Analysts Speculate Rover Pipe Will be Delayed Following FERC Order
Yesterday MDN brought you the news that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has slapped a stop work order on underground horizontal direction drilling (HDD) for Rover Pipeline at the site crossing under the Tuscarawas River (see FERC Stops Rover Drilling Near River After 200K Gal Mud Disappears). There is tough geography in that area. In April 2017, Rover lost approximately 2 million gallons of nontoxic drilling mud at that location, mud which leaked out of the hole and onto the ground (see Rover Pipeline Accident Spills ~2M Gal. Drilling Mud in OH Swamp). That accident caused a shutdown of all Rover HDD work in Ohio. Work eventually resumed (last year). Work at the Tuscarawas location didn’t resume until last December (see FERC Gives Rover OK to Resume All HDD Work, Incl. Tuscarawas River). But now Rover has lost another ~200,000 gallons of drilling mud in the Tuscarawas borehole. Hence the FERC order. Energy Transfer Partners, the builder of Rover, maintains the entire Rover project will be completed by the end of March. Given the new stop work order with no apparent resolution in sight for how ET plans to overcome the problems at Tuscarawas, industry analysts are now speculating that Rover will not be done by the end of March, as advertised…
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Last September, amidst a heated state budget battle in Pennsylvania (where the phrase “severance tax” was on the lips of every Democrat and RINO in Harrisburg), a group of PA House Republicans did the hard work Gov. Tom Wolf and his cronies in the legislature refused to do: They figured out how to fund a wildly overspent budget without raising a single tax (see 
In November 2015 MDN reported on a zoning court case in Westmoreland County, PA (see 
Philadelphia is the sixth most populous city in the United States, with over 1.5 million residents. And yet *maybe* 120 people turned out yesterday for a Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) hearing on their proposed plan to permanently ban fracking in the Delaware River Basin. A pair of hearings were held earlier this week in rural northeast PA–in Waymart–where the turnout was upward of 150 people! Judging from the wild claims by green groups like THE Delaware Riverkeeper that thousands (millions!) of people don’t want fracking in the river basin, you’d think more than maybe 120 people would turn up for a hearing in a city like Philly. Could it be not all that many people in southeast PA give a hoot about fracking in two northeastern PA counties? That thought crossed our minds as we read the accounts of those who showed up at yesterday’s meetings in Philly. Yes, antis outnumbered those in favor of fracking, but that’s to be expected in Philly. Here’s a recap of yesterday’s meetings…
The Ohio EPA continues its yapping insistence that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) *permanently* shut down underground horizontal directional drilling (HDD) work being done by Rover Pipeline near the Tuscarawas River over concerns that nontoxic (totally safe) drilling mud keeps disappearing down the borehole. FERC listened, sort of. In an order dated yesterday, FERC told Rover to *temporarily* stop HDD work at Tuscarawas until Rover can outline a plan for moving forward that FERC has confidence will address concerns over the disappearing drilling mud. When mud used for drilling holes comes out on the surface any place other than the hole from which it went down, it’s called an “inadvertent return.” We call it a leak. However, if that same mud never comes back to the surface, as sometimes happens, it’s fine. Except when it’s a LOT of mud, as is the case in drilling near Tuscarawas where a cumulative 200,000 gallons of it have disappeared down hole, not (so far) coming back out. Sooner or later it seems likely that at least some of that mud will come back to the surface–somewhere. That’s the concern that no doubt prompted FERC to send Rover a letter yesterday telling them to (for now) stop HDD work at Tuscarawas…
That didn’t take long. We knew it wouldn’t. Last Friday the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) gave its full, final approval for the PennEast Pipeline project, a $1 billion, 120-mile primarily 36-inch natural gas pipeline that will stretch from Dallas (Luzerne County), PA to Transco’s pipeline interconnection near Pennington (Mercer County), NJ. (see 
Yesterday saw the first two of six public hearings held by the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) on their plan to permanently ban fracking in the Delaware River Basin. The hearings were held in Waymart (Wayne County), PA. The DRBC frack ban would essentially ban shale drilling in two northeastern PA counties: Wayne and Pike. Landowners there have been battling the DRBC going on 10 years. At first it was a temporary ban (like New York’s). Now it has metastasized into a full blow permanent ban–if DRBC gets its way. Below we have two reports–one from mainstream media, the other from MDN friend Tom Shepstone, who hilariously was called “Crapstone” by an anti addressing one of the hearings. You know you’re being effective when they start calling you silly names! Tom said it was landowners versus special interest group groupies at both hearings. Here’s an update on what happened…
In December 2015 MDN told you about EQT’s application to drill a single shale well in Jefferson Hills (Allegheny County), PA (see 
WOTUS is, unfortunately, far from dead. In May 2015 the Obama rogue Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) along with the Obama U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) released a finalized rule clarifying what “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS) means vis a vis what can be regulated under the federal Clean Water Act (see 
In December MDN told you that Dominion’s $5 billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) project had asked permission from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to begin clearing trees along the path of the pipeline in all three states where the pipeline will run: West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina (see 
It’s looking more and more like co-tenancy legislation will pass this year in West Virginia (see 
The Brunner Island Power Plant is located in York County, PA, but straddles Lancaster County. It is a huge 1,490 megawatt coal-fired electric generating plant, and has been the target of environmentalists for years. In February 2017, MDN told you that the new owners of the plant are investing $100 million to retrofit the plant so it can, at least part of the time, burn Marcellus Shale gas (see 
My heart breaks for my fellow New Yorkers. Who could possibly have thought 10 years ago that a decade later there would still be no shale drilling in New York State? MDN’s “right hand man,” Chris Acker, was awake at the stroke of midnight last night and snapped the screenshot below, marking the exact 10-year anniversary for NY’s frack ban. The ban first started as a “temporary” moratorium–as these things always do. “Just give us a little more time to get the regulations right.” The “little more time” turned from months into years, and years have accumulated into (now) decades. It’s the standard liberal/anti playbook: Delay, Deny, and then Defend the indefensible actions taken. Our beloved state is rife with corruption–at the highest levels. Everyone knows our governor, Andrew Cuomo, is corrupt. A number of the people around him, some of his closest confidants, are either in jail or on trial. But somehow he escapes the long arm of the law. Cuomo has caved to pressure from his extreme left in directing the Dept. of Environmental Conservation to not only ban fracking, but also block and obstruct pipelines. It is sick and disgusting. Cuomo has stripped Constitutional property rights away from thousands of New Yorkers–and nobody says or does anything. This is how tyranny takes root and grows. NY is a case study. Look at the country of Venezuela today–that’s what NY will be in 30 years. Come back and read it here on MDN 30 years from now (when we’re dead and gone) to see that we were right. At any rate, as long as we have breath, we will continue to fight the good fight against the forces of evil and darkness here in NY…