List of M-U Pipeline Projects Waiting for FERC Approval
A number of Marcellus/Utica pipeline projects are stuck at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Projects that builders are waiting on for a final go-ahead from FERC. What’s the holdup? Leftist Democrat members of FERC insist that unless FERC considers mythical man-made global warming when approving pipeline projects, those projects should not be approved. It almost appears as if Democrat FERC members, including Dick Glick and Cheryl LaFleur are colluding with Big Green groups who have filed a flood of lawsuits insisting on the same thing. The end result is to slow, sometimes stop, progress on approving new projects.
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Slowly but surely, more and more union members are beginning to vote Republican. They see their own Democrat Party denying them jobs by rejecting important, big construction projects (pipelines) because of an irrational fear of fossil fuels. This week union members have been picketing a NY Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) office in Buffalo (exclusive pictures below) to protest the DEC’s rejection of National Fuel Gas Company’s proposed Northern Access Pipeline project.
Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), a 303-mile pipeline from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County, VA (now 80% built), may have just found a way to eliminate one of the last remaining obstacles to completing the project. Although MVP’s solution will delay completion and cost more money. In a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission made Monday, Equitrans (builder of MVP) announced a deal with the U.S. Department of the Interior to swap ownership of land over which some of the Appalachian Trail travels in return for the right to drill under the Trail.
As we chronicle today in another post, Marcellus/Utica gas continues to break new records for production. In July, the U.S. EIA says “Appalachia” gas production will hit a new all-time high of 32.4 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d). Our region doesn’t use anywhere near that much gas, which means we have to find other markets that will use it. So where does all that gas go? And how does it get there? That’s the topic of a recent RBN Energy post that outlines the corridors and pipelines that flow our gas to other markets around the North American continent.
Several analysts at last week’s LDC Gas Forum Northeast conference in Boston offered their opinion that further growth in production for the Marcellus/Utica region is on the cusp of stalling. Why? Because they don’t see any new major pipeline projects on the horizon beyond the final “big 3” (Atlantic Coast Pipeline, Mountain Valley Pipeline, and PennEast Pipeline), and because major LNG export plants along the Gulf Coast will receive most of their gas from bountiful associated gas that comes from plays much closer to the Gulf, including the Permian and Midcontinent regions.
It’s time to smoke out irrational fossil fuel haters and use their own science against them. National Grid has just released a study (full copy below) commissioned with researchers from M.J. Bradley & Associates that shows there are FEWER so-called greenhouse gas emissions from using the proposed Williams Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) pipeline to New York City than by using alternatives being pushed by New York State–alternatives like heat pumps. You read that right. LESS emissions by using a pipeline than the so-called “green” alternatives. If that doesn’t beat all.
Pennsylvania antis from the Philadelphia area who don’t want pipelines running through their neighborhoods (NIMBY types) have beat the drums of war so loud and for so long, they’ve finally begun to intimidate the non-partisan, shouldn’t-be-intimated PA Public Utility Commission (PUC). The PUC last Thursday launched a “major review of its safety regulations for hazardous liquids pipelines” in response to pressure from Mariner East 2 pipeline foes. It’s sad to see a government body cowed by a few loudmouthed troublemakers.
So-called environmentalists in the Albany, NY area are fine with a 333-mile underground electric cable that will pass through the area to bring hydro power from Quebec to New York City, but they object to a 7-mile underground natural gas pipeline that will increase supplies of natgas to the region–because natgas is vile and filthy “fracked gas” and these so-called environmentalists have an irrational (certifiably nuts) aversion to using fossil fuels as an energy source. It truly boggles the mind. Will anyone be left in New York State in another 20 years?
Somebody’s lying–and our money is that the North Carolina Dept. of Environmental Quality (DEQ) are the liars. The DEQ recently denied a federal Section 401 Water Quality Certification permit (issued under the federal Clean Water Act) for the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) Southgate project, claiming MVP has not provided information it needs to properly evaluate the project. MVP says it’s bent over backward and forward to give DEQ everything it needs.
Dominion Energy has laid 35 miles (so far) of the 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) project that will run from West Virginia to North Carolina to bring Marcellus/Utica gas to the South. However, the project has been stalled for months due to multiple lawsuits brought by colluding Big Green groups. We recently told you about a whispering campaign that says Dominion may abandon the project (see 
Anti-fossil fuelers in Massachusetts who are desperate to block a federal (and state) approved compressor station from getting built in Weymouth, MA continue to use a mix-up at the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (over air sample test results) as an excuse to bully the DEP into reversing its decision to grant a permit for the project. The DEP, to its credit, is not caving to the pressure.
That didn’t take long. Barely two months ago President Trump signed an Executive Order instructing the Environmental Protection Agency to review Section 401 of the Clean Water Act–the section that grants states (and tribes) the right to have a say in pipeline projects (see 
Two important pipeline projects, PennEast and Adelphia Gateway, are at various stages of approval. PennEast is a $1 billion (or $1.2 billion, depending on the source) new greenfield pipeline project from Luzerne County, PA to Mercer County, NJ. PennEast will flow PA Marcellus gas to markets in NJ. Adelphia Gateway is an old oil pipeline, already in the ground, that runs from Northampton County, PA through Bucks, Montgomery, and Chester counties, terminating in Delaware County at Marcus Hook. Adelphia will flow Marcellus gas to the Philadelphia region. PennEast was announced in 2014, and Adelphia in 2017. Neither has yet begun construction. What’s the status for each project?