New Group Aims to Counteract Big Green’s Paid Protesters
The Energy Equipment and Infrastructure Alliance (EEIA) announced last week they have launched “Energy Builders,” a new community-based coalition of workers, families and businesses dedicated to educating friends, neighbors and elected officials about the importance and benefits of energy infrastructure and its ongoing development. Energy Builders came together in reaction to paid Big Green protesters being dropped into local communities spreading fear, misinformation and untruths about new energy delivery projects. Americans deserve the best, safest, most modern and secure energy delivery systems in our communities. Energy Builders promotes that. America is enjoying an energy revolution, where innovation and new discoveries of clean and affordable fuels like natural gas are cutting consumer prices, utility bills, and air pollution. We need to modernize and expand our energy infrastructure and delivery systems to ensure that all families, workers and businesses get their fair share of the rewards. We say, it’s about time to fight back against the paid protesters with a radical (WAY outside the mainstream) agenda…
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Yes, lack of pipelines in the Marcellus/Utica does hurt many people and businesses. When drillers can’t get their product to markets that fetch higher prices, the existing markets where they sell becomes saturated and the price drops. That means less money in royalty payments for landowners, less money in the pockets of drilling companies, less drilling until prices go up again, fewer jobs, less tax revenue flowing to the state and municipalities. Etc. You get the idea. It also can impact those who trade natural gas futures. Ginormous investment bank Goldman Sachs markets and trades natural gas–one of the world’s biggest natgas traders. The company “bet wrong” on which way the price of gas would go in the Marcellus/Utica, believing it would go higher with projects like Rover Pipeline coming online. Instead, Rover and other projects in our region hit obstacles and delays. And the price of gas stayed low. It cost Goldman $100 million this spring–turning in the worst performance ever for its commodities trading unit. Yes, we understand, it’s hard to shed a tear for a big company like Goldman. After all, they were rolling the dice in the Wall Street casino. Our point remains: When pipelines don’t get built, there’s a very real cost associated–a cost that ripples throughout the economy from the biggest players (Goldman) to the smallest players (landowners)…
MDN has enthusiastically covered the story of Millennium Pipeline’s challenge of the New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation’s (DEC) refusal to (so far) grant a federal Clean Water Act stream crossing permit for a short, 7.8-mile pipeline from Millennium to natgas-fired electric plant currently under construction in Orange County, NY. States are given a year to respond to a request for such a permit, and the DEC was long past that date. So Millennium took the DEC to court–the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In June the court dismissed the lawsuit by Millennium, which at first blush may seem like a blow. But it was the reasoning and opinion of the judges in dismissing the case that will change everything in New York. The judges said there is no case because if, as Millennium says, the DEC is denying the water permits, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) itself has the power to jump back in and simply override NY DEC and issue the permits (see 
The Oil and Gas Industry Labor-Management Committee, led by the American Petroleum Institute (API) and North America’s Building Trades Unions, released a study this week on union pipeline employment across the county. The study outlines the many (many!) different types of jobs involved in building pipelines. You may think it’s just welders and their assistants. No way. It’s FAR more than that. Skilled tradespeople that work on pipelines include: boilermaker, carpenter, electrician, instrumentation technician, insulator, ironworker, construction laborer, millwright, operator, painter, scaffold builder, welder, and plumber, pipefitter, and steamfitter. Of special interest, however, are four occupations that traditionally play central roles in pipeline crews. Three are among the trades listed above: operators (i.e. operating engineers), construction laborers, and plumbers/pipefitters/steamfitters. The fourth is “drivers,” the occupation responsible for moving people and equipment around and between job sites. Now that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has a quorum, pipeline projects will start getting approved and all of the jobs above, in the Marcellus/Utica, will pick up. Below is a copy of the full report, titled “Skilled Trades Employment in the Pipeline Industry: 2006-2015″…
