Ashtabula County | Economic Impact | Energy Services | Erie County | Industrywide Issues | Jobs | Ohio | Pennsylvania | Pipelines | RH energytrans
As Risberg Pipe Nears Finish, $474M Plant Locates in Ashtabula
The Risberg Line, a 60-mile pipeline from Crawford County, PA to Erie County, PA, and from there across the border into Ashtabula County, OH, began construction in February (see Construction Begins on “Massive” PA to OH Risberg Pipeline). As the project nears completion, Ashtabula is already seeing the benefits. A $474 million pig iron plant is being built in Ashtabula that will use gas from this pipeline to power it. The new plant will use 500 construction workers to build it, and 110 permanent workers to operate it. And this plant is only the beginning for Ashtabula.
Read More “As Risberg Pipe Nears Finish, $474M Plant Locates in Ashtabula”
In what we would say is an unusual, very public rebuke of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the former chairperson of the Massachusetts Dept. of Public Utilities says that Cuomo is to blame for a near-emergency situation in New England during the winter of 2017/2018 when the region was within two days of a massive blackout due to lack of electricity. The lack of electricity is because New England doesn’t have enough natural gas to feed power plants during critical load periods.
Back in January Tallgrass Energy, builder and operator of the mighty Rockies Express (REX) pipeline which is a critical link that flows Marcellus/Utica gas to Midwestern markets, dropped the bombshell announcement that investment firm Blackstone was buying a “controlling” interest in the company (see 
The Mariner East pipeline projects (plural) are an important part of the shale energy story in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. As is the Marcus Hook Industrial Complex (what we call the Marcus Hook refinery). Currently between Mariner East 1 and 2, somewhere around 170,000 barrels of NGLs (mostly ethane and propane) flow to Marcus Hook and most of that gets exported to other countries. Mariner East 2X is currently under construction and due to come online next year, increasing that number significantly. For many Marcellus/Utica drillers, selling NGLs is the difference between being profitable and not profitable.
To his credit (we don’t often heap praise on him), Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf toured a Mariner East 2 pipeline construction site in Chester County near Philadelphia last Thursday, along with some Democrat politicians, and told anti-pipeline residents “NO” to their faces when they asked him to shut down the Mariner East pipeline system. He was polite, but firm, telling them he disagrees with their position of the need to permanently shut down the Mariner pipelines. “Do a better job” with construction and impacts from the project? Sure, according to Wolf. Shut it all down permanently? NO.
Last October NEXUS Pipeline, a $2.6 billion, 255-mile interstate pipeline that runs from Ohio to Michigan, received permission from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to begin partial operation (see 
How dumb must you be to not understand that if there’s not enough gas supply, you can’t hook up new customers to the distribution grid? Yet some New York City legislators, 17 of them, are vilifying National Grid, one of NYC’s two main natural gas utilities, because National Grid continues to deny new customers who want gas service to be hooked up. It’s clearly Andrew Cuomo’s fault–he denied permission to build a pipeline to bring new supplies of gas to the region. Yet the legislators close ranks for this putz and blame the company that can’t get those new supplies. Some of these same legislators OPPOSE the pipeline! Yet they want more natgas. What kind of mental gymnastics does that require?
In May, Columbia Gas Transmission was forced to haul the State of Maryland into court over the state’s refusal to grant an easement to drill a tiny 3.5-mile pipeline under the Potomac River (see 
We should have seen this one coming (but didn’t). Yesterday MDN told you that the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) had revoked the right of the Beaver County Conservation District (BCCD) to issue and monitor permits for erosion and sediment control, two permits used in building both pipelines and drill pads (see 
Two weeks ago MDN told you about an incident near Philadelphia in which the flare stack at a Mariner East 2 (ME2) pipeline pump station ignited causing a loud noise, which we likened to flatulence (see 
In 2006 the Pennsylvania State Legislature passed a bill (signed into law) that protects certain information about pipelines from being divulged via open records requests. It’s all too easy for terrorists (foreign or domestic) to use that information to inflict pain and suffering, even death–or to stop the flows along those pipelines. Good law, good call. But now several PA House members from the Philadelphia area want to pass a new law that would repeal the 2006 law–all in the name of pipeline “transparency.”
The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has just given Equitrans’ Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project a huge thumbs up and assist by approving permit changes made by West Virginia that will allow MVP to restart work in crossing hundreds of streams and rivers in the state.