Dominion: Cove Point LNG 95% Complete, Online in 4Q17
Dominion Energy released its second quarter 2017 update and held a conference call yesterday to discuss those results. Dominion is a huge producer and transporter of energy with its fingers in a lot pies. Dominion produces 26,200 megawatts of electricity, owns 15,000 miles of natural gas transmission, gathering and storage pipelines, and owns 6,600 miles of electric transmission lines. Dominion operates one of the nation’s largest natural gas storage systems with 1 trillion cubic feet of storage capacity. They also are a local utility company, serving more than 6 million customers. Yeah, big company, big deal. However, our interest in Dominion is fairly narrow: They are building an LNG (liquefied natural gas) export facility along the shoreline of Maryland. The Cove Point LNG facility will export 1.8 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of Marcellus/Utica Shale gas–to India and Japan. On yesterday’s call, Dominion CEO Tom Farrell said Cove Point is “95% done” and “remains on-time and on-budget” to begin operations by the end of this year. That’s great news! The other thing we closely watch with Dominion is the $5 billion, 594-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP)–a natural gas pipeline that will stretch from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina. With respect to ACP, Farrell said they’ve already purchased 84% of the materials needed for the project and that it remains “on-track to start construction later this year.” Farrell said the pipeline should be done in the “second half of 2019.” More good news! Here’s the latest from energy giant Dominion Energy…
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Two natural gas-fired electric generating plants (and one coal-fired plant) are already up and running in Prince George’s County, Maryland. In 2012 Maryland put out a call for energy companies to produce more power in the state, and three more projects popped up for Prince George’s County (which borders Washington, DC). The areas where the power plants are located is largely rural. According to a Prince George’s County councilman, those five plants “are going to be in the top five largest taxpayers of the county,” providing funds for schools and public safety. We expect much of the natural gas feeding the four natgas plants will come from the Marcellus/Utica region. Most residents like the plants, but there’s always a few who want to make trouble…
In October 2016, Dominion announced a new pipeline project called Eastern Market Access Project (see 
Since early 2013 all of the LNG export capacity at the coming Cove Point LNG facility (on the shore of Maryland) has been spoken for–by India and Japan (see 
Metaphorically speaking–Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s finger was on the trigger of a loaded pistol, pointed at the head of the once-great State of Maryland. And now, Hogan pulled the trigger, assassinating any hope of new jobs, new wealth for some of the state’s poorest people (farmers and landowners in western Maryland), and new tax revenue for local communities. BANG. Done. Killed. Death. Thanks Larry, you da man. We previously reported that the Maryland House had loaded the chamber, and then the Senate had cocked the gun and put it in Hogan’s hand (see 
The same old (very small) cast of environmental radicals is claiming victory in Maryland over the recently passed bill to ban fracking statewide–a bill that now sits on traitor Gov. Larry Hogan’s desk (he’s promised to sign it). Radicals from the Chesapeake Climate Action Network (and Food & Water Watch, and the Sierra Club, et al), who are waging a holy war against fossil fuels, say this momentous occasion is evidence of new “bipartisan” support sweeping the nation–that Maryland’s vote has “national implications.” It’s nothing of the sort. Anti-fossil fuel nutters are still by and large Democrats (and Socialists) and confined to a few far-left states (Maryland, New York, Vermont). Larry Hogan is an anomaly–a Republican who ran on a platform of support for fracking who suddenly, without warning and for inexplicable reasons, flipped and promised to sign a ban bill should one be proffered. We wonder, who paid who? There is corruption at work in this situation, of that we have no doubt. All of the so-called “leaders” of the ban frack movement in the Maryland legislature come from either the Washington, D.C. suburbs, or the Baltimore area. They are located on the opposite side of the state from where fracking would, theoretically, take place. These enviro radicals have hijacked the property rights of landowners in Allegany County and Garrett County, the only two Maryland counties with commercially viable shale deposits that could be fracked. It will be a sad day when Hogan turns his back on the people of Maryland and signs the law…
There were early signs that Maryland’s newly elected “Republican” governor was weak on the subject of fracking, as we pointed out in 2015 when we said that then-new Gov. Larry Hogan, who was elected on a platform of supporting shale drilling, had decided to let a two-year moratorium on shale drilling become law without his signature (see 
There is a concerted effort by a small group of fossil fuel haters to strip away the Constitutional property rights of all Marylanders by passing a permanent ban on fracking in the state. They’ve already convinced the Maryland House to pass a ban bill. The haters spew outright lies about fracking and attract local media outlets with gullible reporters who never question their outlandish claims. While they make false claims about fracking, that it pollutes water, air and in general kills everything, make no mistake–the root of their objection is that fracking extracts fossil fuels which, in the religion of environmental extremists, causes man-made global warming. That is what animates them. Unfortunately, as we have previously observed, Christian pastors from liberal denominations are claiming that the issue of fracking is a “moral” issue, a “good vs. evil” conflict (see 
Maryland’s heavily Democrat legislature is doing its best to slap a permanent ban on fracking in the state (see 
Fossil fuel haters did their best to stop Dominion’s Cove Point LNG export facility in Lusby, Maryland. They sued (see 
Maryland is a lot like New York–populated with lefty liberals who love to tell other people how to live their lives. Maryland went through a years-long process, just like New York, and eventually released what would likely be the strictest drilling regulations in the nation, in late 2014 (see