U.S. Senate Bill Promotes Continued Use of NatGas for PowerGen
U.S. Senator John Cornyn, Republican from Texas, along with Republican Senator Bill Cassidy from Louisiana, along with (surprise!) two Democrat Senators, Chris Coons from Delaware and Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona, are all co-sponsoring a new bill called the Launching Energy Advancement and Development through Innovations for Natural Gas (LEADING) Act. While on the surface the bill seems to be addressing mythical man-made global warming, it’s true intent is to ensure loony birds in federal and state governments don’t outlaw the use of natural gas to generate electricity.
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We recently brought you several stories about New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s predictable (and foolhardy) rejection of the Williams Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) pipeline project to pipe more natural gas to a desperate New York City and Long Island (see 
Two weeks ago MDN reported that a New Jersey state commission, the Pinelands Commission, which has a power to block a pipeline through 10 miles of “protected” scrub pines and swamp lands, is currently paralyzed in their efforts to roll back permission previously granted for the pipeline project under Republican Gov. Chris Christie (see 
Earlier this year, under the direction of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the state issued new draft regulations aimed at shutting down most of the state’s “peaker plants”–small electric generating plants that produce electricity for brief periods during high demand (see 
Anti-fossil fuel kooks in Massachusetts are desperate to block a federally (and state) approved compressor station from getting built in Weymouth, MA. Antis have one remaining, way-outside chance of blocking the project: Bully the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) into reversing the permit it has already issued for the project.
Yesterday New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo dropped an economic atom bomb on New York City by rejecting a natural gas pipeline to bring more supplies of clean-burning natgas to NYC and Long Island (see 
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, arguably PA’s worst governor in a generation, has just thrown in his lot with uber-leftists Andrew Cuomo (governor of NY), Phil Murphy (governor of NJ), and John Carney (governor of DE) to support a total, permanent ban on fracking *and a ban on any drilling-related activities* in the Delaware River Basin (DRB). Put another way, Wolf has just turned his back on thousands of PA citizens living in the Wayne and Pike counties (in PA) who could be, right now, benefiting from Marcellus Shale drilling.
Yesterday two northeast Pennsylvania legislators–state Representative Aaron Kaufer (Republican) and state Senator John Yudichak (Democrat)–hosted a rally to promote proposed new bipartisan legislation aimed at luring a “world-class” petrochemical manufacturing plant to the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area. A big plant, on the order of the Shell cracker plant in southwestern PA. But no, not an ethane cracker. The kind of plant the two legislators want to attract in northeastern PA would leverage the huge volume of locally extracted Marcellus dry gas (i.e. methane).
Hey New York Islanders NHL team–you’re screwed. No new stadium because your governor, Andrew Cuomo has just directed his corrupt Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to deny a permit to build the Williams Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) natural gas pipeline, a pipeline your new stadium needs or won’t get built. You can thank Andy for blowing your billion dollar project. Oh, and residents in NYC’s tenement buildings who won’t have heat next winter because their landlords are being forced by the city to dump fuel oil and now have nothing to switch to? They can thank Andy too, as they huddle with their winter coats on in their freezing apartments.
Speaking of the exploded Revolution Pipeline located in southwestern Pennsylvania that’s led to a driller declaring bankruptcy (see EdgeMarc Energy Files for Bankruptcy, Blames Revolution Pipe Outage), yesterday the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) issued an order to Energy Transfer, builder of Revolution, to “identify and restore or mitigate all streams and wetlands that it illegally eliminated or altered during the construction” of the pipeline. DEP claims ET “illegally” eliminated at least 23 streams and changed the length of another 120 streams.
Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), being built by Equitrans (formerly EQT Midstream), has just agreed to pay a $265,972 fine and submit a plan of corrective action to West Virginia state regulators to fix storm water runoff caused when building the 303-mile pipeline in the Mountain State.
Guess we should have seen this one coming. Last week MDN told you that U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected an appeal by the rich snobs from Cooperstown that call themselves Otsego 2000, challenging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) approval of Dominion Energy’s New Market Project to build two new compressor stations in Upstate NY (see 
Last week the Pennsylvania House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee held an informational meeting to hear from the regulated community, including the shale industry, on their experiences with Dept. of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) permit review processes. By all accounts legislators (and the DEP) got an earful.
Antis pinned their hopes that they could get the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to overturn a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approval for Dominion to build a couple of compressor stations in upstate New York, thereby forcing FERC to consider mythical man-made global warming in ALL pipeline decisions. The case had the makings of being a “landmark” case. Yesterday antis lost their landmark case when the court ruled the party bringing the lawsuit, Otsego 2000, didn’t have standing to bring the lawsuit in the first place.