New York Electric Prices Up 50%, NatGas Up 75% – Lack of New Pipes
The price of electricity and natural gas in New York State is through the roof. Average New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) power prices across major hubs increased by 50% year over year in May, and natural gas prices increased nearly 75% year over year. It’s a train wreck here in New York. And you can directly blame Andrew Cuomo and the Democrats in the NY legislature for blocking new natural gas pipelines. That’s the root cause. No pipelines = obscenely high prices for electricity and gas.
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Traders are crediting news from Enbridge’s Texas Eastern Transmission (TETCO) pipeline that a recent flow restriction enforced by the Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration (PHMSA) will continue through the end of summer with helping to spike the Henry Hub futures price of natgas, up 4.5% on Friday to close at $3.30/MMBtu.
As we report today, Enbridge’s Texas Eastern Transmission (TETCO) pipeline will not be back to full pressure flowing Marcellus/Utica gas south (some of it to the Gulf Coast) until the end of summer. Last week MDN brought you the news that TETCO was denied permission to continue operating its pipeline system (three pipelines, actually) at full pressure (see 
Williams, Kinder Morgan, and other giant midstream companies with major assets in the Marcellus/Utica are looking at, investigating, and actively considering blending in hydrogen with natural gas in their interstate pipelines. Sounds easy, right? Just hook up to a handy source of hydrogen and let the molecules flow and mingle with methane molecules. But adding hydrogen (H2) to existing methane (CH4) pipelines is not a simple thing. There are major roadblocks to flowing H2 through CH4 pipes. At present, it’s still just a pipe dream.
Tennessee Gas Pipeline’s (TGP) plan to flow more natural gas to Westchester and New York City is called the East 300 Upgrade Project. The project involves upgrades at two existing compressor stations (in Pennsylvania), along with building a brand new compressor station in West Milford (Passaic County), just across the border and not far from Westchester County, NY. Two weeks ago we told you area residents and leftwing environmentalists had convinced the county to officially oppose the project (see 
In an effort to prove natural gas is not Satanic, three Marcellus/Utica drillers–Southwestern Energy, EQT, and Chesapeake Energy–have signed up for a certification program by Project Canary called TrustWell. The program certifies that the natural gas produced by these companies is responsibly sourced natural gas (RSG). For the first time a midstream (pipeline) company, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy (BHE), has earned a TrustWell certification for a piece of equipment, the company’s compressor units.
Yesterday the U.S. Dept. of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) submitted an advisory bulletin to the Federal Register. The notice is for pipeline operators. It reminds them that PHMSA has a very big stick that the agency intends to use to force pipeline owners to clamp down on fugitive methane emissions. PHMSA is using the Protecting our Infrastructure of Pipelines and Enhancing Safety (PIPES) Act of 2020, passed and signed during the waning days of the Trump administration, as a big stick to force expensive upgrades to capture every last molecule of CH4, supposedly to cut down on man-made global warming.
Two and a half years after Energy Transfer’s (ET) 24-inch Revolution Pipeline entered service in western Pennsylvania and exploded following a landslide (in September 2018), the pipeline finally returned to service in March of this year (see 
In June 2020, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied hearing an appeal for a case from Sunoco Logistics Partners about a permit for a pump station in Lebanon County, PA used to help flow natural gas liquids through the Mariner East pipeline system (see 
How does this work in the real world? Gas and electric customers on Aquidneck Island (part of Rhode Island) ran out of natural gas leaving thousands without heat on the island for days during a frigid cold snap in 2019. Customers without heat subsequently launched a class action lawsuit. On Wednesday a judge ruled the lawsuit may continue. Yet RI legislators will not allow the utility, Narragansett Electric (formerly part of National Grid) to implement any permanent fixes (like a new pipeline) to prevent another outage from happening! And it will happen at some point. This is what passes for “justice” in Rhode Island.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), now firmly under the jackboots of Chairman Richard “Dick” Glick, has just struck a major blow to five natural gas pipeline projects, four of them either located in the Marcellus/Utica or located elsewhere but will flow significant amounts of our gas. Just coming to light now is the fact that last Thursday functionaries inside the bowels of FERC issued notices to five pipeline projects that FERC has hit the pause button on finishing up final approvals so the agency can take the next six months to complete full environmental impact statements (EIS’s), gauging whether or not these projects will cause too much mythical, man-made global warming. We’d be really angry about this except our anger quotient is already exhausted with this bunch of leftist nuts.
Enjoy the Republican majority on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) while you have it. That majority will end soon. Three FERC Republican commissioners have approved Enable Midstream Partners’ Gulf Run natural gas pipeline which will, in part, connect Marcellus/Utica gas supplies to the Gulf Coast for exporting (see 
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 
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.