Beaver County Wants to Keep Issuing Pipe Permits; $175K from Shell
Last week the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) revoked the right of the Beaver County Conservation District (BCCD) to issue and monitor permits for erosion and sediment control, two permits used in building both pipelines and drill pads (see PA DEP Revokes Beaver County Right to Issue Pipe, Drilling Permits). Antis are now screaming for the DEP to suspend all pipeline work in the county for six months in order to review previously issued permits by BCCD (see Antis Want Pipeline Work in Beaver County Stopped for 6 Months). But the BCCD says the only thing they did wrong was misfile paperwork, that they should be allowed to resume issuing and overseeing erosion and sediment control permits.
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Pennsylvania antis from the Philadelphia area who don’t want pipelines running through their neighborhoods (NIMBY types) beat the drums of war so loud and for so long, they finally began to intimidate the non-partisan, shouldn’t-be-intimated PA Public Utility Commission (PUC). In June the PUC launched a “major review of its safety regulations for hazardous liquids pipelines” in response to pressure from Mariner East 2 pipeline foes (see 
We’ve mentioned this in passing in a few articles in the past, but thought it might be good dedicate an entire post to it. What happens, currently, with the prodigious amounts of ethane produced in the Marcellus/Utica? Ethane, as you may know, is one of the natural gas liquids (NGL) hydrocarbons that comes out of the ground along with methane. Methane is CH4, ethane is C2H6. Next to methane, ethane is the most produced hydrocarbon in the M-U. How much gets produced, and what happens to all that ethane?
MDN is not a blog/news site about the myth of man-made global warming, but we do address the topic from time to time because the false belief of man-caused warming is at the root of opposition to fossil fuels and shale energy. We’re accused of being Luddites. Not with the times. Out of touch. Climate deniers. We say we’re simply seeing the issue clearly. A recent article brings into focus for everyone how the masses have been lied to by media and leftist scientists. There is no global warming happening–at least not because of mankind–since 2005. We have incontrovertible proof…
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Eight permits issued for Utica/Point Pleasant shale; Tesla solar debacle is explained by Vanity Fair and Walmart; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: The Fox Energy Center operates a power plant; Natural gas soon to be outlawed in almost all new Menlo Park buildings; NATIONAL: EIA updates its U.S. energy consumption by source and sector chart; Don’t be so quick to write off natural gas; Natural gas prices poised for dramatic price increase; U.S. natural gas is the new, global, soft-power weapon; E&P stocks plunge to all-time lows despite solid second-quarter profitability; Michael Mann, creator of the infamous global warming ‘hockey stick,’ loses lawsuit against climate skeptic; INTERNATIONAL: Canada’s new oil, natural gas development regulation takes effect; PGNiG agrees sale of U.S. LNG cargo to Ukraine; New market for LNG as Germany moves to add import terminals; Australia, U.S. LNG exports turn up the volume on global market leader Qatar.
Researchers from Pennsylvania State University, using a new testing protocol that uses existing, affordable water chemistry tests, have tested 20,751 water well samples from wells located near high levels of both conventional and shale oil and gas drilling in PA. The tests show whether or not existing/naturally occurring methane is in the water well, or whether methane from nearby drilling is present in the water. Know what they found? Out of 20,751 samples, they found 17 wells (0.08%, less than one-tenth of a single percent) showed “possible signs of methane contamination.” Statistically speaking, it’s zero.
New Fortress Energy is in the process of building the first (of two or more) LNG liquefying plants in Wyalusing, PA–nowhere near a shoreline. The company will truck (eventually rail) the LNG to a port located on the Delaware River along the New Jersey shoreline for export to Puerto Rico and other destinations. As we reported in July, work is now underway to clear the site before actual construction of buildings begins (see 
In what we would say is an unusual, very public rebuke of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the former chairperson of the Massachusetts Dept. of Public Utilities says that Cuomo is to blame for a near-emergency situation in New England during the winter of 2017/2018 when the region was within two days of a massive blackout due to lack of electricity. The lack of electricity is because New England doesn’t have enough natural gas to feed power plants during critical load periods.
In June MDN told you that the Cambridge (Massachusetts) Retirement System is not happy with their investment in EQT shares of stock, so they’re suing the company (see 
Back in January Tallgrass Energy, builder and operator of the mighty Rockies Express (REX) pipeline which is a critical link that flows Marcellus/Utica gas to Midwestern markets, dropped the bombshell announcement that investment firm Blackstone was buying a “controlling” interest in the company (see 
