USFWS Issues 3rd Finding that MVP Won’t Hurt Protected Species
Will the third time be the charm? Probably not. On Wednesday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) issued a 297-page biological opinion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline’s (MVP) potential impact on threatened and endangered species if the 94% complete pipeline is allowed to finish. We have a full copy of the opinion below. It finds that completing the MVP project will NOT harm protected species. Two other times USFWS issued this same report, and two times the radical judges of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals (three Democrats) have overturned the opinion and blocked a permit needed to allow MVP to finish. Will it happen again?
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In 2022, 897 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of interstate natural gas pipeline capacity was added from five projects to the interstate gas pipeline system, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). That is the least amount of capacity added to the interstate natural gas pipeline system since the EIA began data collection in 1995. This ignominious achievement happened under the Bidenistas, while Richard “Dick” Glick was Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).
That was fast. Yesterday we told you that newly-elected Maryland Gov. Wes Moore had nominated someone who actually knows something about the energy industry, from the American Gas Association, to be a member of the Maryland Public Service Commission (see 
It’s full speed ahead in the U.S. House of Representatives, now controlled (thank God!) by Republicans. Today and tomorrow, three different House committees will hold hearings and markups on 20 distinct measures related to energy and permitting reform. The permitting reform measures, in particular, may help save the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project in the Marcellus/Utica region.
Isn’t it typical for Democrats to try and use a crisis that has nothing whatsoever to do with shale and natural gas to block shale and natural gas? Seven members of Pennsylvania’s Congressional delegation, every single one of them a Democrat, sent a letter (copy below) to another Democrat, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg (an incompetent nincompoop), asking him to permanently delete a rule adopted during the Trump administration that allows LNG to be safely transported by special rail cars. The reason cited for banning LNG by rail? The train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio–an event that has nothing whatsoever to do with shale energy.
In April 2019, President Trump signed an Executive Order (EO) instructing the Environmental Protection Agency to review Section 401 of the Clean Water Act–the section that grants states (and tribes) the right to have a say in pipeline projects (see 
Last summer then-Gov. Tom Wolf instructed the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) to conduct a comprehensive review of conventional oil and gas driller compliance with an eye on locating enough dirt to justify creating onerous new regulations for the industry (see 
A little over a month ago, MDN brought you the good news that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has approved the Williams Regional Energy Access Expansion (REAE) project, a plan to beef up the Transco pipeline in Pennsylvania and New Jersey to deliver an extra 829 MMcf/d of Marcellus gas to PA, NJ, and Maryland (see 
Pennsylvania State Rep. Martin Causer, Republican from Bradford (McKean County), PA, is introducing a new bill to prohibit PA municipalities from banning the installation and use of natural gas stoves and furnaces. “Pennsylvanians deserve better than to have their freedom restricted by an overly involved government that thinks it knows better than they do,” Causer wrote in a memorandum to his fellow House members, asking them to join him in co-sponsoring the bill. In our opinion, every single Republican member of the PA House should be listed as a co-sponsor of Causer’s “energy freedom” bill.
The difference between the Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) and the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) is stark. The former is well-run and rational, the latter is disorganized and irrational. At least with respect to fracking. Over the weekend, the SRBC published a notice in the Pennsylvania Bulletin to announce that during the month of January, the agency approved 38 requests for daily water use on shale well pads in the SRBC’s jurisdictional territory in Pennsylvania, totaling some 233.5 million gallons. Put another way, this is a handy list of where drilling will soon happen in northeastern PA.
The Barack Hussein Obama administration went crazy with over-regulation in many areas. One of them was to redefine “waters of the United States” (or WOTUS) as everything down to, no exaggeration, mud puddles. When Donald Trump took office, he set about to correct some of the insane abuses of the Obama era, including WOTUS. He finally got it fixed. However, the Bidenistas took up the cause once again. Radicals at the EPA announced a new rule in January aimed at re-regulating all waters, putting power over just about everything (including oil and gas drilling) into the federal government’s hands via WOTUS (see