How to Apply for one of the 15K Jobs Building the Rover Pipeline
Last week MDN brought you the news that Energy Transfer’s $3.7 billion, 711-mile Rover Pipeline needs up to 15,000 workers to build it. They currently have ~4,500 workers. And they want to complete the first stage of the pipeline by July (see Help Wanted: 15,000 Workers Needed for Rover Pipeline, STAT!). MDN’s story went viral. It has, so far, been read over 17,000 times on the MDN website–an all-time high for a story less than a week old. The headline and blurb we posted on Facebook has been seen by nearly 72,000 people! The result was that we were flooded with this simple question: Where do I sign up to work on the pipeline? The answer, unfortunately, is not straightforward. We reached out to Energy Transfer multiple times and got less-than-satisfactory answers. Energy Transfer’s answer to the question is this: If you are a contractor or want to try your hand at becoming a contractor, you can try applying via Rover’s contractor online application process (here). However, most people are not interested in that route. They just want to sign up and begin working. For those folks, Rover responded, “Rover is committed to utilizing Union labor 100% for this project. Laborers looking for work, can contact their local union halls.” No help with identifying those local union halls. It is a sort of “you’re on your own” kind of response. Which strikes us as odd. Does Energy Transfer really want to complete this project on time? Could they at least provide a list of the “local union halls” for folks to contact? Apparently not. So we will…
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Last Thursday was the last day for people, agencies, nutjobs, supporters–for anyone–to file an official comment with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on the agency’s draft environmental impact statement for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline project. Dominion has proposed building the $5 billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) project from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina. One of the problems they’ve had is resistance from U.S. government agencies, including the U.S. Forest Service. In January 2016, the USFS told Dominion it was a no-go for running the pipeline through tiny pieces of either the Monongahela or George Washington national forests in West Virginia and Virginia (see 
Yesterday we brought you the sad (and angering) news that once again Gov. Andrew Cuomo has caved to political pressure from environmental Nazis and instructed the now-corrupted Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to deny stream crossing permits for National Fuel Gas Company’s Northern Access Pipeline project (see 
Two weeks ago MDN brought you the news that not only has the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) issued final permits for two new injection wells in the state, they also sued the two townships where those permits were granted because the towns had adopted home rule laws that are illegal, in contravention to state law that give power to permit and control injection wells to the DEP only–not to local municipalities (see 
Some 70 years ago Allen Danos Sr., a descendant of south Louisiana farmers, borrowed $2,000 to start a small tugboat company with his brother-in-law. The small business grew and expanded into the oil and gas business, attracting customers like Gulf Oil (which later became Chevron). Over the years Danos has continued to grow. Today it is an oilfield services company (OFS) servicing some of the world’s largest drillers with coating, construction, environmental, fabrication, instrumentation and electrical, production workforce, project management, consulting and more. Danos is still headquartered in Louisiana (with multiple offices in that state), but also with major offices in Texas–and in the Marcellus/Utica region. Danos is expanding in our region, opening a new facility in Martins Ferry, OH. They’ve also decided to close the Canonsburg, PA office and merge it into the Martins Ferry office. Here’s the announcement…
Compressor Engineering Corp. (CECO) popped the cork on completing 50 years of business in 2014 when it discovered it had a huge problem. The company had expanded into the pipeline business–laying pipelines–and the people the company had hired to manage that part of the business were dishonest, according to CECO. Money the company thought it had wasn’t there–but they still had to complete projects already signed and sealed. So the company, which works in Ohio and Pennsylvania, completed the projects, borrowing heavily to do it. They nearly went bankrupt. After exiting the pipeline business in Ohio, they considered shutting down the company. But then a miracle happened. One of CECO’s core businesses is manufacturing pipeline valves. As it happens, pipelines that used to flow gas from the Gulf Coast to the northeast were beginning to reverse and flow Marcellus/Utica gas the other way. That required a special kind of valve–manufactured by CECO. You can probably guess where this story is going…
An MDN reader and friend recently forwarded along an email newsletter from the ALLARM Shale Gas Program. ALLARM stands for Alliance for Aquatic Resource Monitoring. With the rapid growth of the Marcellus industry in Pennsylvania shale drilling in neighboring states, “concerned citizens” wanted ways to collect data on water quality impacts from shale gas activities. As a response to requests from communities, ALLARM developed a volunteer-friendly protocol in 2010 to assess small streams for the early detection and reporting of surface water contamination by shale gas extraction activities. Volunteers (i.e. anti-drillers) monitor water quality throughout the year, including conductivity, barium, strontium, and total dissolved solids–and physical parameters, including stream stage and visual observations prior to, during, and after shale gas well development. Monitors also participate in a quality assurance, quality control program which includes in-person trainings, routine meter calibration, and sample testing via split-sample analysis two times a year. Since they began monitoring local streams, nearly 5,000 observations have been logged. And what have we learned from all of this monitoring? That shale gas drilling is safe for local streams…
The main reason anti-drillers are hellbent on preventing any new drilling, and indeed the use of natural gas, is because it’s a “fossil fuel” and when burned, it creates carbon dioxide (CO2). However, what many non-thinking antis often overlook is that the use of natural gas instead of coal, oil and other fossil fuels leads to LESS carbon dioxide emissions. They blather on about limiting natural gas usage when it is because of natgas that CO2 emissions continue to go DOWN, year after year. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has just published an article highlighting the fact that CO2 emissions in the U.S. went down again in 2016–mostly because of a change from using coal to generate electricity to using natural gas, much of it extracted from the Marcellus/Utica…
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: Natgas prices heading lower post-2017 due to Marcellus/Utica; board turnover at Rice Energy; Dominion Cove Point introduces fuel gas into power block; Columbiana County tax revenues skyrocket thx to Utica; ODNR issues 23 Utica permits; PA Senate Majority leader not necessarily opposed to severance tax; Vermont AG caught refusing FOIA requests from those who don’t share his political views; oilfield jobs coming back; Exxon’s shale oil dilemma; more fake news from Columbia J-School; and more!
