New Lawsuit Against Mountain Valley Pipe Seeks to Emasculate FERC
In June, a group of radical “environmental” organizations filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit against the West Virginia Dept. of Environmental Protection–for doing their job (see Radicals File Lawsuit Against WV DEP for Approving MV Pipeline). Sierra Club, West Virginia Rivers Coalition, Indian Creek Watershed Association, Appalachian Voices and Chesapeake Climate Action Network sued the DEP because the department had the audacity to conduct a thorough review, and then issue a stream and water-crossing permit (demanded under federal law) for the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP). MVP is a $3.5 billion, 301-mile pipeline that will run from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County, VA. A second lawsuit has now been filed in federal court to block the MVP project–this time from anti-pipeline residents from West Virginia and Virginia. This second lawsuit is even more insidious than the first. The new lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Roanoke, VA (full copy below), seeks to block the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) from doing its job by issuing a certificate to approve MVP. The suers claim FERC would be violating the U.S. Constitution by approving a private project that “takes” private land without just compensation. The suers maintain that according to the Constitution, land can only be taken for “public use” and that the pipeline is for private use, not for the public good. That’s the claim. If these virulent antis win this case, it would emasculate FERC–take away its authority to approve major interstate pipeline projects. We don’t give the case much of a chance, but hey, one never knows…
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My how times change. Just last October EQT indicated that in the not-too-distant future the company would be primarily a Utica Shale driller (see 
Each month MDN tracks how many rigs oilfield services company Patterson-UTI Energy reports operating–as a proxy for when/if the drop in rig counts for the Marcellus/Utica turns around. Patterson operates a number of rigs in the northeast, as well as other areas of the continental United States (and Canada). Patterson’s rig count kept sinking month by month until June 2016 when things finally turned around. Since last June, Patterson has reactived and began running new rigs (a higher rig count) in each successive month. In April, Patterson completed a merger/buyout of Seventy Seven Energy, the new name for the former Chesapeake Oilfield Operating company (see 
MDN previously reported about problems experienced in Chester County, PA (suburb of Philadelphia) with underground horizontal directional drilling (HDD) by Sunoco Logistics Partners for its Mariner East 2 Pipeline project (see 
In January 2016, MDN told you about a $130 million, 30-mile natural gas pipeline proposed by New Jersey Natural Gas (NJNG) to connect NJNG’s distribution system serving customers in Ocean, Burlington and Monmouth counties (in NJ) and the interstate pipeline system adjacent to the New Jersey Turnpike. The idea came about after Superstorm Sandy. How can NJNG create reliable natgas service in the region, preventing major disruptions like that which happened after Sandy? The “Southern Reliability Link” pipeline project was the result, and in January the NJ Board of Public Utilities (BPU) approved it 5-0 (see 
According to one of the top accounting/consulting firms in the world, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), mergers & acquisitions (M&A) activity in the oil and gas sector in the U.S. went from being red hot in 1Q17 ($73.04 billion) to just hot in 2Q17 ($37.01 billion). While some in the financial (and oil/gas community) may view the weaker M&A numbers as “cause for alarm,” PwC says to calm down. “Place that number in a longer-term historical context and it’s clear that the market is still robust. The $37.01 billion of deals in the second quarter is the third highest second quarter during the past eight years. Additionally, with over $110 billion in announced deals during the first half of the year, 2017 is off to the strongest start in the past eight years.” If you rank the number of deals done, the Permian comes out on top in 2Q17, with $4.49 billion worth of deals. However, the might Marcellus trumps that. With only four deals (one of them the huge EQT/Rice Energy deal), the Marcellus saw $10.22 billion worth of M&A deals in 2Q17–top dog. Here’s the latest quarterly M&A in the oil and gas sector update from PwC…
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: Youngstown spent $187K so far on 6 failed anti-fracking ballot measures; PA mystery – where’s the fracking pollution?; outside interest in Wheeling WV picks up, thx to shale; battle rages for Atlantic Coast Pipeline in Virginia; pipeline approvals pile up at FERC; drillers begin to slash drilling budgets; US fracking “devastates” Canada; and more!
