Lancaster Coal Burning Electric Plant Adding Marcellus NatGas
We often hear about, and report on, new electric generating plants being built that will use Marcellus (or Utica) Shale gas. Panda Power, Invenergy and others are building plants around Pennsylvania to take advantage of cheap, abundant and clean-burning Marcellus Shale gas. What you don’t hear often, but is equally as important, are existing coal plants converting to burn natural gas. The “much-maligned” Brunner Island coal-fired power plant on the edge of Lancaster County, PA is one such plant. Brunner Island will keep its coal burning operation at the plant–for now. They are, however, spending $100 million to add natural gas burners to help drive the plant’s three electric generators. This is an accelerating trend with electric generating plants across the country, particularly in the northeast…
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Ever hear the phrase, “diggin’ deep”? That’s what anti-drillers are doing in New Hampshire with their opposition to a pipeline slated to come through their area in Hillsborough County. As plans for Kinder Morgan’s $6 billion Northeast Energy Direct (NED) pipeline project that will stretch from Pennsylvania through New York into Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and back into Massachusetts near Boston progress, more and more articles appear in newspapers, like the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, attempting to convince people the pipeline is from Satan himself. In fact, according to the latest article, NED may just be from Satan! The Ledger-Transcript claims the pipeline, if it follows the same route as already-built high voltage electric lines, would cut through a hay field that (151 years ago) used to be a potato field and is the site of a miracle of importance to Seventh-Day Adventists…
On Friday Baker Hughes, which is being forced into a merger with Halliburton by the end of this year/early next year, issued a summary of rig counts last Friday. At first blush it appears to be good news, but when you dig under the surface, it’s not–at least for the Marcellus/Utica. The international rig count was 1,118, down 28 from the 1,146 counted in June 2015. However, the average U.S. rig count for July 2015 was 866, up 5 from the 861 counted in June 2015. It appears we’ve turned the corner on how low rig counts will go–we’ve bottomed and are either holding steady (in the U.S.), or perhaps every so slightly gaining ground again. But then we ran the numbers for the Marcellus/Utica and found rig counts continue to decline month over month…