Russia Shuts Down Nord Stream 1 Gas Pipeline Using False Pretenses
While this is technically not a Marcellus/Utica story, it does affect our region (as well as all regions) due to the enormity of how it impacts the overall natural gas market. Russia, using the flimsy excuse that they found some trouble with a turbine during maintenance, has decided to keep the Nord Stream 1 pipeline closed down indefinitely after what was supposed to be a three-day outage to do routine maintenance. The outage denies Europe natural gas a critical time during which they are attempting to fill up storage ahead of the winter months. This is a transparent play by Vladimir Putin, who pulls all the strings in Russia, to squeeze Europe and get it to cave to his will and accept his invasion of Ukraine (i.e. remove all sanctions).
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For more than four years, we have been calling attention to the fact that the Boston/New England area imports FOREIGN LNG each year, even though abundant DOMESTIC supplies sit a few hundred miles away in the Pennsylvania Marcellus (see 
A futures contract is a legal agreement to buy or sell a particular commodity asset (like natural gas) at a predetermined price at a specified time in the future. The Henry Hub Natural Gas futures contract (NG) on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) is widely used as the national benchmark price for natural gas. The Henry Hub (HH) is located in southern Louisiana where 16 interstate natural gas pipeline systems converge. But just about any trading hub along natgas pipelines can have a futures contract associated with it. For example, the Eastern Gas South hub in southwestern Pennsylvania (which used to be called Dominion South) has monthly futures contracts extending out for years. Eastern Gas South and other M-U hubs are seeing the price for futures contracts drop like a rock compared to HH. Why? Lack of takeaway pipeline capacity.
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Chairman Richard “Dick” Glick tried to pull a fast one earlier this year when he tried to permanently enshrine global warming considerations as a requirement to approve all new pipeline projects (see 
We’ve heard from a few MDN subscribers who think we’re being too hard on Joe Manchin and his sellout of the country in return for finishing the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project. We don’t think so. The one thing everyone agrees on, those who support Manchin and the many of us who do not: It’s time to finish MVP…now.
In March, MDN told you that the Deputy Chief Administrative Law Judge of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) issued a ruling against the now completed Mariner East 2 pipeline project, assessing a $51,000 fine on the project for work done near an apartment complex (see 
Using rational arguments and facts and science to make the case that natural gas and natgas pipelines benefit the environment is akin to spitting in the wind when talking with environmental leftists. But we suppose the effort must be made–at least for appearances. Such is the case in New Jersey, where representatives from several utility companies and an academic think tank patiently, rationally, and carefully lay out the case for how using natural gas and gas pipelines will help NJ achieve its so-called clean energy targets by 2050. The utility reps and think tank use the intellectual equivalent of baby talk so nutty lefties in the Garden State will understand what’s being said. Is it all just spitting in the wind? Probably.
The 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project from Wetzel County, WV, to Pittsylvania County, VA, announced in 2014, was supposed to be completed in 2018 and cost $3.5 billion. The project builder, Equitrans Midstream, now says MVP, which is 94% complete, should be done by the end of 2023 at a staggering cost of $6.6 billion. What happened between 2014 and today is that Big Green groups, many of which use foreign funding (from countries like Russia), have repeatedly challenged the project. Complicit and colluding judges have placed roadblocks in the way, preventing MVP from finishing. Given the ongoing opposition from the radical left, MVP asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in June to extend the time to complete the project until October 2026, just in case. On Tuesday, FERC granted MVP’s request.
In January 2020, the retirement systems for public employees of various municipalities, including the Allegheny County (PA) Employees’ Retirement System, filed a lawsuit against Energy Transfer and subsidiary Sunoco Logistics alleging top management made false and misleading statements about the construction of three Mariner East 2 and the Revolution natural gas pipeline projects in Pennsylvania. The lawsuit alleges because of those statements, the share price of their stock fell, and investors lost a boatload of money. In April 2021, the lawsuit survived a motion to dismiss by Energy Transfer (see 
Tennessee Gas Pipeline’s (TGP) plan to flow more Marcellus gas to Westchester County, NY, and New York City, to be used for Consolidated Edison customers, is called the East 300 Upgrade Project. The East 300 project took a giant leap forward in April when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued permits that allow TGP to upgrade two existing compressor stations (in PA), and build a brand new compressor station in West Milford (Passaic County, NJ), just across the border and not far from Westchester County (see 
The 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project is 94% complete and in the ground. About the only thing left to build is a short 3.5-mile piece on federal land (Jefferson National Forest) and crossings either through or under several hundred creeks and swamps. We are almost there. And yet anti-fossil fuel zealots believe they can still stop the project and block it from ever finishing. We read yet another fawning ode to environmental zealots article about a small group gathering to commiserate about how they dream of stopping MVP, and it struck us, as it often does, how these people speak of themselves and their efforts in religious terms.
It used to be that freedom and justice and capitalism were baked into our psyche via the U.S. Constitution. All of those things–freedom, justice, and capitalism–are rapidly disappearing. They are replaced with totalitarian statism. The people we “elect” actually think we serve them and that they tell us what we can and can’t do. Example: A pipeline expansion (looping pipe and expanding some compressor stations) by Williams in the Marcellus/Utica is now imperiled by authoritarians in New Jersey.
U.S. Senator from West Virginia, Joe Manchin, supposedly “secured an agreement” to fast-track the completion of the 94% completed Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) in return for selling out the entire country by voting for the Big Green “Build Back Better” bill, renamed to the laughable “Inflation Reduction Act” (see 
U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (Traitor Joe) from West Virginia made a huge gamble in agreeing to vote for the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Manchin got an agreement from Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi to allow a vote on a separate bill sometime in the fall that will help the stalled 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (94% done) to get completed. The gamble is that Pelosi will actually allow a vote and, if so, that she will use her iron fist to ensure it passes. Legal experts have reviewed the “deal” Manchin made with the devil and conclude it’s far from certain MVP will finish.
The 
In March 2019, MDN told you about a new Williams plan to beef up the Transco pipeline in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, to deliver an extra 829 MMcf/d (originally 1 billion cubic feet per day) of Marcellus gas to PA, NJ, and Maryland (see