Will Army Corps Delay the 92% Complete MVP Another Year?
We have some further clarification on the status of Equitrans Midstream’s 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project. One month ago Equitrans announced due to ongoing delays in permits (because of lawsuits filed by Big Green groups) MVP will not finish construction until next year (see Equitrans Delays MVP & Southgate In-Service Dates to 2022 & 2023). At various times we’ve seen different numbers bandied about for the number of creeks, rivers, and wetlands that still need to be crossed. We now have clarity on those numbers.
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When was the last time you heard about a state legislature with the guts to reject a governor’s nominee to head a regulatory agency because the nominee proved to be, well, dumb? Yeah, like never. Until now! The ranks of dullard bureaucrats are legion across the country, but you can count on one less dullard in North Carolina where the Republican legislature, after quizzing Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper’s nominee to head the state’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), determined she flunked because she didn’t know a darned thing about Mountain Valley Pipeline’s proposed Southgate project.
Crestwood Equity Partners and Consolidated Edison, Inc. (Con Edison) yesterday announced they are selling their 50/50 joint venture in Stagecoach Gas Services to pipeline giant Kinder Morgan for $1.225 billion in cash. Stagecoach consists of four natural gas storage facilities and 185 miles of natural gas pipelines located in the Marcellus/Utica with multiple interconnects to major interstate natural gas pipelines, including Tennessee Gas Pipeline, a Kinder Morgan subsidiary.
It’s interesting to observe how antis twist and turn *any* situation, no matter how obscure and inconsequential, into propaganda that supports their aim to end the use of all fossil fuels. For example, there was a minor, we’d call it routine, incident at a Mariner East 2 pipeline pumping station in Chester County on Monday night. A small leak of methane (natural gas) was detected in the pumping station. The leak was tiny and the gas didn’t even escape the pumping station. Yet antis are attempting to turn this molehill into Mount Everest.
New Jersey Resources’ Adelphia Gateway project is a plan to convert an old oil pipeline stretching from Northampton County, PA through Bucks, Montgomery, and Chester counties, terminating in Delaware County at Marcus Hook, into a natural gas pipeline. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued final approval for the project in December 2019 (see 
Work has restarted on finishing the 92% completed Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) in locations that don’t involve crossing creeks and rivers. One of the areas where work has restarted is the back side of Bent Mountain, south of Roanoke, Virginia. You would be amazed at the ingenuity and sheer guts it takes to build a pipeline–especially down the side of a mountain.
More negative press that Energy Transfer (and subsidiary Sunoco Logistics) doesn’t need for their Mariner East 2 (ME2) pipeline project. Last Wednesday construction workers were replacing backfill near the Glen Riddle Station apartment complex in Media (Delaware County, PA) when apparently they broke a water line to the apartment complex. The pipeline break left about 250 people in the complex without drinking water for more than a day.
We never thought we would write these words: The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under Joe Biden is even worse than it was under Barack Hussein Obama. Biden’s choice to head the EPA, North Carolina’s Michael Regan, is aggressively targeting natural gas, attempting to harm the industry in any way he can. This week he’s targeted natgas in two specific ways: (1) by encouraging FERC to reclassify new pipeline projects as “stranded assets” meaning they shouldn’t get approved, and (2) by repealing Trump’s rightsizing of Clean Water Act 401 permits, once again allowing states to block pipelines using the 401 permit, thereby harming their neighbors by blocking interstate commerce (in contravention to the U.S. Constitution). Regan is a vicious radical, totally out of control. He’s corrupting not only his own agency, but another agency (FERC) as well.
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 
Back in March MDN was one of the first to warn you about a major policy change at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) when three of five FERC commissioners approved an obscure, smallish pipeline project in the Midwest factoring in the pipeline’s contribution to so-called greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (see 
You have two days left to make your voice heard with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers concerning whether or not the Corps should issue a new permit to the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline project as it crosses rivers and streams in both West Virginia and Virginia. Back in April we told you the Corps had given antis an extra 30 days to comment on (complain, manipulate, lie about) issuing MVP a new permit (see 
Radical environmentalists continue to use the City of Oberlin, Ohio to try and advance their agenda of ending the use of natural gas pipelines. And Oberlin willingly lets them do it. We’re referring to the latest court filing by Oberlin (actually by Big Green lobbyists using Oberlin) contesting the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) decision to approve the NEXUS pipeline, a pipeline from the Utica Shale into Michigan that’s been flowing for years connecting to a pipeline that exports some of the gas into Canada. Oberlin says FERC’s approval of NEXUS is faulty because some gas gets exported and is not “in the public interest.”
Every time the Weymouth, Massachusetts compressor station experiences an unplanned shutdown, as it did for the fourth time last week, it gives anti-fossil fuel activists more ammunition to try and convince the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Congress, and anyone else who will listen that this compressor should be permanently shuttered. Shutting it down now would have dire consequences for natural gas customers in places like Maine (see 
Democrats and RINOs just hate it when someone else uses the same tactics against them that they so frequently use themselves. The shoe tends to pinch when it’s on the other foot. Such is the case with a bit of brilliant political maneuvering last Thursday at the most recent Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) open meeting when one of the Republican Commissioners, James Danly, insisted (at the last minute) on appending language for approvals of two western pipeline projects that says, in essence, considerations of man-made global warming played no role in approving or disapproving the projects. Danly’s last-minute sandbagging enraged FERC Chairman Richard “Dick” Glick and his fellow far-left Democrat sidekick Allison Clements. It also had Republican-in-Name-Only (and backstabber) Neil Chatterjee spitting and sputtering. In the end, the three Republicans, including Chatterjee, went ahead and approved the two projects, over fierce objections by Glick. Three cheers for James Danly!
Headquartered in Philadelphia, PECO (a subsidiary of Exelon Corp.) is Pennsylvania’s largest electric and natural gas utility, delivering power to more than 1.6 million electric customers and more than 532,000 natural gas customers in southeastern Pennsylvania. Last fall PECO floated a plan to build a natural gas reliability station in Marple Township (Delaware County, PA) to allow the company to distribute more natural gas into Delaware County through 11.5 miles of new natural gas main lines. As you might expect, the neighbors in the densely populated area of the reliability station are up in arms over the plan (see 
On March 19 Williams petitioned the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to extend the time to build the FERC-approved Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) pipeline project in the New York City area by an extra two years (see