Spectra Admits Detecting Corrision in Exploded TETCO Pipe 4 Yrs Ago
On April 29, Spectra Energy’s Texas Eastern Transmission (TETCO) “Delmont Line 27” pipeline exploded in Westmoreland County, PA, seriously injuring one resident who still cannot walk after being burned over much of his body (see Texas Eastern Pipeline Explodes near Pittsburgh, Antis Celebrate). The reason for the explosion and fire was corrosion on welds covered with a particular kind of pipe tape no longer in use (see Spectra Says PA Pipeline Explosion “Unacceptable,” Blames Pipe Tape). Brace yourself for news that may make you angry: An investigation four years ago (in 2012) discovered corrosion in the very area where the pipe would eventually explode. Spectra says they documented the corrosion, but pipe corrosion happens over time–this is nothing new–and the thing to do is to monitor it. Spectra planned to reexamine the welds and the corrosion again in 2019, per the normal and accepted safety schedule. According to Spectra, until now it has been observed that corrosion of pipes happens at a rate of no more than 2-3% per year. In the case of the exploding TETCO pipeline, the corrosion rate was vastly accelerated, more like 10-15% per year since the last examination. What made it speed up?…
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The Natural Gas Supply Association (NGSA) has gone into action to support two currently-stalled pipeline projects in the People’s Republic of New York, where Chairman Cuomo rules. Yesterday the NGSA filed a brief in federal court to respond to an effort by the rogues gallery of environmental extremist groups (including Catskill Mountainkeeper, Riverkeeper, Sierra Clubbers and other ne’er–do–wells) to stop the Constitution Pipeline from getting built. The Constitution is a $683 million, 124-mile pipeline from Susquehanna County, PA to Schoharie County, NY carrying Marcellus gas. The enviro groups sued in federal court to challenge the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) environmental review of the Constitution. If the wackos can get FERC’s review cast aside, they can slow the project to the point where they can (hopefully for them) kill it. That’s the game plan. NGSA is pushing back, legally. Also this week the NGSA asked the NY State Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to get off its rear-end and approve air permits for Dominion’s New Market Project–a fairly dull $159 million capacity upgrade to an existing natural gas pipeline which runs across upstate New York from the PA line, west of Horseheads, and then northeasterly to the state’s Capital Region. Once again the DEC is doing their master’s bidding by refusing to grant necessary air permits for the New Market Project to proceed…
Patterson-UTI Energy is a company we watch as a proxy for when/if the drop in rig counts for the Marcellus/Utica will turn around (see 
By our reckoning, the 2016 Shale Insight event being held in Pittsburgh next week (Sept. 21-22) will be MDN editor Jim Willis’ fifth consecutive Shale Insight event. In past years Jim has hung out at the NGI (Natural Gas Intelligence) booth. This year Jim and Marcellus Drilling News will have their own booth: #208 (near the entrance). Jim invites MDN readers who are attending to stop by and say hello! Jim will bribe passersby with free candy, so stop by and grab a piece! What’s that? You aren’t (yet) registered to attend Shale Insight? Let’s get that rectified right now. There are many reasons to attend, including keynote addresses by Harold Hamm, CEO of Continental Resources, and a closing keynote by none other than The Donald (as in Trump). Here’s a rundown of what’s happening next week at Shale Insight…
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: Utica rigs down by 1; Chinese invade PA next week; natgas industry must be proactive with messaging, or else; sizing the shale footprint; big oil’s new focus – natgas; pulling mythical GHG from natgas streams; and more!
