The West Virginia House Energy Committee passed a bill yesterday that appears to be picking up steam and possibly headed for approval by both the House and Senate. It’s an interesting bill that allows local natural gas utilities to pay drillers to drill new gas wells in areas where there is not a reliably sufficient supply of gas.
Read More “WV Bill Would Let Utilities Pay Producers to Drill New Gas Wells”
One of the long-running complaints from shale drillers across Pennsylvania has been the amount of time it takes the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) to issue a simple permit–like an erosion and sediment control permit.
Read More “PA DEP Southwest Office Says Permit Backlog Down 75%”
The New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC), thoroughly corrupted by, and a political tool of, NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo, continues to have a bad week. Monday we told you about a recent court decision that gives new hope for both the Constitution and Northern Access Pipeline projects (see Recent Fed Court Decision Gives NY Pipes Hope for Bypassing Cuomo). A second court decision has just been issued that allows Northern Access to take a huge step forward.
Read More “Federal Court Slaps Down NY DEC Rejection of Northern Access Pipe”
Utility giant National Grid, which services Long Island (part of New York City) with natural gas service, is threatening New York State that if the state does not approve Williams’ Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) pipeline project by May 15th, they will, as Consolidated Edison has just done in Westchester County, impose a no-new-natural gas customers moratorium for the New York City area. Which would block development of the new $1 billion Belmont Park Arena.
Read More “National Grid Threatens New Gas Customer Moratorium on Long Island”
Kinder Morgan’s Elba Island LNG, situated along the Georgia coastline near Savannah, is supposed to launch the first of its 10 LNG export mini-trains by the end of first quarter this year, and have all 10 up and running by the end of the year (see Elba Island LNG Won’t be Fully Online Until “End of 2019”). Good news: FERC has just granted permission to begin flowing feed gas into the facility for testing.
Read More “Kinder Morgan Takes Another Baby Step with Elba Island LNG”
Speaking of National Fuel Gas Company’s Northern Access Pipeline project, NFG asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) last November to extend the project timeline by an extra three years, to give them more time to fight with Cuomo in court and actually get the pipeline built once lawsuits from the state are exhausted (see NFG Asks FERC for Extra 3 Yrs to Build Northern Access Pipe in NY). Last Thursday FERC granted that request.
Read More “Northern Access Pipe Gets 3-Year Extension to Build in NY”
In November, Dominion Energy said that their 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) would be delayed, with a partial startup in 2019 and full startup for everything else in mid-2020 (see Dominion Energy 3Q18: Atlantic Coast Pipeline Delayed to 2020). The company also said the price tag had gone up from $6.5 to $7 billion. Strike all that. Last week Dominion said the startup will now be even later, and the cost even more.
Read More “Dominion Delays Atlantic Coast Pipeline Again – 2018 Update”
The Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry (PA Chamber) recently filed a brief in Commonwealth Court opposing THE Delaware Riverkeeper in a case that still has us angry and baffled. The case brought by Riverkeeper is clear across the state, hundreds of miles from the Delaware River Basin where Riverkeeper supposedly operates, and attempts to force a local municipality to adopt zoning ordinances it doesn’t want to adopt. And it involves Martians.
Read More “PA Chamber Files Brief in Martian School Court Case”
Virginia House of Delegates member Lee Ware, a Republican, has “quietly” introduced a bill in the General Assembly that would block Dominion Energy, builder of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP), from passing along costs related to the pipeline to the electric generating plants and their ratepayers that will use the cheap natural gas made available by the pipeline.
Read More “Va. Bill Would Block Atlantic Coast Pipe from Passing Along Costs”
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) office of enforcement is close to launching a new audit policy “that will offer significant new penalty reductions for the oil and gas industry.” That’s how the news is being spun–that oil and gas are about to get a big, fat, wet, sloppy kiss from the EPA. The truth is far different from the media spin.
Read More “EPA Plan Allows E&Ps to Self-Report Clean Air Act Violations”
Bats are a big deal in the Pennsylvania Marcellus. Why? Drillers and midstreamers can’t cut down trees from April 1st through October 31st of each year for fear of killing a northern long-eared bat that may be roosting in one of those trees. The PA Board of Game Commissioners have just added two more bat species to the list, further complicating the issue.
Read More “PA Drillers/Pipelines Must Now Deal with 3 Protected Bat Species”
Equitrans’ (EQT Midstream) 300-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) is now 70% built (see Shocker: Mountain Valley Pipeline Now 70% Built, Online by 4Q19). Even so, radicalized environmental groups are still trying to overturn and block it from beginning service via numerous lawsuits. One lawsuit in particular seeks to emasculate the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in the process.
Read More “Antis Try to Convince Fed Court to Block Mountain Valley Pipeline”
MDN previously reported on efforts in both Ohio and Pennsylvania to plug orphaned and abandoned oil and gas wells (all of them conventional/vertical wells), which present a health and safety issue. It’s all too easy to hit one of these old wells when drilling a new horizontal shale well. In WV, a new effort to plug old wells is causing concern for some–that the effort to plug old wells may inflict economic damage on WV counties. Huh?!
Read More “Plugging Orphan O&G Wells May Economically Hurt WV Counties”
It seems the rather thick-headed governors from New England have finally woken up and understand their resistance to new natural gas pipelines has placed them in a pickle. The region, when it gets really cold (like over the next few days), gets really short on natural gas. Prices soar, supplies diminish, and people not only pay high natgas prices, but high prices for electricity, which gets generated by natgas. The govs have a plan to slap a Band Aid on the problem.
Read More “New England States Finally Waking Up re Domestic Natural Gas”
This post is about a pipeline project we’ve written quite a bit about over the past few years–Dominion Energy’s New Market project that ever-so-modestly expands an existing pipeline in Upstate New York. But at its heart, the issue is much deeper. Anti-fossil fuel radicals are challenging this project, in court, as a way to force the government to consider man-made global warming when approving such projects.
Read More “FERC Responds to NY Radicals re Pipeline Impacts on Global Warming”
Some great news for the Williams Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) project–a project to beef up capacity along the Transco pipeline system going into New York City. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), after delaying a decision for four months, has just issued a final *favorable* environmental impact statement (EIS) for the project.
Read More “FERC Gives NYC Transco Pipeline Expansion Favorable Enviro Review”