Support to Regulate Unregulated Gathering Lines in PA Grows
Last month MDN wrote a post outlining an initiative to begin regulating small, low-pressure gathering pipelines–something not now done (see PIOGA Opposes Bill to Regulate Unregulated PA Gathering Pipelines). Media articles about this issue misstate and obfuscate, purposely, what is happening. Senate Bill (SB) 1235 would “enhance” the existing 811 law in PA. (811 is the number you call before you dig, to be sure there are no buried pipelines or electric lines or other underground structures.) One of the “enhancements” in SB 1235 is that it removes an exclusion for low-pressure natural gas gathering pipelines from being required to be part of the 811 system. Many owners of excluded lines voluntarily participate in the programs. The bill would also transfer regulatory enforcement power over the lines from the Department of Labor to the Public Utility Commission. The Pennsylvania Independent Oil & Gas Association (PIOGA) pushed back against the removal of the exclusion for conventional production lines and rural (“Class 1” under federal law) gathering lines. PIOGA is not against knowing where pipeline are buried and protecting PA citizens–they ARE against onerous new regulations on those pipelines, which would have happened under the proposed SB 1235. PIOGA instead pushed for another year to sort out the issue, instead of passing SB 1235 as/is and throwing the conventional oil and gas industry into regulatory chaos. PIOGA won (see PA Bill to Regulate Unregulated Gathering Pipelines Fails). However, the oil and gas industry is divided on the issue. Several industry reps participated in a pipeline safety hearing yesterday at the State Capitol in Harrisburg–and voiced their support for the provisions in the defeated SB 1235…
Read More “Support to Regulate Unregulated Gathering Lines in PA Grows”
Companies in the oil and gas sector often split the ownership of assets into different companies (on paper) for various reasons: tax purposes…to attract investment…to give us laypeople headaches. CONE Midstream, a joint venture between CONSOL Energy and Noble Energy (CO from CONSOL and NE from Noble Energy) was formed in summer 2014 (see 
Somehow or other MDN wound up on the distribution list for Deutsche Bank’s Equity Research (North America) updates. Which we like! Germany-based Deutsche Bank (DB) is the world’s 11th largest bank. They have some sharp analysts who keep tabs on multiple industries, one of those industries being oil and gas. Given the recent happenings with the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), and the happenings with the Ohio Rover pipeline–both pipelines projects of Energy Transfer Equity–DB decided to do a quick update on both projects, giving us the investor/trader view of what will happen over the next 2-3 months. We found the update interesting and think you will too…
One of the most important choices before President-elect Trump is who he will select to run the rogue, out-of-control Environmental Protection Agency. Who will Trump pick to, as he calls it, “drain the swamp”? It’s an important choice. We need someone who will dismantle the wild, lawbreaking regulations of an agency operating unchecked for the past eight years. If you believe Reuters (and we’re not sure we do), Trump is looking at two people to head the EPA. Both would, it seems to us, do a good job of draining the EPA swamp…
MDN’s favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, has just published a brief article denoting a milestone: the amount of natural gas in storage has reached a new, record high of 4.017 trillion cubic feet (Tcf). Our country does not use as much natural gas as we produce during the months of April through October–which is the time when we store the extra gas in (mostly) underground salt caverns. From November to March, when it’s cold, we withdraw gas from storage because we’re using more than we produce. Over the past few years we have produced, and stored, far more gas than we can use–leading to a crash in natgas prices. A buildup in storage is a signal to the market that once again we have too much supply and not enough demand. Which furthermore is a signal that the recent rise in prices for natgas (over $3/Mcf) isn’t likely to last. In fact, the price of gas over the past month has gone from $3.25/Mcf to (today) $2.75/Mcf–a $0.50 drop. Storage is a big part of the reason why. Here’s what the EIA had to say…
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: A first look at Shell’s ethane cracker site; USGS finds biggest onshore oil find ever in West Texas; America on track to export record volume of shale gas this month; still too early to feel effects of US LNG exports; will Trump slow down coal-to-gas switching?; financial markets fall in love with The Donald; and more!
