Dunkirk, NY Desperate to Restart Shuttered Electric Plant
This is a truly sad story. Because of delays from lawsuits and regulators, power generator NRG said last week it has officially given up on restarting a shuttered coal-fired electric plant near Buffalo, in the Town of Dunkirk. There had been plans to convert the plant to burn natural gas, but due to delays, it didn’t happen. NRG closed the coal-fired plant in 2016, which was an economic nuclear bomb for Dunkirk–they get 40% of their tax revenue from that one plant. New York State “generously” shucked out $5.5 million so Dunkirk wouldn’t collapse economically. But doing that year after year will get old quick. Dunkirk needs that plant. Because of delays due to a lawsuit by a competitor (now dropped), NRG needs to restart the project from scratch, which means reconnecting the plant to the electricity grid. Estimated reconnect costs go as high as $115 million! The cost of “transmission upgrades,” according to the NY grid operator. The cost to reconnect would be almost as much as the project cost itself (see Looks Like WNY Coal-Fired Plant Will Never Convert to Gas/Reopen). As we predicted last month, NRG is walking away from the project. They said so, officially, last week. And that has Dunkirk leaders and residents in a panic, desperate to find someone else to take over the project and get it going. Don’t hold your breath. If NRG can’t make the numbers work, what makes Dunkirk think another company can?…
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We have nothing against solar energy–honestly. Yes, in one sense solar competes with natural gas, but hey, let the best energy source win! Truth be told, we need all energy sources, not just one. So please understand this is not a “bash solar” story. However, we do have a problem when politicians and anti-fossil fuel zealots insist we MUST use one source of energy over another. That’s just not American. And it doesn’t make economic sense either. You may hear that solar is cheap and getting cheaper. Some claim solar now produces electricity at a lower cost than natural gas. Not true. Here’s a comparison. Earlier this week Broome County celebrated the startup of a “large” solar farm on 20 acres of county-owned land in Conklin, NY. The official ribbon cutting was a big affair with the county executive claiming the county will save $140,000 a year with the facility–a facility that’s a year-and-a-half late going online. Fair enough. Who doesn’t want to save $140K a year, right? Not that a single taxpayer in Broome County will notice the 10 cents per tax bill they end up saving. Meanwhile, over the past ten years in Susquehanna County, PA (just south of Broome County, shares a border with Broome), natural gas drilling has been going great guns. In Susquehanna County, a single driller, Cabot Oil & Gas, has put $1.5 billion into the pockets of private landowners through signing bonuses and royalties, and has spent another $3.5 billion on drilling (over $5 billion total spent)–all in Susquehanna County. It is an economic miracle. Tax revenues in the county have gone through the roof! Millions have poured into tax coffers because of the gas industry. Cabot, a single driller, is providing 2.5% of all the natural gas produced in the U.S.–from Susquehanna County. And that’s just one driller! There are more drillers in Susquehanna. We’d estimate that at least $7-$8 billion has flowed into the county over the past 10 years. Mind blowing. And yet, here in the Binghamton area, local media has a blackout and refuses to report on Susquehanna County’s economic miracle. Meanwhile, Broome residents are told to get all excited about saving $140K a year. We’re being asked to jump up and down and feel good about a few economic cracker crumbs when 15 miles away everyone eats economic filet mignon. And now a group of antis masquerading as a solar group is trying to snow even more Broome residents into thinking solar is our energy savior. They’re selling a bill of goods…
New York City, in its attempt to (a) take every last dime out of the pockets of five big oil companies, and (b) shut down all fossil fuel extraction in the future–has struck out. Rather magnificently. In January, New York City’s insane mayor, Bill de Blasio, used city resources to sue five oil companies, blaming them for “climate change”–the hoax that mankind is causing the earth to warm at an apocalyptic rate (see 
There’s a small group of rich snobs who have created a mini-swamp in Cooperstown, NY. They go to each other’s wine tasting parties and pretend they’re Important People. Gentry class. Folks with lots of money who want to keep Upstate as their own private playground. You know…keep the poor folks away from your property, unless they’re mowing the lawn or weeding the garden. God forbid people like disgusting farmers should actually make money on drilling or pipelines. These are the type of people behind a group called Otsego2000. They just can’t accept the reality that their will is not being obeyed in blocking a VERY modest upgrade to an existing pipeline that runs through Upstate–called the New Market Project. Dominion’s New Market Project (currently under construction) consists of building two new compressor plants and upgrading another to help flow more abundant, cheap and clean-burning Marcellus Shale gas from Pennsylvania into the northeast (see 
Basil Seggos, Commissioner of the New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation (and tool of Andrew Cuomo and Big Green radicals) has officially killed the Seneca Lake LPG storage project planned near Seneca Lake. In May, Crestwood, the project’s sponsor, said the depleted salt cavern that would house the LPG (propane) underground may leak in one small area (see 
