DC Suburb Goes Commie – Demands End to NatGas Use by 2045
Last Friday MDN told you about an initiative in Arizona and five other states to block the right of local municipalities from banning natural gas appliances and natural gas heat from homes and businesses (see Several States Float Laws to Ban Municipal NatGas Bans). As we pointed out, Berkeley, California was the first to enact such a ban (there’s a reason it’s nicknamed Berserkley). Now Takoma Park, Maryland, on the other coast, wants to go *even further* than Berkeley’s ban. Takoma appropriately calls itself the Berserkely of the East. Takoma officials have floated a plan that will ban “all gas appliances, close fossil fuel pipelines, and move gasoline stations that do not convert to electric charging stations outside city limits by 2045.” Wow! Talk about wackadoodle!
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Last April President Trump issued an Executive Order directing the Secretary of Transportation to write a new rule allowing specially constructed tanker cars for railroads (DOT-113 tank cars) to ship LNG, i.e., liquefied natural gas (see 
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, to carry more PA Marcellus natural gas to locations in Delaware and Maryland. Last Thursday FERC granted final approval for the project.
Yesterday Dominion Energy announced it has sold a 25% stake in the completed Cove Point, Maryland LNG export facility to Brookfield Asset Management for a cool $2 billion. Dominion completed the $4.1 billion facility in 2018. The share just sold to Brookfield values the facility at $8.22 billion. Holy smokes! Nice play–to double the value of your investment in not much more than a year after completing it. What will Dominion do with all that cash?
In May, Columbia Gas Transmission was forced to haul the State of Maryland into court over the state’s refusal to grant an easement to drill a tiny 3.5-mile pipeline under the Potomac River (see 
Global warming fundamentalists (our new term for radical environmentalists who irrationally hate all fossil fuels) are ramping up to oppose a plan to prevent a now-closed coal-fired electric power plant in Baltimore from reopening powered by natural gas. Because you know, global warming. And because we MUST dump the use of all fossil fuels by 2050 (the new “it” date) or earth will explode. This plant would have a useful life much longer than 2050. Can’t have that.
Ann Bristow, Professor Emeritus at Frostburg State University and resident of Garrett County, is once again trying to foment irrational fear of the fossil fuel industry. Bristow was one of the “experts” that kept fracking out of Garrett County (one of two Maryland counties with commercial shale deposits), harming its citizens economically. Now she’s trying to whip up opposition to a regional ethane storage hub that won’t even be located in Maryland.
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.
We spotted a story that says India’s GAIL (formerly known as Gas Authority of India Limited) has put yet another one of its contracted LNG shipments of Marcellus Shale gas coming from Dominion’s Cove Point LNG export facility, up for sale. In fact, it’s already sold and on its way to be unloaded at a port in Belgium.
According to RBN Energy, “U.S. production of natural gas liquids is projected to increase by 17% this year, and by another 10% in 2020.” NGLs cover a variety of hydrocarbons. Two NGLs, propane and butane, are further classified as LPG–or liquefied petroleum gas. Of the four “smaller” LPG export facilities here in the U.S., two-thirds of all exported LPGs last year came from one–Energy Transfer’s Marcus Hook refinery near Philadelphia.