Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Crime | Energy Services | Equitrans/EQT Midstream | Industrywide Issues | Montgomery County | Pipelines | Virginia
Judge Orders Tree-Sitting Wackos to Stop Blocking MVP or $500/Day
Believe it or not, there are still two environmentalist wackos living up a tree in Montgomery County, Virginia, preventing work crews for Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) from cutting trees to clear a path for the pipeline. This has been going on for years and frankly, everyone is tired of it. A county judge has found the two cowards not willing to reveal their names (known as Tree-sitter 1 and Tree-sitter 2) in contempt of court. Starting today if they don’t come down, they are both on the hook for a $500 per day fine.
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We were wrong. In August MDN told you that the tenth and final mini-train had gone online at Kinder Morgan’s Elba Island, Georgia LNG export facility (see 
Northeast Natural Energy (NNE) is a small-to-midsized driller headquartered in Morgantown, WV. The company drilled its first shale well in 2013. NNE currently owns 49,000 acres of leases “in the heart of the Marcellus Fairway,” operating 27 Marcellus wells and over 100 conventional oil and gas wells, mainly in West Virginia (with some located in southwestern Pennsylvania). In April 2017 MDN reported that NNE had obtained $300 million of investment from two investment firms (see 
Antero Resources, one of the largest drillers in the Marcellus/Utica, working primarily in West Virginia, has just won a major sales tax case in the WV Supreme Court that affects the entire oil and gas industry, including M-U drillers.
The Enverus U.S. rig count rose by 3 to 382 over the past week. Prior to that, the count rose by 20, 11, 11, and 13 for each of the four weeks prior, respectively. That’s up 58 rigs over the past five weeks! The Marcellus and Utica each remained constant last week (same as the week before), not adding and not dropping. The Marcellus stands at 27 rigs, and the Utica at 6.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: South Jersey Gas files petition for Infrastructure Investment Program; Farmers, consumers beware — natural gas foes have vision but no plan; NATIONAL: To achieve a true energy transition, America must discard green scams; Jeff Bezos announces first beneficiaries of his $10 billion climate fund; Why a Biden Administration threatens US energy security; US LPG arrivals to Asia in Dec to be around 2.7 million mt; INTERNATIONAL: Germany’s growing gas demand shows no signs of slowing.
The Dept. of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) is actually five laboratories, including locations in Pittsburgh, PA, and Morgantown, WV. The current director is West Virginian Dr. Brian J. Anderson (great guy!). NETL recently published a notice on its website to talk about the “generational opportunity” to leverage the superabundance of natural gas in the Marcellus/Utica. NETL, says Anderson, is on the case and has a new initiative to leverage M-U gas.
Eastern Shore Natural Gas Company (ESNG), a subsidiary of Chesapeake Utilities Corporation, filed a request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in Sept. 2018 to build 19+ miles of new pipeline, called the Del-Mar Energy Pathway Project, in Delaware and Maryland. Last week the Maryland Dept. of the Environment (MDE) approved the project. Now the project must pass by the Board of Public Works (BPW). We give it a 50/50 chance of getting approved by the three libs on the BPW.
Monday night the radical Sierra Club hosted a virtual town hall in which people could complain about the Mariner East 2 (ME2) pipeline project. And complain they did. The aim of the virtual complaint session is to try and close down the already up-and-running ME pipelines (plural), and most particularly prevent the final bit of ME2X from getting completed. By airing sob stories, the Clubbers are hoping to bully the state Dept. of Environmental Protection and/or the Governor into blocking further work on the project–a project just a few months from being done.
In June, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), in conjunction with the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), published final rules to allow specially constructed tanker cars for railroads (DOT-113 tank cars) to ship LNG (see 
Last December MDN told you about a second natural gas-fired power plant planned for Charles City County, Va. (near Richmond) being developed by C4GT (see 
On Monday we brought you the news that Gulfport Energy, the third-largest driller in the Ohio Utica Shale, had filed for bankruptcy over the weekend (see