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Sunoco Gets FERC Permission to Sign Up New ME2 Shippers for C3+
Last December MDN brought you news that at the time seemed a bit odd to us at the time–that Sunoco Logistics Partners (division of Energy Transfer) was floating a new open season for NGL shipments along the Mariner East pipeline system (see Open Season – for Mariner East Pipelines?!). In late December, following that announcement, Sunoco filed a request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for permission to allow them to change up the mix of NGLs flowing through Mariner East 2, and for permission to lock-in long-term customers for new C3+ capacity. FERC (finally) approved the request yesterday.
Read More “Sunoco Gets FERC Permission to Sign Up New ME2 Shippers for C3+”
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, arguably PA’s worst governor in a generation, has just thrown in his lot with uber-leftists Andrew Cuomo (governor of NY), Phil Murphy (governor of NJ), and John Carney (governor of DE) to support a total, permanent ban on fracking *and a ban on any drilling-related activities* in the Delaware River Basin (DRB). Put another way, Wolf has just turned his back on thousands of PA citizens living in the Wayne and Pike counties (in PA) who could be, right now, benefiting from Marcellus Shale drilling.
Yesterday two northeast Pennsylvania legislators–state Representative Aaron Kaufer (Republican) and state Senator John Yudichak (Democrat)–hosted a rally to promote proposed new bipartisan legislation aimed at luring a “world-class” petrochemical manufacturing plant to the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area. A big plant, on the order of the Shell cracker plant in southwestern PA. But no, not an ethane cracker. The kind of plant the two legislators want to attract in northeastern PA would leverage the huge volume of locally extracted Marcellus dry gas (i.e. methane).
Last week the Pennsylvania House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee held an informational meeting to hear from the regulated community, including the shale industry, on their experiences with Dept. of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) permit review processes. By all accounts legislators (and the DEP) got an earful.
Here’s a cool story: Energy Transfer, the company building the Mariner East 2 Pipeline in Pennsylvania, has just committed to funding the Pennsylvania Special Olympics to the tune of $450,000 over the next three years. MDN editor Jim Willis’ wife works with special needs kids, so he has a soft spot for programs like Special Olympics. Jim thought: “Hey, this is a good news story. Surely someone in the media will have picked up the Special Olympics press release by now and published an article about this, right?” Nope. Total media blackout. We couldn’t find a single news outlet that has covered this news, now four days old.
A radical Pennsylvania environmental group called PennEnvironment is pushing a media narrative that a “collection of 88 Republican and Democratic Pennsylvania state legislators” have joined together to introduce and endorse a truly insane plan that would require all (as in 100%) of electricity generated in the Keystone State to come from so-called renewables by 2050–just 30 years from now. It will NEVER happen, but that’s beside the point. Our point is that one named Republican is part of this “bipartisan collection” of 88 leftists. The lone Republican is PA State Sen. Tom Killion from the Philadelphia area.
Two weeks ago MDN told you the Pennsylvania House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee approved a series of five bills that restore some sanity in how environmental regulations are made and paid for in the Keystone State (see 
Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection Secretary Pat McDonnell will get his day in court, or rather, his day in a reconfirmation hearing–on May 8. We previously wrote about the delay of McDonnell’s reconfirmation hearing (see 
For months Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has been traveling around the Keystone State pretending he’s Santa Claus, pushing a plan he calls Restore PA–a plan that will get rid of lead paint in schools, fix flooding, repair old roads, give rural residents internet access, and just about any other goody you can think of. The catch? The PA legislature must pass a Marcellus-killing severance tax to pay for it. Republicans from western PA called his bluff, offering an alternative way to fund it (see 
THE Delaware Riverkeeper, Maya van Rossum, along with a couple of radicals from Lancaster County flying under the name Lancaster Against Pipelines (the Clatterbucks), hoped they could convince the U.S. Supreme Court to consider a case that a series of lower courts dismissed–a case that would shut down the now-operating Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline (see 
Pennsylvania State Sen. Gene Yaw (Republican from Lycoming County), who serves as Majority Chair of the Senate Environmental Committee, 
A group of four Democrat Pennsylvania State Senators and one RINO, all from the Philadelphia region, have requested the Senate committee that will hold a hearing on reconfirming state Dept. of Environmental Protection Secretary Patrick McDonnell to a second term, be put on hold. The gang of five are fighting the completion of the Mariner East 2 pipeline project and believe McDonnell improperly approved and has covered up problems with the project. Don’t you love it when Dems turn on their own?