Ground Broken for 22-Mile Gas Pipeline in Central Kentucky
Natural gas is coming to Lincoln and Rockcastle counties in central Kentucky. Delta Natural Gas, a local gas utility and subsidiary of PNG Companies (People’s Natural Gas), which in turn is a subsidiary of Essential Utilities, broke ground on a 22-mile pipeline to provide natgas to Lincoln and Rockcastle for both residential customers and industrial customers located in corporate parks. According to Delta, these two counties have been lobbying for natgas service for 30 years.
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Sometimes, the only place you can find important news is from your opponents. Example: The radicals of Food & Water Watch (far-left “environmental” organization) ran an op-ed appearing on NorthJersey.com that is the equivalent of a printed temper tantrum decrying the news that a compressor station project they thought they had stopped is, in fact, now up and running. The compressor in West Milford, NJ, is part of Kinder Morgan’s Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) East 300 expansion project, an upgrade of TGP to deliver an extra 115 MMcf/d of natural gas to Consolidated Edison and its customers in New York City and surrounding suburbs. East 300 is a FERC-approved project (see 
More progress to report on finishing the 94% completed (now likely closer to 97% completed) Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project. MVP needs to cross under Interstate 81 in Montgomery County, VA, and it’s no small challenge to drill under the highway because it’s solid rock. On Oct. 13, MVP (being built by Equitrans Midstream) filed a request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to drill 24 hours a day, seven days a week, on the I-81 crossing. Last Tuesday, FERC approved it, although the approval comes with a few strings attached, like using special lights and monitoring noise levels.
Pennsylvania’s Pipeline Investment Program (PIPE) issues grants covering part of the cost of building new natural gas pipelines to connect homes and businesses, typically in rural parts of the state, to homegrown Marcellus Shale gas supplies. We’ve written about many PIPE grant projects in the past (
Some exciting news to share. Earlier this month, midstream giant Williams gave a green light to proceed with a new Transco pipeline expansion project called the Southeast Supply Enhancement. The project will flow an extra 1.4 Bcf/d (billion cubic feet per day) of Marcellus/Utica molecules southward along the Transco pipeline system, to deliver those molecules to states in the southern U.S. Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) will flow an extra 2 Bcf/d of M-U molecules to southern Virginia. Williams’ Southeast Supply Enhancement promises to flow some of those molecules further south (and southwest). This is a major new pipeline initiative that snuck up on us.
In July, MDN compared the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection to an organized crime mob with its ongoing shakedowns in assessing “fines” on the Mariner East pipeline project (see 
The North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) is sounding the alarm that more than half of the U.S. and parts of Canada, home to around 180 million people, could fall short of electricity during extreme cold again this winter. Why? If you read certain leftwing publications, they will say we’re heading for blackouts due to an overreliance on natural gas. According to NERC and its just-released 2023–2024 Winter Reliability Assessment, the coming outages are because we don’t rely ENOUGH on natural gas! That’s right. NERC (and FERC) say we need more pipelines and natural gas to shore up a lack of supplies during the worst cold snaps. The lack of natural gas leads to a lack of fuel for electric power plants (and for people who use it to heat their homes). Both agencies, but NERC in particular, say we need more pipelines, and we need them NOW.
Pipeline giant Williams issued its third quarter update yesterday. Among the news of interest for the Marcellus/Utica was a statement by Williams CEO Alan Armstrong that the company completed the first half of Transco’s Regional Energy Access Expansion (REAE) project well ahead of schedule (on Oct. 21). The company is working with FERC to get the completed portion of the project online and flowing asap. REAE is a plan to beef up the Transco pipeline in Pennsylvania and New Jersey to deliver an extra 829 MMcf/d of Marcellus gas to PA, NJ, and Maryland. The initial portion (now complete) will flow about half that amount (see 
DT Midstream (DTM), headquartered in Detroit, owns major assets in the Marcellus/Utica region and other regions (like the Haynesville). DTM issued its third quarter 2023 update yesterday. Items related to the M-U of note is that construction of the Ohio Utica System, a new greenfield gathering system in the Ohio Utica for EOG Resources, is progressing ahead of schedule with an expected in-service date of 1Q24. DTM also announced the NEXUS Pipeline added approximately 50 MMcf/d of additional leased capacity in 3Q.
Equitrans Midstream issued its third quarter update yesterday. As you might expect, there was much talk about completing the nearly-done Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project. Near the top of Equitrans’ 3Q official update is this comment from CEO Thomas Karam: “Once in-service, there is little doubt MVP will be one of the most valuable pipelines in the U.S., directly connecting our country’s largest and lowest-cost natural gas resource and the rapidly growing demand of the mid-Atlantic and southeast markets.” MVP remains on track to be completed and online in 1Q24. We learned a few new details about MVP from the update. However, MVP wasn’t the only hot topic during yesterday’s update. We have new info about the Rager Mountain Natural Gas Storage Field incident, Ohio Valley Connector Expansion Project, and MVP Southgate.
TransCanada Corporation, which renamed itself TC Energy in 2019, bought out and merged in U.S.-based Columbia Pipeline Group (now Columbia Gas Transmission) in 2016 (see 
Shrill antis have their answer from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (D.C. Circuit) in a request to (once again) shut down construction on the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP): NO! A small group of uppity Virginia landowners don’t want MVP crossing their horse pastures, leaving a mark. So they conspired with Big Green lawyers in a lawsuit challenging the right of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to use eminent domain to build pipelines across private land.