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REX Pipe Asks FERC to Prevent Shipper from Breaking Contract
If an upstream (drilling) company with a long-term pipeline contract files for bankruptcy, does that give the company the right to break their pipeline contract? A major shipper on the Rockies Express (REX) pipeline, Ultra Resources, is expected to file for bankruptcy very soon. REX is concerned Ultra may claim its bankruptcy is a “get-out-of-the-contract free” card. REX has asked FERC to preemptively “assert its jurisdiction” as the arbiter of whether or not companies like Ultra can skip out of contracts.
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Energy Transfer’s 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 
The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (DC Circuit) heard oral arguments yesterday in a case of major importance to the future of all federally-approved pipeline projects. The case revolves around the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) use of something called a tolling order in approving Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline (in the PA Marcellus). Big Green groups launched the lawsuit in an effort to strip away FERC’s right to use tolling orders when considering requests to “rehear” decisions to approve pipelines.
The first phase (of three) for Sabal Trail, a $3.2 billion, 515-mile interstate natural gas pipeline in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama to deliver Marcellus gas to the southeast, came online in June 2017 (see 
Eighteen Pennsylvania State Senators sent a letter to Gov. Tom Wolf on April 21 asking Wolf to direct the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) to stop trying to ram through a new tax on carbon that will kill the state’s flourishing natural gas-fired electric generating plants.
Disgusting anti-fossil fuel lunatics have hassled the Keystone XL oil pipeline in the Midwest with frivolous lawsuits for years. Last week an Obama-appointed liberal judge serving in Montana, U.S. District Judge Brian Morris, vacated a permit for the Keystone project, once again stopping construction. The permit vacated was issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and is called a Nationwide Permit 12–the equivalent of a Section 401 permit under the Clean Water Act–allowing projects like pipelines to be built across or under streams, rivers and “wetlands” (swamps). The problem with the judge’s action is that it potentially affects all pipeline projects across the country using an NP12 permit–including the delayed Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), a 303-mile Marcellus/Utica gas pipeline from West Virginia to southern Virginia.
Virginia Natural Gas (VNG), a company that serves customers in northeastern Virginia, wants to build new natural gas infrastructure in Prince William and Fauquier counties. VNG is seeking state approval to build 24 miles of new pipeline and two new compressor stations (expanding a third compressor), connecting to the mighty Transco pipeline system to flow Marcellus/Utica gas to the region. The Header Improvement Project, as it’s called, will help service VNG’s 300,000 natural gas customers and is needed to deliver natural gas to two proposed new gas-fired power plants.
The Narragansett Indian Tribe in Rhode Island won’t be smoking the peace pipe any time soon. The Tribe tried to block construction of Tennessee Gas Pipeline’s (TGP) Connecticut Expansion pipeline project as a violation the National Historic Preservation Act by not protecting “ceremonial stone landscapes” supposedly found along the path of the pipeline (see 
A fairy tale is a made-up story. Fiction. Something not rooted in truth or science. That’s what the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) recently issued in a so-called report about how man-made global warming (euphemized to be “climate change”) is going to toast the Keystone State. Aside from the fact man-made global warming is non-existent, want to know how we know this report is a fairy tale? The DEP, with a straight face, says chicken farms will double by 2050…because the warmer climate will make PA more conducive to raising chickens and by then it will be too hot for chicken farms in southern states.
One of the worst overreaches and offenses of the Obamadroids was to redefine what “waters of the United States” (or WOTUS) actually means. As they were getting ready to leave power, the Obama EPA redefined WOTUS as everything down to large mud puddles–no lie (see 
Spectra Energy’s Algonquin Incremental Market (AIM) pipeline project is an $876 million expansion of the existing Algonquin pipeline system designed to carry 342 million cubic feet of natural gas per day to New England states that badly need the gas. On March 3, 2015, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued its final approval for the project, allowing the project to go forward. Construction began in 2015 and, following extreme opposition from New York State over a small portion of the project, it finally went online in 2016.
Before the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic hit, causing lockdowns and stay-at-home orders throughout much of the U.S. (and world), natural gas drillers in places like the Marcellus/Utica were hurting (due to low gas prices) but holding their own financially. Maybe not all, but a majority were doing OK. And then the bottom dropped out of everything with the virus causing demand “destruction” because people are not traveling. Right now there’s less of everything–less electricity being used (a major customer for natgas), less natgas used for heating big office buildings and factories, etc. Of course, that means less production, with shale gas drillers choosing to scale back new drilling and even shut-in some wells.
The PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) published a notice in Saturday’s Pennsylvania Bulletin that the agency is proposing changes to the Residual Waste General Permit WMGR123, which governs the processing, transfer and beneficial use of oil and gas liquid waste to develop or frack an oil and gas well. Some of the changes include defining certain terms, including “processing,” “transfer,” and “storage”; changing the application from a registration to a determination of applicability; revising sampling and analysis requirements; and revising the frequency of inspections.