Dealing Honestly with Issue of Eminent Domain for Pipelines
Life is messy and complex. Nowhere is that more true than with the issue of using eminent domain to “condemn” a property, forcing the landowner to allow a pipeline company to cross the property with a decades-long (often extending past the lifetime of the current landowner) lease on the land. Sometimes landowners just don’t want a pipeline. We get it. MDN’s extended family owns rural property (a small farm), so we understand the objections. What if you plan to one day build a new barn in an area where a pipeline is set to run? No can-do. However, pipelines that cross a field or a pasture are (mostly) fine–you can grow back hay and grass and a few years after a pipeline is in the ground, you have use of that land again. You can even plant crops over top of a pipeline. Even though the presence of a pipeline can yield a number of benefits, money for the landowner being the chief benefit, there are drawbacks. But let’s put a different hat on. What if 9 out of 10 landowners along a pipeline’s route in a particular town have signed and welcome the pipeline, but one landowner smack in the middle of the others objects? And what if there’s no feasible re-routing to be done? Should the 9 suffer because of the actions of the one? Tough question. And what about all of the people who will benefit from the gas flowing through the pipeline? Should they suffer because one landowner objects? Again, tough question. For us, property rights are sacrosanct. You don’t tell me I can’t allow a pipeline or drilling–and I don’t tell you that you must allow it. What’s fair is fair. How do we resolve these issues?…
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The Maine Public Utilities Commission (PUC) recently declined to help fund a new LNG peakshaving facility in the state, concluding it would not reduce consumer natural gas and electricity prices. Er, a, what’s an LNG peakshaver anyway? Good question! According to industrial engineering company Fives, “LNG peak shaving units are used for storing surplus natural gas, so as to be able to meet the requirements of peak consumption later during the different seasons. Gas distribution companies and local administrations use this application to be more flexible in their consumption of natural gas. Thanks to these Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) peak shaving units, they will be able to face periods of peak consumption during cold winter times and extreme summer heat. Peak shaving can also be used to keep natural gas prices from soaring during periods of high gas consumption.” That helps. They are small LNG plants that kick in when demand for natural gas exceeds supply. There are 44 such peakshaving tanks at 29 locations in the northeast. Last September the Maine legislature authorized the PUC to spend $25 million on leasing capacity at a peakshaving plant, if they could find the right plant to do it. A number of projects were submitted, and the PUC said nyet–they don’t like any of them and don’t think a peakshaver will be needed going forward… 
The following is a post from MDN friend Tom Shepstone about using humor (and sarcasm) to fight back against what MDN calls certifiably insane anti-fossil fuelers. Read (and watch) it, and enjoy!… 
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: PJM capacity auction reflects impact of cheap Marcellus/Utica gas; Vinton County, OH quake probably not fracking-related, state says; grant for CNG trucks in Trumbull County; what Chesapeake is cooking up in the Haynesville Shale; how American shale drillers flipped OPEC’s script; infrastructure for affordable energy; has Strategic Petroleum Reserve outlived its usefulness?; ‘gas apocalypse’ looms amid power plant construction boom; OPEC considers cutting production again; and more! 
For the past few years MDN has had an eye on a trend we find exciting–“virtual pipelines”–by which we mean facilities that are located along a pipeline that compress natural gas (CNG), load it onto tanker trucks, and then distribute that gas to businesses that are not fortunate enough to be located near a natgas pipeline. With irrational opposition to pipelines rampant, virtual pipelines are a good alternative. We were first alerted to this trend when International Paper’s Ticonderoga mill in northern New York, near the Vermont border, opted for a virtual pipeline from NG Advantage, back in 2015 (see 
Here we go again. A new “study” published today by Harvard University researchers supposedly indicates that Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia are loaded with underground natural gas storage sites that may leak like the Aliso Canyon debacle in California. The new study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, titled “A national assessment of underground natural gas storage: identifying wells with designs likely vulnerable to a single-point-of-failure” (full copy below), says there are 14,138 active underground storage (UGS) wells in 317 locations/facilities in the U.S. The study identifies 2,715 active UGS wells across 160 facilities that, like the failed well at Aliso Canyon, were not originally designed for gas storage. (Gasp) Even worse: The majority (88%) of these repurposed wells are located in OH, MI, PA, NY, and WV. (Double gasp) Here’s the thing: Aliso Canyon was one facility that had a catastrophic failure (a failure which, by the way, hurt no one–it just released some extra methane into the air). While it may be interesting and useful to know (for accident prevention) that there are other facilities constructed years ago, like Aliso Canyon, that were later repurposed to be used for underground storage–each and every location is different, with unique characteristics. No two storage sites are the same geologically. It does not follow, as implied in the report, that because Aliso Canyon leaked, that these other “similar” facilities will eventually fail and leak. However, our main objection to this research–and why we call it fake research–is that the researchers never bothered to go into the field and take air samples to see if there is any ACTUAL leaking going on at any of these thousands of other sites! Fake mainstream news sources are just now picking up on the story and running it. Nothing sells newspapers (or grabs online eyeballs) like fear. And hey, it serves the mainstream narrative that fossil fuels are the ultimate evil. Here’s the kicker: This latest “research” was funded, in large part, by the virulent anti-fossil fuel Heinz Foundation and The Nature Conservancy. That tells you all you need to know about this latest bought-and-paid-for “research” study with a Harvard label slapped on it…
