The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: Gas going from East to West; title attorneys face layoffs from low gas prices; WNY residents oppose compressor station; Ohio passes 1K producing Utica wells; PA town beats back challenge to Sunoco pipeline; antis threaten lawsuit against WV EPA; and more!
Read More “Marcellus & Utica Shale Story Links: Thu, Sep 17, 2015”
Did Chesapeake Energy take Williams to the cleaners? Chesapeake Energy has just cut a deal with Williams to shave 25 cents per Mcf off their natural gas gathering fees in the Utica Shale (see this Shale Daily story: Chesapeake Strikes Sweeter Haynesville, Utica Gathering Deals With Williams). In return for the price cut from Williams, Chesapeake agreed to bring more wells online and increase the volume of the gas they send through Williams’ pipes. But what’s this? Credible rumors are swirling that Chesapeake, after winning concessions from Williams, is now looking to dump their dry gas (not wet gas) Utica Shale assets in an effort to raise $2 BILLION. Sure looks to us like Chessy just enhanced the value of their assets in the Utica as a way to turn around and sell it…
Read More “Credible Rumor: Chesapeake Shopping Utica Dry Gas Assets for $2B”
Once again Ohio Republicans are starting to lose their cool and are considering a dalliance with a high Utica Shale severance tax proposed by RINO Gov. John Kasich (who’s running for president, but then nobody knows since he’s at 0% in the polls). Perhaps state Republicans think by giving Kasich what he wants in a high severance tax it will enhance his presidential prospects with conservatives? (NOT!) Whatever the reason, Ohio’s left-leaning PBS outlet at Kent State is reporting legislators are meeting “behind closed doors” with members of the oil and gas industry to beg and plead for an increase in the severance tax…
Read More “Ohio Legislators Continue Dalliance with Kasich Severance Tax”
Kinder Morgan announced yesterday they are extending the current binding open season for the proposed Utica Marcellus Texas Pipeline (UMTP) project. Which is not a very good sign in our humble opinion. Before it was called the UMTP, Kinder Morgan’s proposed NGL pipeline, that will run from the Marcellus/Utica all the way to the Gulf Coast, was called the Y-Grade Pipeline and had its first binding open season at the end of 2013 (see Kinder Morgan/MarkWest Proposed NGL Pipeline Gets a Nickname, Map). Then in June of this year, with no mention of the first open season, Kinder ran a second binding open season for the pipeline (see KM’s SECOND Binding Open Season for Utica/Marcellus NGL Pipeline). Now they’re “extending” it–which in our book equals the third open season. Which means they aren’t getting enough customers to sign up to use it…
Read More “KM’s THIRD Binding Open Season for Utica/Marcellus NGL Pipeline”
The global warming/control-every-single-aspect-of-your-life-for-you nutters are on a rampage. Some 400 “organizations” (mostly individuals) have sent a letter to their Dear Leader, Barack H. Obama, asking the Dear Leader to keep all fossil fuels in the ground. Sensing that their time grows short while Dear Leader is still in office, the nutjobs, wackos and ne’er do wells in the most extreme part of the environmental movement (which is pretty much all of it) are pressing their advantage while they have a sympathetic ear in the White House. The letter, delivered yesterday (a copy is embedded below) predictably uses man-made global warming as the excuse to choke off all further fossil fuel extraction on U.S. owned or controlled land. In good liberal fashion they’ve created a catchy phrase for their effort: “Keep it in the ground.” They’re starting with federally controlled land first–then they’ll go after private land next. Below is the press release from EARTHWORKS, one of the worst of the worst of these lunatic organizations…
Read More “Anti-Fossil Fuel Zealots Press Obama to Ban Drilling on Fed Lands”
Love it, love it, love it! What would it actually be like without fossil fuels in our lives? We hear it all the time–global warming nutters “demanding” we end the use of fossil fuels. Read today’s related story about a group of 400 people who wrote to Obama demanding that he “keep it [fossil fuels] in the ground.” The Western Energy Alliance (WEA) is calling their bluff. The WEA is challenging those who profess to want to end the use of fossil fuels to participate in a Fossil Fuel Free Challenge for five days–so they can see for themselves just what life would be like without the miracle of fossil fuels. The dirty little secret is, they can’t do it, because they can’t live without fossil fuels in their lives. It’s impossible. This is a brilliant move on the part of the WEA–calling the bluff of those agitating for an end to fossil fuels–exposing the lie that it’s even possible…
Read More “WEA Challenges Antis to Live Without Fossil Fuels for 5 Days”
It appears that fossil fuel hate group FANG–Fighting Against Natural Gas–has struck again in Rhode Island. We told you in August about two FANG radicals who used PVC pipe (made from fossil fuels) and tar to stick themselves to each other and to a fence at a site where a natural gas compressor station is being built (see FANG Protesters Chain Themselves to RI Compressor Station Gate). Three more protesters have just been arrested doing the same thing. The news account doesn’t say it’s FANG protesters–but it’s the same compressor station and the same MO (using PVC pipe), so we’re 99.999% sure its nutters from the same loony tunes organization who are responsible…
Read More “FANG Protesters Strike RI Compressor Station Again, 3 Arrested”
FlexEnergy, a New Hampshire-based manufacturer of gas turbines, has just sold three of their gas turbines to Pennsylvania General Energy to power a remote compressor facility in the Marcellus Shale region. The PGE compressor station will be located in a middle of nowhere area without the benefit of an electric line–hence the FlexEnergy gas-powered compressors…
Read More “NH Co. Sells 3 Gas-Powered Turbines for Remote Marcellus Compressor”
