Outrage: Taxpayer Money Continues Funding PA Anti-Pipeline Group
Although President Trump is having good success in draining much of the D.C. swamp, there are still stagnant pools here and there. One of them is the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA). Two years ago PHMSA was caught directly funding anti-pipeline activists with your taxpayer dollars! When it was exposed, the grants stopped–at least temporarily. But now they’ve begun again. In 2018, PHMSA is giving almost $100,000 to the Pipeline Safety Coalition, a radical anti-pipeline group in Pennsylvania. Since 2009 the group has grabbed $1.1 million of taxpayer’s money via federal grants!! It’s time for a Congressional hearing and investigation.
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Although EQT Midstream’s 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline project has experienced a number of legal and regulatory setbacks and is currently blocked from constructing pipeline across/under/near any river, stream, or wetland in all of West Virginia and all of Virginia, there are still places where MVP can build (see 
There’s a series of private events held each fall, sponsored by investment banks and investment firms, that won’t allow media to attend. Supposedly the events allow companies to speak off the record (to investors and analysts) about things they’d rather not have on the public record. We think its a farce…since it keeps us out of those meetings! Inevitably, if there’s big news, it leaks out. And such is the case with news from a recent event hosted by Height Capital Markets in Washington, D.C. At the Height event, Energy Transfer (i.e. Sunoco Logistics Partners) told analysts that the Mariner East 2 (ME2) pipeline project “will be in service as soon as it is mechanically complete, which is expected to be in the next few weeks.”
Less than two weeks ago NEXUS Pipeline, a $2.6 billion, 255-mile interstate pipeline that runs from Ohio into Michigan, received permission from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to begin operation (see 
We thought that all of Mountain Valley Pipeline’s (MVP) permits issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for stream and wetland crossings had been pulled in both West Virginia and Virginia, but alas, no. One of the regions where permits issued by the Army Corps (called NWP 12 permits), in the northern panhandle of WV, is issued by a different Army Corps district office (in Pittsburgh). That office has now revoked MVP’s permits in Wetzel and Harrison counties–another 59 stream and 62 wetland crossings. Which now makes it complete: MVP cannot engage in any construction across/under/near any river, stream, or wetland in *all* of WV and *all* of VA. That is, until they get the NWP 12 permit reworked and reissued.
TransCanada’s ANR Pipeline system has just received permission from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to begin service on the Wisconsin South Expansion Project, a project to expand capacity along the ANR in northern Illinois and Wisconsin. This is the first time we’ve highlighted this project. So why *are* we highlighting it? Because we think Marcellus/Utica molecules will be some of the molecules flowing along the expanded ANR–all the way to Wisconsin.
Pipeline company Eureka Midstream was once a subsidiary of Magnum Hunter Resources. Magnum Hunter spun Eureka out into a standalone company prior to Magnum going through bankruptcy. Last October Eureka acknowledged the former Magnum Hunter no longer owned any of it (see 
The Sisters of the Corn (our name for the a group of nuns in Lancaster County, PA) are not giving up their hypocritical lawsuit against Williams for building the Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline across their property. As we told you in September, the sisters planned to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case, claiming infringement of religious freedom (see 
Although the 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) was federally approved a year ago, in October 2017 (see 
MDN told you in July that Philadelphia antis were paying $50,000 to a “consultant” to produce a faux report that will say the Mariner East 2 (ME2) natural gas liquids pipeline is dangerous, a nightmare waiting to happen (see 
Columbia Gas of Massachusetts (NiSource) continues to try and recover from a series of explosions in its local delivery pipelines north of Boston in mid-September (see 
A recurring theme (broken record) over the past few months has been, “Natural gas storage is too low, far lower than last year and far below the five-year average–prices will have to skyrocket any day now!” That’s been the meme by traders and industry watchers. We keep saying things have fundamentally changed–that drillers can open the spigots any time they want and let it flow. Don’t believe us? Then maybe you will believe the American Gas Association.
Once again it seems environmentalists in Kentucky have won–stopping yet another NGL (natural gas liquids) pipeline. On Wednesday Kinder Morgan, one of (perhaps the) largest pipeline companies in North America, announced it is canceling plans to convert part of its Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) that currently flows natural gas from the Gulf Coast to the northeast, to reverse the pipeline and flow natural gas liquids (NGLs) from the Marcellus/Utica region to the Gulf Coast. The project, called Utica Marcellus Texas Pipeline (UMTP), would have cost $4 billion. Instead, Kinder says it will still seek to reverse a big portion of TGP, but will instead flow M-U natgas south, instead of NGLs.
Year after year New England sees historic price spikes and shortages of natural gas during the winter. It got so bad last year that several LNG cargoes from Russia were delivered (see 
In July MDN told you that Dominion Energy had decided, at least unofficially, to abandon a plan to build a compressor station across the Potomac River from Mount Vernon–the home and estate of our illustrious first president, George Washington (see