Lawsuit: Jessup Board Colluded to Punish Gas Plant Property Seller
A landowner in Jessup Borough (Lackawanna County, PA, near Scranton) has filed a lawsuit against the Borough Council as a whole (and the individuals who serve on it), claiming they rezoned the landowner’s property, cutting them out of millions of dollars, as retribution because the landowner had the audacity to sell property to the Marcellus gas-fired Lackawanna Energy Center (LEC) power plant.
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TransCanada, which recently changed its name to TC Energy, is on a mission to sell more natural gas produced in Western Canada to New England and the East Coast of Canada. TC Energy’s Mainline pipeline system, that pretty much spans the continent, has just won its third rate cut by the Canadian National Energy Board (NEB), making Western Canadian gas that much cheaper to cart over 1,000 miles away to markets in the east.
Last week the Pennsylvania House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee held an informational meeting to hear from the regulated community, including the shale industry, on their experiences with Dept. of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) permit review processes. By all accounts legislators (and the DEP) got an earful.
Here’s a cool story: Energy Transfer, the company building the Mariner East 2 Pipeline in Pennsylvania, has just committed to funding the Pennsylvania Special Olympics to the tune of $450,000 over the next three years. MDN editor Jim Willis’ wife works with special needs kids, so he has a soft spot for programs like Special Olympics. Jim thought: “Hey, this is a good news story. Surely someone in the media will have picked up the Special Olympics press release by now and published an article about this, right?” Nope. Total media blackout. We couldn’t find a single news outlet that has covered this news, now four days old.
We haven’t written about Weatherford International, the world’s fourth largest oilfield services (OFS) company, since last December when the New York Stock Exchange threatened to de-list their stock (see 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: NY politicians are out to create fresh natural-gas crises; Rohr says ‘Right time’ to depart EQT board; Lehigh County receives $1 million grant to expand natural gas service; Pa. Senate confirms Dunn for DCNR Secretary; Water trucks, safety and a museum of natural gas?; NJ Common Pension Fund invests $4.09 million in Antero Resources stock; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Tax exemption could result in jobs, revenue; Under Oregon’s cap-and-trade bill, natural gas prices will explode; NATIONAL: The world’s richest institutions invest in fossil fuels. Activists are changing that.; INTERNATIONAL: Europe bailed out by cheap LNG; Trinidad gets bad news on natural gas project; Russia loses billions in Druzhba oil pipeline contamination crisis; Oil giant Total SA goes further in liquefied natural gas with $8.8 billion deal in Africa; Trade war cuts U.S. liquefied natural gas exports to China.
Antis pinned their hopes that they could get the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to overturn a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approval for Dominion to build a couple of compressor stations in upstate New York, thereby forcing FERC to consider mythical man-made global warming in ALL pipeline decisions. The case had the makings of being a “landmark” case. Yesterday antis lost their landmark case when the court ruled the party bringing the lawsuit, Otsego 2000, didn’t have standing to bring the lawsuit in the first place.
Hey Westchester County, NY: You have a model to look at for your own moratorium on (blocking of) new natural gas customers. It’s located upstate, in Lansing, NY, just outside of college town Ithaca. The local utility (NYSEG) wanted to build a short pipeline in 2017 to supply new customers with natgas, but was blocked by crazies who irrationally hate fossil fuels (see 
Another day, another episode of the ongoing soap opera that is the power struggle to retain (or take over) control of the country’s largest natural gas producer: EQT. Yesterday we told you about current CEO Rob McNally’s bold and gutsy move in adopting a “universal proxy” and about going on offense with a scorching letter written to Toby Rice (see 
Several members of the Marcellus Shale industry spoke at a meeting of the Williamsport/Lycoming Chamber of Commerce yesterday, including MDN friend George Stark from Cabot Oil & Gas. George is director of external affairs. At the meeting he said the Marcellus industry has made tremendous strides in the last 10 years and will be around for decades to come. He said, “It’s booming in our area.” George also said Cabot is having trouble filling vacant jobs.
Two Democrat New York State legislators, Senator Jen Metzger and Assemblywoman Nily Rozic, are floating parallel bills that would outright ban any new natural gas-fired electric plants or natural gas pipelines in the state. Really bizarre stuff. They’re calling this lunacy “Freedom from Fossil Fuels.” Want to run a new gas pipeline from the local utility to a new housing development or commercial business park? Forget it. No new gas customer hookups *anywhere* in the state–not just in Westchester County (see 
Events related (or of interest) to the Marcellus, Utica and other Appalachian shales happening in the next 90 or so days. Send your calendar items (listed for free!) to: jim (at) marcellusdrilling.com.
In the fight to control EQT, it appears like the momentum has just shifted in favor of EQT’s existing management. No more defense, EQT’s management team and board are now on offense. Yesterday the board and CEO Rob McNally released their list of proposed nominees to be voted on at the annual meeting in July. Three longtime members of the existing board including (surprisingly) board chairman Jim Rohr, will be out. Three new members have been named to replace them. Most important, in a bold move, EQT is adopting a “universal proxy card”–something advocated by Toby and Derek Rice in their attempt to replace the board. We explain this important development below…
Chesapeake Energy CEO Doug Lawler continues his quest to transform what used to be the nation’s second largest natural gas producer into an oil company. Yesterday the company issued its first quarter 2019 update. From that update we learn that Chessy will pull money out of its Marcellus and Haynesville shale gas drilling programs, dropping from three to two rigs in the Marcellus and from two to one rigs in the Haynesville, in order to put more money, rigs, time and effort into the company’s Powder River Basin oil drilling program. We liken their pursuit of oil riches to trying to grab St. Elmo’s Fire–it appears, and as soon as you reach to grab it, it’s gone.