Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | PennEast Pipeline | Pipelines | Regulation
NJ Congress Members Ask FERC to Shut Down Work on PennEast Pipe
Two Members of Congress from the New Jersey delegation–Tom Malinowski and Bonnie Watson Coleman (both liberal Democrats)–are calling on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to issue a “stop-work” order for the PennEast Pipeline project. Not that any real work to build it has even begun! The lib Dems say because of the recent ruling in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, the entire project should be shut down and mothballed.
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In April 2017 while using underground horizontal directional drilling (HDD) for the Rover Pipeline project, some 2 million gallons of drilling mud went down a hole near the Tuscarawas River and popped back out where it should not have, harming a wetland by smothering aquatic life (see 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Southwestern Energy pads finances ahead of earnings season; Utica Summit hears Shell cracker update; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: California’s high gasoline prices are no accident; NATIONAL: A shale-gas revolution, if we can keep it.
Xtreme Energy Co., headquartered in Victoria, Texas, has been ordered by the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) to shut down/stop producing at two Marcellus wells operated by the company located in Somerset County, PA, in the southwestern part of the state. Why? Because, says the DEP, Xtreme has not paid its impact fee (i.e. severance tax) for those wells for 2014, 2015 and 2016.
Here’s a cautionary tale for landowners who think they can go court-shopping on the other side of the country to settle their differences with pipelines that cross their land. Don’t do it. A Pennsylvania landowner in Schuylkill County, PA thought he could force Williams’ (Transco Pipeline) into arbitration to compensate him for allowing the Atlantic Sunrise pipeline crossing his land. Except the landowner filed for arbitration in California! Williams/Transco refused to participate in the arbitration since Cali has NOTHING to do with Pennsylvania when it comes to arbitrating compensation for eminent domain.
Eight of Ohio’s top Utica Shale development counties collected nearly $142 million in real estate property taxes on oil and natural gas production from 2010 through 2017, according to an updated report by Energy In Depth (EID) and the Ohio Oil and Gas Association (OOGA). The Utica Shale Local Support Series report titled, “2019 Update: Ohio’s Oil and Gas Industry Property Tax Payments” (full copy below) analyzes the economic impacts of oil and natural gas real estate property taxes (called “ad valorem” taxes) paid in eight counties: Belmont, Carroll, Columbiana, Guernsey, Harrison, Jefferson, Monroe and Noble.
Leftist Democrats in Pennsylvania are still hopping mad that they couldn’t block Invenergy’s 1,480 megawatt, $1 billion Marcellus gas-fired electric plant called the Lackawanna Energy Center, located near Scranton, PA (see 
Chesapeake Utilities Corporation is a diversified energy company engaged in natural gas distribution and transmission; electricity generation and distribution; propane gas distribution; and “other” businesses. One of Chesapeake’s subsidiary companies is Eastern Shore Natural Gas Company, which builds pipelines in the Delmarva Peninsula area, including most of Delaware and portions of Maryland and Virginia (see 
The so-called FracTracker Alliance is a group of leftist anti-fossil fuelers who heavily shade the truth (i.e. lie) about the “health impacts” of shale drilling in western Pennsylvania. In May some two dozen FracTracker “volunteers” visited the Pine Creek Watershed in parts of Clinton, Lycoming, Potter and Tioga counties. Their stated purpose was to “catalog the impacts of the unconventional oil and gas industry and related infrastructure on the landscape.” The effort resulted in a false map misrepresenting even basic facts about shale drilling in the region. The Marcellus Shale Coalition could not keep silent about FracTracker’s false and misleading narrative, and wrote to set the record straight.
News of a recent forum held in Washington, D.C. caught our attention because of the topic discussed: property rights and pipelines. Representatives from both sides attended in an effort to find a way to “ease tensions” with landowners in having pipelines cross their property. Inevitably these things usually boil down to compensation–how and how much. We have a few thoughts of our own on the subject.
Talk about disingenuous political posturing by a couple of pompous windbags. Massachusetts’ two U.S. Senators, Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren and Ed “Lackey” Markey have introduced a bill in Congress to block the construction of a single pipeline compressor station–slated to be built in Weymouth, Mass. They even made up a catchy name for their bill: the “Community Outreach, Maintenance, and Preservation by Restricting Export Stations from Subverting Our Regulations Act.” Or “COMPRESSOR Act” for short. What childish dopes.