Construction Begins on $780M SWPA NatGas-Fired Power Plant
“It’s a go” for a long-delayed $780 million natural gas-fueled power plant in South Huntingdon (Westmoreland County), PA being built by energy giant Tenaska. So said a Tenaska spokesperson following an announcement that the Tenaska Westmoreland Generating Station, a 925-megawatt (MW) natural gas-fueled power plant project near Pittsburgh, has secured $780 million in funding. The project was first proposed in 2009 and since that time has secured all of the necessary permits. The project has also faced some local opposition. According to the Tenaska announcement, construction began “earlier this year” at the project site. Black & Veatch is doing the engineering work and acting as the contractor for the project. And yes, Marcellus/Utica gas will feed the plant when it goes online in 2018…
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MDN recently received a tip from a reader who said that WPX Energy, which has been exiting the Marcellus for more than year, is plugging and abandoning its wells in Cook Township (Westmoreland County), PA. We asked WPX about it and got the scoop about what’s happening with WPX in southwestern and central PA…
A potentially troubling development in Penn Township (Westmoreland County), PA. Apex Energy had a permit from the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection to drill a Marcellus Shale well in Penn Twp. An anti-drilling group called Protect PT filed a lawsuit against the town for allowing the well to be drilled with first requiring a full environmental impact statement (EIS)–something that drives up the cost of drilling a well. The town caved to pressure and withdrew permission to drill, so Apex also sued the town. A deal has been worked out. Apex will have to pay for and conduct an EIS, and then they will be allowed to drill. Other towns populated with anti-drillers are catching wind of it and eyeing it as a potential way to slow or stop drilling in their towns…
Yesterday CONSOL Energy’s management team hosted their second quarter 2015 analyst and investor conference call. There was major information contained in that call. The big news is that CONSOL just hooked up and tested a new Utica Shale well in Westmoreland County, PA that is the second best initial producing Utica well ever. Just last week MDN told you about the #1 Utica well drilled so far, by EQT (see 
If there’s one thing you NEVER do, it’s get between an anti-driller and a camera/microphone. Elected town leaders in Ligonier Township (Westmoreland County), PA found that out the hard way Tuesday night. At the regular town board meeting there was a 45-minute section of the meeting, out of a much longer meeting, devoted to discussion of new zoning regulations for Marcellus Shale drilling in the township. The new zoning regs are, according to town leaders, a “work in progress.” About 100 people showed up at the meeting, 50 of whom wanted to talk about this “work in progress.” It was a regular town board meeting and not the time to devote the 3-4 hours necessary for anti-drillers to preen before the cameras and spew their same old same old. Ligonier supervisors kept to the 45-minute time limit and shut down the freak show at that point. That enraged a handful of mouthy anti-drillers and, according to witnesses, the meeting got “out of control”…
On Monday MDN told you about three families near a WPX Energy wastewater impoundment near Ligonier (Westmoreland County), PA who say their well water has been contamined by frack wastewater leaking from the impoundment (see 
Three families near a WPX Energy wastewater impoundment near Ligonier (Westmoreland County), PA say their well water has been contamined by wastewater leaking from the impoundment. The case is just coming to light (at least for MDN) although the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) has known and has investigated the “leaky impoundment” for going on two years now…