PA PUC Rejects West Goshen Appeal, ME2 Building Valve Station
West Goshen Township, in Philadelphia suburb of Chester County, has failed yet again to stop Sunoco Logistics’ Mariner East 2 NGL pipeline in its community. Last March MDN told you about the desperate last stand taken by liberal anti-pipeliners in West Goshen (see West Goshen’s Last Stand to Stop Mariner East 2 Pipeline). West Goshen signaled it would deny Sunoco a zoning permit for a valve on the pipeline. Sunoco politely, but firmly, told West Goshen the pipeline doesn’t need a permit from the town to install a valve because it’s a state-permitted project. Sunoco said it would move forward at the appropriate time with a valve installation. Last week West Goshen tried again, by filing a 135-page petition with the state Public Utility Commission on Monday, asking the PUC for an emergency order to stop construction of the new valve station that Sunoco is set to begin work on any time (see West Goshen Pulls Legal Stunt in Attempt to Stop ME2 Pipeline). The PUC has now responded to West Goshen: NOPE…
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MDN previously reported about problems experienced last week in Chester County, PA (suburb of Philadelphia) with underground horizontal directional drilling (HDD) by Sunoco Logistics Partners for its Mariner East 2 Pipeline project (see 
Last March MDN told you about the desperate last stand taken by liberal anti-pipeliners in West Goshen Township, in the Philadelphia suburb of Chester County (see 
We’re not quite sure how to present this news. In some respects, we want to roll around on the ground laughing. In other respects, we’re angry at the semi “racist” overtones of a new “research” paper. We’ll report, you decide. A couple of researchers from the University of Maryland’s Dept. of Economics have published a so-called “working paper” via the National Bureau of Economic Research that finds a link between fracking and more babies. The paper, titled “Male Earnings, Marriageable Men, And Nonmarital Fertility: Evidence From The Fracking Boom,” says for every extra $1,000 of money earned by those working in the fracking industry, the pregnancy rate goes up by 6 births per 1,000 women. However, marriage rates don’t go up. The researchers say that people in rural pockets of Texas, Oklahoma, California and Pennsylvania who are connected to the fracking industry are “reproducing at a rate that far exceeds the national average.” In other words, those ignorant rednecks can’t get enough sex–IF they have lots of money coming in. However, those same rednecks feel no need to marry the women they knock up. Rednecks find it perfectly acceptable to shack up. That’s the MDN summarized version of the research…
Last November MDN brought you the delicious news that Pennsylvania would shift $24 million away from a boondoggle program called the PA Alternative Energy Investment Act and into a new program called the Pipeline Investment Program, or PIPE (see 
Huntley & Huntley has plans to drill shale wells in Upper Burrell Township (Westmoreland County), PA. As MDN reported in June, a landowner in Upper Burrell filed an appeal against Upper Burrell’s zoning ordinance that allows drilling in rural, agricultural districts (see 
The Gas Technology Institute (GTI), based in Illinois, is doing the Marcellus/Utica region a huge favor. GTI has launched a pre-employment training program to introduce folks to natural gas pipeline operations. The four-week program provides a basic understanding of natural gas, the utility and pipeline industry, and different equipment, procedures and operations used. The program is aimed at students, veterans, displaced coal workers and others with an interest in getting a job with utilities, midstream (i.e. pipeline) companies and their contractors. Here’s the best part: The program is fully funded, so there is no tuition cost for those who qualify. The program is delivered via classroom at three participating colleges: Westmoreland County Community College and Butler County Community College (both in PA), and Washington State Community College (in OH). Here’s the lowdown..
