PA Landowner Awarded Piddly for Legal Fees in Fighting ME Pipe
Huntington County, PA landowners Stephen and Ellen Gerhart have opposed the Mariner East pipeline project across their land from day one. They (and their daughter) have a long history of activism against the project. The Gerharts sued the builder, Sunoco Logistics Partners, in a bid to first block the pipeline, and later “restore” their property after it was built. In the end the Gerharts won a single, tiny concession–forcing Sunoco to recreate a swamp (i.e. “wetland”) on their property–all of 0.066 acres (meaning less than 1/10th of an acre–about the size of a big mud puddle). The Gerharts legal bills over the past several years have added up to $266,000. The attorneys asked the PA Environmental Hearing Board, a special court that hears appeals of DEP decisions, to make Sunoco and the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) pay the bill. How much did they get?
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The companies behind PennEast Pipeline, a $1.2 billion new greenfield pipeline project from Luzerne County, PA to Mercer County, NJ, have not given up on the long-delayed project. As we told you in November, PennEast plans to file an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court (on Feb. 3) to overcome a lower court ruling that prevents PennEast from using eminent domain in New Jersey for some of the route (see 
Yesterday the American Petroleum Institute (API) launched “
At the end of last year/beginning of this year we noticed several articles predicting what will happen with natural gas drilling in 2020. The upshot from the experts and prognosticators quoted is that drillers will “tap the breaks” and natural gas production will, at a minimum, stay flat through 2020. Perhaps even fall a bit.
A new study conducted by the University of California San Diego and published this week in the journal Nature Sustainability says 26,610 U.S. lives were saved from 2005-2016 as a result of increasing reliance on natural gas in electric power generation. That’s right–a liberal university published a study in a liberal journal that says natural gas SAVES LIVES. You may have to pinch yourself to see if it’s a dream!
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: ‘Forced march’ to heat pumps is bad policy; Sempra to open Houston office to support LNG business; NATIONAL: Low U.S. natural gas prices lock in more demand; The key distinction between U.S. energy independence and energy security; United States holds competitive advantage in natural gas industry.
Yesterday Range Resources issued its 2020 budget plan, which calls for spending $520 million to drill mainly in Range’s Marcellus assets. That figure is down from the $728 million Range spent in 2019 (a 29% decrease). What about production? Will that drop in 2020 too?
In a lawsuit filed last week, three couples who own land along the route of the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) in Virginia, who don’t want the pipeline crossing their land, are trying to overturn federal approval of MVP by emasculating the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. This is not the first time someone has tried to emasculate FERC using MVP.
Diversified Gas & Oil owns close to 8 million acres of leases with some 60,000 (mostly) conventional oil and gas wells. Their focus has been to acquire quality production and cash flow–regardless of the well or commodity type (gas or oil). They currently have over 400 M-U shale wells in their portfolio. In November Diversified closed on a deal to raise money via securitization–meaning to issue securities (“notes”) based on the value of their gas wells (see 
Last week the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) announced it has selected 16 projects to receive nearly $25 million in federal funding for cost-shared projects to advance natural gas infrastructure technology development. DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy will provide federal funding for these projects. Two of the 16 are located in West Virginia and will receive a cumulative $4.5 million of the $25 million (18% of the total).
In September Longview Power filed an application with the West Virginia Public Service Commission to build and operate a Marcellus gas-fired electric generating facility in Monongalia County, WV, near Maidsville (see 
Once upon a time conventional wisdom said if the price of natural gas or oil rose, the rig count would also rise and consequently more production would be the end result. The reverse was also true: falling prices equal fewer rigs and less production. But that conventional wisdom has been turned upside down with the shale revolution.
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) recent settlement with Energy Transfer (ET) concerning the Revolution Pipeline explosion in southwestern PA also has significant impact on southeastern PA. How? The signed consent order in which ET pays the state $30.6 million lifts a moratorium on granting new permits to ET for *any* of its pipeline projects in PA for the past one year–including permits to complete the Mariner East (ME) projects. With the consent order comes a lifting of that permit moratorium, meaning the final bits of ME can now be completed.