Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Electrical Generation | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Regulation | Statewide PA
Legislation Requiring PA Get 100% Electric from Renewables DOA
A radical Pennsylvania environmental group called PennEnvironment is pushing a media narrative that a “collection of 88 Republican and Democratic Pennsylvania state legislators” have joined together to introduce and endorse a truly insane plan that would require all (as in 100%) of electricity generated in the Keystone State to come from so-called renewables by 2050–just 30 years from now. It will NEVER happen, but that’s beside the point. Our point is that one named Republican is part of this “bipartisan collection” of 88 leftists. The lone Republican is PA State Sen. Tom Killion from the Philadelphia area.
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On multiple occasions we have outlined the reasons why federal agencies like the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) exist–in order to prevent individual states from harming their neighbors economically. An individual state can’t block a new interstate highway, or the trucks and cars that travel it, from entering their state. It’s the same for power transmission lines and for pipelines. Yet New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is violating that law by rejecting interstate pipelines.
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) has just fined EQT $330,775 for erosion and sedimentation violations at two well sites in Forward Township, Allegheny County, PA. Water with sediment in it leaked from the well sites in early 2018, which sometimes happens. The reason for the stiff fine is that EQT failed to notify the DEP when it happened. If the DEP finds out via its own inspections first, the cost goes way up.
We have news of a new, small pipeline project with the potential to carry more PA Marcellus natural gas to several locations in Delaware and Maryland. 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. FERC has just issued a positive environmental assessment (EA) for the project.
Last Friday the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a final approval for Williams’ Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) pipeline project by a vote of 3-1 (full copy below). The only remaining regulatory hurdles are for both New York State and New Jersey to issue federal Clean Water Act 401 certificates to allow the project to cross bodies of water in their respective territorial waters. All eyes are now on NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo and what he will do. Will he approve the project, benefiting New York City and Long Island with much-needed gas? Or will he veto the project, harming millions of NY residents, simply to placate a small group of very vocal radical leftists who pretend to care about the environment? He has until May 16 to decide.
We’re sometimes criticized by MDN readers for too much “green bashing.” Yet how should we handle news like this: The Sierra Club is launching yet another attack on the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), which runs from Wetzel County, WV to Pittsylvania County, VA, by bastardizing the endangered species act in an attempt to bully the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service into blocking construction. Should we pretend to remain aloof and report that a respectable “environmental organization” is launching “new opposition” to a gas pipeline? Or tell you what we really think: That this evil, disgusting left-of-Attila-the-Hun group of thugs is once again organizing, using money from lefty billionaires like George Soros and Tom Steyer, to try and destroy a company and the people whose jobs depend on that company?
In March a group of Pennsylvania landowners from Lancaster County asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case in which they say they’ve been screwed over by Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline, that the pipeline should not have had the right to use eminent domain to build the pipeline before the matter of compensation was fully adjudicated (see 
Last week the Mountain Valley Pipeline project, being built by Equitrans Midstream, got a boost from the West Virginia Dept. of Environmental Protection (WVDEP). WVDEP has submitted a revised stream/river crossing permit previously rejected by a federal court. The reworked permit means construction will once again resume in some areas where it’s currently stalled, maybe by mid-year.
Last week we brought you the news that President Trump is considering a waiver to the 1920 Jones Act for LNG to be shipped from port to port in the U.S., even if the ships used are foreign flagged (see 
Two weeks ago MDN told you the Pennsylvania House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee approved a series of five bills that restore some sanity in how environmental regulations are made and paid for in the Keystone State (see 
Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection Secretary Pat McDonnell will get his day in court, or rather, his day in a reconfirmation hearing–on May 8. We previously wrote about the delay of McDonnell’s reconfirmation hearing (see 
For months Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has been traveling around the Keystone State pretending he’s Santa Claus, pushing a plan he calls Restore PA–a plan that will get rid of lead paint in schools, fix flooding, repair old roads, give rural residents internet access, and just about any other goody you can think of. The catch? The PA legislature must pass a Marcellus-killing severance tax to pay for it. Republicans from western PA called his bluff, offering an alternative way to fund it (see 
Andrew Cuomo has himself painted into a corner. In recent years he’s pandered to his radical/left environmental base by blocking natural gas pipelines. Another such project now must be decided, by May 16. Williams’ Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) project needs a water crossing permit from New York State. If Cuomo rejects the project, both Consolidated Edison and National Grid, the two utilities that supply New York City and its suburbs, including all of Long Island, with natural gas, have said they will slap a moratorium on all new gas customer hookups. Either way Andy is toast. Which way will he decide?