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DTE Midstream Buys Another 30% of WV Gathering System
In 2016, DTE Energy, a BIG utility and midstream company based in Detroit, MI, purchased 100% of M3 Midstream’s Appalachia Gathering System (AGS), located in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and 40% of M3’s Stonewall Gas Gathering (SGG), located in West Virginia (see DTE Energy Buys Marcellus/Utica Pipelines for $1.3B). The reason? To feed natgas-fired electric plants the utility wants to build (see DTE’s Reason for Buying M-U Pipes: NatGas-Fired Electric Plants). DTE has just cut a deal to buy another 30% of the Stonewall system in WV.
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In March a group of Pennsylvania landowners from Lancaster County asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case in which they say they’ve been screwed over by Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline, that the pipeline should not have had the right to use eminent domain to build the pipeline before the matter of compensation was fully adjudicated (see 
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Tellurian’s Driftwood LNG wins non-FTA export approval from DOE; Shell not ‘desperate’ to grow US shale despite Anadarko sale; NATIONAL: Net injections into working natural gas in the Lower 48 states totaled 123 Bcf; FERC holds the line on one-year limit for state review of Clean Water Act certifications for interstate natural gas pipelines; Paying too much for natural gas? Thank the Jones Act.; Fossil fuel tax breaks would get killed under Senate bill; American LNG positioned to win with IMO 2020; INTERNATIONAL: Activists call for halt on U.S. LNG shipments to Europe despite growing demand; US to EU: Our liquefied natural gas is more reliable than Russia’s; Europe’s imports of American natural gas are soaring.
This is a “man bites dog” kind of story. Typically when we read about drilling on Pennsylvania state-owned land, the drilling happens on private land adjacent to the state land with the lateral reaching under state land (leased for that purpose). This time we spotted a story about a new well due to be drilled this year in Elk County, PA that sits directly *on* state land, and will reach under private land!
Last week the Mountain Valley Pipeline project, being built by Equitrans Midstream, got a boost from the West Virginia Dept. of Environmental Protection (WVDEP). WVDEP has submitted a revised stream/river crossing permit previously rejected by a federal court. The reworked permit means construction will once again resume in some areas where it’s currently stalled, maybe by mid-year.
Last week we brought you the news that President Trump is considering a waiver to the 1920 Jones Act for LNG to be shipped from port to port in the U.S., even if the ships used are foreign flagged (see 
Two weeks ago MDN told you the Pennsylvania House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee approved a series of five bills that restore some sanity in how environmental regulations are made and paid for in the Keystone State (see 
Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection Secretary Pat McDonnell will get his day in court, or rather, his day in a reconfirmation hearing–on May 8. We previously wrote about the delay of McDonnell’s reconfirmation hearing (see 
So-called environmentalists, best typified by the odious Sierra Club, are on a mission to rid the world of its dependency on fossil fuels–coal, oil and natural gas. Most often they object, protest and otherwise hate coal and “fracking”–at the same time. Yet to do so is clinical insanity. Why? Because you need either coal or natural gas to produce steel. Without steel, you don’t have a civilization. No new buildings, no new cars, no new iPhones. Kaput, all of it, without steel. And yet that is exactly what the nutters of the Sierra Club are lobbying for.
For the past 12 consecutive months and counting, the United States has been a net exporter of natural gas. That means we sell more gas to other countries than we buy. What a turnaround from just a few years ago! What may surprise you is that the way we export most of our gas is via pipeline–to Canada and Mexico. And what may further surprise you to learn is that our exports to Canada have hit new record highs thanks mostly to two Marcellus/Utica pipelines–Rover and NEXUS.
Every now and again we traffic in rumors here on MDN, but we do so rarely and only when we trust the source of the rumor. In mid-March we brought you juicy tidbits from a highly trusted source about the PTT Global Chemical ethane cracker project in Belmont County, OH, a rumor about why a final investment decision (FID) to proceed has been delayed (see 
CNX Resources released its first quarter 2019 update yesterday, which shows the company lost $87 million, as opposed to making $527 million in profit in 1Q18. Even so, CEO Nicholas DeIuliis announced the company is upping its drilling budget from the previously announced $700 million to instead spend $885 million, largely to drill more “deep dry” Utica wells. Go big or go home!
Last week MDN told you that NextEra Energy, a partner in Equitrans’ 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) that will run from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County, VA, said MVP will most likely not get finished this year (see 
Last September MDN told you that a new natgas-fired electric plant planned for the People’s Republic of Rhode Island in Burrillville was on life support, with antis reaching to pull the plug (see