On Friday the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) finally, after delaying a decision three times adding an extra eight months, issued a final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the PennEast Pipeline project. We should add, it was a favorable EIS. While FERC found (as they always do) that there would be “some adverse environmental impacts” from the project, those impacts “would be reduced to less than significant levels” with PennEast’s proposed construction plans. This is a major milestone and all but assures the project will now go forward and will be built and go into service sometime in 2018. What potential roadblocks remain? For one, PennEast will need water crossing permits from New Jersey, which they filed for last week (see 
On Feb. 3, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved a long-delayed project–National Fuel Gas Company’s (NFG) Northern Access 2016 pipeline project (see 
The Baker Hughes rig count in the U.S. continued to rocket skyward in March. In January the average number of U.S. rigs was 683. In February, the count zoomed to 744, up 61 rigs in just a month. And in March, the U.S. rig count zoomed to 789, up another 45 rigs in a month. Each active rig translates into hundreds of jobs, both directly working at the rig and indirectly in services delivered to the rig and its workers. It also means more landowners will soon have royalty payments heading in their direction. When rigs are active, life is good. What about rig counts in the Marcellus/Utica? Disappointingly our region’s rig count lost a rig in March. PA lost two rigs, OH gained a rig, and WV stayed even. What does it all mean? It means that this zooming up in rig counts is happening in other locations–primarily in the Permian Basin in Texas. That is, oil rigs rushing to take advantage of an increase crude prices to a sustained $50+/barrel. While we’re happy the rig count is up, we’re not happy more it is not happening in the northeast. But honestly, without pipelines to take away an increase in production, can you blame our drillers? Once there is more takeaway capacity, you’ll see rig counts begin to climb again in our neck of the woods…
In January 2016, Kinder Morgan committed to building the UTOPIA (Utica To Ontario Pipeline Access) pipeline, a 12-inch ethane pipeline that will run ~240 miles across the state of Ohio where it will connect with another pipeline and (eventually) flow ethane all the way to a cracker plant in Canada (see 
There’s some good news and, depending on your perspective, bad news when it comes to severance tax collections from natural gas (and coal) in West Virginia. According to West Virginia Department of Revenue in a report released last week, severance tax collections on oil, gas and coal in the Mountain State exceeded revenue projections by $13 million for the first nine months of the current 2017 fiscal year. The surplus reverses the trend from the previous year when WV lost severance tax money due to the drop in the price of oil and gas. Severance tax revenue, as we’ve pointed out before, floats up and down with the commodity price of oil and gas, unlike impact fee revenues which are much less tied to commodity prices (and one reason why PA drilling flourishes). So WV is seeing higher severance tax revenue–that’s the good news. The “bad” news is that Gov. Jim Justice and the WV Senate plan to cut the severance tax–putting the state back in the position of doing more with less…
School officials at a school district in Delaware County, PA (Philadelphia suburb) were, understandably, concerned about plans that would bring the Mariner East 2 pipeline “near” the school. What happens if, in the extremely unlikely event, the pipeline leaks? Or explodes? What kind of measure are in place to protect the kiddies? Sunoco Logistics personnel (builder of the ME2 project) along with emergency first responders met with Middletown school officials on March 31 in a private meeting–because emergency plans are confidential. Coming out of that meeting, the school district superintendent said he was “extraordinarily satisfied” with the plans and that they kids are safe with ME2 being located nearby. You don’t hear that often, because the media doesn’t typically report it…