TETCO Pipeline Returns to Full Pressure This Week – 2 Mo. Early
In June MDN brought you the news that Enbridge’s Texas Eastern Transmission (TETCO) pipeline is being flow-restricted by the Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration (PHMSA). Some 40% of the Marcellus/Utica molecules that flow through TETCO’s pipeline to destinations in the southeastern U.S. disappeared and were predicted to stay that way until the end of September (see TETCO Pipe Throttling 40% of M-U Southbound Gas to Last All Summer). Fantastic news! PHMSA last week gave permission to Enbridge to boost pressure back to 100% again, beginning this week.
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The anti-fossil fuelers of Nicetown, PA (near Philadelphia) aren’t so nice. Even though a Marcellus gas-fired power plant in Nicetown has already been built by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) and is currently in operation (has been since last November) providing cheap electricity for railroads and heat for a local bus depot, antis want it all shut down. They claim it’s racist to have the facility located in the community where it’s located. The Joe Biden EPA is investigating Nicetown with an eye to shutting it all down. What a tragedy on so many levels. Once again energy has been politicized by the left in this country.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is moving to revise a two-decade-old standard that guides approval of proposed interstate natural gas pipelines. FERC Chairman Richard “Dick” Glick informed a congressional panel last week of the impending changes. Glick wants to permanently change the standards used so future FERC commissioners will be handcuffed to his twisted view of global warming when considering whether or not to approve a pipeline project.
In June MDN brought you the news that three Democrat judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit overturned a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approval for a long-completed and flowing natural gas pipeline in the St. Louis area that flows Marcellus/Utica gas to residents, businesses, and electric generating plants throughout the region (see 
In June MDN brought you the news that Enbridge’s Texas Eastern Transmission (TETCO) pipeline is being flow-restricted by the Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration (PHMSA). Some 40% of the Marcellus/Utica molecules that flow through TETCO’s pipeline to destinations in the southeastern U.S. have disappeared and were predicted to stay that way until the end of September (see 
Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) had laid 31 miles of pipeline and had cut trees for 222 miles along the 600-mile route before Dominion Energy, the builder, decided last summer it no longer wanted to be in the interstate pipeline business, canceling ACP (see 
Yesterday PA Gov. Tom Wolf grabbed some headlines by having his Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) announce they will “soon” begin to require *all* landfills in the state to test leachate (water with nasty stuff in it that comes from landfills) for radioactivity. The Wolf DEP press release takes great pains to point out the new testing includes landfills “that accept unconventional oil and gas waste.” Which is the purpose of the announcement. To plant the seed that maybe, just maybe, drill cuttings are causing folks to glow in the dark. Radiation poisoning. Yet buried in the press release is this statement about a previous study of leachate from PA landfills with and without drill cuttings…
Increasingly ours is a world run by computers. Even in-the-ground pipelines are monitored and controlled by computers. The ransomware attack earlier this year against Colonial Pipeline, a pipeline that flows a significant amount of refined products (gasoline and diesel fuel) from the Gulf Coast where it’s refined as far north as New Jersey, was a wake-up call for all pipelines. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) heard the call and responded. In May the TSA issued an initial “security directive” requiring pipelines, including natural gas pipelines, to do certain things to protect themselves and the public they serve. Last week TSA issued a second such pipeline directive.
A Pennsylvania Democrat lawmaker from Beaver County (southwestern PA) who professes to support the Marcellus industry, Rep. Rob Matzie, has written a letter to Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) Secretary Pat McDonnell (a fellow Dem) asking him to deny a request by PennEnergy Resources to withdraw as much as 3 million gallons of water a day from Big Sewickley Creek and one of its tributaries for shale fracking. Matzie says that’s just too much water to withdraw from the creek.
Energy Transfer’s (ET) Revolution Pipeline in southwestern Pennsylvania is the financial gift that keeps on giving–for the state of Pennsylvania. Revolution Pipeline runs through Bulter, Beaver, Allegheny, and Washington counties. The 24-inch gathering pipeline shifted and exploded in September 2018, just as it was entering service (see 
In a brilliant move aimed at boxing in the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), two northeastern Pennsylvania State Senators–Gene Yaw and Lisa Baker–along with members of the PA Senate Republican Caucus (27 Senators in all), filed a lawsuit in January against the DRBC accusing the quasi-governmental agency of “taking” the property rights of PA residents without just compensation under the law (see 
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf pulled a fast one. He pressured the PA Environmental Quality Board (EQB), a powerful committee operating under the larger umbrella of the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), to hold a hearing and cast a vote yesterday (in the dead of summer with everyone out of town) on whether or not PA should join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), an obscene tax on carbon for power generators including natgas power plants. The EQB, packed with people who depend on Wolf for their jobs (he’s their boss), voted in favor of advancing the $2.6 billion RGGI carbon tax proposal by 15-4. No surprise there. It was an inside job.
In a letter dated May 27, federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Wetlands Branch Chief Jeffrey Lapp pressured the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to deny Equitrans’ Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) a Section 404 Clean Water Act permit that would allow the 303-mile pipeline project (now 92% complete) to finish crossing some 300+ streams and swamps in West Virginia and Virginia. Gee, the Biden EPA trying to close down an almost completed pipeline project. Why are we not surprised?