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Marcellus/Utica Ethane Will Flow to 6 Crackers Being Built in SW
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…
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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…
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…
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 
A group of hard-left environmentalist groups dedicated to the irrational idea of eliminating the use of all fossil fuels because they believe in the myth of man-made global warming are giving high praise to America’s most liberal governor, Tom Wolf, and Wolf deputy John Quigley (the PennFuture Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection) for hosting a series of “listening” sessions in 14 PA locations. The sessions are meant to gather comment and support for draconian cuts in coal and natural gas-burning electric plants as part of Barack Hussein Obama’s Clean Power Plan (CPP). Yesterday a group of these nutters held a press conference (listen below) to praise Wolf/Quigley and to encourage the nutty faithful to turn out in force to support the equivalent of PA cutting it’s own economic throat. The organizations supporting the CPP and PA’s self immolation in the name of global warming include: Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), PennFuture, Clean Air Council, Moms’ Clean Air Force, Penn Environment, NextGen Climate America, Conservation Voters of PA, Clean Water Action, Voces Verdes, the Sierra Club, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Audubon Pennsylvania. Please be sure you NEVER send any of them a dime…
Cabot Oil & Gas is one of the stellar success stories of the Marcellus Shale. They drill in a single northeastern Pennsylvania county–Susquehanna County (near where MDN is located). From that single county Cabot produces 1.7-1.8 billion cubic feet (Bcf) per day of natural gas. If you want to know how to “do it right” with shale drilling in the Marcellus–you watch Cabot. The company participated in the Barclays CEO Energy/Power Conference 2015 last week in New York City. We grabbed a copy of their PowerPoint presentation from that event and include it below, along with some of the insights we glean from reviewing the presentation…
Warning: You’re now entering… the anti-fossil fuel Twilight Zone. An anti-fossil fuel group that calls itself ForestEthics last week launched what they hope will be a public relations sensation–a campaign to scare the wits out of every person in the country, particularly young children. Their angle? If a rail tanker car carrying crude oil passes anywhere within a mile of where you are–BANG!–it may blow up and if you’re within a mile, you’re in “the blast zone.” They’ve even produced a handy dandy online mapping app where you can plug in your address and see if you live or work or (shutter) go to school in a blast zone. DANGER WILL ROBINSON! RUN FOR THE HILLS!! Of course, this is just another anti-fossil fuel campaign aimed at taking us back to the Stone Ages where we all burn wood for fuel. Oh wait, that creates carbon–can’t do that! Better yet, let’s just extinguish all carbon-generating human life–we’re a just pestilence on precious Mother Earth, ya know…
You really can’t make this stuff up. CORN–the Ohio-based Coalition to Reroute Nexus (as in the NEXUS pipeline)–is holding a CORN maze for a fund-raiser. Could anything be CORNier? Of course, CORN is not really about re-routing the NEXUS pipeline to another area–it’s about stopping it altogether. Antis have a hard time telling the truth. It seems to be a congenital flaw. We’ve previously written about CORN on a number of occasions (see our 
New Jersey natural gas customers of Public Service Electric and Gas Co. (PSE&G), the very people who will benefit from the proposed PennEast Pipeline, will see another 5.7% drop in their natgas bills this winter. PSE&G, which serves approximately three-fourths of all NJ residents, says because of the nearby Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale, since 2009 their natgas customers have seen a whopping 47% decrease in rates. That equates to an average savings of $792 per year! Thanks to the Marcellus Shale and the miracle of horizontal hydraulic fracturing, NJ’s air is cleaner, NJ consumers pay less for natural gas, and the gas is home grown energy from a neighboring state–providing jobs and making us more secure…
There are over 300,000 miles of natural gas pipelines in the ground in the United States–did you know that? Those pipeline bring cheap, abundant, clean-burning natgas to American households, businesses, and electric generating plants. Nobody gave pipelines a second thought for oh, the past 75 years or more. That is, until coordinated campaigns by groups of nutters who irrationally oppose fossil fuels, seeking to demonize pipelines–the safest form of transportation in existence. Unfortunately their lies require a response. The Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA) has stepped up to the plate, launching a nationwide campaign, complete with a TV commercial, to educate American consumers about the benefits of natural gas and natural gas pipelines…
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: Antis oppose 3 Tetco pipelines; PA’s Engelder goes to OH; antis oppose fracking near Pittsburgh; Shell’s emissions quota for cracker plant; Sunoco LP shops for pipeline land; hearing set for Hilcorp wellpad; Moxie electric plant clears another hurdle, and more!
Three weeks ago MDN told you that Aubrey McClendon and his American Energy Partners had made their first foray into international oil and gas drilling (see 
Landowners in Pennsylvania have been upset with shenanigans by Chesapeake Energy in shorting them out of royalties for years. In 2013 a group of landowners in Bradford County, PA filed a lawsuit against Chesapeake over the royalty issue (see 
A couple of bits of news from Gulfport Energy, a driller focused primarily on the Utica Shale in eastern Ohio. In April, MDN reported that Gulfport had inked a deal with Paloma Partners III, a small energy & exploration company headquartered in Houston, to purchase 24,000 acres in Belmont and Jefferson counties (Ohio) for $12,500 per acre (see 
Sunoco Logistics Partners, which owns the Mariner series of pipelines (East, West and South), has just launched a new binding open season–time when drillers and other shippers can sign up for capacity–for an expansion of the planned Mariner East 2 project. In April 2014 MDN brought you the news that Sunoco LP had completed an open season for Mariner East 2 and had enough customers to move forward with the project (see