Energy Services | Equitrans/EQT Midstream | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | Pipelines | Regulation | Statewide WV | West Virginia
What are Next Steps for Mountain Valley Pipe? Will it Get Done?
So what happens now that Joe Manchin’s plan to get his fellow Democrats to vote for a bill to finish up the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), a “permitting reform” bill, is dead (see “Save MVP” Permitting Bill is Dead – Manchin Pulls it From CR)? Manchin and his buddy Chuck Schumer have said they will try to resurrect Manchin’s bill, called the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2022, for a vote by the end of this year. Good luck with that. We give it a 0% chance. Back here in the real world Equitrans Midstream, the company building the 94% complete MVP, has to deal with the hand they’ve been dealt. What does their plan to complete MVP look like?
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The Millennium Pipeline, which stretches 263 miles from Corning, NY, to just outside New York City, delivers Pennsylvania Marcellus and Utica gas to utility and power plant markets across New York State and into New England. Several companies jointly own the pipeline, which operates under its own corporate structure. Among those with an ownership interest are TC Energy (formerly TransCanada), utility giant National Grid, and pipeline company DT Midstream. Last week DT Midstream announced it would double its ownership stake in the Millennium from 26.25% to 52.50%. DT will pay $552 million to become the majority owner of the Millennium Pipeline.
It doesn’t take much these days to buy yourself a “study” that shows what you want it to show. So-called scientists are for hire all over the place. Take, for example, “researchers” at Stanford University and the University of Arizona. All that the far-left Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) had to do was put some money into the pockets of a couple of “researchers” from those schools, and voila! A new “peer-reviewed” study was published yesterday that claims natural gas gathering pipelines (in the Permian Basin) leak like sieves. Oh yeah. It’s FAR worse than anyone had ever thought. All that methane is leaking and toasting Mom Earth, and the villain is gathering pipelines. What a load of…
Here’s a challenge to a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) pipeline certificate we don’t fully comprehend. In 2018 the Panda Hummel Marcellus-fired power plant in Snyder County, PA roared to life (see 
Yesterday was the first day of the two-day Shale Insight conference being held in Erie, PA. By all accounts, it was a great day. Among the all-stars presenting were Toby Rice, CEO of EQT Corporation, Nick Dell’Osso, CEO of Chesapeake Energy, Greg Floerke, COO of MPLX, and Neil Chatterjee, former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman. The important role of LNG, pipelines, regulations, and more were discussed. One of the themes of the day: Natural gas is not a bridge fuel, but the destination.
We’ll say it right up front: We told you so. From the beginning, when U.S. Senator Joe Manchin announced he had sold out the country and would vote in favor of the horrible (misnamed) Inflation Reduction Act in return for a promise from Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi to pass a “permitting reform” bill that guarantees to finish the stalled (95% complete) Mountain Valley Pipeline, we told you it was a bad deal (see 
A small group of landowners in southwestern Virginia who have lost all of their previous attempts to block Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) from crossing their property have made one last-ditch effort to fundamentally change the laws of the entire country to prevent this one pipeline. The landowners, obviously using Big Green money, have appealed their losing case to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the high court to hear their case against FERC’s (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) right to delegate its eminent domain power to a private pipeline company–in this case to MVP.
Virginia Natural Gas (VNG) is one of four natural gas distribution companies owned by Southern Company. VNG provides natural gas service to more than 300,000 residential, commercial and industrial customers in southeast Virginia. Since 2012, VNG has replaced nearly 500 miles of the aging pipeline, resulting in a 27% reduction in methane emissions. VNG is a little over halfway through spending $360 million on infrastructure upgrades.
Republicans in the Pennsylvania Senate have, since April 2021, refused to appoint new members to the five-member Public Utility Commission in response to Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf’s unilateral push to force the state to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax scheme (see 
U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, from West Virginia, made a stop at the Global Clean Energy Action Forum (a confab of global warming wackos) on Friday to make a pitch for support of his “save Mountain Valley Pipeline” bill without actually mentioning MVP. At the start of his talk, Manchin was heckled by four wackadoodle protesters who were escorted out by security. Manchin then talked about his bill and how it will streamline the process for renewable energy projects. No mention of fossil fuel projects. Love the one you’re with, right?
The term “woke” is thrown around a lot these days. The left introduces race and alleged racism wherever it can as a bludgeon to justify stripping away more of your Constitutional freedoms. Woke means everything and everyone is racist. The Biden Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has just launched a new “Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights” (“woke office”) that will try to paint any new pipeline, any new compressor station, any new fossil energy infrastructure project of any kind as racist and therefore should not get built.
Yesterday evening, U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (from West Virginia) finally released a draft bill that purportedly streamlines the permitting process for oil and gas pipelines, among other things. The bill, called the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2022, also clears away the remaining roadblocks to complete the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline that travels through WV and into Virginia. MVP is 94% done and in the ground, yet anti-fossil fuel wackos keep blocking its completion with frivolous lawsuits and colluding federal judges. Manchin wants to blast through it and get it done, to his credit.
