Andrew Cuomo Turns Mobster – Threatens to Replace National Grid
Andrew Cuomo, so-called governor of New York State (more like a ruling mob boss), is feeling the heat from HIS decision to block the Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) pipeline from getting built to provide more gas to the New York City region. Because of HIS decision, National Grid, one of two natural gas utility companies for NYC and Long Island, has slapped a moratorium on all new customers of any kind from being added to the gas delivery system. If they add new customers, they run the risk of running out of gas during peak usage times in the winter. Cuomo is now threatening to replace National Grid as the utility supplier, displaying true mob boss-like behavior.
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Last week the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) 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 
Pennsylvania antis from the Philadelphia area who don’t want pipelines running through their neighborhoods (NIMBY types) beat the drums of war so loud and for so long, they finally began to intimidate the non-partisan, shouldn’t-be-intimated PA Public Utility Commission (PUC). In June the PUC launched a “major review of its safety regulations for hazardous liquids pipelines” in response to pressure from Mariner East 2 pipeline foes (see 
We’ve mentioned this in passing in a few articles in the past, but thought it might be good dedicate an entire post to it. What happens, currently, with the prodigious amounts of ethane produced in the Marcellus/Utica? Ethane, as you may know, is one of the natural gas liquids (NGL) hydrocarbons that comes out of the ground along with methane. Methane is CH4, ethane is C2H6. Next to methane, ethane is the most produced hydrocarbon in the M-U. How much gets produced, and what happens to all that ethane?
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