The Jones Act Means Puerto Rico Can’t Import Marcellus LNG
A recent article by the American Enterprise Institute tackles the issue of how the Jones Act is keeping Puerto Ricans from fully recovering from Hurricane Maria, which happened in 2017. Puerto Rico is U.S. territory, subject to U.S. laws. One of those laws is the 1920 Jones Act, which makes it illegal to ship anything from one U.S. port to another U.S. port if the ship was not made here in the U.S. and crewed by Americans (under a U.S. “flag”). Since there are zero LNG carriers manufactured in the U.S.–that means Puerto Rico can’t receive U.S. LNG (in particular Marcellus LNG) to help in its recovery. What a travesty.
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Mainstream media, via a single Associated Press story, is reporting a decision by Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court yesterday is largely a “win” for the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection with respect to Chapter 78a regulations. The AP story de-emphasizes what we consider the larger story–that the drilling industry already won most of the case last year (see 
The Cameron LNG project in Lake Charles, La. is ready to begin service and asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) yesterday to allow it to fire up and begin service by this Friday. What’s that? Why is this news for MDN readers? Because Marcellus/Utica gas flows to that facility!
In May 2016, a landowner in Wayne County, PA filed a lawsuit against the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) asking a judge to declare that the DRBC does not have jurisdiction to prevent construction of a natural gas well (see 
A federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation meant to ban wastewater coming from unconventional (shale) wells from being disposed via municipal sewage treatment plants is about to go into effect in August. The new reg, which was first issued by the Obama EPA in 2016 (see 
The State of Connecticut’s “Siting Council” has changed its mind. In 2016, NTE Energy proposed building a 650-megawatt natural gas-fired electric plant in Killingly. The Siting Council said NTE couldn’t justify the plant and refused to issue a certificate. In February, we reported the Siting Council was once again actively considering the project (see 
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo tried to stop a fully built, brand new natural gas-fired electric generating plant in Orange County from going operational last year by instructing his Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to deny renewing an air permit it had approved just five years earlier (see 
Columbia Transmission is on a mission to flow more Marcellus/Utica gas south–all the way to the Gulf Coast in Louisiana. Earlier this week Columbia filed a new application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to build the Louisiana XPress Project, a project to beef up flows along the existing Columbia pipeline system by an additional 850 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) by adding and expanding several compressor stations in Louisiana. Most, if not all of the M-U gas that will flow through it, is heading to Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass LNG export facility in Lake Charles.
Speaking of New Fortress Energy and their planned northeast Pennsylvania LNG liquefaction facility (see today’s story, Work Begins to Clear Site for NEPA Landlocked LNG Export Plant), in addition to chilling natural gas into LNG, you also need a way to load it onto ships and move it to other markets. New Fortress plans to build a $96 million, 1,600-foot-long pier on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River at the former DuPont dynamite factory site to dock and load two ships at a time.
LS Power, which owns a number of competitive power generation projects including the 700 megawatt dual-fuel simple cycle Troy Generating Facility located in Luckey, OH, is threatening to pull a $500 million plan to expand the Troy facility if Ohio proceeds to pass a new law subsidizing the state’s two nuclear plants. The subsidies would create an uneven playing field for natural gas-fired electric plants like the Troy facility.
A little good news coming from New England, for a change. Over objections of radical anti-fossil fuel nutters, the Massachusetts Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) on Friday granted an air permit for a compressor station in Weymouth. The compressor station is part of the Spectra Energy/Enbridge Atlantic Bridge expansion project, stalled since 2017. The administration of MA Gov. Charlie Baker (RINO) issued an air permit for the project in January of this year (see 
In March 2016, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved Tennessee Gas Pipeline’s (TGP) Connecticut Expansion project (see 
New York State is so screwed. Let’s just be honest–there’s no saving the Empire State now. (We can say these things because we live here.) Following the passage of a recent law (see