THE Delaware Riverkeeper Mad – Can’t Bleat at FERC Hearings
As we reported yesterday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has found a way to eliminate the histrionics practiced by anti-fossil fuel nutjobs who want to oppose the PennEast Pipeline at FERC hearings (see FERC Alters PennEast Hearing Process to Reduce Antis’ Bleating). FERC is denying antis an audience in front of which to engage in the circus-like freak show they love to perform. And that has THE Delaware Riverkeeper–Maya van Rossum–hopping mad. She calls the new procedure of delivering comments in a private room before a single FERC rep and stenographer “a faux public hearing.” You see, antis needs an audience, otherwise their pathetic lives have no meaning. Without hooting and hollering and making outrageously false claims (i.e. lies), where’s the fun? Without an audience, Maya’s minions will just stay home instead. Oh oh. That’s not good! Here’s how Riverkeeper stenographers at the Philly Inquirer are reporting it…
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With the low low price of natural gas and oil currently in place–and not letting up any time soon–the frenzy of shale drilling has slowed. So fossil fuel haters have turned their focus from fracking and stopping it, to pipelines and stopping them. Antis understand that pipelines are critical to getting natural gas to market–and without pipelines drilling will stop. So money and time and effort is being poured into the effort to stop pipeline projects. Enough! The Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA), a national consumer advocacy group, has just launched a national campaign called “Pipelines for America” to counter the lies and smears coming from fossil fuel haters. The campaign is aimed at educating American consumers about the vital importance of our pipeline infrastructure–and that more pipelines are needed to keep energy prices low AND to protect the environment. Here’s the CEA announcement of this important new initiative…
Pennsylvania residents: It’s time to (once again) show your support for the Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline project, a $3 billion, 198-mile project running through 10 Pennsylvania counties to connect Marcellus Shale natural gas from PA with the Williams’ Transco pipeline in southern Lancaster County. It is a much-needed pipeline to move more Marcellus gas south, to new markets. In the past MDN has asked you to sign letters going to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and to the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP). And you, our dear readers, have been the most responsive audience to get behind the effort to support this project. Thank you! We’re coming to you again with a new request. 
All the way back in February MDN brought you exclusive news that Shell had begun approaching landowners in Beaver County to get them to sign easements for two ethane pipelines to feed the mighty cracker plant they plan to build in the county (see 
In July MDN reported that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has approved Eastern Shore Natural Gas’ (ESNG) System Reliability Project (see 
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has issued a favorable environmental assessment (EA) for three Spectra Energy projects: Access South, Adair Southwest and Lebanon Express. The three are part of an expansion of the Texas Eastern Transmission (Tetco) pipeline. The combined projects will transport an additional 662,000 dekatherms per day (or 662 million cubic feet) of Marcellus and Utica Shale gas from Pennsylvania to Ohio, Kentucky and Mississippi. This is great news indeed!…
We have been making the point, loudly, for the past year, that IF New York State blocks the Constitution Pipeline, as they have now done, the state runs the very real risk of having the federal government strip away their right to make such decisions about any federally-approved pipeline project. We’ve previously warned that New York is in grave danger of losing their power by attempting to block the Constitution. We wrote the following in October 2015: When MDN editor Jim Willis attended the Shale Insight conference in Philadelphia in September, he listened to a panel discussion of midstream (pipeline) experts, including a former FERC commissioner. He got to ask a question and the question, roughly, was this: “The NY DEC is currently holding up the FERC-approved Constitution Pipeline. What if the DEC refuses to issue the necessary permits? What happens next?” The answer Jim got was, “It depends.” The bottom line seems to be that it’s likely FERC (and Williams) will need to take the DEC to court. The DEC frankly has no legal right to prevent a federally approved project from being built. That’s the bottom line. It may take a court to force the DEC (and Gov. Cuomo) to act, but in this matter the law is on our side. This is not a question of “if,” it is a question of “when” the pipeline will get built (see 
Time to do a happy dance. THE (arrogant) Delaware Riverkeeper has lost yet another court case–one of many such cases they continuously file to stop any fossil fuel-related project in the northeast. In March MDN told you that THE Delaware Riverkeeper had sued the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, challenging their decision to approve the Williams Transco Pipeline’s Leidy Southeast Expansion from PA to New York City (see 
It’s not often we miss something that happens in the Marcellus. No, we’re certainly not omniscient. But not much (we hope) escapes our eye when it comes to drillers, midstreamers and other participants in the Marcellus/Utica region. Here’s one that did! Unit Corporation is a Tulsa-based, publicly held energy company engaged through its subsidiaries in oil and gas exploration, production, contract drilling, and gas gathering and processing. Pretty much the whole upstream and midstream pie. In January 2016 Unit completed 49 miles of gathering pipelines in Centre County, PA. That’s the part we missed. Below are a few excerpts from their recent second quarter 2016 update talking about what they call their Snow Shoe Gathering system, along with a couple of screen shots from the most recent company PowerPoint presentation…
MDN felt that the big news today was word from Spectra Energy that their Access Northeast pipeline project is making excellent progress (see Spectra Energy 2Q16 – Access Northeast “Advancing Toward Execution”). However, a bit of news coming from Spectra disclosed on yesterday’s earnings call comes in at a close second. You may recall there was an explosion and fire in Spectra Energy’s Texas Eastern Transmission’s “Delmont Line 27” pipeline in May (see 
MDN spotted what we thought was an interesting article on the Seeking Alpha investors website about the existing pipeline bottleneck in Northeastern PA and what can be done about getting all of that gas to market. Pipeline delays out of NEPA, including the delayed Constitution Pipeline and projects currently underway but taking a long time, like the Atlantic Sunrise, are forcing producers like Cabot Oil & Gas, Southwestern Energy and Chesapeake Energy to look for other ways to move their abundant supplies of natgas out of the region. Eastbound routes out of NEPA are full, but westbound routes *may* be a possible solution–at least in the short-to-medium term. National Fuel Gas’s pipeline system has expanded recently to allow more gas to flow west. NFG has additional projects in the coming years to build on that capacity. Is it time to Go West, Young Molecule?…