Higher prices for Rex Energy’s Marcellus/Utica gas are on the way. Why? Because the company will, beginning in November, begin to ship some of its gas out of the northeast–to the Midwest and Gulf Coast, where it can get higher prices. So says Rex in an update issued yesterday. Rex issued an operational update yesterday to discuss recent results and the next round of drilling they plan to do–4 more wells on the Vaughn pad in Carroll County, OH–and the news that a new high pressure gathering system is on the way in Butler County, PA. Included in the update is the good news that Rex will begin to ship 100 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of natgas to the Gulf Coast and 30 MMcf/d to the Midwest, starting in November, via two different pipelines. Which pipelines?…
Yesterday MDN’s favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), issued our favorite monthly report–the Drilling Productivity Report (DPR). The DPR is the EIA’s best guess, based on expert data crunchers, as to how much each of the U.S.’s seven major shale plays will produce for both oil and natural gas in the coming month. The September marks a new milestone–the EIA has added a new tab of information for Drilled but UnCompleted wells, called DUCs in the business. Beginning with this month’s report, the EIA now includes estimates for how many DUCs there are, by shale play. The ongoing meme for sometime has been that the DUC inventory has been dwindling, with drillers not willing to drill new wells given the low price of oil and gas. To keep things moving (and revenue coming in the door) drillers have taken to completing wells they drilled but never finished, or “completed” as it’s called in the business. Completing a well includes fracking it and hooking it up to production. As DUCs go down, and as new wells are not begun, it portends a coming decrease in supply and therefore a coming rise in prices. That’s what drillers, midstreamers, gas traders and others watch for. So this new section in the monthly DPR will be eagerly watched. So what does the September DPR show for predicted production in the Marcellus and Utica?…
Last week the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) doled out a total of $13 million in grants for twelve multi-year research projects. The aim of the projects is to develop ways to mitigate methane emissions from natural gas pipelines and storage infrastructure, ways that don’t break the bank. Two of the twelve projects will be run in Pittsburgh. PPG Industries, the Gas Technology Institute and RTI International received a combined $876,639 to study remote monitoring of natural gas pipelines. The University of Pittsburgh and Corning together got a whopping $1.2 million to develop an advanced distributed optical fiber technology for natural gas infrastructure monitoring. Here’s the lowdown from the DOE…
Channeling our inner Joan Rivers: Can we talk? It hurts when a good friend publicly criticizes you. It feels like you’ve been stabbed in the back. Perhaps a case of public criticism is one of the reasons for the developing rancor (we call it a civil war) between landowners and the Marcellus industry in Pennsylvania. Landowners are upset that their royalty checks are, in some cases, pennies–as in less than one dollar. Drillers claim that super low prices they receive for the gas are to blame–that nobody is making money right now. Landowners say that drillers (e.g. Chesapeake Energy) are deducting post-production costs that they shouldn’t be allowed to deduct, resulting in worthless royalty checks. For a number of years landowners in Pennsylvania have supported legislation to force drillers to pay a minimum 12.5% royalty, which is stipulated under a 1979 law. Drillers say post-production costs are written into many contracts and if it’s there, landowners must live by the contract. It’s turning into a mess. We’ve covered it extensively (
Two Democrat-run anti-fossil fuel organizations–the Southern Environmental Law Center and Appalachian Mountain Advocates–pooled their donated money together and went out to find a consulting firm with the veneer of respectability that could be bought off to produce a faux “report” slamming two much-needed pipelines. They found an easy mark in Synapse Energy Economics, headquartered in ultra-liberal Massachusetts. The “report” Synapse produced says neither Dominion’s $5 billion, 594-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (a natural gas pipeline that will stretch from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina), nor EQT’s $3.5 billion, 301-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County, VA) are needed. The sham report, titled “Are the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the Mountain Valley Pipeline Necessary?” (full copy below) is getting picked up by lazy (or propagandist) mainstream news organizations and reported as real news. It’s nothing of the sort. It’s a joke…
Although there’s less new drilling for oil and gas (at least there’s less if you believe press reports), and although DUCs (drilled but uncompleted wells) are decreasing, overall production in the lower 48 states is actually increasing. IHS Markit says natgas production in August increased month over month for the second month in a row–something that hasn’t happened in a year. Markit says the main reason is an increase in production in the northeast–specifically an increase in production in the Utica Shale. However, there were also increases in other plays. Here’s the full update…
Using natural gas may literally save your life. Researchers from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) recently conducted research using the country of Turkey because that country has made a big shift over the past couple of decades, moving away from other forms of energy and to natural gas. The researchers looked at mortality rates for adults and the elderly and found that mortality rates for both groups dropped, dramatically, over that period. Why? How? Good questions. Because the air is now cleaner thanks to an increase in natgas use, there has been a decrease in pollution linked and a correlating decrease in lung and heart disease deaths among adults and the elderly. It’s in the report. Of course people living longer because of natural gas isn’t good news for anti-fossil fuel nutters…
Macquarie Infrastructure has filed an application to build a new natural gas-fired electric generating plant in Chesapeake, Virginia, the state’s third most populous city, located near Norfolk. The facility, called Matex Virginia Power, would produce 1,400 megawatts of electricity by using three gas combustion turbines and one steam turbine. It’s not (yet) known how the new plant will get its gas, although Dominion’s planned $5 billion, 550-mile long Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) project is scheduled to have a branch going to Chesapeake. It’s not much of a stretch to think that ACP will feed this new plant, bringing Marcellus/Utica gas from the north to the plant. Here’s the good news, followed by reaction from environmental Nazis that oppose it…