If this doesn’t beat all: New York has banned fracking as potentially unsafe to the health and welfare of its citizens–but its citizens, particularly in New York City, are benefiting from fracked shale gas (from Pennsylvania) in a huge way. Electricity prices for the five boroughs of NYC have plummeted because of the abundant, cheap and clean-burning natural gas from PA’s Marcellus Shale, used in electric generating plants that serve Gotham. In fact, NYC’s electric rates are now at parity or falling below the electric rates in Washington, DC!…
Read More “NYC Residents Benefit Big from Marcellus-generated Electricity”
Columbia Gas Transmission is a huge, 12,000-mile pipeline system stretching from New York State to Ohio to Virginia–and all states in between. Back in 2012, then-owner of Columbia Gas Transmission, NiSource, announced a plan to invest $4 billion to upgrade the entire 12K-mile system (see NiSource Announces $4B Upgrade Plan for Interstate Pipelines). Just a few months ago Columbia was split off into its own company (see NiSource/Columbia Pipeline Divorce is Final). Although it now stands on its own, Columbia continues its $4B upgrade plan. The latest portion of the pipeline to win upgrade approval from the federal government is a project to replace more than 34 miles of bare steel pipeline in Greene, Washington and Allegheny counties with coated, corrosion-resistant steel pipelines. The project is called the Tri-County Bare Steel Replacement Project and Columbia is investing $138 million to make the upgrades…
Read More “Columbia Gas Wins FERC Approval for Pipeline Replacement in SWPA”
Just a few weeks ago Dominion announced they will hand out $1 million in grants for housing, food and health care in the regions in which they operate (see Dominion Does it Right: $1M in Grants for Housing, Food, Health Care). Barley two weeks later and they’ve done it again. On Monday Dominion East Ohio (division of Dominion) announced they’re offering another $110,000 in grants–this time to non-profits that have “made a difference” in the Ohio communities they serve. Details…
Read More “Dominion Does It Again – $110K in Grants to OH Community Groups”
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: Dry gas Utica a rival to Marcellus?; NY town bans fracking; PIOGA continues legal battle against DEP; $728K to study pipeline safety in WV; fossil fuel divestment would cost Harvard $51M; oil may sink to $20/barrel!; Congress remains impotent on lifting crude export ban; and more!
Read More “Marcellus & Utica Shale Story Links: Wed, Sep 16, 2015”
While two, possibly three, major ethane cracker plant projects are being considered for the Marcellus/Utica region, there are six ethane crackers currently being built in the Gulf Coast region. The kicker? Marcellus and Utica Shale ethane will feed some of, perhaps portions for all of, those six cracker plants. It’s a shame, really. We could be reaping the rewards of a massive influx of jobs and investment not only by building an ethane cracker, but with the satellite businesses that will locate around it. Instead, much of that investment and those jobs are slipping away to the Gulf via NGL pipelines…
Read More “Marcellus/Utica Ethane Will Flow to 6 Crackers Being Built in SW”
An interesting article in the Philadelphia Inquirer provides some of the history, and an update, for the Marcus Hook refinery in the Philly area. You may recall that Sunoco Logistics Partners purchased the refinery and is in the process of turning it into an NGL export facility–to send ethane, propane and other NGLs to locations along the U.S. coastline and internationally to Europe. What you may not know (what we sure didn’t know) is that Sunoco LP hopes to one day build a propane cracker at the site–a facility that will convert propane into propylene, the raw material used to make plastics. Who knew?! This would be yet another cracker plant that would compete, in a small way, with the proposed Shell cracker plant planned for the Pittsburgh area…
Read More “Sunoco Logistics Planning Propane Cracker Plant for Marcus Hook Site”
A major defeat for Pennsylvania’s anti-drilling groups, including THE Delaware Riverkeeper, was just handed down by the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court in a Lycoming County zoning case. In Gorsline v. Board of Supervisors of Fairfield Township, anti-drilling neighbors, including Brian and Dawn Gorsline, Paul and Michele Batkowski and others (collectively “Gorsline”) sued to stop a conditional use permit granted by Fairfield Township to allow Inflection Energy to construct a well pad on the property of Donald and Eleanor Shaheen. The case was weak, but the lowest court in the PA court system–the Court of Common Pleas (i.e. county court)–said the ninny nanny neighbors had a right to strip away the Shaheen’s property rights to allow drilling on their own property. The PA Commonwealth Court obliterated the faulty reasoning of the lower court and has, significantly, redefined how courts should interpret the results of the Act 13 zoning lawsuit that allows local municipalities the right to restrict shale drilling. The Commonwealth Court decision (full copy below) has kicked the legal legs out from under those seeking to use an amicus brief filed by THE Delaware Riverkeeper in the Act 13 case…
Read More “Major Victory for PA Landowners/Drillers in Lycoming County Case”
Pennsylvania’s shale drilling industry is pushing back against the last minute changes made to PA’s oil and gas regulations commonly known as Article 78. In April the Pennsylvania Independent Oil & Gas Association (PIOGA) turned up the heat on newly-elected Gov. Tom Wolf and PennFuture Dept. of Environmental Protection Secretary John Quigley with a scorching hot letter (see PIOGA Turns Up the Heat on Wolf/Quigley Over TAB/Article 78). The Marcellus Shale Coalition has joined PIOGA in criticizing the proposed changes to Article 78. MDN has spoken to one drilling company, Cabot Oil & Gas, and confirmed that the new rules proposed by Quigley’s out-of-control DEP will increase the cost to drill by $1-$1.5 million per well by creating senseless rules that don’t safeguard either workers or the environment…
Read More “PA Drillers Warn Article 78 Reg Changes Will Cost Jobs/Investment”