Phila. Gas Works: Will Take 45 Years to Upgrade Unsafe Pipelines
Natural gas customers in Philadelphia could have had all of the outdated and unsafe pipes belonging to the aging Philadelphia Gas Works (PGW) pipeline network replaced within 5-10 years, paid for by UIL Holdings Corporation, a Connecticut-based gas and electric utility holding company that offered to buy PGW in a deal brokered by Democrat Mayor Michael Nutter. But the corrupt Philadelphia City Council torpedoed the deal (see Philly City Council Kills the Phila. Gas Works $1.86B Deal). Now PGW ratepayers are going to see an increase–instead of a decrease–in their utility rates in order to “speed up” the pace of replacing unsafe natural gas pipes throughout the city. What does “speed up” mean for a government-owned utility?…
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A researcher with the California Institute of Technology has taken a close look at what would happen if five major universities–Harvard, Yale, MIT, Columbia and NYU–heeded the siren call of anti-fossil fuel nutters to divest their considerable endowments from holding any fossil fuel-related stocks. Just those five universities would lose a combined $200 million of value in their stock portfolios should they divest from fossil fuel stocks. Such efforts have been going on for some time. Not long ago Syracuse University divested all fossil fuel stocks, which will lead to losses in their endowment fund (see 
The NEXUS Gas Transmission pipeline, a $1.5-$2.0 billion natural gas pipeline that will carry Utica and Marcellus Shale gas spanning 11 counties in Ohio, 3 counties in Michigan, and eventually connect to the Dawn Energy Hub in Canada, has had to take some Ohio landowners to court simply to gain access to their property survey for potential routes. Sometimes county judges rule against NEXUS (see 
Last week the CEO of Thailand chemical giant PTT Global flew to Belmont County, OH to announce his company is spending $100 million over the next 9-12 months on preliminary work to build an ethane cracker plant in the county (see 
Midstream giant Williams and drilling giant Chesapeake Energy are cuddling a little bit closer in the Ohio Utica Shale. Williams announced today they have signed an agreement with Chesapeake to run gathering pipelines in a new area of the dry gas Utica for Chesapeake in return for signing a contract that binds Chessy to using Williams until 2035. Williams was already gathering natural gas for Chessy on 140,000 acres of Utica Shale land in Ohio. This agreement extends the time on that 140,000 acres by adding another 20 years, and adds another 50,000 acres to the mix…
Oilfield service giant Baker Hughes released their venerable monthly rotary rig count report today for August 2015. The numbers worldwide improved–the international rig count for August was 1,137, up 19 from the 1,118 counted in July. Looking specifically at the U.S., onshore (mostly shale) rig counts climbed from 835 in July to 849 in August, up 14. It does indeed seem as if we’ve turned a corner. This is the second month in a row that U.S. land-based rigs increased month over month (see 
More than 3 1/2 years ago (in January 2012) MDN told you about a plan in West Virginia to use a process patented by Union Carbide in the 1970s to build an ethane cracker plant on the cheap–much less than the typical “world scale” crackers announced by Shell, Odebrecht and others since that time (see 
A few more details about the proposed site for an ethane cracker plant in Belmont County (see 
Pennsylvania’s Democrats continue to fight dirty in the budget battle–in their losing effort to pile big taxes on a single industry, the Marcellus Shale industry. The latest in the dirty war they’re waging: the extremely partisan Democrat-controlled so-called Independent Fiscal Office (yes, a PA state government office funded by taxpayers) has issued a report to sycophantic media outlets (but not the general public via its website) to forecast a decrease in Marcellus Shale impact fee revenue for 2015…
As we told you yesterday, Ohio Gov. John Kasich horned in on a visit by Thailand-based PTT Global CEO Supattanapong Punmeechaow to Belmont County where Punmeechaow announced his company will spend $100 million over the next 9-12 months on a potential ethane cracker plant complex (see 
Katie Klaber, principal of the Klaber Group consulting firm and former president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, was hired to write a white paper/study for the Ben Franklin Shale Gas Innovation and Commercialization Center (SGICC) on the topic of how small Pennsylvania companies can be successful in delivering new products and services to the oil and gas industry. That is, how can your company plug into the supply chain? The white paper, titled “Technology Adoption in the Shale Energy Industry + the Role of SGICC” (full copy below) focuses mainly on technology companies–those with a new innovation. How do such companies get noticed? Get their first customer? Katie’s company surveyed 24 such companies that have worked with the SGICC to get noticed and get plugged in. She brings the lessons learned to this report. You might think, “Yeah, but I have a fencing company–nothing high tech about it. Would this report help me?” Yes, it would. There’s plenty of great marketing insights, an update on where things stand for the Marcellus/Utica specifically, and the oil and gas industry in general. We think this is a great report for any business that wants a better understanding of how to market to the upstream, midstream and downstream in the oil and gas industry…
“This is Dr. Frazier Crane, I’m listening.” Remember the old sitcom Frazier? Funny stuff. Something equally as funny is coming to Pennsylvania. The PA Dept. of Environmental Protection is holding 14 “listening sessions” from this month through November to accept comments on Barack H. Obama’s so-called Clean Power Plan that will force states like PA to cut carbon emissions to the point of bankrupting businesses and forcing sky-high utility rates. The PennFuture Secretary of the DEP, John Quigley, an Obama acolyte and global warming Kool Aid drinker, can’t wait to “listen” to what PA residents have to say. We encourage you to show up and give him a piece of your mind…
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has buckled to pressure from politicians to schedule yet another scoping hearing in New Hampshire (the third such hearing in tiny NH, the 14th overall), and extend the period for public comments, for the Kinder Morgan Northeast Energy Direct pipeline project that would bring much-needed supplies of abundant, cheap and clean-burning Marcellus/Utica Shale gas to New England (see