PA Charges Mariner East Pipeline $8M+ to Fix Marsh Creek Lake
While drilling in Chester County in August 2020 in the Marsh Creek State Park area, Energy Transfer’s (ET) Mariner East 2X pipeline experienced an “inadvertent return”–nontoxic drilling mud coming up out of the ground where it’s not supposed to (see Mariner East 2X Construction Causes Another Drilling Mud Spill). In this case, an estimated 8,100 gallons of non-toxic drilling mud came up in a small section of the 535-acre Marsh Creek Lake. It was a costly episode for ET. The state has just announced a gun-to-the-head “agreement” with ET that has ET paying a $4 million fine, spending another $4 million (or more) to dredge and fix the area, and $341,000 in civil penalties for permit violations.
Read More “PA Charges Mariner East Pipeline $8M+ to Fix Marsh Creek Lake”
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), lapdog of leftwing Gov. Tom Wolf, tried to bypass the state legislature and secretly push through and get adopted a proposed regulation on the state joining the highly controversial Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a multi-state compact to limit carbon emissions from power plant operators (a carbon tax). The DEP just got caught red-handed.
Olympus Energy (formerly Huntley & Huntley) has contracted with Project Canary to monitor methane emissions from both the company’s drilling operations (the upstream) and the company’s pipeline operations (the midstream). While a number of other Marcellus/Utica drillers have signed up with Project Canary to monitor methane emissions, the Olympus deal is different and special for two reasons: (1) it’s a private (not publicly owned) company, and (2) the deal covers both upstream and midstream, for the same company.
The odious leftists from the so-called Food & Water Watch (Big Green group, funded with foreign money) continue to pressure, cajole, woo, and hoodwink local municipalities in New Jersey to oppose building a new dock on the Delaware River–a dock that would allow LNG cargo carriers to come alongside and load up with yummy, safe, clean-burning LNG. The latest victim of FWW’s lies is Trenton, New Jersey.
Even amid the increasingly shrill and irrational ramblings of so-called scientists who predict gloom and doom if we don’t dump fossil fuel use immediately (while they ignore even bigger sources of carbon emissions), the world’s biggest banks and investment houses, while talking about dumping fossil fuel investments, haven’t actually done so. And according to Bloomberg, big banks don’t intend to deny their fossil fuel clients (oil, gas and coal companies) anytime soon. That’s really good news.
The NYMEX natural gas futures price plunged more than 10% on Monday, falling to the lowest level since August to close down 47.5 cents at $3.66 per MMBtu. And that comes after last week’s 24% loss, which was natural gas’ worst week since February 2014! What’s going on? The forecast is for warmer-than-expected winter temperatures across much of the country.
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: ISO New England sees precarious power reliability heading into winter; Pinelands ‘stab in the back’; NATIONAL: These twenty-five Biden administration policies are raising energy costs; INTERNATIONAL: Saudis raise oil prices for Asia and USA; European natural gas inventories decline as first cold snap of winter arrives; Upstream industry ‘too optimistic’ on how long energy transition will take; Natural gas markets to see very volatile 2022.
Once again Democrat politics rear their ugly head to pressure the Virginia Air Pollution Control Board, which voted last Friday to reject issuing an air permit for a compressor station in southern Virginia for the proposed Mountain Valley Pipeline Southgate extension that will run 75 miles from Virginia into North Carolina. The permit would have allowed a compressor station to be built in the Virginia town of Chatham (Pittsylvania County). And according to critics of the pipeline, that’s just plain racist.
On Friday the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a new temporary emergency certificate to the Spire STL pipeline, a 65-mile pipeline that connects to and flows Marcellus/Utica gas from the Rockies Express (REX) pipeline to residents and businesses in the St. Louis, MO area. The temporary certificate means the pipeline will not have to shut down just as winter sets in, endangering the lives and property of more than half a million residents in the St. Louis area. Whew.
Last Thursday CNX Resources reached a plea deal with the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office over alleged violations of the Air Pollution Control Act and bad recordkeeping. Yeah, you read that right. State Attorney General Josh Shapiro (a real putz) leveled criminal charges against CNX over miscounting how many times the company used a pig (pipeline inspection gauge) to clean out a pipeline in Washington County, PA. An anti-fossil fuel zealot who lives near the pigging station complained about noise and emissions and ran squealing to the AG (pun intended).
So many lawsuits and appeals of actions have been filed against the Mariner East pipeline system (being built by Energy Transfer and its subsidiary Sunoco Logistics) we’ve lost count. Dozens? Hundreds? Who knows! We try to highlight some of them–the more important ones that have the potential to slow or stop work on the 99% done system. Here’s one not even on our radar that got completely dismissed last week: Wilmer Baker and Rolfe Blume vs. Sunoco Pipeline L.P.
A group of anti-fossil fuel zealots, with support from a clueless reporter at the Boston Globe, are targeting a tiny “peaker” gas-fired electric power generating plant in Peabody, Massachusetts (a suburb of Boston). The small 55-megawatt peaker would provide electricity only on the heaviest demand days for short periods of time. It would be powered by clean-burning natural gas. Yet the crazies are out in force protesting this $85 million project. Why? Because it will contribute, so say the crazies, to global warming. What dunces.
FirstEnergy Corp. CEO Steve Strah has an impossible job–to revive the badly tarnished reputation of his company following the biggest bribery scandal in the history of Ohio. Ohio’s House Bill (HB) 6 law granted billions (plural) of dollars to FirstEnergy in an attempt to prop up the company’s economically failing nuclear power plants. FirstEnergy bribed state legislators to pass, and keep passed, HB 6 by paying out $61 million to a small group of insiders, including the now-former Speaker of the House (see 