WV Bill Would Establish Fund to Kick-start NGL Hub, Reassure China
The West Virginia legislature kicked off its 2020 60-day session yesterday with a bang–at least for the shale energy industry. House Speaker Roger Hanshaw introduced House Bill 4001, aimed at reassuring China it’s OK to begin investing some of that $84 billion they promised to invest in WV’s shale and downstream sector. The bill also would help fund the Appalachian NGL Storage and Trading Hub project and other big petrochemical projects (maybe even a cracker plant!).
Read More “WV Bill Would Establish Fund to Kick-start NGL Hub, Reassure China”
The Lorax Judge strikes again. One year ago the Virginia State Air Quality Board, at the prompting of Gov. Ralph Northam, voted to approve a low-emissions compressor station for Dominion Energy’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP), to be built about an hour outside of Richmond, Virginia (see 
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), the agency charged with overseeing oil and gas drilling in the state, “blindsided” the shale industry in February 2018 with a proposal to hike the fee required when submitting an application to drill a new shale well by 2 1/2 times, or 250% (see 
The companies behind PennEast Pipeline, a $1.2 billion new greenfield pipeline project from Luzerne County, PA to Mercer County, NJ, have not given up on the long-delayed project. As we told you in November, PennEast plans to file an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court (on Feb. 3) to overcome a lower court ruling that prevents PennEast from using eminent domain in New Jersey for some of the route (see 
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) recent settlement with Energy Transfer (ET) concerning the Revolution Pipeline explosion in southwestern PA also has significant impact on southeastern PA. How? The signed consent order in which ET pays the state $30.6 million lifts a moratorium on granting new permits to ET for *any* of its pipeline projects in PA for the past one year–including permits to complete the Mariner East (ME) projects. With the consent order comes a lifting of that permit moratorium, meaning the final bits of ME can now be completed.
The companies behind PennEast Pipeline, a $1.2 billion new greenfield pipeline project from Luzerne County, PA to Mercer County, NJ, have not given up on the long-delayed project. As we told you in November, PennEast 
Eastern Shore Natural Gas Company (ESNG), a subsidiary company of Chesapeake Utilities Corporation, filed a request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in Sept. 2018 to build 19+ miles of new pipeline and new meter and delivery stations in Kent and Sussex counties in Delaware, and Wicomico and Somerset counties in Maryland, to carry more PA Marcellus natural gas to locations in Delaware and Maryland. Last Thursday FERC granted final approval for the project.
In September MDN told you about environmentalist wackos at the Bernheim Arboretum (about 25 miles from Louisville, Kentucky) who refuse to grant an easement for 4,000 feet of land they bought *after* the Louisville Gas and Electric Company (LG&E) already had a state-approved plan to build a new pipeline over that land as part of tiny 12-inch, 12-mile pipeline (see 
In what has become an ongoing pattern, THE Delaware Riverkeeper (aka Maya van Rossum) has lost yet another lawsuit (in federal court) against a pipeline project–in this case the Millennium Pipeline expansion project called the Eastern System Upgrade.
Delays in building new pipelines, like the PennEast Pipeline, have real, tangible costs for natural gas customers. In the case of PennEast, natgas customers in southeastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey are paying billions in higher gas costs because PennEast is not yet built. Even worse, there’s a looming shortage coming in New Jersey.