Subcontractor Working on Exploded Boston-area Pipes Identified
We continue to track the story we first brought you on Monday of this week, that late last week there was a chain-reaction of explosions in local natural gas delivery pipelines about 25 miles north of Boston (see Local NatGas Pipes Explode Near Boston Killing 1, Injuring 25). The explosions and resulting fires tragically killed one teenager and injured 25 others. Local officials ordered some 8,600 residents and businesses in the three communities to evacuate–until Sunday. A major incident. The ramifications of this situation will go on for years. Although it’s still early in the investigation process, the cause of the explosions appears to be a combination of old/decaying pipes with too much pressure flowing through them. According to an NTSB spokesman, the early indicators are that a pressure sensor is the cause (see Pressure in Exploded Massachusetts Pipes 12X More than Normal). Here’s what *may have* happened: A pressure sensor that controls how much gas is pumped through local pipelines was attached to a portion of a pipeline that was capped at both ends and closed off. The sensor detected little-to-no pressure, so it signaled the system to keep increasing the pressure, to flow more gas. The pressure eventually reached 12 times what it should have been, and the older cast iron and steel pipelines couldn’t take it, resulting in explosions and fires. The question turns to who capped off the pipeline with the sensors? Who was working on pipelines in that community on that day? A Boston TV station tracked down the who…
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Earlier this week we brought you the good news that the forces of good have overcome the forces of evil–evil being the Sierra Club and the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) and their mission to stop the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) from getting built (see 
At the end of July NEXUS Pipeline was 80% complete and made big boasts that it would be ready to flow during the third quarter of this year (see 
It’s been a years-long wait, but the week/day/minute Atlantic Sunrise will open the valves and begin to flow natural gas from northeastern Pennsylvania is finally here! Yesterday Williams, the company building the 200-mile greenfield pipeline in northeastern and southeastern PA, filed a request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for permission to open up the valves and let it flow. No response yet, but we expect within a day or two FERC will give the high-five to Williams. It’s been a loooong time in coming–overcoming multiple lawsuits by radical leftists who pretend to care about the environment. The startup date was delayed from August to the week of Sept. 10 (see 
On again, off again, on again, off again. Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), EQT Midstream’s 303-mile pipeline from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County, has had its share of ups and downs. A myriad of lawsuits have been filed against the project. Wacky radicals took to sitting in trees and poles to try and stop it. Most of the illegal protests and lawsuits only served to slow down the project, not stop it. But then a lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club (and a few other colluding Big Green groups) yielded fruit in July when a federal court pulled permits for 3.5 miles of the pipeline where it runs through Jefferson National Forest (see 
Two days ago we reported that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission had finally lifted the stop-work order for Dominion Energy’s huge 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (see 
Last Thursday a major accident occurred 25 miles northwest of Boston when natgas delivery pipelines owned by Columbia Gas (NiSource) in three communities exploded and caught fire at more than 80 locations (see 
Once again, the forces of good have overcome the forces of evil–evil being the Sierra Club and the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) and their mission to stop the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) from getting built. Yesterday the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) lifted a previously issued stop-work order that had idled work along the entire 600+ mile ACP. The stop-work order came in early August after a federal court pulled permits for approximately 100 miles of ACP in response to a lawsuit filed by the anti-American Sierra Club and a few other groups, including the SELC (see 
An article appearing on the Pittsburgh’s PBS station WESA website is, in a phrase, fake news. The article boldly states in its headline (and text) that: “Only 11 Percent Of Pennsylvania’s Natural Gas Pipelines Are Mapped For The Public.” The implication, the slight-of-hand intended to mislead lazy readers, is that 89% of natural gas pipelines in PA are not mapped at all. That simply is not true. The second graf of the story says this: “There are three types of natural gas pipelines: large transmission lines, medium-sized gathering pipelines and small distribution lines that go to homes and businesses. Transmission lines are the only ones mapped and disclosed to the public by the federal government, and they make up about 11 percent of total pipelines. There are 89,296 total natural gas pipeline miles in the commonwealth; the vast majority are small distribution lines, but more than 1,105 miles worth are gathering pipelines.” Does that not overtly imply the “vast majority” of PA’s pipelines are not even mapped? Pennsylvania recently went through a major revision of the state’s 811 system. Not only are gathering pipelines to shale wells mapped and included in the 811 system, so too are gathering lines to conventional wells. The only pipelines not part of the 811 system are those that run to “stripper wells”–wells that produce barely a puff of gas and therefore there’s no danger if you do happen to hit one when digging. The state Public Utility Commission wants to include stripper well pipelines in 811 too (see 
Last Thursday a major accident occurred 25 miles northwest of Boston when delivery pipelines owned by Columbia Gas (NiSource) in three communities exploded and caught fire at more than 80 locations (see 
