FERC Alters PennEast Hearing Process to Reduce Antis’ Bleating
We’ve sat through our fair share of public hearings and open houses for pipelines–from Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) hearings to state agency hearings to open houses sponsored by midstream companies (see Vicariously Attend FERC Scoping Hearing on Constitution Pipeline). The script is always the same. Anti-fossil fuel freaks show up and perform before the cameras and microphones. That’s what they are there to do–engage in a circus act. When they are denied such an opportunity, they complain (see Williams’ Smart Open House in Lebanon County Confounds Antis). FERC hearings are always the same–show up and sign up to speak, with 3 or 4-minute allotments for each speaker. And speakers are taken in the order in which they signed in. Those in the audience who are for or against typically applaud or issue boos and insults. We have often said FERC personnel should get hazard pay for sitting through 4-hour marathons of this nonsense. FERC has wised up. They held a public hearing last night in the Bethlehem, PA area for the proposed PennEast Pipeline project. Instead of a public forum, FERC set two private rooms with a stenographer in each. FERC recorded comments two-at-a-time, in private. And they saved themselves all of the theatrics by anti-drilling trolls. And of course, that didn’t sit well with the antis. Most of the antis who spoke were reading from cue cards prepared for them by THE Delaware Riverkeeper, Maya van Rossum. The antis are so dumb they can’t even form their own thoughts about why they are against the project! Too funny…
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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?…
We found this story amusing. A group of 40 anti-fossil fuel nutters met at the Towamensing Township fire hall Tuesday night to “hone their arguments and strategies on how to derail or at least delay construction” of the $1.2 billion PennEast Pipeline. Why is that amusing? Because if the media is reporting there were 40 there, that means there were really 20-25. And when you read the story, you get the distinct impression that a very small group of hardened anti-fossil fuelers move these meetings around–it’s the same small group–and that their movement to stop PennEast is dying. Rapidly. Here’s the latest evidence…
For some time now we’ve been tracking progress with an LNG export plant planned for the eastern shore of Nova Scotia, the Bear Head LNG project. Of all the Canadian LNG export projects that will export Marcellus gas, Bear Head seems to have the most momentum. The project has received most (if not all) of the necessary permits it needs to proceed. The most recent regulatory hurdle was a greenhouse gas approval from Nova Scotia, issued in July (see