Berkshire Gas (Mass.) Searches for Solutions to Get More NatGas
In December 2014 the Massachusetts-based utility Berkshire Gas Company announced the amount of natural gas they could purchase from the Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) was at full capacity. There’s no additional gas supplies to buy–unless TGP builds their Northeast Energy Direct (NED) expansion project. So Berkshire was forced to tell new customers for natural gas in portions of Franklin County they won’t be able to tap into Berkshire’s line (see Guts: No New Pipeline in MA? Then No New Natgas for Utility Customers). In January 2016, Berkshire had to expand the prohibition area, turning down new businesses in neighboring Hampshire County (see Shortages Begin: Tangible Result of No Pipelines in New England). In April came the devastating news that TGP was canceling the NED pipeline project (see NED is Dead – Kinder Morgan Suspends $3.3B New England Pipeline). What can Berkshire Gas do? Where can they turn now? Is there ANY hope that new residences and businesses in Franklin and Hampshire counties can hook up to natural gas? Berkshire is having to deal with the crappy hand dealt them. They are trying to find a way to get more gas supplies for their customers. They have a plan to build a short, 19-mile pipeline to deliver new supplies. Predictably, the idiots living in the affected areas are resisting the plan…
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We’ve written plenty in the past about the PA-based radical anti-drilling group called CELDF–Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (
In January 2014, MDN brought you the story that due to incessant nagging from the NJ Sierra Club and the NJ League of [Liberal Democrat] Women Voters the Pinelands Commission, which oversees a stand of scrub pines in South Jersey, nixed a plan for a new natural gas pipeline to bring cheap, clean, abundant Marcellus Shale natural gas to South Jersey for use by residents and to feed an electric plant a local utility wants to convert from burning coal to natgas (see 
We’ve written about various pipelines either planned or under construction that will, by joining with other pipelines, haul Marcellus/Utica natural gas (and/or natural gas liquids) all the way to the Gulf Coast. However, the pipes hauling our gas to the Louisiana/Texas borders are one thing. But then the gas has to go the final leg of the journey through Texas (or Louisiana) to the Gulf Coast area where it gets used in petrochemical plants, like crackers or liquefied and exported as LNG. A recent RBN Energy blog post points out the big pipes hauling our gas to Texas and Louisiana are, in many ways, the easier projects to build. Getting it “the last mile of the way” to the Gulf Coast is the more difficult task. It involves reversing pipelines and tieing systems together. Here are six projects in the works to accomplish the mission of getting our gas all the way to the Gulf Coast…
Though often we’re irritated, sometimes we simply marvel at the arrogance of organizations like THE Delaware Riverkeeper. They honestly think they know better than you what kind of energy you should have the right to buy. The people who run the organization (Maya van Rossum, who is THE self-appointed keeper of the Delaware River Basin), irrationally hate all fossil fuels. Even though Maya & company use those fossil fuels every day of their lives. In fact, even though their lives DEPEND on fossil fuels. van Rossum and those who follow her philosophies have settled on a new strategy to try and defeat the use of fossil fuels: stop all new pipeline development. Period. The only way they can do that is to bully and intimidate federal and state agencies–like the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP). Currently it’s FERC in Maya’s cross-hairs. Maya and THE Delaware Riverkeeper are convening a meeting in Washington, D.C. at the National Press Club (nice place, we’ve eaten there) called “People’s Hearing Investigating FERC.” You read that right. In an attempt to bully and humiliate the hard-working people at FERC, Maya plans to initiate a media circus to pressure FERC into denying, among other projects, the PennEast Pipeline. She’s billing the event as a hearing for those who “have experienced abuse at the hands of FERC and the pipeline industry.” We’re mulling over the possibility of a hearing into those abused by Maya and THE Delaware Riverkeeper. We thing we’d have a pretty strong case…
Lack of pipelines for natural gas and natural gas liquids (NGLs) in the Northeast has very real economic and financial consequences. Yesterday the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce held a program titled “Fueling A Downstream Economy” in downtown Philly. One of the speakers was from petrochemical giant Braskem America Inc. If the name looks familiar, it should. Braskem and their Brazilian parent company Odebrecht are still considering building an ethane cracker plant in West Virginia (see 
The well-funded Big Green radical movement–the movement that wants to end the use of all fossil fuels–thinks it has found a new legal tactic to use in their attempts to stop the Mariner East 2 (and other) pipeline in Pennsylvania. You may recall that in September the Democrat-controlled PA Supreme Court further eviscerated the 2012 Act 13 Marcellus drilling law (see 
You may recall that in April, New York’s anti-drilling governor, Andrew Cuomo, decided he would cave to pressure from radical environmentalists once again and block the building of the federally-approved Constitution Pipeline (see 
On Friday, ahead of releasing its third quarter update, Williams issued a press release to confirm what we already know: Atlantic Sunrise will be delayed. Atlantic Sunrise is a $3 billion, 198-mile pipeline project running through 10 Pennsylvania counties to connect Marcellus Shale natural gas from PA with the Williams’ Transco pipeline in southern Lancaster County. Two weeks ago the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission announced a delay in the environmental review of the project (see 
One of the largest banks in the world (#11) is the German-based Deutsche Bank. They have major branches in dozens of countries, including the U.S. The Equity Research – North America operation of Deutsche Bank attended the Platts 9th Annual Appalachian Oil & Gas Conference in Pittsburgh earlier this week. The DB analyst who attended wrote up notes and shared them. We found the writeup interesting and thought you would too…