RE Burger Smoke Stack Demolished Today, Prep for OH Cracker Plant
The next chapter in the quest to build a $5.7 billion ethane cracker plant complex in Belmont County, OH takes place today. Part of the chosen site for PTT Global Chemical’s cracker plant is the 130-acre site where the R.E. Burger Plant, a coal-fired electric generating plant owned by Ohio utility company FirstEnergy, is located. Today is the day that the plant’s 854-foot concrete smoke stack will get demolished. By the time you read this, it will already be on the ground. Local media is calling the site “historical” and a “landmark.” We’d call it an eyesore. Bring on the cracker! NOTE: We found a dramatic video of the smoke stack and nearby buildings coming down–give it a watch!…
Read More “RE Burger Smoke Stack Demolished Today, Prep for OH Cracker Plant”
In May MDN told you agitators from the PA-based radical anti-drilling group called CELDF–Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund–had gone fishing for dupes in Meigs County, OH (among other locations) to see if they could trick enough dumb dumbs into signing a petition to get a so-called Community Bill of Rights initiative on the ballot in November (see 
In May MDN brought you the news that a researcher at West Virginia University believes an natural gas liquids (NGL) storage hub is what the Marcellus/Utica region really needs (see 
This is somewhat old news, but still news for MDN as we’re just learning about it. You may recall back in March MDN reported on a truck crash that resulted in a spill of 5,000 or so gallons of frack wastewater from Utica drilling, some of which ended up in the Barnesville Reservoir #1 (see 
In April 2015 PTT Global announced they had chose a site in Belmont County, OH as the site of for their $5.7 billion ethane cracker complex (see 
Good news for Marcellus/Utica drillers. There are signs that a Youngstown, OH-area injection well that has been shuttered since 2013 will re-open. You may recall the sad story of D&L Energy, a Youngstown, OH operator of several wastewater injection wells. D&L’s owner was Ben Lupo, who also owned sister company Hardrock Excavating, operating both companies under the D&L Energy Group umbrella. In September 2012, Lupo instructed a Hardrock employee to dump untreated frack wastewater down a sewer drain that emptied into the Mahoning River. Lupo and the driver were found out in early 2013 (see 
Last week MDN reported that a previously trumpeted so-called research study of air quality near fracking sites in Ohio had been retracted (see 
It’s been some time since we’ve heard anything about/from the Ashtabula Gas-to-Liquids (GTL) plant project that Velocys says it will build in Ashtabula, Ohio. As a quick tutorial for those who may not know, GTL converts natural gas, a hydrocarbon, into other hydrocarbons, like diesel fuel, gasoline, solvents and (for Ashtabula) waxes. An abundance of cheap natural gas in the Marcellus/Utica is one of the prime motivators for establishing a GTL plant in the area. But although we’ve heard plenty of talk about such plants, none of them seem to get built–including the Ashtabula plant. There has been progress on the Ashtabula project. Early in 2015 Velocys filed for a permit, which was subsequently granted (see 
This is how it works with adults, those who wear “big boy pants.” A few weeks ago the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) told Energy Transfer that their Rover pipeline, a $3.7 billion, 711-mile Marcellus/Utica natural gas pipeline that will run from PA, WV and eastern OH through OH into Michigan and eventually into Canada, and Columbia Pipeline that their Leach XPress pipeline, running from Marshall County, WV through Ohio to Leach, KY, that a small section where the pipelines cross must be reworked or it’s a “no go” for both projects (see 
Earlier this month MDN shared with you the news that Munroe Falls (Summit County), OH had filed yet another frivolous lawsuit against Beck Energy to prevent drilling–after already losing a similar case before the Ohio Supreme Court (see 
Relief is on the way for some Ohio landowners who want to see drilling on or under their land, but have been held up because their land border state-owned land belonging to the Ohio Dept. of Transportation (DOT). Apparently the DOT (and/or the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources, or ODNR) has been reluctant to pool or unitize land under DOT control to allow shale drilling. OH Gov. John Kasich has just signed House Bill (HB) 390 into law–a new law that gives the the ODNR 45 days to pool DOT-controlled land into units so drillers can begin drilling under it. Although the bill forces units to be issued, it allows drillers up to two years to begin their drilling after the units are issued, given the low prices in the market right now…
A few days ago MDN told you about the fruitless efforts by anti-drilling zealots in Youngstown, OH in delivering a petition for a sixth vote on a frack ban measure for the November ballot (see