Liberal States Like CA & NY Losing the War to Ban Natural Gas Use
Leftists in states like California, Washington, and New York either already have, or are attempting to, outlaw the use of natural gas by homes and businesses. The first step they take is to disallow any new buildings to be connected to natural gas delivery lines. Eventually, they will force existing customers to stop using natural gas and force them to use electricity instead for heating and cooking. Or simply go without heat and cooking (they really don’t care). Leftists are drunk with their own power to force other people to do what they want them to do. Meanwhile, other states, like Texas, Florida, and many others are blocking efforts to block natural gas. The pro-gas states are actually winning the gas-ban war.
Read More “Liberal States Like CA & NY Losing the War to Ban Natural Gas Use”
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 
Pennsylvania’s Democrats are having trouble selling the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a carbon tax aimed at shutting down PA’s coal and natural gas-fired power plants, and by extension shutting down many shale-related jobs in the state. The Dems can’t paper over the fact that RGGI will spell massive layoffs. So what do they propose? Government handouts to those who get laid off, paying them literally pennies on the dollar in government welfare checks in return for “saving the planet” by shuttering coal and gas-fired plants (and putting people out of work). That’s the brilliant solution proposed in a bill offered up by southeast PA state Senator Carolyn Comitta (D-Chester County).
For the past seven years a privately-owned dump near Scranton, the Keystone Sanitary Landfill, has sought to expand in order to accept more garbage. The dump is also authorized to accept Marcellus Shale drill cuttings–rock and soil leftover after drilling. Yesterday the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) announced after seven years of study, hearings, meetings, and whatever else the DEP does to fiddle away the time, they have finally approved Keystone’s request to expand.
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 
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.
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) has done a little more fundraising to underwrite the salaries of overpaid management. The DEP fined Olympus Energy (formerly Huntley & Huntley) for $175,000 in a “civil penalty.” What did Olympus do that was so egregious? After a hard rain some of the rainwater got muddy on an Olympus well pad and washed down an unnamed creek in Allegheny County. Oh, and the language on a sign posted at the pad site didn’t contain some of the exact “Simon Says” language on it, including permit numbers. The shame! The horror!
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 
New Fortress Energy, which likes to build and own as much of the LNG supply chain as possible, built and finished an LNG import terminal in San Juan, Puerto Rico in early 2020. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) then dinged the company, asking for an explanation as to why they built it without FERC permission (see 
Last fall MDN told you that a Marcellus-fired power plant planned for Clinton County, PA called the Renovo Energy Center, had come back to life as an even bigger project that will produce 1,240 megawatts of electricity when it gets built (see 
It’s been ten long years since Windfall Oil and Gas first floated a plan to drill a shale wastewater injection well near Dubois, in Brady Township (Clearfield County), PA. The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a permit for the well in 2015. The PA Dept. of Environmental Protection approved the project in March 2018 (see 
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.