Pipelines make a HUGE difference in the price drillers can get for their gas. When more pipelines get built to haul gas out of an over-saturated/producing area, like the Marcellus/Utica, the higher the price drillers can get for their gas. It’s simple Economics 101. Right now we have too much supply and not enough demand. When pipelines start flowing our gas to other markets, it the over-supply goes to places where there’s not enough supply and prices go up. This is not just theory. It’s fact. Our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, has done an analysis of the price fetched for Marcellus/Utica gas for the first seven months of 2017 versus the same period in 2016. Extra/new pipeline capacity has come online in the first half of 2017. The EIA found that in the first seven months of 2016, our gas averaged a sale price of $0.76 below the benchmark Henry Hub price. In the first seven months of 2017, our gas averaged a sale price of $0.53 below the Henry Hub. The gap is narrowing year over year. That 53 cent price is a 30% improvement over last year. So yes, pipelines make a HUGE difference in the price of natural gas!…
Once upon a time it was a given that local officials (state, county, township) would obey federal laws. It’s what responsible adults do. You obey the law, even if you don’t agree with or like the law. If you don’t like the law, you work to get it changed. Ignoring the laws you don’t like is a prescription for anarchy and the end of civilized rule (a descent into tyranny). When local officials, like those in Pittsylvania County, VA willingly, enthusiastically obey the law these days (as it relates to federally-approved pipelines), it’s the exception rather than the rule. It’s noteworthy. Such is the post-Obama world we now live in. Don’t like a law? Ignore it. Break it. Subvert it. But not in Pittsylvania. Tuesday night the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors discussed the legal “wrangling” over easements and eminent domain for Mountain Valley Pipeline, a $3.5 billion, 303-mile pipeline that will run from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County. The Board was in agreement: this pipeline is a GOOD thing, and easements for it in Pittsylvania are bound and governed by federal law–not local or state laws. Residents and their representatives on the county board are not free to violate those laws. What breath of fresh Virginia mountain air!…
Constant frivolous lawsuits against legal, legitimate businesses performing a valuable service for society is having a corrosive effect on our legal system. That’s the thought that hit MDN as we read, yet again, about lawsuits and actions against pipelines in Virginia and West Virginia. In Virginia, radicals from the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League are pressuring the state Attorney General to get involved to try and stop Dominion’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline–a $5 billion, 594-mile natural gas pipeline that will stretch from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina. In West Virginia, the Sierra Club and several other far-out-on-the-left fringe groups are suing the state Dept. of Environmental Protection for having the audacity to evaluate and then approve the Mountain Valley Pipeline project there. Mountain Valley is a $3.5 billion, 303-mile pipeline that will run from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County. This ongoing barrage of lawsuits and actions are meant to delay these projects–to give antis more time to whip up opposition and to figure out how to legally (or illegally) stop them. Yes, antis often engage in illegal activities when they disagree with a lawful activity, like building a pipeline. All of these legal machinations tie up our courts and, in our opinion, corrode our legal institutions, causing irreparable harm to pipeline companies. It’s time to fight back and hold these groups (and individuals) accountable. Make them PAY (money) for their strategy of delay. Only when we hold people accountable for their actions will this mess stop…
Energy Transfer Partners (part of Energy Transfer Equity) is the company that built the Dakota Access Pipeline (now flowing, thankfully). They are also the pipeline company building both the Rover Pipeline in Ohio and Michigan, and the Mariner East 2 natural gas liquids pipeline from eastern Ohio across Pennsylvania to the Philadelphia area. Big company, big projects. ETP recently sold off 32% of the Rover project to Blackstone for $1.57 billion (see 
Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) is not taking a ludicrous, outrageous lawsuit by anti-pipeline residents from West Virginia and Virginia lying down. They are fighting mad as recent court filings show. MVP is a $3.5 billion, 301-mile pipeline that will run from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County, VA. A lawsuit was filed in federal court at the end of July to block the MVP project (see 
