Mountain Valley Pipeline Files FERC Appl, Now Just Matter of Time
It’s finally official. Although the length of the pipeline changed from 330 miles to 301 miles, and although the number of project partners expanded from the original EQT and NextEra Energy to include WGL Holdings, Vega Energy Partners, and RGC Resources, and although over 100 landowners blocked survey access (later taken to court to force access)–the $3.5 billion Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) stretching from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County, VA filed an official application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last Friday. Now it’s just a matter of time. Yes it will take a few years to get it approved and built, but the most important step has been accomplished…
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Duke Energy, the largest electric power holding company in the United States and a utility with 7.3 million customers in the southeast and Midwest, announced today they are buying Piedmont Natural Gas for $4.9 billion in cash and the assumption of $1.8 billion in existing debt–for a total deal price of $6.7 billion. Piedmont is a midstream and natgas LDC (local distribution company, or utility) with operations primarily in North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. This is the story of a big southern electric utility buying a smaller southern natural gas utility. So why is it important for the Marcellus/Utica? Because Piedmont has been active in two very important pipeline projects in the Marcellus/Utica–and that project ownership will now go to Duke…
Part of the ongoing hit series in the Democrat-owned Harrisburg Patriot-News that attempts to smear the Marcellus industry (see 
Good news! The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) have approved Dominion’s $165 million New Market Project, a project that expands Dominion’s transmission pipeline from western New York across the state to the Capital Region of the state, near Albany. As with any fossil fuel-related project, radical environmentalists objected (see 
Enough is enough. It’s become quite obvious that NY Gov. Cuomo is up to his old tricks–delay and then deny. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) long ago approved the Williams Constitution Pipeline (see 
Last year International Paper’s Ticonderoga mill in northern New York, near the Vermont border, received $1.75 million in grant money from Andrew Cuomo and New York State (that is to say, from we the taxpayers) to help with an $11 million project to convert the plant from using oil to using natural gas (see the Albany Times Union story: 
If landowners along the route of the PennEast Pipeline don’t sign a lease with the company, PennEast says they will be forced to (and will) use eminent domain to gain lease rights. The PennEast, as a reminder, is a proposed pipeline costing $1 billion that will run from Luzerne County, PA (near Wilkes-Barre) all the way to Mercer County, NJ (just outside of Trenton), flowing 1 billion cubic feet of clean-burning Marcellus Shale gas each and every day. Landowners along the pipeline’s route will still own the land, but there will be restrictions–you can’t erect a building over top of a pipeline, for example. PennEast looks at eminent domain as an absolute last resort. However, according to the radicals at the PA Sierra Club who are opposing the pipeline, around two-thirds of the landowners along the pipeline’s route have not yet signed a lease to allow the pipeline across their land. PennEast recently filed their official application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (see 
It’s a theme often repeated here on MDN and in mainstream media: We need more pipelines in the Marcellus/Utica. The problem, of course, is that it’s easy and fast to add new rigs and drill new wells in nothing flat. But at some point all of those wells flowing all of that gas need larger interstate pipelines to get the gas to market–markets in New England, New York and New Jersey, the south, the Midwest, even the Gulf Coast. The Marcellus/Utica is producing more than 25% of all the gas being produced in the country–way more than we can use ourselves. We need to move the gas to other parts of the country that can use it. So new wells come online, but it takes, literally, years to build a new pipeline. Why? Mostly because government regulatory agencies grind so slowly. We have an imbalance. What are drillers in the northeast doing to address the situation? Choking back their wells so they flow less. In some cases they’re shutting the wells in to stop them producing–until new pipelines are finished providing access to new markets so they can sell gas for a higher price. The latest mainstream media source to note this trend is Bloomberg…
Testing laboratory Exova is a sizable international company with 4,500 workers in 142 locations around the world. Exova, with headquarters in Edinburgh, Scotland, has just added its newest testing lab–number 143–in Pittsburgh. The main customer base they’re aiming for in the Pittsburgh region is the Marcellus/Utica industry. A lot of what Excova does is test metals (and other materials) for corrosion and wear and tear. With all of the pipeline work going on in the Marcellus/Utica, it certainly makes sense for Exova to want a piece of that action…
Are you a farmer in Ohio with concerns, or perhaps a general interest, in whether or not pipelines running across your property will negatively affect crop productivity? If you are, Ohio State University wants to talk to you. OSU is looking for 20 to 30 farmers with pipelines in their fields over a period of three to five years to participate in a new research study. Here’s the details of the study and how to participate…
We know, you think MDN loves to toss out hyperbole and verbal jabs just to get a rise out of people. You think we’re somehow not quite as “serious” (or accurate) as other news/blog sources because of our sometimes “outrageous” comments sprinkled in with the news. Like this comment: Without new natural gas pipelines to New England, like the Kinder Morgan Northeast Energy Direct project or Spectra Energy’s Access Northeast project, New Englanders will experience rolling blackouts for electricity in the future. “There you go again. Nobody believes that! Just another over-the-top comment.” Except–it’s true. It’s not hyperbole. It’s not over-the-top talk. Yesterday the operator of Massachusetts’ only operating nuclear power point, the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, MA, said they will shutter the plant no later than June 1, 2019. It’s just gotten too expensive to comply with increasingly onerous federal regulations. Not only will 600 jobs be lost, so too will electricity for 600,000 homes. Natural gas powering electric generating plants is the only practical/serious alternative that can be ready in time to take up the slack. Without natgas powering new electric plants, there simply won’t be enough electricity for everybody in New England, and that will lead to brownouts and rolling blackouts. Do you see just how dire the situation is for New Englanders? And yet, a small number of anti-fossil fuelers persist in the fiction that sticking up windmills and solar panels will somehow provide enough energy…
Last week Kinder Morgan’s Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) filed their official, full application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) seeking approval for their Orion Project. The project will cost $143 million and construct 13 miles of “looping” pipeline in Pike and Wayne counties, Pennsylvania. The project will boost capacity on the TGP by another 135 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d), allowing TGP to pump more Marcellus Shale gas to Mid-Atlantic and New England states. If all goes according to plan, the TGP Orion upgrade will be complete and in-service by June 2018…
Yesterday Rice Energy announced that the company’s subsidiary, Rice Midstream, has signed a joint venture agreement with competitor Gulfport Energy to develop a pipeline gathering and water delivery system for Gulfport’s Utica Shale drilling program in Ohio’s eastern Belmont County and Monroe County. Rice will be 75% owner and in charge of the jv. Rice and Gulfport plan to invest a combined $640 million into the jv over the next six years. Construction begins immediately and the first gas (and water) will begin to flow through the new system by middle of next year. Here’s the details…
On Tuesday a Medina County, OH judge ruled that the NEXUS pipeline does have a right to enter private land to survey it for possible routes for the pipeline. The judge said Ohio laws allow private companies to survey land for eventual appropriation (including eminent domain) as long as the company can prove it is an energy or utility company. The judge said the law is quite clear on that point–plain and simple to understand. The judge’s decision didn’t sit too well with the CORNballs of CORN (Coalition to Reroute Nexus pipeline). We’ve written plenty about CORN and their effort to “reroute” the NEXUS (