Yesterday MDN told you that a war of words has broken out between the Obama U.S. Army Corps of Politicized Engineers and Energy Transfer Equity (ETE) over the Dakota Access Pipeline (see 
You may recall that TransCanada, one of Canada’s leading midstream/pipeline companies, cooked up a deal to pipe natural gas from Canada’s West Coast to the East Coast in order to fend off cheap supplies of Marcellus/Utica gas that will flow into Canada when/if the NEXUS and Rover pipelines get built (see 
On Monday Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf announced PA taxpayers are forking over $5 million to Steamfitters Local 449 union for use in their Butler Training Facility project. The union training facility trains welders. The Shell ethane cracker plant, when it gets built, will need a LOT of welders. Right now the facility graduates 170 new welders a year. With the grant money, they will expand it to train and graduate 270 welders a year…
The New Jersey Division of the Rate Counsel (NJDRC) is a state government agency responsible for representing the interests of residents, businesses and other rate payers in dealing with regulated public utilities and insurance firms. In September the NJDRC filed a so-called analysis with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) slamming the need and cost recovery plan for the PennEast Pipeline–a $1 billion, 118-mile, primarily 36-inch pipeline that will get built from Dallas (Luzerne County), PA to Transco’s pipeline interconnection near Pennington (Mercer County), NJ. PennEast responded to the NJDRC’s analysis with an independent report written by Concentric Energy Advisors, rippping to shreds the arguments put forward by NJDRC (see 
PECO, formerly known as the Philadelphia Electric Company, is the largest combined electric/natural gas utility company in Pennsylvania. PECO serves 1.6 million electric customers and about a half million natural gas customers. In October 2015 the state Public Utility Commission approved a PECO plan to grow their natgas customer base by approving a plan that allows new natgas customers to spread the cost of hooking up to the gas line over 20 years (see 
We have to state up front that we are fans of Google’s services. We love the Chrome browser and Chrome OS, Android (for phones), Gmail for email, Google Drive…the list goes on and on. But at the same time, we detest the far-left, in-bed-with-Big-Green-groups leadership of Google. And we don’t like some of their initiatives–including their creepy snooping into every aspect of our lives. We spotted a story about Google’s roaming Street View cars that ride along our roads snapping pictures. Snapping pics isn’t enough for Googlers. In Pittsburgh they’ve added methane sniffers to help detect elevated levels of (they say) global warming causing methane escaping into the atmosphere, like a fugitive. Supposedly the methane sniffers will help People’s Natural Gas (which we suspect was bullied by Google) to identify where People’s 50 year-old natgas pipeline network is experiencing leaks. Look, we’re all for finding and fixing gas leaks–don’t get us wrong. But the motivation here is not the safety of the residents of Pittsburgh. It’s to bow down and worship at the altar of the Global Warming gods. Quick! There goes the Google car–turn off the gas grill…it might mistake your backyard barbecue for a gas leak! All joking aside, what will Google strap onto those cars next? Maybe they’ll snap a pic of a fat customer walking into McDonalds and send it to his friends to shame him. Or maybe they’ll snap a pic of (gasp) someone walking into a Donald Trump campaign office–sending it to that person’s boss. Yeah, that’ll fix ’em. It was no surprise to learn that PA Gov. Wolf also butted in on the Google methane sniffing action, along with the radical anti-drilling Environmental Defense Fund and PA Dept. of Environmental Protection…
The West Virginia Oil & Natural Gas Association (WVONGA) has hired Anne C. Blankenship, an attorney with Babst Calland, to serve as executive director. She has some big shoes to fill following the sudden death of WVONGA’s former director Corky DeMarco (see 
Undoing the damage caused by the Obama Administration over the past eight years is going to take time. When President Trump assumes office on January 20, 2017 (can’t come soon enough!), he will put in motion regulatory relief and tax policies that will create new jobs for the 94 million Americans now out of work (a staggering number that doesn’t get reported by biased mainstream media). However, those policies will take time to implement. If jobs are the #1 priority for Donald Trump, how can he deliver relief in the short term, starting on Day One? According to the retired president of the Association of Washington (State) Business, Don Brunell, Trump should turn to fossil fuels. Brunell suggests a quick solution to more jobs: more fracking…