Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Energy Services | Energy Transfer Partners | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | Pipelines
ET $300M Lawsuit v. Big Green Pipe Violence Gets Court Hearing
A lawsuit being heard this summer is designed to hold Big Green groups responsible for their actions. Energy Transfer (ET), the owner and operator of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAP), is suing Greenpeace and other alleged instigators for $300 million for the damages sustained by the company as a result of violent protests incited by the groups in North Dakota in 2016. Big Green is scared.
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We continue to be range-bound with respect to the Baker Hughes U.S. rig count. The count has gone up and down every few weeks. But since the third week of June, the range has been as low as 581 and as high as 589. And that’s it. We seem to have found the bottom (we hope we have). Last week, the national rig count lost another rig and now stands at 585. The Marcellus/Utica remained even at 35 active rigs after losing one rig two weeks ago. Pennsylvania operates 21 active rigs; Ohio operates nine active rigs; and West Virginia operates five active rigs.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Utica Shale Academy opens new learning spaces; NATIONAL: Harris is strategically silent on climate; We’ll need equivalent of 300 new Hoover dams to keep up with power demand; INTERNATIONAL: US sanctions seven ‘dark fleet’ ships linked to Russia LNG; Tanker carrying sanctioned Russian LNG attempting ship transfer.
This week’s permit report is a bit different. Technically, for the week of August 12 – 18, a total of seven new permits were issued across the Marcellus/Utica. However, last week’s permit report omitted West Virginia numbers because the state’s online data service was out of order (see 
Eureka Resources, which operates three frack wastewater treatment facilities in the Marcellus Shale, has idled one of its three plants, the Standing Stone plant in Bradford County, PA. According to an inspection report by the Department of Environmental Protection conducted on August 19, Bob Cooney, Vice President of Operations at Eureka Resources, told the DEP inspector that the facility’s “primary customer” had stopped sending wastewater to the plant. As a result, all plant employees were laid off as of approximately July 30. This morning, MDN spoke to Eureka CEO Dan Ertel about what’s going on at the plant and plans for the future. 
We spotted a press release about pipeline repair company operating in the Marcellus/Utica, located in Ohio, Precision Pipeline Services, buying out a pipeline repair company based in Pennsylvania, Allegheny Contracting. We checked, and we’ve never written about either company. We always get a thrill when uncovering new companies involved in the M-U we didn’t know about. Both companies are privately-held, and the financial particulars of the deal were not disclosed.
U.S. Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia (aka Traitor Joe) spoke to the Pittsburgh Business Times Wednesday afternoon about a bill he and Republican Sen. John Barrasso (from Wyoming) recently introduced, the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 (see 
In 2019, the Rhode Island Energy Facility Siting Board waived a licensing requirement for a “temporary” LNG storage facility in Portsmouth to prevent another gas outage episode from happening again (see 
Earlier this month, MDN told you that the Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub (ARCH2) has officially received its first $30 million from the Bidenistas (see 
With all of the hoopla at yesterday’s ribbon cutting in Morgantown, WV, for the new Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub (ARCH2) headquarters, we thought it appropriate to share a couple of studies analyzing whether and how existing natural gas infrastructure (pipelines) and appliances (furnaces and stoves) can use the hydrogen that will get produced by ARCH2. Three weeks ago, we noticed a study published by U.K. utility company National Gas that announced results from an experiment it had conducted that showed its pipeline system could be converted to flow 100% pure hydrogen, which was a shocker for us. Then, last week, a U.S. study was published, largely led by members of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), that reports the opposite — using existing natgas pipelines to flow 100% pure hydrogen is “mostly unusable” and won’t work. Which study is right? Because they both can’t be right.
Dominion Energy plans to build four small “peaker” electric generating plants in Chesterfield County, VA, near Richmond (see 
Five months ago, the New York Senate passed a bill already passed by the Assembly to ban the use of carbon dioxide in shale drilling (so-called “CO2 fracking”). Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul, a reliable anti-fossil fueler, has still not signed the bill into law. What the heck is going on? A small group (seven, by our count) of environmentalist wackos turned up outside the main gate at the just-opened New York State Fair in Syracuse yesterday to hold signs and protest to remind Hochul she needs to do their bidding. 
Venture Global’s Calcasieu Pass LNG export facility received Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) authorization to place the final three liquefaction blocks (7-9) into service in November 2023 (see