Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | CNG/LNG | Energy Services | Exporting | Industrywide Issues | New Fortress Energy | Regulation
Antis Hope to Convince Biden Admin to Block Dela. River LNG Exports
Anti-fossil fuel zealots including THE Delaware Riverkeeper are attempting to convince the Biden administration to block the now fully permitted and authorized LNG export terminal New Fortress plans to build on the New Jersey shore of the Delaware River in Gibbstown. They’re hoping they can appeal to Biden’s parochial concerns for his home state of Delaware, hoping to scare an old man with dementia into blocking LNG ships from transiting the Delaware River by lying about safety issues.
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Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), a 303-mile, 2 Bcf/d pipeline to move Marcellus/Utica gas from West Virginia to southern Virginia, has been hounded by radicals from Big Green groups including the Sierra Club for years. Big Green apparently has the clown judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in its back pocket because the clowns keep overturning legal and legitimately issued permits by government agencies including the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (see 
David Blackmon is an independent energy analyst/consultant based in Mansfield, TX. Blackmon is a Forbes contributor and has a 39-year career in the oil and gas industry, most of it in public policy and managing regulatory and legislative issues for various companies, including Burlington Resources, Shell, El Paso Corporation, FTI Consulting and LINN Energy. Blackmon has been around the block a few times and understands not only the technical aspects of our industry, but the politics as well. He recently peered into his crystal ball and predicted what lies ahead (i.e. challenges) for the O&G industry in 2021, including a “regulatory onslaught” from Joe Biden…
The five voting members of the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) met in early December and voted 4-0 (one abstention) to approve a 1,300-foot-long pier in Gibbstown, NJ which will be used to load LNG tankers (see 
In an effort to flow more 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 
Anti-fossil fuelers love to protest things. Fine. Let them protest. This is (still) America. But when antis tip over into illegal acts like blocking legal activities of building pipelines or drilling wells, or when antis tip over into acts of vandalism like destroying equipment, that’s NOT okay. Antis call it “protesting.” We call it criminal behavior. A bill just passed in the Ohio legislature calls such activity what it is–crimes. And now (provided Gov. DeWine signs the bill into law, which is expected), such miscreants will pay stiff fines and in some cases do jail time for their crimes.
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) over the weekend published a final (revised) version of its Waste General Permit which governs how wastewater from shale fracking and produced water can be processed and reused for more drilling and fracking.
The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC), the agency in charge of issuing permits for building the Mariner East pipeline projects, has just poked its head up to weigh in on another Energy Transfer project it issued permits to build: Revolution Pipeline. The PUC is proposing a $1 million penalty for “multiple violations” that led to an explosion of the pipeline as it entered service. The PUC also details a bunch of hoops ET must jump through in order to start service on the pipeline.
Leftists, like Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, always have to learn lessons the hard way. In August, Wolf’s Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) finalized and put into effect a massive increase in the permit fee to drill new shale wells, going from $5,000 per well to $12,500 (see 
In Pennsylvania, there are two permits required by the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) for nearly every shale well drilling project: A Chapter 102 (erosion and sediment control) and a Chapter 105 (water obstructions and encroachments). The DEP has proposed and is seeking comments on wide-ranging amendments to its Chapter 105 regulations.
In March 2019 MDN told you about Kinder Morgan’s Natural Gas Pipeline Company of America LLC (NGPL) project that carries Marcellus/Utica gas from the Midwest all the way to the Gulf Coast to feed just about any of the existing or under construction LNG export plants in the region (see 
Energy Transfer’s (ET) Revolution Pipeline runs through Bulter, Beaver, Allegheny, and Washington counties in southwest PA. The 24-inch gathering pipeline shifted and exploded in September 2018, just as it was entering service (see 
This is rich. The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) took its sweet time reviewing a permit application to drill a series of Marcellus Shale wells on the property of U.S. Steel Corp.’s Edgar Thomson steel mill. Because the DEP delayed its review for so long, in October the East Pittsburgh Borough Zoning Board revoked a local permit previously granted for the project in 2017 (see