Buffett’s EGTS Plans 52.5-Mile Oak Leaf Pipe, Leidy Gas to MD/VA
There’s a brand-new pipeline project on the board for our region, and it’s a good one. Eastern Gas Transmission and Storage (EGTS) — a BHE GT&S company, which means it ultimately belongs to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy — is proposing Project Oak Leaf, a 52.5-mile expansion of its PL-1 system that will move an extra 250,000 dekatherms per day (Dth/d) of natural gas from Clinton County, Pennsylvania down to customers in Maryland and Virginia. (A dekatherm is a heat measurement roughly equal to one thousand cubic feet of gas, so call it about 250 MMcf/d — 250 million cubic feet per day.) EGTS plans to file its application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in the fourth quarter of this year, with construction starting in early 2028 and gas flowing by the end of 2029. The Frederick (MD) News-Post picked up the story yesterday. Four public open houses are already on the calendar, the first one next week. Read More “Buffett’s EGTS Plans 52.5-Mile Oak Leaf Pipe, Leidy Gas to MD/VA”
Big Solar, as in big solar farms (which are ugly and eat up farmland), can’t exist in a fair and open energy market. It’s too expensive. Big Solar fails unless there are massive taxpayer subsidies—you supporting it with your tax dollars. Nowhere is that more evident than what just happened in Centre County, Pennsylvania. The Centre County government agencies that had worked together for years on plans to buy solar energy are ending the initiative after the company they were working with sought to end the current contract amid a “changing financial landscape.” Taxpayer subsidies disappeared, and so, too, has this project. 
The highly functional and responsible Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC), unlike its highly dysfunctional and irresponsible counterpart, the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), continues to support the shale energy industry by approving water withdrawals and consumptive use requests for responsible and safe shale drilling. The SRBC published a notice in the December 6 Pennsylvania Bulletin that the Executive Director of the SRBC approved and/or renewed 76 general water use permits from September 1 through October 31 for individual shale gas well drilling pads in Blair, Bradford, Cameron, Centre, Clearfield, Clinton, Elk, Huntingdon, Lycoming, McKean, Sullivan, Susquehanna and Tioga counties in Pennsylvania and one permit to withdraw water in Steuben County, New York. 
The highly functional and responsible Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC), unlike its highly dysfunctional and irresponsible counterpart, the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), continues to support the shale energy industry by approving water withdrawals and consumptive use requests for responsible and safe shale drilling. The SRBC published a notice in the September 20 Pennsylvania Bulletin that the Executive Director of the SRBC approved and/or renewed 40 general water use permits in August for individual shale gas well drilling pads in Bradford, Centre, Clearfield, Lycoming, Sullivan, Susquehanna, Tioga, and Wyoming counties in Pennsylvania. 
Pine Run Gathering LLC, a joint venture owned by Stonehenge Energy and UGI, announced yesterday that it had completed a transaction to buy Superior Midstream Appalachian, LLC, for $120 million. Superior Appalachian owns and operates three gathering systems in Pennsylvania, namely Pittsburgh Mills (Allegheny & Butler counties), Snow Shoe (Centre County), and Brookfield (Tioga County). The Pittsburgh Mills system is connected to UGI’s Big Pine gathering system. All three have a combined daily flow of approximately 190 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d). 
It’s always a red-letter day here at MDN HQ when we happen across a new pipeline project in the Marcellus/Utica region. Today is one of those days! Eastern Gas Transmission and Storage, a subsidiary of billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy (BHE), filed a new project with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in December to beef up three existing compressor stations in Centre County, Clinton County, and Franklin County in Pennsylvania, and one existing compressor station in Loudoun County, Virginia, with the aim of flowing more Marcellus molecules to the Washington, D.C. area. 
For the week of Dec 2 – 8, permits issued in the Marcellus/Utica bounced back nicely. There were 28 new permits issued last week, more than doubling the 12 issued the week before (and matching the 28 issued three weeks ago). The Keystone State (PA) issued 18 new permits, with eight going to EQT spread across three counties: Jefferson, Lycoming, and Washington. Chesapeake Energy (now Expand Energy) received four permits, all of them in northeastern PA’s Wyoming County. CNX Resource scooped up two permits, both in Westmoreland County. The final four permits were singles issued to Blackhill Energy (Bradford County), XPR Resources (Centre County), Inflection Energy (Lycoming County), and Olympus Energy (Allegheny County). 
Glenn O. Hawbaker, Inc.
Every now and again, we come across someone who is willing to risk their career by openly admitting the truth. This time that brave soul is Russell Johns, the George E. Trimble Chair in Energy and Mineral Sciences at the John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering at Penn State University. In a letter to the editor published in the student-run Penn State Daily Collegian, Johns points out that when considering the intense mining operations needed to harvest materials used in solar and wind technology, and the shipping associated with those materials, etc., solar and wind actually have a *bigger* carbon dioxide footprint than does using natural gas. In other words, natural gas is greener than wind and solar!