FERC Approves Expansion of Dominion Pipeline in Upstate NY
Good news! The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) have approved Dominion’s $165 million New Market Project, a project that expands Dominion’s transmission pipeline from western New York across the state to the Capital Region of the state, near Albany. As with any fossil fuel-related project, radical environmentalists objected (see NY Antis Flood FERC in Fight Against Dominion’s New Market Project). The favorite tactic of anti-drillers is to “demand” that FERC exceed its authority by not only evaluating whether this specific project will have negative impacts on the envirnoment or health of people living near it–but also consider that the pipeline means more shale drilling and possibly (gasp) exports. FERC, under law, cannot consider those things. And when they follow the law and do their job, it sends anti fossil fuelers into a tizzy fit. As they are now with the announcement that FERC has approved the New Market Project (albeit seven months late)…
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In the 2014 campaign for governor of Pennsylvania, California billionaire Tom Steyer gave over $10 million to Tom Wolf’s campaign to help him get elected (see 
Enough is enough. It’s become quite obvious that NY Gov. Cuomo is up to his old tricks–delay and then deny. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) long ago approved the Williams Constitution Pipeline (see 
We find it kind of funny, and kind of sad, that the mighty Exxon Mobil is reduced to groveling like they did yesterday in a press release in which they say, in essence, “We DO believe in global warming. We do we do we do!” Apparently the company was stung by criticism from from a couple of radical anti-fossil fuel rags–InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times–and by follow-on criticism from four communists, two in the United States Senate and two in the House of Representatives: Sen. Bernie Sanders (running for president), Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Rep. Ted Lieu and Rep. Mark DeSaulnier. What? Communists in our own government? No, we’re not mistaken nor are we using hyperbole. We’re using accurate language. Look up the 
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: fracking pays to extend waters lines in rural areas; OH Utica has 1,614 drilled wells, 1,022 producing wells; Portage County, OH votes to ban injection wells; rest of OPEN pipeline goes live Nov 1; Dave Spigelmyer says PA drillers struggling for survival; VA court case against pipeline; White House approves FL CNG export facility; Chesapeake fined $2.1M for inaccurate royalty reports on fed land; and more!
MDN has just published Volume 2 of the 
A harbinger of things to come? Just two days ago MDN reported on an upstate New York paper mill that converted to using natural gas to operate the mill and decided to stick with trucked compressed natural gas (CNG), something called a “virtual pipeline,” instead of going through the hassles of building a permanent pipeline (see 
“No, really, I don’t have a drinking problem,” says the alcoholic who believes just one more drink won’t hurt. Such is the power of denial. That’s the analogy that went through our heads when we read this headline: “Wolf Says Legislators In Denial.” Wolf, the taxaholoic, is the one who is in denial. He’s not listening–to Republicans or to people in his own Democrat Party. Pennsylvanians don’t want his high tax “fix” of the budget. But Wolf is, choose your adjective: obstinate…obtuse…clueless…desperate. That last one is the most likely–desperate to pay back the teachers’ unions that elected him. He can’t afford to not boost taxes–on everyone and everything (especially the Marcellus Shale)–in order to fork big money over to Big Education. Meanwhile, Republicans and Democrats together are working on a bi-partisan budget that they intend to pass without Wolf–with a veto-proof majority. Wolf is toast. He can’t govern, and he’s proved it. Time to govern around him…
The legal beagles at energy law firm Babst Calland are raising the alert that another “sue and settle” lawsuit has been filed against the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by seven radical environmental groups. This is the latest attempt at forcing the EPA to comply with a lawsuit that they intentionally lose. What? Yes, they intentionally lose the lawsuit and then tell Congress that they “have to” comply with a court order “forcing” them to enact certain unlegislated rules and regulations in order to comply with a judge’s order–in effect giving them one more weapon in their arsenal to illegally regulate the oil and gas industry. Regulation of oil and gas is Constitutionally left up to the individual states. The EPA, especially under Obama, has been innovating ways to circumvent the Constitution and Congress and cease regulation authority. So-called “sue and settle” lawsuits are one of the ways they do it. Here comes another one. This time radical environmental groups (which should be sued themselves) have sued the EPA to force them to regular oil and gas drilling wastes under the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). Here’s a summary of what’s happening…
It’s amazing what lengths otherwise rational-thinking adults will go to, to dispose of carbon dioxide–the stuff you breathe out with every breath you take. Global warmists believe an abundance of CO2 in the atmosphere will lead to global warming and toast Mother Earth (even though average global temps haven’t increased in nearly 19 years now, an inconvenient truth for warmists that they avoid addressing). Sometimes this strange behavior of trying to dispose of CO2 is actually beneficial to the shale industry. Researchers from Virginia Tech have teamed with the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) on a multi-part project to investigate the feasibility of injecting captured CO2 into shale and other rock layers. The experiments, which so far are showing great promise, inject CO2 into the rock forcing natural gas out of the rock and to the surface–and locking away the nefarious CO2 underground where it will stay until a couple of hundred years from now when someone figures out how to use CO2 as an energy source and they go after it again…
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), our favorite government agency, is celebrating World Statistics Day by publishing a 20-question quiz about energy statistics. Let’s have a little fun! We’ve reproduced the quiz below. Give it a try and test your energy IQ. We didn’t keep score, but have to confess we got about as many wrong as we did right! Can you do better?…
In January 2014 Hess Corporation sold 74,000 of its 95,000 100%-owned Utica Shale acreage leases to Aubrey McClendon’s American Energy Partners for $924 million (see