Bought & Paid For “Research” Says 2 Marcellus Pipelines Not Needed
Two Democrat-run anti-fossil fuel organizations–the Southern Environmental Law Center and Appalachian Mountain Advocates–pooled their donated money together and went out to find a consulting firm with the veneer of respectability that could be bought off to produce a faux “report” slamming two much-needed pipelines. They found an easy mark in Synapse Energy Economics, headquartered in ultra-liberal Massachusetts. The “report” Synapse produced says neither Dominion’s $5 billion, 594-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (a natural gas pipeline that will stretch from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina), nor EQT’s $3.5 billion, 301-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County, VA) are needed. The sham report, titled “Are the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the Mountain Valley Pipeline Necessary?” (full copy below) is getting picked up by lazy (or propagandist) mainstream news organizations and reported as real news. It’s nothing of the sort. It’s a joke…
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Yesterday MDN reported the story that Dominion Transmission has decided to lock out union members from working at their jobs in Dominion installations over a contract dispute (see 
In April 2015 Kinder Morgan’s Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) subsidiary filed an application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to build 8.2 miles of new looping pipeline in Tioga County, PA and beef up two compressor stations in Bradford County, PA. The $142 million project is called the Susquehanna West Project. The project will increase capacity along a section of the TGP, bumping it up by 145 million cubic feet per day (Mmcf/d). All of the extra capacity is spoken for by Statoil and the wells they’ve drilled in NEPA. Good news: On Tuesday FERC issued their approval for the project, which means construction will begin in January 2017…
Virulent anti-fossil fuel nutters who are opposed to Spectra Energy’s $2 billion, 255-mile NEXUS interstate pipeline that will run from Ohio through Michigan and eventually to the Dawn Hub in Ontario, Canada, have stayed up late at night reading through all of the comments sent to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The habit of antis is to generate a blizzard of negative comments to FERC on any given project, sometimes using the names of their children (see 
Two weeks ago the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (MA’s highest court) ruled that utility companies, which are heavily regulated and the prices they can charge controlled, cannot pass along the cost of a pipeline to electric ratepayers (see 
It’s no secret that Marcellus and Utica drillers need new pipelines–and they need those pipelines urgently. Especially in Pennsylvania where lack of pipelines is keeping inventories high and prices for natural gas the lowest in the country. However, drillers must deal with reality as it is–today. Pipelines take time to build, and recent efforts to block pipelines are delaying important projects like the Constitution and PennEast pipeline projects. The good news is that some pipeline projects *are* being built in the northeast, some of which are almost done. Drillers like Range Resources are ramping up new drilling now, about six months in advance of when new pipelines are due to go online. That’s about how long it takes to put the pieces in motion. The other good news is that some drillers, like Cabot, are finding new markets that DON’T require new pipelines–like selling a tremendous volume of natgas to new gas-fired electric generating plants situated in close proximity to Cabot’s wells. Here’s an update on which drillers are picking up the pace with the prospect of new pipelines (or new nearby markets), and which drillers are waiting a little longer before they pick up the pace…
Last week MDN reported on the decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Court to deny utility companies operating in the state to pass along potential costs of a new natural gas pipeline to electric rate payers–the people who would most benefit from such a pipeline (see