On Monday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced plans to construct a new “state-of-the-art, locally-sourced mini-power grid” that will connect to the statewide electric grid but will also be able to operate independently, to power the Empire State Plaza in Albany–a complex of buildings in downtown Albany housing much of New York State government. The energy-efficient microgrid will supply 90% of the power for the 98-acre downtown Albany complex, and is expected to save the Plaza more than $2.7 million in annual energy costs. The project will also remove more than 25,600 tons of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere each year – the equivalent of taking more than 4,900 cars off the road – supporting New York’s goal to reduce emissions by 40 percent by 2030 from 1990 levels. In an emergency, it can power a shelter for Albany residents. So what will power the magical microgrid and deliver this nirvana of cheaper electricity AND reduce so-called greenhouse gas emissions at the same time? Is it a huge solar array errected in Albany or in the nearby countryside? Nope–the sun doesn’t always shine. Must be a wind farm, maybe off the coast of Long Island? Nope. The wind doesn’t always blow. The magic fuel for the magic microgrid is, you guessed it–fracked shale gas from the Marcellus. Yes, Andrew Cuomo is the same governor who has banned fracking in New York State and is blocking construction of pipelines to bring “fracked gas” from Pennsylvania into New York State. And some people think Donald Trump is crazy?!!!…
We’ve written a number of times about DUCs–otherwise known as drilled-but-uncompleted wells. When a shale driller drills a new well, it doesn’t always happen all in one go. You first drill the hole down, and then curve the drillbit and drill the horizontal portion–called the lateral. Then you pull the drill bit out of the ground and (at some point) the fracking process begins. Fracking doesn’t always happen right away. Sometimes wells are initially drilled but not fracked–essentially putting them in inventory to be fracked later. Those wells are DUCs. Since a lot of the cost to develop the well has already been spent in preparing the site and drilling the hole, to come along at a later time and frack is much “cheaper” if you (as a driller) want to bump up your production. Price of gas low right now? Drill the initial hole, mothball the project, and come back later when the price of gas goes up and finish it off and hook it up to production. The DUC inventory is a closely watched number. Analysts at Platts have been watching and have noticed something interesting. In most shale plays–particularly oil plays like the Permian in Texas–drillers are sinking initial holes as fast as they can and the DUC inventory numbers are going up up up. The Permian has seen 476 new DUCs added since January! But in the Marcellus, only 3 new DUCs have been added since last December. Which is “puzzling.” What does it mean?…
No more “acting” for Pennsylvania’s Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP). In May 2016, DEP Secretary John Quigley was fired for using a PRIVATE email account to collude with his Big Green friends to try and bully PA’s legislators into supporting his onerous proposed regulations (see 
Helmerich & Payne is the largest drilling rig contractor in the U.S. Their rigs can be found all over the world. In the U.S., H&P may H&P rigs are located in Texas, in the Permian basin, drilling for oil. Although a fair number are also in North Dakota and Colorado. If you look at H&P’s rig locations from last July (the most recent stats they publish, on their website), you’ll find 13 active H&P rigs in the Pennsylvania–in the Marcellus Shale. A year later, we are assuming (based on recent data) that those numbers have gone up everywhere, including the Marcellus. Even if H&P’s rig count is still just 13 in the PA Marcellus, that represents 38% of the active rigs in the Marcellus as of April (see 
In December 2016, the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) unveiled new regulations to clamp down on methane emissions and other other air pollution that allegedly comes from shale drilling sites (see 
MDN previously reported on a $900 million Marcellus gas-fired electric generating plant coming to Orange County, NY (see 
Believe it or not, Shell previously hired a third-party consultant to perform a traffic study in the area where Shell plans to build a $6 billion ethane cracker in Beaver County, PA. Based on the findings and recommendations of that study, Shell has begun to secure parking spots for construction workers that will descend on that location to build the plant–beginning later this year. One of the recommendations is to limit the number of parking spots to no more than 1,500 at any one location. Shell currently has three locations lined up and (mostly) ready to go, enough for 3,100 parking spots. At its peak, the project will employ something like 6,000 workers. So either Shell will line up more spots, or maybe workers will carpool…