Pipeline companies face enormous governmental roadblocks when it comes to building new pipelines. “Red tape” doesn’t begin to describe the hassles they face in going from government agency to government agency in order to build an interstate pipeline. Yesterday, with the stroke of a pen, President Trump helped correct that situation. Trump signed a new executive order that will speed up approvals of permits for highways, bridges, pipelines and other major building efforts by shortening the time for environmental reviews. Trump’s executive order (full copy below) revokes an idiotic Obama executive order aimed at reducing exposure to flooding, sea level rise and other consequences of mythical climate change. Obama intentionally screwed things up and created long delays. Trump is fixing it. The American Petroleum Institute and business groups applauded the new EO and said it will directly translate into more jobs…
Last night the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) held one final public hearing for the Williams Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline project–in Lancaster. As we previously reported, anti-fossil fuel nutters planned to gather prior to the meeting so they could choreograph a “walkout” of the meeting, as a form of protest (see 
The Washtenaw County (Michigan) Road Commission has written a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), requesting FERC deny a certificate to build the NEXUS Pipeline because (they claim) NEXUS has bullied them. It seems the Road Commission has been working with NEXUS over the past year to prepare for the pipeline. The Road Commission wants NEXUS to jump through all sorts of hoops, do handstands, backflips, and in general, dance to the Road Commission’s tune. And because NEXUS isn’t willing to bend all the over backwards, the Road Commission is miffed. The Road Commission is the lord of their domain, and no outsider is going to do anything without their permission. So the Road Commission has run to mommy (FERC) and started bawling that NEXUS are meanies and they won’t pick up after themselves and they’re just BULLIES. So FERC should just go ahead and shut the whole $2 billion, 255-mile interstate pipeline project down (that will run from Ohio through Michigan)–because of one whiny Road Commission in one county…
Jeff Tittel, the head of the New Jersey Sierra Club, last week called President Trump a “fossil fool in the White House” and panned Trump for doing his Constitutional duty in appointing new members to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Tittel’s latest titillation came in response to PennEast Pipeline sending a letter to FERC last Thursday requesting the agency move forward posthaste with granting the project a final certificate to proceed to construction–something that terrifies Tittel and his sidekick, THE Delaware Riverkeeper, Maya van Rossum. Tittel and van Rossum have staked their reputations and the reputations of their anti-fossil fuel groups on stopping PennEast. So once the bulldozers fire up and begin digging trenches, it’s all over for them. They might actually have to find real jobs. Below is PennEast’s request to FERC along with the instantaneous (and paranoid) reaction from several Big Green radical groups….
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) sent an important signal last week: the agency is open for business and they won’t wait until the first public meeting (Sept. 20th) to begin voting on important pipeline projects. That’s our take after reading a notice posted by FERC, and after reading statements made by a FERC spokesperson. Which is good news for the many pipeline projects currently in limbo. A quorum of voting members was reestablished last week when both Neil Chatterjee and Robert Powelson were sworn in (see 
MDN has been tracking the prices paid by Shell to landowners to run an ethane pipeline under their land to feed the might cracker plant the company is just now beginning to build in Beaver County, PA. Why? So landowners in Beaver (and other locations) have a useful metric for judging the offers they receive. To be fair, a company that wants to run a local gathering pipeline across someone’s land will pay a lot less than Shell is willing to pay–given you can’t move the cracker plant. Interstate pipelines will likely pay something less too. But still, we find it interesting and useful to know what Shell is up to in Beaver. We don’t have a lot of data points, yet. In June, we learned that Shell paid roughly $75 per foot for 3,138 linear feet of pipeline space in Greene Township (see 
The CORNballs of Ohio are not happy campers in their quest to try and shut down the $2 billion, 255-mile NEXUS interstate natural gas pipeline that will run from Ohio through Michigan and eventually to the Dawn Hub in Ontario, Canada. CORN stands for Coalition to Reroute NEXUS. CORNballs is what we affectionately call the group–as a way of pointing out their nutty real purpose, which is to try and shut the NEXUS project down. Their aim has nothing to do with “rerouting” and everything to do with shutting it down. In May 2017, the CORNballs revealed their true colors when they filed a lawsuit in federal court in Akron, OH (see