Crestwood Says Sale of Stagecoach JV Coming Soon – 1Q21 Update
In 2016 Crestwood Equity Partners formed a joint venture with New York City’s largest utility company, Consolidated Edison Inc., to operate a critical link of pipelines and storage facilities in the heart of the Marcellus/Utica called Stagecoach Gas Services (see Con Ed & Crestwood Seal the Deal on Marcellus Pipeline/Storage JV). In February we learned that Con Ed is looking to sell its 50% share of the Stagecoach jv (see Marcellus Stagecoach Sees Record Volumes, Con Ed Wants to Sell). We have an update on that effort, shared as part of Crestwood’s 1Q21 update.
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On April 6 the Weymouth, Mass. compressor station experienced its third “unplanned release” of methane and was shut down (see 
Here’s a connection we hadn’t made until we read about yesterday’s oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in PennEast Pipeline vs. New Jersey. The connection is this: The PennEast case also has huge ramifications for another currently-stalled M-U pipeline. Columbia Gas wants to build a tiny 3.37-mile, 8-inch pipeline under the Potomac River from Maryland to West Virginia. It is being blocked from doing so by the lefties in Maryland (see 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Drilling past rocket science (video); PA Senate Environmental Committee approves bill mandating legislative oversight in RGGI; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Crusoe Energy raises $128 million for natural gas-powered modular data centers; NATIONAL: U.S. energy imports declined in 2020, while exports remained largely unchanged; Precision’s U.S., Canada contract drilling escalating quickly as outlook ‘substantially improved’; Biden plan leaves an opening for financing of global gas projects; Jennifer Granholm’s tone deaf advice for the oil and gas industry; Plus and Cummins to develop first autonomous natural gas trucks; deployment in 2022; U.S. natgas at eight-week high on record exports and output slide; INTERNATIONAL: Electric cars: What will happen to all the dead batteries?
While the Philadelphia Inquirer has at least one reliable and objective reporter working in its ranks–Andrew Maykuth–the same can’t be said for the lefties who populate the editorial board at the newspaper. Yesterday’s unsigned editorial declares that “Fracking jobs will disappear. Pennsylvania has to manage the decline.” Like he!!. The lefties on the editorial board base their brazen (and false) statements on Joe Biden’s plan to decimate the fossil fuel industry with his warmed-over Green New Deal vomit. The editorial board presumes Biden’s attempts will be successful. They will not.
Dominion Energy is a huge company. Once upon a time, Dominion owned major pipeline assets throughout the Marcellus/Utica region. But in July of 2020 Dominion decided to sell their pipeline assets (and part of the Cove Point LNG export facility) to Warren Buffett for $9.7 billion (see 
We’re kind of speechless and dumbfounded–but perhaps we shouldn’t be. Last week President Biden announced a new program to be funded with $109.5 million aimed at figuring out how to convince fossil fuel workers to be happy taking a huge pay cut and installing solar panels and windmills instead of making far more money in a far more meaningful job working in fossil fuels. Brian Anderson, director of the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), headquartered in Pittsburgh, will lead the effort. How enormously sad that Anderson, someone we greatly admire, is out in front selling Biden’s bill of goods–the end of fossil energy.
Here’s a new truism of life you may not have heard before: Be careful that the corporation you climb into bed with actually has a spine. Interestingly, U.S. Steel in East Pittsburgh, whom you would assume has a steel spine, doesn’t have a spine at all! Merrion Oil & Gas found that out the hard way. Merrion, a privately-owned oil and gas company headquartered in New Mexico, signed a lease with U.S. Steel to drill a series of up to 18 shale wells on the Edgar Thomson Works property in Allegheny County. Following blowback from loud-mouth anti-fossil fuel nutters, U.S. Steel decided the project isn’t worth the negative press. So they caved and canceled the lease with Merrion. Shame on U.S. Steel.
The issue of expired leases has once again reared its head for EQT–this time in West Virginia. In 2006 a group of WV landowners/rights owners sued Equitable Production Company (now EQT) claiming, among other things, “damages for improper deductions of post-production expenses from their royalty payments and damages for breach of lease agreements, breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, violation of the West Virginia Consumer Credit and Protection Act…violation of the flat rate royalty statute… and punitive damages, all related to the improper payment of royalties.” That case was settled in 2010. However, a subgroup within the larger class action group has a new/different claim: that EQT let leases lapse and then reentered and drilled on property out-of-lease. It’s called trespass.
The Biden-controlled U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has just granted anti-fossil fuel zealots enough rope to strangle the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project, or enough rope to strangle themselves. We hope it’s the latter, we fear it may be the former. The “rope” in this case is time. The Army Corps announced Friday it will give antis an extra 30 days to comment on (complain, manipulate, lie about) a proposed water crossing permit for MVP in West Virginia and Virginia. Even with the extra 30 days antis still are not satisfied.
Here’s an interesting twist on building new oil and gas pipelines in Ohio. Due to a late filing made by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (Ohio EPA), from now on interstate pipeline builders will *not* need to seek and receive a federal section 401 water permit under the Clean Water Act from the Ohio EPA to build the pipeline. Instead, the pipeline builder can just ask the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for a Nationwide Permit 12 (NWP12). Ohio EPA has been problematic for pipelines in the past (see