FERC Aggressively Expands Enforcement, Fines Utica NGL Pipe $30K
God help you if you are a midstream company that has to wade through the mountain of federal regulations and codes generated by agencies including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), and are subject to those agencies’ arbitrary decisions on what they will and won’t enforce. In what amounts to a game of Simon Says, FERC has just fined M3 Ohio Gathering, Utica East Ohio Midstream, and UEOM NGL Pipelines–all three either current or former owners of two tiny NGL pipelines that flow propane and ethane from the Scio (Ohio) fractionation plant–$30,000 for not filling out a particular form over a six-year period. Thirty grand for a paperwork violation. It is, according to lawyers who watch these things, an escalation, an “aggressive expansion of enforcement” on the part of FERC.
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Last year Big Green lobbyists using the City of Oberlin, Ohio contested the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) decision to approve the Enbridge/DTE Energy NEXUS pipeline, a $2 billion, 255-mile pipeline from the Ohio Utica Shale into Michigan that’s been flowing for years connecting to a pipeline that exports some of the gas into Canada (see 
Shippers (drillers, utility companies, others that buy and sell natural gas) are now free to buy and sell producer certified gas (PCG), or responsibly sourced gas (RSG), at all pooling points across the Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) system. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved the TGP pooling plan after previously rejecting the plan. FERC decided the pooling plan is precisely what we said it was–a marketing thing–and not an endorsement by FERC of whether or not the methane flowing with that designation meets certain environmental criteria.
National Fuel Gas Company (NFG) and its pipeline subsidiary Empire Pipeline have worked on a plan to build the Northern Access Pipeline since 2016. Northern Access is a 97-mile project from McKean County in Pennsylvania into and through Allegany, Cattaraugus and Erie counties in New York, that will flow Marcellus gas into New York State. The project was repeatedly delayed by the radicals of the Andrew Cuomo (now Kathy Hochul) administration. NFG says it still wants to build the project, but needs more time. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) just gave NFG an extra 35 months to get the project done.
Equitrans and its Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project, attacked by Big Green groups including the Sierra Club (rumored to be backed by Russian money), finally got some good news yesterday. As soon as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a certificate approving the MVP Southgate project, the FERC certificate was challenged by the Clubbers in federal court. Yesterday the court turned back the challenge by the Clubbers and said Southgate has a right to life.
More than half of the refining capacity in the U.S. is located on the Gulf Coast, where more gasoline and distillate fuel is produced than used. On the other hand, the U.S. East Coast has very little refining capacity but is often the location where the most gasoline is consumed. Consequently, the East Coast receives fuel from other regions, predominantly the Gulf Coast, and imports fuel from other countries. It seems to us that there is a big opportunity to build new refineries along the East Coast.
The clowns who occupy the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (4th Circus) have rejected a request by Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) to appoint a new panel of three judges to hear cases involving the 94% completed pipeline (see 
Coretrax describes itself as a global well integrity and production optimization expert. Last week the company announced it had completed a world record-breaking project in the Utica Basin. Coretrax successfully deployed its ReLineMNS system across three wells and expanded a total of more than 27,000 feet of tubulars (pipelines) across the campaign. With one of the expandable liners reaching 9,000 feet in its expansion, all installations smashed the previously held record of 7,243 feet by at least 1,000 feet.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally-owned electric utility corporation in the U.S. TVA’s service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. TVA is the sixth-largest power supplier and the largest public utility in the country. One year ago MDN told you that TVA is spending over $1 billion to replace six coal-fired plants with natgas-fired turbines (see 
In 2019 a group of Virginia landowners filed a lawsuit against the Equitrans Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project because they didn’t like how the pipeline left a mark across their horse pastures. The landowners arrogantly argued Congress improperly delegated its legislative powers to FERC and that ALL pipeline approvals made by FERC that have led to properties being “taken” against a landowner’s wishes, including MVP, should be invalidated. In May 2020 a federal court dismissed the case (see 
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 (see 
Columbia Gas, a subsidiary of Canada-based TC Energy (formerly TransCanada), wants to build a tiny 3.37-mile, 8-inch pipeline under the Potomac River from Maryland to West Virginia. The Eastern Panhandle Expansion, as it is called, is being blocked by the lefties in Maryland (see 
Last month MDN brought you the news that Joe Biden is renominating Richard “Dick” Glick to serve yet another undistinguished term at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (see 