It’s been a while since we’ve updated you on a little-known (but rapidly becoming better known) company called JKLM Energy. In May 2016, the last time we wrote about JKLM, we told you the company had successfully drilled and was flowing gas from Potter County, PA’s first Utica Shale well (see 
Here’s not something you read every day, especially in Lebanon County, PA where local media seems only too interested in covering negative stories about pipelines: “What I have heard has all been positive – that the workers were willing to go beyond anything that might be expected of them and do little special things for the landowners.” That statement is from a town official in Lebanon County, talking about Mariner East 2 pipeline construction workers who are busy in the Lebanon County installing the first of two ME2 pipelines. Of course, not everyone is happy. But then, not everyone is always happy with anything–even a sunshiny day! Here’s what’s happening in Lebanon County with ME2…
While the construction of the Mariner East 2 natural gas liquids (NGL) pipelines in Lebanon and Lancaster Counties appears to be sailing along with very few issues (see today’s companion story), the project did hit a small bump in the road in nearby Chester County, PA. A dozen families reported their water wells became cloudy–or lost pressure–after underground horizontal directional drilling (HDD) by Sunoco Logistics Partners in attempting to install pipes underground in places where digging trenches will not work. The company put up five families in local hotels for several nights. Sunoco also provided bottled water for all of the affected families. The working theory is that bentonite clay (i.e. drilling mud) is the source of the cloudiness. Fortunately, bentonite is non-toxic and used to manufacture many products, including toothpaste and kitty litter. The incident, while troubling and inconvenient for the families involved, has not set back the project–at all. Drilling and construction of the pipeline resumed on Saturday…
Here’s a story of some Catholic nuns who have forsaken their vow to serve Christ, and instead have taken up a vow to serve radical environmentalism–which is apparently their new religion. A group of nuns in Lancaster County, PA invited the radical group Lancaster Against Pipelines (whose organizer participated in the illegal blockage of the Dakota Access Pipeline) to build a “prayer chapel” in the middle of a cornfield that belongs to the Adorers of the Blood of Christ (as they are called). The chapel is meant to stand in the way of Williams’ Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline, slated to go through that field. The so-called prayer chapel is little more than a few portable benches and a pop-up shelter like the one you would use when camping–just about big enough to cover a gas grill and leave enough room for two or three people to stand under it. The “prayer chapel” is obviously a statement thing. Knowing it will get torn down at some point, the sisters and their radical friends didn’t want to waste a lot of money on the project. Essentially this is a setup for a photo op when the bulldozers come through. It’s truly a shame to see how those who have dedicated themselves to the work of Jesus Christ have been co-opted and distracted from their far higher, and much better, calling. Unfortunately, the nuns are rank hypocrites. They themselves use–and promote the use of–natural gas for their own ministry on the very same parcel of property…
Totally biased, Big Green-backed mouthpiece StateImpact Pennsylvania, funded in part by taxpayers via PBS (a travesty), as well as funded in part by anti-drilling organizations like the Heinz Endowments and the William Penn Foundation (which appear to control StateImpact’s “reporting”), is targeting a PR agency because the agency has the audacity to do good work for Sunoco Logistics and the Mariner East 2 Pipeline project. You see, in liberal anti-drilling land, it’s OK for antis to smear and lie and fabricate all sorts of falsehoods about pipeline projects–but it’s not OK for the object of those smears (i.e. Sunoco LP) to fight back and to present its side of the issue. As soon as you fight back and tell your side of the story, you’re “targeting” innocent people, you’re attempting to bully the little guy. You’re mean. You’re pedaling fossil fuel death. That’s how it works in Big Green land. A recent article on StateImpact PA attempts a smear job on PR agency Bravo Group because Bravo has the gonads to say this on their website: “We’re helping Sunoco Logistics build public and policyholder support for its Mariner East projects, an infrastructure investment of more than $3 billion. The goal: secure regulatory approvals, neutralize opposition and develop the Mariner East projects on budget and without capital losses.” The “neutralize opposition” phrase in particular set off the anti-pipeline crazies, so StateImpact created an entire story focused on that phrase. You know you’re being effective when they attack you with a smear campaign…
Being a marketing guy, MDN editor Jim Willis knows that crystallizing a concept into a few key words is critical. You have to be able to convey your meaning in as few words as possible–and those words must be pregnant with meaning. Jim was lucky enough to name this blog/news site Marcellus Drilling News, which (mostly) conveys its purpose–to report on happenings in the Marcellus (later adding the Utica) region. A very smart person who’s given a lot of thought about our industry is Kathryn “Katie” Klaber. Katie owns her own consulting firm–The Klaber Group. But before that, she was founder and president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition (a well-named organization). Katie lives and works in Pittsburgh. In a recent article for the Pittsburgh Business Times, Katie ponders over Pittsburgh (and our industry’s) “identity crisis”–by which she means our lack of good branding. Sometimes our industry and region is referred to as “Appalachia.” But that term often connotes the mountains of West Virginia, spreading out into Kentucky. Sometimes we are referred to as the “Marcellus/Utica basin,” which gets a lot closer to meaningful, but connotes drilling and leaves out the downstream. And sometimes we’re called “the Northeast.” But folks in Ohio consider themselves Midwesterners, not northeasterners. Why is it important to lock down an accurate, pregnant-with-meaning description for our entire industry (upstream, midstream and downstream), and our geographic region? According to Katie, it comes down to two words: capital investment. We need to brand ourselves and do it sooner rather than later, if we want to grow business in our neck of the woods…
Here on MDN we talk a lot about big interstate natural gas pipelines–like Rover and NEXUS, Atlantic Sunrise and Atlantic Coast. But we don’t talk so much about the tiny (in diameter) gas pipelines that connect to people’s homes. In oil and gas industry parlance, those pipelines belong to the “downstream”–or the end users of natural gas. From time to time we’ve covered stories about NiSource and other utilities spending big money to replace aging local distribution pipelines (see