Sunoco Reconciles Differences with Municipalities re Mariner East
Hats off to Sunoco Logistics. In order to complete the conversion of a decades-old pipeline already in the ground, the Mariner East 1 pipeline, into flowing natural gas liquids (propane and ethane) across the state to the Marcus Hook refinery near Philadelphia, the company needs to build or upgrade 31 pump and valve stations along the existing pipeline. A legal battle ensued with resistance from many of the local municipalities, largely ginned up by scare stories from the usual sources like the Clean Air Council, THE Delaware Riverkeeper, Mountain Watershed Association and their sycophantic buddies in mainstream media outlets like PBS’ StateImpact Pennsylvania. Sunoco felt it had no option but to try and get the pipeline declared a public utility and by extension, use eminent domain to avoid local zoning ordinances. There have been plenty of legal twists and turns along the way (see our list of stories here). Sunoco has worked out their differences with 22 of the 31 townships and they are now hammering out deals with the rest. So they’ve withdrawn their application with the state Public Utility Commission (PUC) to be exempted from local zoning ordinances–no eminent domain. Anti-drillers are feverishly trying to spin this as a loss for Sunoco Logistics–that the company has “backed down” and is beaten. What it is, is a major victory for Sunoco–the pipeline will be completed (very soon) and NGLs will flow all the way to Marcus Hook…
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Have you ever played Jenga? You know, the game where you stack blocks of wood in mini-skyscraper style and then each player must remove a block from a lower level and stack it on the top until somebody pulls a block out and the whole thing comes crashing down. That’s the comparison used to describe the state budget recently proposed by PA Gov. Tom Wolf in none other than the reliably liberal, Democrat-supporting, anti-drilling Allentown Morning Call. As the Morning Call points out, Wolf has built his Jenga (house of cards) budget on soaking drillers with a new severance tax. When that doesn’t happen, the whole budget comes tumbling down and no one will be to blame except Tom Wolf himself…
Tioga County, PA is getting a reputation. No, not THAT kind of reputation silly! Tioga County, PA is getting a reputation for impressive Utica Shale wells. Last September MDN told you that Shell had drilled a pair of Utica wells in Tioga County (see 
Three weeks ago MDN reported a Buffalo, NY-based company had successfully gotten all necessary permits to move forward with building a $615 million, 549 megawatt electrical generating plant near Moundsville, WV that will be powered by Marcellus Shale gas (see 
Antero Resources, one of the largest drillers in the Marcellus/Utica, wants cash and they want it bad. Two days ago we told you that Antero is in the market floating IOUs (or “notes”) looking to raise a huge $1.25 billion (see