Biden PHMSA Unloads $196M to Replace Gas Pipes 2 Wks Before Election
With just two weeks left until official election day, the Biden-Harris administration has opened up the taps and is flowing billions of dollars to various states and companies in a naked attempt to buy votes for the election. It’s sickening. Even the otherwise nonpartisan Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) has become partisan in awarding big money from the so-called Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to swing states like Pennsylvania and Georgia and to states like Virginia and North Carolina that stand a good chance of flipping to Trump. Money is also going to some “red” states (just to make it look good). Read More “Biden PHMSA Unloads $196M to Replace Gas Pipes 2 Wks Before Election”
Last Friday, RBN Energy published a blog post declaring that the Shell ethane cracker in Monaca (Beaver County), PA, is now “firing on all cylinders.” The post retrospectively covers the project’s history, from construction through recent problems as the plant was commissioned to the present day. We learned something interesting: Shell, a petrochemical giant and owner of other cracker plants producing various products, had exited the plastic pellets business years ago. The Monaca cracker is Shell reentering that market. 
It is just coming to light for us now that back in August, Hope Gas, a large local utility company that provides gas service to more than 131,000 residential, industrial, and commercial customers in thirty-seven West Virginia counties, filed a rate case with the state Public Service Commission (PSC) looking to convert customers who use a “farm tap” gas system to either propane fuel or electric heat for their homes. The change would affect around 600 customers, removing them from the ability to use local natural gas. 
The northeast, particularly New England, has some of the highest energy costs in the country. We are the poster child for inadequate fuel supplies and lack of energy. Yet we have embarrassing riches of energy under our feet in the Marcellus/Utica! The problem? “The Northeast is the most extreme example of demand/supply mismatch in recent years, thanks to local court decisions and policy changes that have brought gas infrastructure developments to a screeching halt. Challenges facing the region will only persist, if not get worse until adequate infrastructure is built to bring energy into the region.” 
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit (6th Circuit) slammed the brakes on a pipeline project in Tennessee on Friday. In January, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a certificate of public convenience for Kinder Morgan’s Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) subsidiary to build the Cumberland Project, a 32-mile, 30-inch pipeline to feed 245 MMcf/d of natural gas (from the Marcellus/Utica) to the Tennessee Valey Authority’s (TVA) proposed Cumberland gas-fired power plant. 
Enbridge Inc. is using artificial intelligence (AI) pioneered by Microsoft to “drive significant advancements in safety, emissions reduction, and asset optimization across its operations.” Enbridge uses Microsoft’s AI to help it better flow its gas and liquids through pipelines, monitor right-of-ways where its pipelines are buried, and monitor and flag pipelines that need maintenance to prevent problems and accidents. 
Yesterday, the Ohio Supreme Court issued a “slip opinion” dismissing a challenge to a tiny 3.7-mile, 30-inch pipeline Columbia Gas wants to build in Maumee, a city in Lucas County, Ohio, a suburb about 10 miles southwest of Toledo. The owners of a commercial office building claimed they would suffer “irreparable financial harm” if the pipeline were built near their office building. The pipeline does not cross any land owned by the company but does cross land adjacent to the building. We searched our considerable archives (over 28,000 posts!) and found no references to this project. 
Pennsylvania General Energy (PGE) wants to install a tiny 3.7-mile gathering pipeline in Lycoming County, PA, to connect several PGE wells to the Transco pipeline system, along with two 8-inch water pipelines of about the same length (see 
While there are a number of interstate pipelines that crisscross the Marcellus/Utica, there is one pipeline system that is key to moving molecules out of our region to other markets, particularly in the southeast and the Gulf Coast: Transcontinental Gas Pipeline LLC (Transco), owned by Williams. Transco stretches from the Gulf Coast to New York City and was originally designed to flow gas produced in the Gulf northward. A number of years ago, Williams reversed the flow on Transco, and most of the time, it now flows M-U molecules southward to Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and beyond. When sections of Transco undergo maintenance, flows are reduced, driving down spot prices for natgas sold by drillers to the pipeline but raising the price paid by customers on the other end of the pipeline. And when maintenance is done and flows return, it reverses. 
The Algonquin Gas Transmission pipeline (owned by Enbridge) transports up to 3.09 Bcf/d of natural gas through 1,131 miles of pipeline. Algonquin connects to Texas Eastern Transmission (TETCO), Millennium Pipeline, and Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline and supplies New England with critically needed natural gas supplies for power generation and consumer use. As we told you in September 2023, Enbridge conducted an open season to gauge interest in expanding Algonquin’s capacity to flow more gas into New England — mainly from the Marcellus/Utica — called Project Maple (see 
A little over a month ago, MDN told you about a new opportunity major midstream (pipeline) companies discussed in their latest quarterly updates: building natgas pipelines directly to data centers. Why? Because increasingly, those data centers are considering making their own power (see 
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally-owned electric utility corporation in the U.S. TVA’s service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. TVA is the sixth-largest power supplier and the largest public utility in the country. In July 2021, MDN told you that TVA announced investments of over $1 billion to replace six coal-fired plants with natgas-fired turbines (see 
On Friday, June 14, Equitrans Midstream, the builder and majority owner of the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) that runs from Wetzel County, WV, to Pittsylvania County, VA, announced the pipeline had, after a decade of planning and building, finally begun to flow Marcellus/Utica molecules (see