PA House Hearing: Pipelines Needed for Next 30 Yrs, Antis Ejected
The Pennsylvania House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee held a hearing on Tuesday that investigated the economic benefits of the state’s 1,000-plus miles of gas pipelines. The adults in the room all acknowledged even if there is a transition away from fossil fuels “someday,” pipelines hauling natural gas around the state will need to be kept up and running for *at least* the next 30 years (likely longer). Pipelines are here to stay. A band of radical anti-fossil fuel nutters behaved badly during the hearing, as they so often do, and had to be ejected.
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It’s been a long, tough slog for Equitrans Midstream’s Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), a 303-mile pipeline from West Virginia into southern Virginia. The project is 92% done and in the ground. The final bits should be done within the next year and it will go online (if the crick don’t rise and the Lord don’t come) in mid-2022. One of the places where the pipeline was recently installed is close to a small clump of homes (called a “village”) in the Virginia mountains of Giles County. A place called Newport. A recent article in the Roanoke Times would have you believe the pipeline has somehow devastated the local community. It has not. We’re here to provide perspective on pipelines as good neighbors.
There is a very real and tangible cost to the delays coming from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) with respect to reviewing natural gas pipeline projects. Those delays, intentionally created by current FERC Chairman Richard “Dick” Glick, are costing West Virginians jobs and money. JB McCuskey, the state auditor for WV, should know. He audits how tax dollars are spent in the state. His office reviews and approves general operating budgets for some 700 municipalities, counties, and school districts across the state. McCuskey says FERC is tangibly hurting the state of WV by dragging its feet in reviewing pipeline projects.
Spire STL is a 65-mile pipeline that connects to and flows Marcellus/Utica gas from the Rockies Express (REX) pipeline to residents and businesses in the St. Louis, MO area. The pipeline began flowing gas in late 2019 (see 
The New York State Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC), completely corrupted by radicals under the thumb of outgoing Gov. Andrew Cuomo, has struck again. The DEC has filed a letter with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) blasting a plan to boost capacity at two existing compressor stations along the Iroquois Gas Transmission System pipeline. DEC says more natural gas flowing along the pipeline (desperately needed in both New York City and in New England) will cause more mythical global warming and therefore FERC should reject the request. How sad. How intellectually bankrupt.
Mariner East 2 (ME2) Pipeline is the gift that keeps on giving…for the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP). The DEP keeps assessing fines for alleged construction violations that happened a year or more ago. This time the DEP has fined ME2 for supposed violations happening in early 2020 in four Pennsylvania counties: Blair, Cumberland, Juniata, and Lebanon. The problems were “inadvertent returns” of drilling mud in several swamps (“wetlands”) and creeks. Yes, ME2 is once again up Snitz Creek…
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has disregarded the petulant demands of anti-fossil fuel fanatics and has given its permission to Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project to switch the method it uses to cross 136 streams and 47 wetlands. For roughly 70 miles of the pipeline’s 303-mile route, MVP asked FERC in early February to change the method of installation from open trench to trenchless, drilling under the body of water using horizontal directional drilling (see 
In a second victory for Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) over the past week, a federal judge rejected a request by a Virginia landowner for emergency power to block construction of MVP across the landowner’s property on Bent Mountain. Last week we told you the landowner claimed blasting and construction for the pipeline on his property could “explode the headwaters of Bottom Creek.” We noted the same landowner has been suing to block MVP on his property since at least early 2019. The judge told him that her court was not the proper jurisdiction to resolve the dispute.
In February 2020 we told you about a mob of anti-fossil fuelers attempting to block the final few feet of construction for a 6.8-mile natural gas pipeline stretching from Brownsville to North Brooklyn in New York City (see 
In an effort to flow more Marcellus natural gas to a starving New York City, Kinder Morgan cut a deal with utility company Consolidated Edison in 2019 to provide more gas by beefing up capacity along its Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) that feeds NYC, allowing Con Ed to avoid cutting customers off from natgas hookups (see 
Somehow the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) thinks it can tell the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) what it can and can’t do with respect to evaluating pipeline projects. EPA is “advising” FERC to begin incorporating the “social cost of carbon” into its environmental reviews, taking an added look at the climate change impacts of natural gas infrastructure projects. Who the heck does the EPA think it is? Climate God?
Some disturbing news out of Pennsylvania. You may recall that PennEast Pipeline, a 120-mile, primarily 36-inch pipeline that will cost $1 billion to build and run from Dallas, Luzerne County, in northeastern Pennsylvania, and terminate at Transco’s pipeline interconnection near Pennington, Mercer County, New Jersey, won a huge and important victory at the U.S. Supreme Court in June (see 
Yet another lawsuit brought by one landowner against the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) asks the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia to block blasting and construction for the pipeline on his property, alleging it could “explode the headwaters of Bottom Creek.” The same landowner has been suing to block MVP since at least early 2019 by our quick check of the court records. This appears to be just one more attempt to use sketchy information to block the completion of a project that’s already 92% done and in the ground.
Yet another fine for Energy Transfer (ET), assessed by the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP). This time the DEP has fined ET $140,000 for violations that occurred in 2019 and 2020 during the construction of ET’s B15 Well Connect Pipeline construction project located in Beaver County, PA. According to the consent order and agreement (COA), “sections of the pipeline project were not temporarily stabilized, areas of the site showed accelerated erosion and sedimentation, waterbars were not installed properly or not installed in the approved locations, and erosion and sedimentation best management practices (BMP) were inoperable or ineffective.”
You have to say one thing about environmentalist wacko zealots–they never give up. Ever. We’re talking about the Big Green money behind Appalachian Mountain Advocates, Southern Environmental Law Center, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (among 19 groups in total) which have filed a “request” (i.e. demand) with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to expand an environmental review for Equitrans Midstream’s 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project.