One of the arguments/concerns used to defeat a facility near Binghamton, NY that would fill trucks transporting CNG to large customers not lucky enough to be located close to a natgas pipeline is that the trucks used to haul the CNG are “bomb trucks.” Just waiting to explode if they should be in an accident. And you know that sooner or later there will be an accident. NG Advantage had big plans to build a virtual pipeline (gas compression & trucking facility) on the outskirts of Binghamton, in the Town of Fenton. The facility would use gas from the Millennium Pipeline to fill trailers outfitted with a series of CNG canisters. We sat through several information sessions where the safety of those trailers was explained. We looked at one of the rigs, up close and personal. We recall one woman from Hillcrest screeching “It’s so BIG!” upon seeing the tractor trailer–which is much shorter than a standard tractor trailer rig. We heard NG explain that if a truck should be so unfortunate to be in an accident, the safety design would automatically release the gas, which dissipates into the atmosphere immediately–making an explosion or fire extremely unlikely. But facts make no difference in a heated, emotional debate. NG isn’t the only company attempting to service businesses in Upstate with CNG, to compensate for Cuomo’s ban on safe pipelines. Another company, Xpress Natural Gas (XNG), has a virtual pipeline operation based just south of Binghamton in Susquehanna County, PA. Things are so much easier in PA (sigh). An XNG truck was traveling through Otsego County, NY, when the truck overturned on a rural roadway. We thought, this is it. Major explosion, right? Scorched earth everywhere. Ball of fire. Driver burned to a cinder. But no, none of that happened. In fact, NOTHING HAPPENED. The truck overturned, and there it sat until it was pulled back upright again. Perfectly safe, as designed. Which illustrates and exposes the lies so often spread about virtual pipeline operations…
Another case of irrational fossil fuel hatred has cropped up in (surprise!) New York State, in Ulster County (Hudson Valley area). This time the hater is Democrat County Executive Michael Hein. He doesn’t want a teeny tiny 20 megawatt gas-fired electric generating plant because he’d rather have thousands of acres plastered with solar panels and/or windmills–to produce the same drop of electricity this small gas-fired plant would produce. We have to wonder: Why is no one calling for psychological tests of these people? They are literally insane! Pathological conditions. Hein is fine with solar panels and windmills junking up the landscape, but not with a single tiny power plant that nobody would even see. Why? Because it doesn’t have the word “renewable” in the title. And because it uses an evil, vile, nasty “fossil fuel” called natural gas to power it. The plant, proposed by GlidePath, is a “peaker.” It’s a small electric generating plant (powered by natural gas) that doesn’t even run most of the time! It only comes online during “peak” electric demand periods–times when the grid needs some extra juice. It’s used to avoid blackouts, like the one happening right now in Los Angeles. But perhaps Hein and his buddy Andy Cuomo actually *want* New Yorkers to experience prolonged blackouts? GlidePath has responded, strongly, to the blithering idiot Hein, to set the record straight and correct Hein’s lies. Prepare to enter through the Looking Glass…
This is a red-letter day indeed! We have waited so long for this day to arrive. Andrew Cuomo (ignominious governor of NY) has lost his battle to stop a short, 7.8 mile pipeline, a lateral/offshoot of the main Millennial Pipeline, to flow Marcellus gas to a newly completed gas-fired electric generating plant in Wawayanda (Orange County), NY. Yesterday the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) granted permission for Millennium’s Valley Lateral pipeline to begin operation. As we previously reported, once the gas is flowing to the Competitive Power Ventures (CPV) Valley Energy Center, the plant itself will begin operation (see 
In May, MDN brought you a story of how New England was “this close” to rolling blackouts due to an extreme shortage of electricity during a cold snap (see 
Yesterday, Dept. of Energy Secretary Rick Perry leveled a warning to Andrew Cuomo and the leaders of other states blocking natural gas pipelines: You will face a “real reckoning” of high energy costs and vulnerabilities (i.e. blackouts) because of your actions. Perry stopped short of saying Washington and the Trump Administration would use Executive Orders to unblock some of the blocked pipeline projects (which is a disappointment). But Perry alluded to that possibility when he said, “We have to have conversation as a country, is that a national security issue that outweighs the political concerns in Albany, N.Y.?” Cuomo should be concerned. We’re holding out hope that Trump will issue an Executive Order for both the Constitution Pipeline and Northern Access Pipeline projects, overruling Cuomo. It’s refreshing to see our side take the fight to the irrational radicals who oppose fossil fuel energy…
Spectra Energy’s Algonquin Incremental Market (AIM) pipeline project is an $876 million expansion of the existing Algonquin pipeline system designed to carry 342 million cubic feet of natural gas per day to New England states that badly need the gas. On March 3, 2015 the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued their final approval for the project, allowing it to go forward. Construction began in 2015 and, following extreme opposition from New York State over a small portion of the project, it finally went online in in 2016. New York’s radical, anti-drilling governor, Andy Cuomo, tried to stop the Algonquin using the flimsy excuse that some of the drilling for the pipeline would happen a half mile from a nuclear power plant–a plant that’s shutting down anyway (see 
Perhaps the proposed legislation by PA Rep. Dan Moul (Republican from Gettysburg) to gut not only the DRBC (Delaware River Basin Commission) of its power to regulate groundwater, but also to gut the SRBC (Susquehanna River Basin Commission), is not so far off the mark after all (see 
Seems like a week doesn’t go by that MDN isn’t asked (by someone from Pennsylvania), “Is there any hope of building the Constitution Pipeline through New York?” Our standard response is this: The only way it gets built is (a) NY elects a new governor favorable to the industry–about a 1% chance of that happening, (b) President Trump issues an Executive Order overriding Cuomo’s blockade of Constitution (and other pipeline projects)–maybe a 10% chance of that happening, or (c) the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) reconsiders a decision to not overrule NY’s move to block the project–maybe a 15% chance. The U.S. Supreme Court in April refused to consider the Constitution Pipeline case, closing that door (see 
In 2013 so-called environmentalists protested, agitated and lobbied to prevent an electrical generating power plant in Tompkins County, near Ithaca, NY, to switch from burning coal to burning natural gas–because they’re afraid it will mean more fracking (see