NEXUS Tells Waterville: Ban Vote Meaningless, Still Building Pipe
As MDN previously reported, the dupes in Waterville, OH voted to pass a resolution on Tuesday that would block the construction of the NEXUS Pipeline, planned to go through city property (see Waterville, OH Passed NEXUS Pipeline Ban, Certain to Get Overturned). Apparently in order for the resolution to be officially in force, Waterville City Council will have to vote to ratify it. Whether City Council does or does not ratify it makes no difference to NEXUS–they will still build the pipeline anyway. Why? Because legally the city has NO SAY in whether or not the pipeline can be built. It is a federal project under the purview of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). A NEXUS official said the pipeline is on track to receive FERC approval by Nov. 30, and then a FERC certificate early next year. As soon as they have the certificate in hand, the Waterville resolution will be just a worthless piece of paper…
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What’s wrong with this AP story from yesterday: “The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says it’s trying to defuse tensions between Dakota Access pipeline protesters and law enforcement in southern North Dakota, but the pipeline’s developer isn’t cooperating. The agency released a statement late Wednesday imploring Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners to voluntarily stop work in the area where protests against the $3.8 billion pipeline have resulted in more than 400 arrests. The Corps made a similar plea last week, but was also rebuffed.” What’s wrong? It shows that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is no longer a group of engineers. It has been corrupted by the Obama Administration into a political agency. IT’S NOT THE JOB OF ENGINEERS TO WORRY ABOUT OR PLACATE PAID CRIMINALS “PROTESTING” THE DAKOTA PIPELINE! It is the job of law enforcement to deal with the out-of-control, paid criminals who have gathered in North Dakota. We call on Congress to immediately convene hearings into what in the world is going on inside the USACE–and to force them to shut up when it comes to criminal protesters and stick to engineering. We are VERY concerned that the USACE has compromised their role to the point that they should be removed from any kind of regulatory oversight of the Dakota Access project. To their credit, Energy Transfer Partners (building the pipeline) is not backing down and continues to build the pipeline, even in the face of the Obama politicized USACE…
Back in April the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) told PennEast they would extend the amount of time they are taking until December of this year, rather than this past August, to complete their Environmental Review (see 
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 
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 