PA Judge Rejects Landowners’ Challenge to Mariner East 2 Pipeline
A Pennsylvania state judge last Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit by three Cumberland County landowners against Sunoco Logistics Partners over the company’s assertion of eminent domain to build the Mariner East 2 pipeline across their property. Sunoco is currently pumping propane through the Mainer East 1 pipeline and has plans to add a second and third pipeline next to the existing pipeline, collectively called Mariner East 2. All told, Sunoco LP is spending an eye-popping $3 billion to build out the Mariner East project which flows natural gas liquids (propane, ethane, others) from as far away as eastern Ohio to the Philadelphia-area Marcus Hook refinery. The judge, in tossing out the lawsuit, further strengthens Sunoco LP’s argument that the Mariner projects, which will distribute the NGLs flowing through them both within PA and beyond PA, is in fact a public utility under PA law and entitled to use eminent domain, if necessary, to build the project…
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Sometimes you have to reach out to the other side (i.e. the unreasonable enemy of fossil fuels) to try and convince them that the oil and gas industry is not Satanic. We don’t bother with trying to convince them (lost cause in our opinion), but kudos to those who have the patience to try it. Case in point: Cabot Oil & Gas recently hosted a delegation from the Big Green/radical group Trout Unlimited (TU). TU, you may recall, is the sad story of a once great group co-opted into being a radical green group (see 
In March of this year, Syracuse University Professor Dr. Donald Siegel published the results of an extensive research study that found fracking of Marcellus Shale wells in Pennsylvania does not cause methane in water wells (see 
On Monday MDN told you about an accident in Sweden Township (Potter County), PA where JKLM Energy released soap into a water aquifer while trying to fish out a broken drill bit from a Utica Shale bore hole (see 
Last November, MDN told you about an innovative plan by PECO, a utility company based in Philadelphia serving some 500,000+ natural gas customers in southeastern PA, to allow customers to sign up for its natural gas service and spread the cost over 20 years (see 
Perhaps we now know the real reason why a group of anti-fossil fuel protesters decided to abandon their protest at the headquarters of PennEast Pipeline’s main sponsor, UGI. MDN told you yesterday how mainstream media in the New Jersey market covered a “massive” protest (of 35 people) who showed up at the Statehouse in Trenton during the day–with obviously nothing better to do–to protest against the PennEast Pipeline (see 
PA Gov. Tom Wolf has dropped all pretense of being a nice guy and has turned into a mafioso bully because he can’t get his own way. We understand. He made a back-room deal with teachers’ unions and they delivered him an election victory. He owes them and the only way he can pay them off is by taxing the Marcellus Shale industry into oblivion. Wolf’s latest tactic is to call the Republicans who won’t go along with his Marcellus-killing severance tax “the bad guys” and appeal to RINOs in the House and Senate–those like Rep. Gene DiGirolamo (from the Philly area)–those he calls “good Republican legislators”. Wolf plans to make the RINOs an offer they can’t refuse in order to support a severance tax. Will they bow to pressure from the don?…
The ideologically rigid, most-liberal governor in America (according to InsideGov), Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, yesterday vetoed a stopgap spending budget passed by the Republican-controlled House and Senate, further damaging the people he pretends to want to help–little children in schools. Falling back on the same old lies and political pandering rhetoric, Wolf said he was vetoing the bill because it “sells out the people of Pennsylvania to oil and gas companies and Harrisburg special interests.” It’s now open war on the Marcellus industry by the Wolf administration. In his veto letter, Wolf doesn’t mention that his own special interests–primarily teachers’ unions–are the real reason he’s holding out for an obscenely high severance tax on Marcellus Shale production. Sometimes politicians like Wolf have conveniently leaky memories. Wolf is perfectly happy with driving the state right over an economic cliff if he doesn’t get his way on a severance tax, no matter who (i.e., children) get hurt…
Looking like he’d had his morning Ensure drink, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush had plenty of energy as he talked about energy policy in a speech he delivered yesterday at the headquarters of Rice Energy in Washington County, PA. As predicted, Bush said things the oil and gas industry can stand up and cheer for: lift the ban on exporting crude oil, make it easier to export natural gas, and repeal some of the onerous regulations now on the books. He would also roll back Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan regulations that target coal (and natural gas) with a regulatory death sentence. Below is how it was reported, followed by Bush’s policy paper on how he would handle energy policy if he were to get out of single digits in the polls and get the nomination (something not very likely)…
Your beliefs matter. For example, if you believe in the fairy tale of man-made global warming (see 
The Washington County (PA) Firemen’s Association recently opened a new $500,000 gas well training center at the fire academy located at 895 Western Ave in Houston, PA. The project, which took more than a year to plan and complete, was completely funded by some of the biggest and best drillers in the Marcellus/Utica, including Range Resources, Rice Energy, CONSOL Energy, EQT, American Well Service and others. It will be used to train first responders not only in Washington County, but also from other parts of Pennsylvania along with West Virginia and Ohio. According to Pennsylvania Fire Commissioner Tim Solobay, “There’s nothing like it outside of Texas”…