WV, OH, PA, KY Should Cooperate on $10B NGL Storage Hub
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 WVU Researcher Says Marcellus/Utica Needs an Ethane Storage Hub). According to Brian Anderson, director of WVU’s Energy Institute, without ethane storage (and pipelines) the Marcellus/Utica region risks seeing its abundant ethane leave the area, mostly heading to the Gulf Coast. We need that ethane here, in our area. Kevin DiGregorio, executive director of the Chemical Alliance Zone, is also taking up the cause. Writing an opinion article in the Charleston Gazette-Mail, DiGregorio says West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Kentucky need to band together to build such a project. Set aside their competitive natures and cooperate? Yes. Why? Such a project will cost an estimated $10 billion–far more than a single ethane cracker project. No one state can do it on its own. It will take all our states cooperating to pull it off. Below is DiGregorio’s op-ed along with more details about the proposed NGL storage hub…
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The anti-frackers at the Johns Hopkins-Bloomberg School of Public Health are out with another bought-and-paid-for (by anti-drillers) “study” that implies the presence of fracking in Pennsylvania leads to causing or making worse asthma attacks. You may recall the same group of antis pushed out a study last October that supposedly shows fracking leads to premature births (see 
Yesterday the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) released an updated version of an online GIS (i.e. mapping) application that allows users to learn information and download reports about oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania. The DEP also released a new video tutorial (embedded below) that explains how to use the 
Some interesting Marcellus-related items were included in the recently adopted Pennsylvania state budget that have largely flown under the radar. There are also a few things that weren’t in the budget bill–previously intended to be part of it–that didn’t survive the process. At the top of the list is lack of a severance tax. But right behind that (for us) is that a gross receipts tax on natural gas use, which we thought would be part of the final deal, was not. As MDN previously reported, a gross receipts tax taxes end users of natural gas, in essence targeting low-income households (see 
Last Friday MDN brought you the really big news that Sunoco Logistics Partners had won a major appeals court case that recognizes them as a public utility in Pennsylvania with the right to use eminent domain to build the Mariner East 2 NGL pipeline (see 
In the past we’ve been pretty critical of the Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office (IFO). It claims to provide revenue projections for use in the state budget process along with “impartial and timely analysis of fiscal, economic and budgetary issues to assist Commonwealth residents and the General Assembly in their evaluation of policy decisions.” It’s been our observation the IFO is populated with partisan Democrats. However, we have to acknowledge their prediction of impact fee revenue from 2015 was spot on. Earlier this year the IFO predicted that when the dust had settled, the impact fee would generate $185.5 million (see “Independent” Fiscal Office Says PA Impact Fee Revenue Drops 17%). When the state Public Utility Commission (PUC) finally reported the actual numbers, it turned out to be $188 million (see 
Last year Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf completely botched his first-ever budget, by holding out for nine months seeking a Marcellus-killing severance tax as payback to teachers’ unions that helped elect him (see 
In July 2012 MDN told you about a one-year study of air quality in and around Chartiers Township in Washington County, PA being conducted by the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (see 
PA’s very liberal Governor, Tom Wolf, has been obstinate in demanding onerous new drilling rules for the conventional, as well as unconventional (shale) drilling industry since he took office. Reworked drilling rules were done and ready to go under previous Governor, Tom Corbett. Then Corbett lost to Wolf, and Wolf demanded to change common sense rules everyone had already agreed to (see 
This pipeline project has been, until now, completely off our radar screen. As pipeline projects go, it’s pretty small. But building even a single square inch of new pipeline, or expanding a compressor station, is anathema to anti-fossil fuel nutters. So we expect this project will be in the headlines starting this week, with a pair open house meetings in the Philadelphia area (and one in Delaware) where the project will get built. The project is being built by Eastern Shore Natural Gas and is called the 2017 System Expansion project. In March 2015, Eastern Shore ran a non-binding open season to see if customers want more natural gas in the Delmarva Peninsula area (includes most of Delaware and portions of Maryland and Virginia). It looks like Eastern Shore’s customers expressed enough interest that they plan to move forward with an expansion project that will bring new sources of natgas from an interconnection Eastern Shore has with the mighty TETCo (Texas Eastern Company) pipeline near Philadelphia. Below we have details on the expansion project, and details for the open house meetings scheduled for this week in PA and DE…
The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) filed a lengthy comment with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) last week regarding the Williams Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline project (full copy below). The EPA said, in a nutshell, that more studies should be done. The EPA said the pipeline could have “significant adverse environmental impacts.” They also said alternate routes should be considered. A few things to know about the EPA’s filing: First and foremost, the EPA is treated like any other individual or organization who files comments on a project with FERC. That is, the EPA’s comments will receive no special treatment or consideration. Second, the only value in EPA’s comments is publicity for anti-pipeline nutters. Third, the “alternate routes” the EPA professes to prefer have already been considered, thoroughly, and discarded by FERC. So this is a lot of smoke and noise and mirrors–and nothing else…
MDN has previously reported on efforts in Pennsylvania to substitute a so-called “gross receipts tax” (GRT) on natural gas for a severance tax as a way to raise millions of dollars for Democrats’ voracious appetite to spend money (see