US Supremes Reject Big Green Case to Gut Eminent Domain Using MVP
Finally, it’s the end of the road for Big Green using (abusing) six uppity Virginia landowners who didn’t want the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) to cross their well-groomed horse pastures. The landowners, funded by Big Green and using Big Green lawyers, sued repeatedly to try and overturn the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) right to delegate its eminent domain authority to pipeline companies like MVP in order to build pipelines. Big Green and the landowners knew it wouldn’t stop MVP — the hope was to block all (and we mean ALL) future pipelines from getting built. That was the end game. Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court said it will not revisit the case. It had already looked at this case once before. This is well and truly the end of the line for these landowners and Big Green in attempting to gut FERC’s eminent domain authority. Finally.
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We’re just a few weeks away from the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) going online, flowing 2 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of yummy FRACKED natural gas from the Marcellus/Utica to southern Virginia and beyond. And that fact is driving the insane, unhinged left even more insane and unhinged. Yesterday, a man (who refused to identify himself as a man) tied himself to two barrels full of concrete in the middle of the road in the Bent Mountain (Roanoke County), VA, area, blocking access to an MVP work yard. The protester was spewing anti-Israel statements (a bigot and anti-Semite), along with nonsensical statements about the oil and gas industry. Truly unhinged. State police arrived to deal with the situation.
Here’s a truism you can take to the bank. Anti-fossil fuel nutters need (crave) a public forum where they can prance around like peacocks making a spectacle of themselves. Deny them that forum, and they get grumpy — fast. Such was the case at an information session held Tuesday at the Athens (NY) Elementary School. A company hired to work on upgrading a compressor station in Athens for the Iroquois Gas Transmission pipeline tried to share important information about the project. However, protesters made it impossible, and the session was dismissed early due to the bad behavior of the petulant protesters.
It’s clearly a case of sour grapes for the same three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (4th Circus clowns) who tried to block the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) by rendering arbitrary decisions that caused years of delays for the pipeline. We’re talking about Judge Stephanie Thacker, appointed by Barack Hussein Obama (she likes to quote from Dr. Seuss books in her opinions); Judge James Wynn, appointed by Barack Hussein Obama; and Chief Judge Roger Gregory, appointed by William Jefferson Clinton. All three are (in our opinion) corrupt and should immediately be impeached and removed from the bench. Congress finally had enough of their judicial malpractice in blocking MVP and passed a law overriding the clowns, signed into law by Joementia last June (see 
TransCanada Corporation, which renamed itself TC Energy in 2019, made a play for and bought out/merged with U.S.-based Columbia Pipeline Group in 2016 (see 
On May 1, a section of the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) near Roanoke, VA, failed (ruptured) during pressurized water testing conducted to ensure that there were no leaks or flaws (see 
Last week, in reporting on pipeline giant Williams’ first quarter 2024 update, we told you about a major new project Williams has begun to replace (upgrade) 112 mainline compressor units with state-of-the-art low-emission turbines and electric drive units on the Transco and Northwest Pipe (see 
This story gets a little complicated, but we’ll do our best to explain. The Algonquin Gas Transmission (AGT) pipeline (owned by Enbridge) transports up to 3.09 Bcf/d 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. Anti-fossil fuel fanatics who see carbon dioxide molecules under every rock and lurking in every shadow claim a tiny upgrade to an AGT regulating station (costing $15.7 million) in Connecticut is part of Enbridge’s Master Plan to expand AGT throughout the region. Led by the radicals of the Sierra Club, protesters will hold a meeting on Thursday to oppose the upgrades to a regulating station that does nothing more than aim to keep the gas reliably flowing through existing pipes.
The odious and disgusting Food & Water Watch (FWW) organization (anti-fossil fuel fanatics) has taken point on the left’s effort to block Iroquois Gas Transmission’s plan to upgrade compressor stations in the Empire State. Iroquois’ Enhancement by Compression (ExC) project increases horsepower at three compression stations — two in New York and one in Connecticut — by an extra 125 MMcf/d, flowing more Marcellus/Utica gas into New York City and New England. Less than two weeks ago, FWW announced it had recruited 5,000 drones (no doubt paying some of them) to write comments against ExC in an effort to give New York’s weak Governor, Kathy Hochul, political cover to reject ExC (see 
Pipeline giant Williams, with major assets in the Marcellus/Utica and the owner of the mighty Transco pipeline that flows huge quantities of M-U gas south and southwest, issued its first quarter 2024 update yesterday. CEO Alan Armstrong said in prepared remarks that the company, which operates in just about every region of the country, has “20 high-return projects in execution across our business.” That’s 20 pipeline or storage projects of various kinds, many of them in the M-U region. The projects include “approximately 3.1 Bcf per day of expansion on Transco, which equates to a 15% increase in fully contracted long-term capacity that will be coming online over the next few years.” Transco current flows a maximum of 18.6 Bcf/d (billion cubic feet per day). It’s going to expand by another 3.1 Bcf/d!
We have to admit we’re disappointed. A section of the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) ruptured during pressure testing last Wednesday in Roanoke County, Virginia, according to a report from the state’s environmental agency. A landowner observed sediment-laden water in her pasture on Wednesday morning and reported it to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). “The origin of the sediment-laden water reported in the complaint was from the rupture of a section of pipe during hydrostatic testing the morning of 5/1/2024,” wrote the DEQ expert, John McCutcheon.
We’re sad but not surprised. The last time we reported on Williams’ Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) Project slated for New York was last June when Williams asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for a time extension to build it (see 
Antero Midstream, a separate company from Antero Resources (at least on paper, although it is managed by the same people), issued a press release yesterday to announce it had purchased a bolt-on acquisition of gathering and compression assets in the Marcellus Shale for $70 million from Summit Midstream Partners. The assets acquired include two compressor stations and 48 miles of high-pressure gas-gathering pipelines located in West Virginia.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is the sixth-largest power supplier and the largest public utility in the country. In 2021, MDN told you that TVA is spending over $1 billion to replace six coal-fired plants with natgas-fired turbines (see