Dominion Brunswick NatGas-Fired Plant Begins Electric Generation
The newest member of Dominion’s power generation fleet, the 1,358 megawatt, natural gas-fired Brunswick Power Station (Brunswick County, Virginia) began producing electricity for customers on Monday, April 25. The station produces enough electricity to power 325,000 homes. The power plant will eventually be fed by Marcellus Shale gas coming from Dominion’s own $5 billion, 550-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline. But right now it uses at least some Marcellus/Utica gas coming from the Williams Transco pipeline. Last September Williams completed and put into service the Virginia Southside Expansion project to feed this power plant (see Williams Completes $300M Pipeline Expansion in Virginia on Time). As we pointed out at the time, Williams has upgraded parts of the Transco in New Jersey and Pennsylvania in order to make the Transco bidirectional–pushing Marcellus/Utica gas southward. A plethora of these new plants in the region is an important new source of demand for abundant, clean-burning Marcellus/Utica Shale gas. Here’s the details about the latest clean energy plant from Dominion going online earlier this week…
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CONSOL Energy, once up a time a coal company that is now a natural gas driller, issued its first quarter 2016 update yesterday. CONSOL lost $97.6 million in 1Q16, nearly half of it coming from the Bailey Mine coal complex in southwestern PA. Another $29.3 million of the loss came from commodity derivative investments. And $12.6 million of the loss came from the sale of a gathering pipeline. Revenue was $558.5 million in 1Q16, down 30% from 1Q15. Natural gas revenue dropped 19% in 1Q16 while coal revenue fell 40%. On the positive side of the ledger, CONSOL’s natural gas production hit a new record high of 97.5 billion cubic feet equivalent (Bcfe), and CONSOL’s banks reaffirmed the company’s $2 billion borrowing base. Here’s the update…
MDN is certainly not of this opinion, but we spotted a Reuters article that quotes several natural gas market analysts who say recent announcements of pipeline delays may boost natgas prices–and that’s a good thing. Of course being a good thing is in the eye of the beholder. Pipeline delays in the Marcellus/Utica–like the Constitution Pipeline–mean (a) lack of takeaway means natural gas prices in the Marcellus/Utica region will continue to be the lowest in the country, which means (b) drilling in the Marcellus/Utica will continue to slow and won’t restart any time soon, consequently (c) that will lead to less production, and so (d) less supply in the northeast will mean prices for natural gas, and things that natgas produces (i.e. electricity) will go higher in places like New York City and New England. Whether that’s all good news or bad news depends on your point of view…
Just a few years ago Halliburton, the second largest oilfield services company in the world, employed 600 people in its operation center located in Lycoming County, PA. Today? There are 40 working there. Some 200 of Halliburton’s Lycoming employees were laid off last Friday. Lycoming County is relatively rural with the city of Williamsport as its county seat. Losing 560 jobs, 200 of them in one go, is a huge blow to the area. We grieve with those who have lost their jobs–and with their families who depended on those jobs…
Two weeks ago MDN told you that Rice Energy had offered a “stalking horse” bid of $200 million for the shale assets of now-bankrupt coal company Alpha Natural Resources (see 
How do you prove a negative? You can’t. But that’s the (illegal) demand Penn Township (near Pittsburgh) is placing on Apex Energy. Penn Township’s zoning board has denied Apex permits to begin building a well pad for an eventual nine wells–wells that are fully permitted and permissioned by the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP). The Penn Township ordinance “states that drillers have to prove that the drilling site won’t violate Penn Township citizens’ rights to clean air and water.” Apex provided air and water studies showing possible risks from accidental spills, etc.–along with how they will prevent such things from happening. But the zoning board was tone deaf and rejected it. So what’s next? We’ve seen this movie before. Last year a group of anti-drillers took Apex to court to stop drilling on two wells, with the town backing them. Apex’s lawyers roared that the company was losing $70K per day by not drilling, threatening to sue. The town backed down, and Apex drilled the wells…
In February the natural gas industry in the Lower 48 States made history by hitting record high production (see 
We knew that corporate raider Carl Icahn’s protege, Keith “Mini-Me” Meister, had been meddling in Williams since 2013 (see 
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: Appeals court hears NEXUS pipeline case; Dimock verdict “aberrant result”; why do researchers hide good news about fracking?; PHMSA schedules hearings on LNG regs; Schlumberger’s new tech may be competitive threat; E&P capex spending plunges again; and more!
The partners in the Constitution Pipeline, including Williams and Cabot Oil & Gas, have come roaring back against Gov. Cuomo and his pusillanimous Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) after the DEC lied last Friday in announcing they would not grant stream crossing permits for the pipeline project. Yesterday Cabot, along with Williams, issued a STRONGLY worded rebuttal that says, in part that the DEC’s “stated rationale for the denial includes flagrant misstatements and inaccurate allegations, and appears to be driven more by New York State politics than by environmental science.” Flagrant misstatements is another way of saying the DEC lied, which is exactly what we said yesterday (see 
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s action to stop progress on the Constitution Pipeline has very real, tangible negative effects on jobs in Upstate New York. This is the true story of two large regional employers in New York’s Southern Tier that would benefit from cheap, abundant, and clean-burning Marcellus Shale gas from northeastern Pennsylvania. Wait. You believed the anti’s lie that all of the gas traveling through the Constitution would be transported to other areas, with much of it exported, and would not in any way benefit local residents? Yeah, that’s a lie. Another 100% lie pedaled by irrational fossil fuel haters. As the Constitution crosses places like Broome, Chenango and Delaware counties in the Southern Tier of New York State (i.e. “Upstate”), the pipeline will be tapped in several locations by Leatherstocking Gas Co.–a small but important local utility company. Leatherstocking will then provide gas to area communities and to two large businesses. One of those businesses is the Amphenol Aerospace plant in Sidney, NY. Amphenol is the largest employer in Delaware County with some 1,100 employees. Amphenol needs cheap Marcellus Shale gas from the Constitution to stay competitive and to keep the plant open. The second business is located in the small Chenango County village of Greene–Raymond Corporation. You know those bright red-colored forklifts you see in warehouses and factories? They’re all built at Raymond, which ships them worldwide. The facility is now owned by Toyota. Raymond also needs natural gas from the Constitution Pipeline. With over 
The Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), charged with overseeing potential impacts on the Delaware River and the various tributaries that feed it, has once again stepped outside of its legal bounds. The PennEast Pipeline is a $1 billion, 118-mile pipeline from Luzerne County, PA to Mercer County, NJ–part of it through the Delaware River Basin area. In 2014 the DRBC tried to tell PennEast and its sponsors that the pipeline will need their approval before it can be built (see 
In what appears to be an ongoing strategy/trend among exploration and production companies (i.e. drillers), Rex Energy is the latest driller to convert outstanding debt in the form of notes (IOUs) into equity, or stock ownership. Earlier this year Rex, a small Marcellus/Utica driller headquartered in State College, PA, offered to refinance its IOUs so the notes expire later, meaning Rex wouldn’t have to cough up cash sooner to pay off the debt (see 