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CONSOL Fined $184K for Sloppy Pipeline Construction
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has fined two CONSOL Energy subsidiaries, CNX Gas (the drilling division) and CONE Midstream (co-owned by CONSOL and Noble Energy) for coloring outside the lines when they built some gathering pipelines in four western Pennsylvania counties. CNX was fined $139,000 and CONE was fined $45,000 for veering off the path officially filed with the DEP. According to DEP spokesman John Poister, the numskulls didn’t pay attention and were sloppy (our words, his sentiment). Here’s the official announcement from the DEP, along with comments from Poister…
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Last week MDN reported on the decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Court to deny utility companies operating in the state to pass along potential costs of a new natural gas pipeline to electric rate payers–the people who would most benefit from such a pipeline (see 
We suppose we should have known, but we didn’t. We didn’t know that Pennsylvania has a Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED). In fact, the DCED has its own cabinet-level Secretary–Dennis Davin–appointed by Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf in January 2015 when Wolf assumed office. Davin has stayed largely under the radar–until now. Wolf has sent Davin out on a road show to promote the forthcoming Shell ethane cracker plant. Davin is conducting roundtable discussions in various communities around PA to generate ideas on how local businesses can benefit from the cracker. So far he’s visited Beaver County (where the cracker will be built), Lawrence County and Washington County. The DCED is flooding the airways with press releases about Davin’s cracker road show…
In June MDN reported the news that Rex Energy had cut a deal to sell its Illinois Basin acreage for $40 million to Campbell Development Group (see 
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…
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