6 More Arrested for Blocking Pipe Work at Lancaster Nun Property
Last Monday 23 radicalized protesters tried to block access to equipment being used to construct the Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline in Lancaster County, PA–on property owned by a sect of Catholic nuns whom we call Sisters of the Corn (see Lancaster Pipeline Protesters ‘Do the Hokey Pokey’ & Get Arrested). The protesters began singing the Hokey Pokey as they waited their turn for the handcuffs–including the arrest of a child. Such is the psychological abuse these people perpetrate on children. Over the weekend, on Saturday, another six protesters at the same location were arrested and carted away. One of them was a priest from New York, showing solidarity with the radical Sisters of the Corn. We have the names of the six arrested on Saturday, and a report of their arrest. What remains interesting to MDN is the low, low numbers of protesters who have been arrested. The people in charge of the protest movement, Mark and Malinda Clatterbuck (from Lancaster County) claim to have more than 1,000 people signed up to protest against the pipeline–to engage in illegal actions to block it. Yet so far 29 have been arrested. So much for the big boasts of the Clatterbucks…
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In March, the West Virginia Dept. of Environmental Protection (WVDEP) issued a federal water crossing permit for the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP)–a $3.5 billion, 301-mile pipeline that will run from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County, VA (see 
In May six anti-pipeline residents living near where the Mariner East 2 pipeline will pass asked the Middletown (Delaware County, PA) town council to reject the path of the pipeline near their property because it would, supposedly, pass closer than town code allows. The town council told the residents they’re out of luck–the town will not pursue any action to block Mariner East 2. Period. The residents, amped-up, agitated and funded by Big Green groups filed a lawsuit against the pipeline, to force it to conform with Middletown’s ordinance (see 
With new pipelines coming online in the Marcellus/Utica, will the price of natural gas bought and sold at regional trading points, like Dominion South and TGP (Tennessee Gas Pipeline) Zone 4 go higher? It certainly makes sense that with more of our gas flowing out of the area, there will be less gas left in the area and therefore will fetch a higher price. In fact, just after Energy Transfer’s Rover Pipeline, now in partial service, began to flow, the price of gas at the Dominion South hub jumped 31% (see 
Last year a group of radical environmental groups including Riverkeeper Inc., Sierra Club and Food & Water Watch (Big Green groups) joined a federal appeal (i.e. sued) to stop Spectra Energy from building their Alogonquin Incremental Market (AIM) Project, a project to expand the capacity of the Algonquin Gas Transmission system to flow more Marcellus/Utica gas to markets in the northeast, including New England (see 
According to the energy experts at RBN Energy, ethane production in the Marcellus/Utica region will go from 470,000 barrels per day now to 800,000 barrels per day by 2022–a 70% increase. Ethane, which is sometimes up to 10% of the hydrocarbons coming out of Marcellus/Utica wells (from wet gas and oil wells), can be an important revenue stream. However, you have to have someplace to sell it. Right now, many Marcellus/Utica producers have to mix in the ethane with the methane stream in order to get rid of it. In other words, it costs them money. It’s a waste product. However, when the Shell cracker plant in Beaver County, PA and (possibly) the PTT Global cracker plant in Belmont County, OH go online, important new markets will open up. But even two huge crackers won’t be able to buy all of the available ethane. There are a slew of new cracker plants coming online in the Gulf Coast over the next five years that could use Marcellus/Utica ethane. But will they? The problem, as always, is pipelines. According to an analysis by RBN, the prospects for moving more of our ethane to the Gulf Coast do not look good…
Rover Pipeline has been served a violation from the Michigan Dept. of Environmental Quality claiming the company discharged polluted water from its drilling operations into a wetland. Which may sound familiar, because Rover was cited for fouling a wetland in Ohio with 2 million gallons of drilling mud back in April (see 
A group of anti-fossil/anti-pipeline radicals held a rally yesterday to spread lies and innuendo about the safety of pipelines in general, with a focus on stopping construction of the Mariner East 2 pipeline project in particular. Supposedly 150 people turned up (including Democrat lawmakers) to bash pipeline projects in the Keystone State. What mainstream media reports don’t tell you is that it was a staged event, organized by the loathsome Food & Water Watch–a Big Green group that lobbies against all fossil fuel projects. Media reports tell you a bunch of moms and dads and kids “negatively impacted” by pipelines showed up to plead their case. Bunkum. It was a publicity stunt, and the calls by these radicals to suspend pipeline construction are a pipe dream (pun intended). Here’s how it was reported, followed by the real story…
