DC Circuit Rules Against FWW in KM Pipeline Expansion to NYC
Tennessee Gas Pipeline’s (TGP) plan to flow an extra 115 MMcf/d of Marcellus gas to Westchester County, NY, and New York City to be used for Consolidated Edison customers is called the East 300 Upgrade Project. The project took a giant leap forward in April 2022 when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued permits that allow TGP to upgrade two existing compressor stations (in PA), and build a brand new compressor station in West Milford (Passaic County, NJ), just across the border and not far from Westchester County (see FERC Issues Compressor Permits for TGP’s East 300 Upgrade in NY, NJ). The odious (and misnamed) Food & Water Watch (FWW), a far-left, very radical group, challenged FERC’s approval of East 300 with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (see Food & Water Watch Sues FERC to Block KM Pipe Expansion to NYC). The D.C. Circuit ruled against FWW on Friday.
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MDN told you the bottom had dropped out of the rig count two weeks ago (see
Last Friday, MDN told you about a problem brewing that will block new hydrogen projects from getting built in the Marcellus/Utica (see
One month ago, MDN told you that although the New York Senate had 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, had still not signed the bill into law (see
Natural gas development in the Marcellus/Utica continues to get cleaner year after year. Updated data shows our region’s natgas producers reduced methane intensity by nearly 17% in a single year. That’s according to a report co-authored by the Clean Air Task Force (CATF), an anti-fossil fuel organization. The CATF and Ceres (an anti-capitalist organization) recently released its fourth annual 2024 Benchmarking Methane and Other Greenhouse Gas Emissions report.
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Two weeks ago, 31 new permits were issued to drill in the Marcellus/Utica region. Last week, June 3 – 9, the number dropped (dramatically) by 77% to just seven new permits. And that seems to be the pattern: Way up one week, way down the next. Last week, for the second week in a row, Ohio issued ZERO new shale permits. The top permit receiver for last week was HG Energy, which had five permits for a single pad in Doddridge County, WV. The other two permits were issued in PA: one to CNX in Greene County, and the other to Range Resources in Washington County.
In a clear case of sour grapes for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (4th Circus clowns) who tried to block the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) by rendering arbitrary decisions that caused years of delays for the pipeline, the court flipped the bird to MVP one last time in a decision issued Tuesday of this week (June 11). Three judges from the 4th Circus re-inflated a jury award against MVP for an eminent domain “taking” case in the Bent Mountain, Virginia, area back in May (see
For months, MDN has told you about a problem brewing that will block new hydrogen projects from getting built in the Marcellus/Utica. It’s an obscure tax rule known as the 45V tax credit, part of the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The Bidenistas at the White House, Treasury Department, and Dept. of Energy proposed a new IRS rule in late December that the 45V tax credits (as provided for in the IRA) can only be used if the hydrogen produced is “green” — meaning NOT made from natural gas. In addition, the electricity used to produce the hydrogen can’t come from fossil fuel sources like natural gas (if you want the tax credit). Biden kneecapped the hydrogen hub projects in the M-U (see
In early March, President Joe Biden nominated three new candidates to become Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) commissioners (see
Coterra Energy CEO Tom Jorden sat for an interview with Jim Cramer on CNBC’s Mad Money program Tuesday evening. During the interview, Jorden had an interesting comment and insight that has the power to change the natural gas market. Jorden said that data center operators (big computer server facilities) may cut supply agreements directly with natural gas companies to meet the growing power demands of the artificial intelligence boom. And it may happen a lot sooner than you think.
In January 2020, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in THE most consequential lawsuit for Marcellus Shale drilling we’ve seen, a case called Briggs v Southwestern Energy (see