Marcellus & Utica Shale Story Links: Fri, Aug 12, 2016
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: Pipeline takeaway capacity in the Marcellus/Utica; a few people show up to protest NEXUS pipeline in OH; Mariner East 2 pipeline hearing draws a big crowd; energy industry driving higher business bankruptcies in Pittsburgh; Trump pledges an energy “revolution”; $245 billion coming in o&g investments; and more!
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We have been making the point, loudly, for the past year, that IF New York State blocks the Constitution Pipeline, as they have now done, the state runs the very real risk of having the federal government strip away their right to make such decisions about any federally-approved pipeline project. We’ve previously warned that New York is in grave danger of losing their power by attempting to block the Constitution. We wrote the following in October 2015: When MDN editor Jim Willis attended the Shale Insight conference in Philadelphia in September, he listened to a panel discussion of midstream (pipeline) experts, including a former FERC commissioner. He got to ask a question and the question, roughly, was this: “The NY DEC is currently holding up the FERC-approved Constitution Pipeline. What if the DEC refuses to issue the necessary permits? What happens next?” The answer Jim got was, “It depends.” The bottom line seems to be that it’s likely FERC (and Williams) will need to take the DEC to court. The DEC frankly has no legal right to prevent a federally approved project from being built. That’s the bottom line. It may take a court to force the DEC (and Gov. Cuomo) to act, but in this matter the law is on our side. This is not a question of “if,” it is a question of “when” the pipeline will get built (see 
Time to do a happy dance. THE (arrogant) Delaware Riverkeeper has lost yet another court case–one of many such cases they continuously file to stop any fossil fuel-related project in the northeast. In March MDN told you that THE Delaware Riverkeeper had sued the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, challenging their decision to approve the Williams Transco Pipeline’s Leidy Southeast Expansion from PA to New York City (see 
A landowner couple in Bradford County, PA, Edward and Kathleen Ostroski, filed a royalty lawsuit against Chesapeake Energy claiming Chesapeake was screwing them out of money by conducting “creative” accounting and deducting expenses that shouldn’t be deducted. Seems like there’s hardly a state where Chessy drills where someone has not filed a similar lawsuit against the company. However, in the Ostroski case, the couple claimed (or rather, their lawyers claimed) the case should be a class action. That there are in fact some 2,000 other landowners similarly affected by Chesapeake’s actions. A U.S. Middle District judge ruled on Monday that the Ostroskis may pursue their case–but only for themselves. There will be no class action. If other landowners feel cheated, they will have to bring their own lawsuits against the company…
WellDog (what a great name!) announced on Monday the launch of a new service called Shale SweetSpotter (another great name!). Clever marketing folks at WellDog, we’ll grant them that. Shale SweetSpotter is “the first commercial reservoir-evaluation analysis technology specific to unconventional natural gas.” In English please! “We’ve just developed a way to tell drillers where oil and gas is locked away in shale layers in the acreage they’ve leased.” Apparently it’s pretty darned good. WellDog partnered up with Shell to test their service in the Marcellus and the field trials were declared “successful”…
Investment firm SailingStone Capital Partners recently purchased enough stock that the firm now owns 11% of Range Resources. That’s more than enough to exert great power and control. And so they have. That 11% stake in the company has “encouraged” (forced?) Range to grant SailingStone a seat on the board of directors. We were, at first, concerned. Is this yet another corporate raider out to force a company (Range) to layoff employees and sell assets in a bid to force the stock price higher so they can dump it and make a big profit? We don’t think so. We find no evidence that SailingStone is anything other than an investor with a lot of money who likes what they see in Range. Below is the official announcement, followed by commentary on SailingStone’s motivation for buying up Range stock…
Last week MDN highlighted and shared with you a top notch new report just issued by the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection–the PA Oil and Gas Annual Report for 2015 (see 
Earlier this week Williams announced a deal to sell its Canadian businesses and assets to Inter Pipeline for $1 billion. Williams is wasting no time following the aborted merger attempt by Energy Transfer Equity to buy Williams. Following that aborted attempt, nearly half of the Williams board quit because they couldn’t get their grubby hands on big piles of money (see 
In June MDN told you about another sham “study” on the way from an anti-drilling “researcher” from Yale University, funded by Big Green groups (see 
Ohio Gov. John “foreigner hunter” Kasich is finally getting back to work after it has sunk in he’s not going to be the Republican Party’s nominee for president. One of the first things up on the agenda for Kasich: Issue executive orders. On August 9th Kasich issued Executive Order (i.e. Edict) 2016-04K which forces companies in the oil and gas industry to immediately report o&g emergencies to the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources’ (ODNR) Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management. The ODNR will then figure out who else needs to get notified and who should respond. Kasich’s Edict will expire in four months and is a band aid solution until the ODNR can adopt a formal, final rule…
Every now and again MDN editor Jim Willis emerges from his writing cave in Binghamton, NY to travel. Such is the case this week. Normally you (hopefully) wouldn’t know that Jim is on the road as he does his best to keep the news coming. Today, however, is different. There will be no new stories posted today. For the past two days Jim attended the excellent “
Methanol plants convert natural gas into methanol, used as a chemical feedstock (or raw material) to create other things, like gasoline, antifreeze and more. More commonly you may call it a gas-to-liquids (GTL) plant. Methanol plants have the capacity to create a big demand for natural gas and sop up some of the oversupply we have in the Marcellus/Utica. In May we told you about Primus Green Energy’s plan to build a 160 metric tons per day (MT/day) methanol plant for Tauber Oil somewhere in the Marcellus (see 
Guess who’s back with a case now before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court? Yep, the odious nutters from Big Green Groups PennFuture, THE (arrogant) Delaware Riverkeeper, and the Peters Township gang. You may recall we reported last September of the humiliating defeat suffered by these groups in the “Gorsline” case (see 