Dominion Sells $500M Natrium NGL Plant to… Itself
Dominion, a huge energy company that does everything from shale drilling to pipelines and processing plants to selling gas and electric as a utility, has just sold the newly built and operating $500 million NGL processing plant in Natrium, WV to…itself. The Natrium plant was due to go online late last year. Then it was forecast be online in the spring of this year. The plant, which separates natural gas liquids from methane in the Marcellus/Utica Shale, finally went online in late June (see Blue Racer Midstream’s Natrium, WV NGL Plant Now Up & Running).
Blue Racer Midstream officially took title to the Natrium plant as of August 9th. Blue Racer is a joint venture between Dominion and Caiman Energy II. Dominion essentially owns Blue Racer, ergo Dominion sold the plant to itself. These things happen on paper–no doubt for more favorable tax and accounting purposes for investors. Dominion’s announcement from yesterday:
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Once upon a time here in the good old U.S. of A. we used to call large areas of stagnant, smelly, mosquito-infested pools of water what they are: swamps. Then came the so-called environmentalist movement that renamed the word “swamp” to the pristine-sounding word “wetland.” Gotta love a good euphemism. We used to drain swamps. Now we make people get permits to walk across them, for fear of killing a mosquito (no doubt carrying West Nile Virus). Such is the enlightened age in which we live.
Starting next week, Marcellus Shale drillers in PA will face strict new rules on air emissions at drill sites. The new rules (i.e. “technical guidance”) won’t officially be released until Saturday, August 10 when published in the Pennsylvania Bulletin. The rules will limit noxious emissions, including nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds and hazardous air pollutants. The rules also include an almost-total ban on flaring of wells–only short-term or emergency flaring allowed.