4 Pipelines Critical to Future of PA’s Marcellus Industry
Gene Barr is the president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry. The PA Chamber is a big supporter of the Marcellus industry. Writing a column that appears in a recent edition of the York Dispatch, Barr gives full-throated support to three pipelines “critical” to PA’s future: Williams’ Atlantic Sunrise; Sunoco Logistics’ Mariner East 2; and UGI Energy Services’ PennEast. We really liked Barr’s column (read it below). However, we would add a fourth pipeline to his list of critically important pipelines for PA drillers: the Williams Constitution Pipeline. While the three projects Barr names will be mostly built in PA, the Constitution Pipeline will be mostly built in New York State. We suppose that’s all we have to say for you to know why that project is in trouble. At any rate, here’s the reasons Barr offers for supporting the three pipelines he mentions in his column, reasons that equally apply to the much-needed Constitution Pipeline too…
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The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: EIA says Marcellus/Utica production will increase for decades; NOVA’s plan to flow more Marcellus/Utica ethane to Canada; NY AG Schneiderman continues to get trapped in his own ExxonKnew lies; poetic justice for Constitution Pipeline; CONSOL starts drilling again in the Utica; Utica Shale Academy enters third year; DEP chief runs around checking “backyards”; natgas heading to $3 again, going higher?; the “shale-band” test; and more!
Marcellus Drilling News doesn’t take a lot of vacation, but we try to take at least a few days in the summer and near the Christmas holiday. MDN will be off for the next two days–Tuesday and Wednesday. We’ll return on Thursday with all the Marcellus/Utica news that’s fit to print!
On Friday MDN reported that Enterprise Products Partners, a huge midstream company, wants to buy Williams (see 
Last month MDN brought you the news that UK-based Velocys, a company that builds gas-to-liquids (GTL) plants has, for now, put a previously planned GTL plant project in Ashtabula, OH on hold (see 
How low can you go, and still make money? That’s the question TransCanada is testing in a bid to compete with cheap Marcellus/Utica natural gas that is heading to Canada via new pipelines, including Energy Transfer’s Rover and Spectra Energy’s NEXUS pipelines. Last month MDN reported that TransCanada has a plan to use existing pipelines from Western Canada to Eastern Canada–from Alberta to Toronto–to ship more natural gas from west to east (see 
The ace reporters and analysts at Natural Gas Intelligence (NGI) recently came through yet another quarterly earnings season with their sanity mostly intact. 😉 MDN editor Jim Willis works with NGI expert analyst Patrick Rau on occasion. Pat is a terrific guy and one of the sharpest energy analysts Jim has had the pleasure of meeting. Pat sat through dozens of quarterly earnings calls for drillers, oilfield services companies and more over the past month or so. What did Pat learn from all those calls? Are there trends emerging? That was the upshot of an article written by NGI reporter Leticia Gonzales last week. It’s a must-read article (see 
Ratings agency giant Fitch Ratings maintains and periodically issues a “Loans of Concern” list. It is a list of companies Fitch considers to have “material, near-term default risks.” That is, the companies will likely default on repaying loans, which may lead to nastier things, like a bankruptcy. As of last week when Fitch issued the list, there were 53 companies on it. Of those 53 companies, some 49% of them (26 in all) are energy companies. You must be a Fitch subscriber in order to see the full report/list of companies. Alas, we are not. However, Argus got a look and lists a few of the names in the list. One of those names stood out for us: American Energy-Marcellus, which is one of the American Energy subsidiary companies founded by former Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon. American Energy’s Marcellus/Utica division later changed its name to Ascent Resources in June 2015 (see 
In August 2015, MDN told you that one of the biggest drillers in the Marcellus/Utica, Antero Resources, floated the idea of building a $275 million state-of-the-art frack wastewater treatment plant in Doddridge County, WV (see 
Pennsylvania, like all states, is on a mission to combat the fairy tale of man-made global warming by reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions (the stuff you exhale with every breath), and by reducing methane (i.e. natural gas) that escapes into the atmosphere. Global warmists have talked themselves into the belief that a little methane leaking here and there is worse than a supernova. Whatever. The Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) in PA is tasked with developing a plan to reduce CO2 and methane emissions in the Keystone State. They’ve just released a final version of their 2015 Climate Change Action Plan Update (full copy below). Among the suggestions from the brainiacs at the DEP is dressing up trucks in skirts (don’t ask)…
A quick tutorial on the U.S. electric grid system. At a very basic level, the electric grid in our country is made up of RTOs (regional transmission organizations) and ISOs (independent system operators). Each RTO or ISO covers a single state (ISO) or multiple states (RTO). Electric generation is shifted around to meet demands in each region, overseen by whichever regional authority is in charge. For much of the Marcellus/Utica region, the electric organization in charge is the RTO called PJM (lots of acronyms!) PJM Interconnection covers all or parts of Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia. There has been a flurry of new natgas-fired electric plants announced over the past six months or so. The question being asked by industry analysts and bankers (who back such projects) is this: Are we building too many new electric plants, particularly in the Marcellus/Utica?…
Events related to drilling in the Marcellus and Utica Shale, primarily pro-drilling.
Just when you thought things had finally settled down with midstream giant Williams, a new rumor is making the rounds. Brief history: Energy Transfer Equity’s (ETE) billionaire CEO Kelsy Warren propositioned Williams for over six months before going public with his overtures (see