You don’t often think of the safety of the pipeline network that delivers natural gas to your home or business because it’s so rare there are any problems with it. When’s the last time you heard about a local delivery pipeline exploding? Last Thursday a major incident occurred 25 miles northwest of Boston when delivery pipelines owned by Columbia Gas (NiSource) in three communities–Andover, North Andover and Lawrence–exploded and caught fire at “more than 60 locations.” The explosions and resulting fires tragically killed one teenager and injured some 25 others. Local officials ordered over 8,000 residents and businesses in the three communities to evacuate, turning off electric and gas. Each house and business was then tested before turning electricity back on (gas is still off). Residents were finally able to return to their homes on Sunday. It’s a huge incident, a big, fat, stinking mess. Folks waited in lines for hours at claims centers to file requests for reimbursement for hotels and expenses after being displaced from their homes–only to have the claims centers close because Columbia couldn’t handle the numbers. On Friday, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker declared a state of emergency in the three communities. Later in the day on Friday, he invoked a little-used (and little-known) provision in the state constitution that allowed him to take management of the crisis away from Columbia/NiSource, giving management of the crisis to a competitor, Eversource. Although it’s still early in the investigation process, the cause of the explosions appears to be a combination of old/decaying pipes with too much pressure flowing through them. Attention has turned to pressure sensors along the pipelines. Yesterday Columbia/NiSource announced it will replace all 48 miles of the cast iron and bare steel pipeline system in that area. Meanwhile, the affected 8,000+ residents and businesses will not have gas service restored “for weeks” at a minimum…
Seven radical green groups–Sierra Club, Clean Air Council (CAC), FracTracker Alliance, Earthworks, PennFuture, Breathe Project, Environmental Integrity Project–sent a protest letter last week to the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection objecting to a request by Shell that its 97-mile Falcon Ethane Pipeline be granted certain air permit exemptions. Shell is asking the DEP to determine whether or not (hopefully not) any emissions coming from the pipeline would be “minor sources,” exempting the pipeline from certain permits. The rads are telling the DEP to deny that request, in an attempt to slow or even stop the project. With no ethane, Shell’s $6 billion cracker plant, currently under construction, can’t begin operation. Will the DEP do the right thing and ignore these nutters?…
We have to confess we have a lot in common, philosophically, with Libertarians. We like the philosophy of live and let live–as long as what you do (or what I do) doesn’t hurt the other person, nobody has a right to stop you (or me) from doing it. But the Libertarian philosophy does have its quirks–things we don’t agree with. Sometimes wacky. Like support for legalizing pot smoking. Can you imagine a bunch of potheads driving down our roads? We don’t care if they want to stone themselves into oblivion in the privacy of their own homes–but we do have public safety concerns. A fine line/balance between the public good and private freedom. Here’s another case of public good vs. private freedom: pipelines. We’ve always had a tough time with the use of eminent domain for pipelines. But in the end, the greater public good is served by running pipelines, and if there’s one or two landowners here and there who refuse to deal, eminent domain is regrettably, sometimes necessary. As a last resort. The Niskanen Center, a “right-leaning” Libertarian think tank, has just entered the pipeline debate by filing a “friend of the court” brief with U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, siding with radical anti-fossil fuelers against the Mountain Valley Pipeline. The Niskanen Center is understandably concerned about landowners’ property rights being infringed. Unfortunately, they’ve allowed themselves to be used by antis, people whose political philosophy is closer to Mao Tse Tung (Communist) than it is to freedom for everyone. How could the Niskanen Center be so easily duped? We think we know. They believe in the fairy tale of man-made global warming, which appears to color their view of freedom. If they can fall for that one, they’ll fall for anything…
The U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts has, finally, dismissed a sham lawsuit against Eversource Energy and Avangrid Inc. Last October the radical Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) published a “report” that makes the preposterous claim that New England customers have overpaid utility bills by $3.6 billion due to collusion between the natural gas and electricity industries (see 
This is all kind of speculative, but we find it intriguing and exciting. If you’ve read MDN for any length of time, you’re read about Dominion Energy’s 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which will run from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina–near the border with South Carolina. Unfortunately construction is currently on hold following revocation of some permits by a federal court, and an order from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in August to stop work on the entire project, for now (see 
Yesterday MarkWest Liberty NGL Pipeline, a subsidiary/part of MarkWest Energy (now MPLX since being bought out and merged into Marathon Petroleum in late 2015), announced plans to build a new NGL pipeline. MarkWest Liberty launched a binding open season for the new pipeline–a time when drillers can sign on the dotted line to reserve capacity along the new pipeline. The new NGL pipeline is a bit different than other NGL pipelines in the Marcellus/Utica. It will pick up NGLs from several of MarkWest’s gas processing plants in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and cart the NGLs to fractionation facilities owned by MarkWest in PA and Ohio, where those NGLs will get separated into their discrete hydrocarbon components. Let us explain it this way: Step One is that the gas comes out of the ground. But it’s not all just methane–there’s a number of other hydrocarbons (natural gas liquids, or NGLs) mixed in with it, things like ethane, butane, propane, pentane. The raw mix goes to a cryogenic processing plant where the methane (i.e. natural gas) is separated out and sent on its way to market via pipelines like Rover and Rockies Express and others. Step Two: The NGLs need further separating. That’s what a fractionation plant does. This new pipeline from MarkWest Liberty (the Marcellus unit of MarkWest) will cart the mixed bag of NGLs to fractionation facilities. After being separated into component parts, the components can then be sold. Which fits with MarkWest’s prior statements that in 2018 they would focus on creating new markets for Marcellus/Utica NGLs, butane in particular (see