Pennsylvania Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman and Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati have betrayed the Marcellus gas industry and should be tossed out on their rear-ends in the next election. Corman, Scarnati and other so-called Republicans in the PA Senate leadership have signed on to promote a severance tax plan to “close” the budget gap THEY CREATED by idiotically passing a bloated spending plan they couldn’t pay for. Now, caving to pressure from a tax-and-spend liberal media and tax-and-spend Democrat Party, PA Senate Republicans have opened a door that should never have been opened. PA’s Marcellus drillers already pay the equivalent of a 9.16% severance tax–highest in the country (called an impact fee). This new plan leaves the impact fee in place, AND places a severance tax on top of it, guaranteeing LESS drilling (and less tax money) for PA, not more. How utterly stupid is that? Last night 19 members of the PA Senate Appropriations Committee voted on a plan that, among other things, puts a 2 cents per thousand cubic feet severance tax on all natural gas produced, which, according to the wizards of smart in the Senate, will raise an extra $108 million. Today the package goes to the full Senate for a vote, where it is expected to pass. It then goes to the House. If a severance tax is passed (big if), Gov. Wolf can finally “check a box on a campaign promise” to give away other people’s money to teacher’s unions. Our only line of defense now is the steel backbone of PA House Speaker Mike Turzai and the House Republicans, to hold the line and reject the severance tax proposal coming from the Senate…
One would hope a $6 billion ethane cracker project like the one being built by Shell in Beaver County, PA would consist of 100% American-made parts. But alas, such is not the case. The biggest story to hit Beaver County, likely ever, keeps reporters at the Beaver County Times busy (“busy beavers”–groan). The ace reporting staff at the local newspaper noticed a job posting from Bechtel Corp., one of the major contractors on the project, on LinkedIn. The job posting advertised for a project superintendent for the Shell cracker plant–a position located in Houston and in Tampico, Mexico. The ace reporters followed it up and got confirmation that some of the components for the cracker plant will be manufactured in Mexico and shipped to PA. No doubt in an effort to tamp down what could become a firestorm, Shell quickly confirmed the Mexico connection and pointed out that “more than 80%” of the individual components for the plant will be built in the U.S. Will this news about Mexico parts make a difference in the larger scheme of things?…
Last week MDN told you about opposition from a neighbor in an industrial park in Lordstown (Trumbull County, OH) to a proposal by Clean Energy Future to build a second natural gas-fired electric plant next door to one already under construction now (see 
Yesterday MDN brought you the exciting news that Millennium Pipeline has asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to overrule the New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation–politicized and corrupted by Gov. Andrew Cuomo–and issue permission to commence construction of a very small 7.8 mile pipeline that will connect Millennium to a natural gas-fired power plant now under construction in Orange County, NY (see 
For some time we’ve covered opposition to the proposed Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), a $3.5 billion, 301-mile pipeline that will run from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County, VA. One of the hotbeds of opposition is in the Bent Mountain area of Roanoke County, VA (see our 
Two natural gas-fired electric generating plants (and one coal-fired plant) are already up and running in Prince George’s County, Maryland. In 2012 Maryland put out a call for energy companies to produce more power in the state, and three more projects popped up for Prince George’s County (which borders Washington, DC). The areas where the power plants are located is largely rural. According to a Prince George’s County councilman, those five plants “are going to be in the top five largest taxpayers of the county,” providing funds for schools and public safety. We expect much of the natural gas feeding the four natgas plants will come from the Marcellus/Utica region. Most residents like the plants, but there’s always a few who want to make trouble…
NEXUS Pipeline is a $2 billion, 255-mile interstate natural gas pipeline that will run from Ohio through Michigan and eventually to the Dawn Hub in Ontario, Canada. NEXUS was one of the large pipeline projects left out of a list of pipelines that received final Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approval back in early February, just prior to FERC losing a quorum of voting members (see 
This is it folks. This is the case that will crush New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s blockade of important pipeline projects in the Empire State. For 19 months the New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has dithered around, at the prompting of Andrew Cuomo, and has refused to grant federal Section 401 Water Quality Certification stream crossing permits for a tiny 7.8 mile pipeline spur off the Millennium Pipeline in Orange County, NY, called the Valley Lateral Project, to feed a gas-fired electric generating plant that is now under construction. Statutorily NY has 12 months (1 year) to review such an application and act on it. NY has refused to act on it. So Millennium took the NY DEC to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In June the court dismissed the lawsuit by Millennium, which at first blush may seem like a blow. But it was the reasoning and opinion of the judges in dismissing the case that will change everything in New York. The judges said there is no case because if, as Millennium says, the DEC is denying the water permits, FERC itself has the power to jump back in and simply override NY DEC and issue the permits (see