Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | Kinder Morgan | Litigation | Pennsylvania | Pike County | Pipelines | Tennessee Gas Pipeline
Landowner Wins Fed Case to Get More $ from Pipeline Using PA Law
A landowner in Pike County, PA called King Arthur Estates LP, challenged Kinder Morgan’s Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) over the amount of money they should receive to have a pipeline cross its land–and has won the right to use PA’s more generous laws on compensation rather than the federal government’s more stingy laws on “just” compensation. The decision sets a precedent for all PA landowners.
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The stories are beginning to appear in New York metro and now national media that Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s decision to block the Williams Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) pipeline project is having serious negative economic consequences–right now. For example, the owners of a New York City deli had planned to open a new burger restaurant in Brooklyn. National Grid is refusing to run gas service to the ready-to-go restaurant, and now the deli owners are left holding a $400,000 bag (of loans) to repay for work in getting the new restaurant ready.
A new law passed in Ohio to bail out two bankrupt nuclear plants was pitched as a way for ratepayers to save money. That was a lie. A bunch of squishy RINOs along with some Democrats in the Ohio legislature passed a new bill yesterday, signed into law immediately by Ohio’s RINO governor, Mike DeWine, to add a new surcharge to every residential and business electric bill in order to keep the two financially failing nuke plants operating for years to come. It’s a $5.4 billion boondoggle.
A recent article by the American Enterprise Institute tackles the issue of how the Jones Act is keeping Puerto Ricans from fully recovering from Hurricane Maria, which happened in 2017. Puerto Rico is U.S. territory, subject to U.S. laws. One of those laws is the 1920 Jones Act, which makes it illegal to ship anything from one U.S. port to another U.S. port if the ship was not made here in the U.S. and crewed by Americans (under a U.S. “flag”). Since there are zero LNG carriers manufactured in the U.S.–that means Puerto Rico can’t receive U.S. LNG (in particular Marcellus LNG) to help in its recovery. What a travesty.
The City of Philadelphia owns the largest municipal-owned natural gas utility in the country, Philadelphia Gas Works (PGW). Philly sits not far from, and now benefits from, abundant, clean-burning natural gas deposits in the PA Marcellus. And yet there are those lunatic nutjobs who want Philadelphia to do what the city of Berkeley, California (which we call Beserkley) did and ban the use of natural gas in new buildings. Philly, to its shame, is conducting a “study” to figure out how to transition PGW away from selling natgas. The so-called study is being funded by Bloomberg, meaning it’s a shame from the start–not a true study but a propaganda piece.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: CDL drivers needed in NEPA gas country and SCCTC responds!; Pipeline politics; MVP and ACP face rocky road; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Florida’s biggest coal plant is switching to natural gas. So why aren’t climate activists cheering?; Judge rules against oil companies to keep climate liability case in Rhode Island; NATIONAL: FERC establishes new LNG division, opens Houston office; INTERNATIONAL: The Suez Canal and SUMED Pipeline are critical chokepoints for oil and natural gas trade.
Mainstream media, via a single Associated Press story, is reporting a decision by Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court yesterday is largely a “win” for the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection with respect to Chapter 78a regulations. The AP story de-emphasizes what we consider the larger story–that the drilling industry already won most of the case last year (see 
In February, EQT filed lawsuits in both Pennsylvania and federal courts against two former employees it had fired, claiming the employees, before they were fired, had systematically copied confidential information from company computers and took it with them when they left (see 
The Cameron LNG project in Lake Charles, La. is ready to begin service and asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) yesterday to allow it to fire up and begin service by this Friday. What’s that? Why is this news for MDN readers? Because Marcellus/Utica gas flows to that facility!
A radical anti-fossil fuel group (rich snobs) from Cooperstown, NY, in Otsego County (calling themselves Otsego 2000), sued the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in federal court a year ago to try and stop a project to build a couple of compressor stations in upstate New York, using the argument global warming wasn’t factored into the decision-making process (see 
In 2017 and again in 2018 we brought you news about a Texas-based company called NET Power (see 
On Friday Range Resources, the very first company to sink a Marcellus well back in 2004, announced two deals that will net the company $634 million total. In the first deal, Range sold a 2% overriding royalty interest on 350,000 acres “in southwest Appalachia” for $600 million. In the second deal, Range sold ~20,000 non-producing acres in Armstrong County for $34 million ($1,700/acre).