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NESE Rises from the Dead! Williams Petitions FERC for More Time
Hey, it’s that time of year when thoughts turn to the events of some 2,000 years ago and a Jewish rabbi named Jesus who was raised from the dead. Although nowhere near as world-changing as that event, we have another rise-from-the-dead situation: Williams’ Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) pipeline project. We told you in May of last year after the corrupt Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, and Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey refused to grant permits to build NESE, that Williams had walked away form the project (see Cuomo Rejects NESE Pipe Again, Williams Walks Away). We considered the project dead. But what’s this? It’s not dead after all…
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The Virginia Dept. of Environmental Quality (DEQ) is purposefully dragging its feet in an attempt to derail Equitrans’ Mountain Valley Pipeline project. DEQ is telling the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that it will take the rest of this year to review and plan for roughly 120 stream crossings in the state, requesting a time extension of at least six months to do so. If the Army Corps (now controlled by Joe Biden) agrees to DEQ’s request, there is no way MVP, currently 92% complete, can reach 100% completion by the end of this year.
Joe Biden is proposing an insane “infrastructure” plan that will run into the trillions of dollars. All of that money comes from somewhere folks. Money is not free and you can’t simply print it forever without inflation going haywire and the U.S. becoming the new Venezuela. But we digress. As part of spending more money on infrastructure, Biden is looking to change the 50-year-old National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which regulates construction of infrastructure, by putting back into place strangling regulations that Donald Trump relaxed so it doesn’t take a decade to build a new road.
The flaky Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Commissioner Neil Chatterjee, who lately has taken to stabbing natural gas pipelines in the back (see 
Finally! After months and months of dithering around, the Ohio legislature has passed a bill that will overturn and rescind House Bill (HB) 6, the legislation that got passed due to $61 million in bribes spread around by FirstEnergy in what has become Ohio’s biggest bribery scandal ever (see 
At some point in the distant past (during our lifetime) swamps got renamed to “wetlands.” Don’t you just love how the left euphemizes everything? Chesapeake Energy is a bad actor when it comes to shafting landowners out of royalties, we’ll grant you that. However, the company must now pay Pennsylvania and the federal government (DOJ and EPA) a combined $1.9 million for “failure to identify and protect wetlands at 76 oil and gas well sites in Pennsylvania.” In other words, failure to protect swamps.
Yet another attack on the oil and gas industry by the officially out-of-control Democrats in Congress. In years gone by a few fringe leftists from the Democrat Party have introduced several bills, including the FRAC Act, aimed at permanently ripping the U.S. Constitution apart by overriding states’ rights to regulate and control oil and gas drilling within their own borders. Using the faux excuse of man-made global warming, the FRAC Act overrides the individual states and grants broad/sweeping power to the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate fracking. The Dems are at it again, reintroducing the FRAC Act and four other bills (called the “Frack Pack”), all aimed at restricting/eliminating fracking nationwide.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is finally making official what has, until now, been unofficial (but enforceable via court orders): State environmental agencies have exactly one year to either grant or reject issuing a Clean Water Act Section (CWA) 401 permit for pipelines (and other federal projects) to cross rivers and streams and wetlands. A final rule is now drafted and 90 days after it’s published in the Federal Register the rule will be in place and enforceable.
In February we told you about a group of radicalized anti-fossil fuelers who raised a stink with the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) over the DEP’s routine, nothing-to-see-here renewal of permits for already-running (with no operational problems) shale wastewater recycling facilities scattered around the state (see 
Democrats in Congress continue a vendetta against the fossil fuel (and shale) industry. Their latest attack? House of Representatives (HR) Bill 1512, the Climate Leadership and Environmental Action for our Nation’s Future Act (or CLEAN Future) Act. The bill gives vast powers to the unelected bureaucrats at the EPA to set new regulatory demands before permits can be approved for facilities that produce plastics or the raw materials used to produce plastics, such as ethylene or propylene. A better name would be BANCP (Block All New Cracker Plants) Act.
Two radical left Democrat FERC commissioners and one backstabbing RINO FERC commissioner voted last week to approve an 87-mile natural gas pipeline project in South Dakota and Nebraska. So a natural gas pipeline was approved by two Dems and a RINO (this is not a joke setup). The approval is a good thing, right? No, it’s not. The criteria they used in approving the project establishes a new precedent, new guidelines, that will be used for all pipeline projects going forward. The precedent is to consider how much man-made global warming a new pipeline will generate, which is (of course) nonsensical and can’t actually be measured. In other words, these three will now use made-up, pretend nonsense numbers of their own choosing to decide whether or not to approve any and all pipeline projects moving forward.
Here’s another “XPress” pipeline to add to Columbia’s (TC Energy’s) long list of other XPress pipelines: East Lateral XPress. Columbia has built a number of XPress pipelines, including Gulf XPress, Mountaineer XPress, WB Xpress, Leach XPress, Rayne XPress, Buckeye XPress, and Louisiana XPress, all of which work together to flow (in part) Marcellus/Utica natural gas to points south, including to the Gulf Coast (
Really Dick? This is what you spend your time on these days? Digging up long-addressed and settled and resolved actions (from SIX YEARS ago)–old infractions by pipeline companies like Energy Transfer’s Rover Pipeline. Claiming you will “not look the other way” when there’s a violation (a violation that happened long before you were even a FERC Commissioner). Whoa, you’re such a big man. So self-righteous. Glick is now digging up old pipeline sins to parade around once again. It’s like a dog that buried roadkill a year ago and recently rediscovered the spot, dug it up, and now drags the old rotting carcass around the yard for all to see, all proud of himself.