PA Supremes Consider if DEP Can Regulate FERC Compressor Station
Adelphia Gateway is a project converting an old oil pipeline into a natural gas pipeline. The project stretches from Northampton County, PA, through Bucks, Montgomery, and Chester counties, terminating in Delaware County at Marcus Hook. The project converted 50 miles of an existing 84-mile pipeline from oil to natural gas. The northern 34 miles of the pipeline were previously converted to deliver natural gas in 1996. Portions of the final section began to flow Marcellus gas in April 2022 (see Partial Marcellus Flows Begin on Adelphia Gateway Pipe Near Philly). Neighbors of a compressor station built for the project, located in Bucks County, won a victory in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (3rd Circuit) in March that allows them to appeal the approval of the project in PA and not with FERC (see Fed Court Says Antis Can Challenge Adelphia Compressor in PA Court). The PA Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case.
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Equitrans Midstream issued its second quarter update yesterday, and WOW, what an update! The company had lots to talk about following the high drama surrounding its Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project over the past couple of months. Equitrans CEO Tom Karam said following the U.S. Supreme Court’s intervention, construction has now resumed on MVP and will likely take 4-5 months to finish up the 94% completed project. He expects MVP, barring any severe weather issues that might slow construction, will be online and flowing 2 Bcf/d of Marcellus/Utica molecules by the end of this year. Hallelujah!
In February 2022, Equitrans Midstream announced it had filed a new pipeline expansion project with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (see 
DT Midstream (DTM), headquartered in Detroit, owns major assets in the Marcellus/Utica region and other regions. DTM issued its second quarter 2023 update yesterday. The company announced it had reached a final investment decision (FID) to build a new greenfield gathering system in the Ohio Utica Shale. The gathering system will transport associated gas from new wells being drilled in the rich window of the Utica.
On Friday, the Biden Administration proposed a new rule to amend the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulations. The White House’s Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) proposed changes to NEPA that it says would speed up permitting for clean energy and other projects on federal land. Unfortunately, it does just the opposite. The new rule will slow down urgently needed development under the guise of “environmental justice.” This is an ongoing attempt by the Bidenistas to take a wrecking ball to the good work done during the Trump Administration to make it easier to build major infrastructure projects.
Eversource wants to build the Western Massachusetts Natural Gas Reliability Project in Springfield, Massachusetts, to prevent winter gas outages. The purpose of the tiny 5.3-mile pipeline is to function as a backup–to prevent natural gas from being turned off for 58,000 Eversource customers (200,000 people) in the region. The existing pipeline in that area is 70 years old with no backup. If the existing, old pipeline has an issue and the gas gets turned off, that’s 200,000 people with no natural gas in the dead of a New England winter. Yet the radicalized Massachusetts Energy Secretary Rebecca Tepper (far-left Democrat) has told Eversource its draft environmental impact report for the tiny pipeline isn’t good enough for her. She wants Eversource to cut down more trees to create a supplemental report to answer her nit-picky questions.
Last week, U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (liberal Democrat from West Virginia) hopped up on his high horse and held a hearing of the Senate committee he chairs, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, to discuss the next steps for so-called permitting reform. It takes years to build a new pipeline, and sometimes decades to build a new electric power line. Solar and wind and hydro projects are as susceptible to long delays as fossil energy projects. Manchin (many people in the D.C. swamp) want to “fix” that problem.
In an act of Supreme justice, the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Roberts, issued an order yesterday overturning the stays imposed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (4th Circuit) that were blocking the completion of the 94% done Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP). Let the bulldozers start their engines! We expect work to resume immediately (today) to finish this critical link from the Marcellus/Utica to the Southeastern U.S. The best part is that the decision was announced as the three radicalized leftist judges of the 4th Circuit were hearing arguments that a portion of the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) of 2023 forcing the completion of MVP is unconstitutional. Roberts’ order effectively shut down any further shenanigans by these three clowns.
TC Energy, formerly TransCanada Corporation, has been in the news all week. Tuesday morning, a portion of the Columbia Gas Transmission pipeline (owned by TC Energy) in rural western Virginia exploded and caught fire (see 
Increasingly ours is a world run by computers. Even in-the-ground pipelines are monitored and controlled by computers. The ransomware attack against Colonial Pipeline in 2021, a pipeline that flows a significant amount of refined products (gasoline and diesel fuel) from the Gulf Coast, where it’s refined, as far north as New Jersey, was a wake-up call for all pipelines. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) heard the call and responded. In July 2021, the TSA issued an initial “security directive” requiring pipelines, including natural gas pipelines, to do certain things to protect themselves and the public they serve (see 
Douglas is a small town in southern Worcester County, Massachusetts. The population was 8,983 at the 2020 census. It includes the sizable Douglas State Forest, managed by the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), and not much else. Douglas desperately needs new businesses to move in to help with the tax base, but with no natural gas service, businesses were not interested. So Douglas officials contacted Eversource, one of the state’s largest utility companies, about the possibility of running natural gas lines into and through Douglas. And they’ve done it–behind the backs of radicalized anti-fossil fuelers, who are livid.
TransCanada Corporation, which renamed itself TC Energy in 2019, bought out/merged in U.S.-based Columbia Pipeline Group (now Columbia Gas Transmission) in 2016 (see 