Once upon a time the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) held out the veneer of practical environmentalism–people who would at least listen to the fossil fuel industry and in some rare cases, reach their hand across the isle to work on initiatives with the industry (for example, they are a partner in the Pittsburgh-based Center for Responsible Shale Development). But over the past few years that veneer has been stripped off, and now the EDF has been exposed as a hack organization, just like all the rest of the loons on the left. Case in point is their latest propaganda, issued last week. The EDF published a “report” that makes the rather preposterous claim that New England customers have overpaid utility bills by $3.6 billion due to collusion between the natural gas and electricity industries. EDF spins the outlandish theory that Avangrid and Eversource brilliantly conspired to create Enron-style fake gas shortages involving a whopping 3.5% of the capacity of the Algonquin pipeline–all in order to drive up electric clearing prices for a wind farm Avangrid didn’t yet own, a rarely dispatched Avangrid oil peaker run under rate of return, and three crappy, rarely operated oil and coal plants in New Hampshire–plus nine little hydro dams that Eversource was trying to unload for years (finally sold last week). EDF’s tall tale is so bizarre (and hard to follow) it’s laughable. However, mainstream fake news media picks it up and regurgitates it to an unsuspecting public, so we’re here to set the record straight on yet another Big Green hoax…
Although the anti-fossil fuel group Lancaster Against Pipelines claims “over 1,000 people” have pledged to protest the pipeline in the county, only 26 (or 23, depending on the news source) showed up to get themselves arrested for attempting to stop the pipeline. We’ve previously written about the hypocritical Catholic nuns who operate a retirement home that uses fracked natural gas to heat it, yet oppose a pipeline to flow the same fracked gas under their property. The nuns, called Adorers of the Blood of Christ, have tried several strategies to derail the Williams Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline project. One of stunts they pulled, in league with the radicals from Lancaster Against Pipelines, is to stick a few wooden park benches in the middle of a corn field that they own (leased to a local farmer), and call it a “chapel”–which is why MDN dubbed them Sisters of the Corn. The sisters sued to stop the pipeline on religious grounds, claiming it violates a core religious belief in preserving Mom Earth. A judge saw through that sham and threw out the case (see 
We’d call this a case of Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) and Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) getting taken to the (pipe) cleaners. The anti-fossil fuel (and far-left) Virginia Outdoors Foundation (VOF) warned both Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley, years ago, that land the non-profit previously tied up with non-development easements is off limits for their respective pipeline projects. So-called “open space” organizations like VOF get private landowners to sell them easements to their properties–the right to disallow any kind of development on the land, no matter who buys it in the future. But sometimes “no development” doesn’t actually mean “no development”–it’s just a bargaining position. The VOF has just cut a deal to allow ACP and MVP to cross a cumulative 53 acres of land, land with no-development easements, in exchange for adding 1,130 acres in other places to the their no-development easement stash. Oh, and $4,075,000 in cash for VOF’s coffers will be chipped in too. A true shake-down by shake-down artists, all to stick a couple of pipelines in the ground for a few hundred feet where nothing will get built over top of them anyway…
Canadian company Enbridge owns the mighty Texas Eastern Transmission Company (Tetco) pipeline system in the U.S. Last Wednesday, as workers were installing test equipment along the line in Noble County, OH, the workers noticed soil around the pipeline moving around. Not a good situation. So they shut off the flow of gas through that section of the pipeline, south of the Berne compressor station in Noble County. That portion of the pipeline went from flowing 1.6 to 2.3 billion cubic feet of gas per day (depending on the news source), down to flowing zero. The situation was investigated and the pipeline returned to service on Sunday, Oct 15th. In the meantime, from the 11th to the 15th, Tetco declared the situation “force majeure”–meaning “due to circumstances beyond our control we have to shut it off.” We assume force majeure was declared because shippers who wanted to move gas through the pipeline, and buyers on the other end, were screwed for a few days. Shippers lost money from gas they could have sold and buyers had to scramble to try and find other sources to meet demand. Economic losses for both. We’re guessing declaring force majeure lets Tetco off the hook legally for any potential monetary damages its customers experienced during the outage…
Great news delivered late Friday afternoon: The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued final, full approvals for both the Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley pipeline projects. Atlantic Coast is a $5 billion, 594-mile natural gas pipeline that will stretch from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina. Mountain Valley is a $3.5 billion, 303-mile natural gas pipeline that will run from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County, VA. Both projects still face an uphill battle before they get built. The North Carolina Dept. of Environmental Quality (DEQ) issued a rejection letter for Atlantic Coast last week (see 
The Andrew Cuomo-corrupted New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) on Friday filed an appeal/challenge with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) contesting FERC’s recent ruling that essentially emasculates the DEC regarding their rejection of a tiny pipeline project in Orange County, NY. On Aug. 30, the DEC issued a letter to FERC and Millennium Pipeline denying Millennium’s request for a water permit to build a 7.8 mile pipeline spur from the main Millennium Pipeline to a natural gas power plant under construction in Orange County (see