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PA Marcellus Gas to Power Electric Plant in…Puerto Rico?!
We’ve been tracking the story of a coming $800 million LNG export plant that will be built in rural northeastern Pennsylvania (see Big News! Marcellus LNG Export Plant Coming to Landlocked NEPA). We recently shared the news that some of the Marcellus molecules from the plant will go to Puerto Rico (see Wyalusing, PA LNG Export Plant Making Progress). We now know where and for what purpose.
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In 1990 a landowner freely sold (rather than have taken by eminent domain) land in Lawrence County to the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission for a new highway project. In 2012 the landowner filed a lawsuit claiming when selling the land, she did not sell the mineral rights. She wants to lease under the property for shale drilling. Yesterday Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania denied her request.
PTT Global Chemical has made and broken so many promises about the timing of a decision to build a $6 (lately cited as $10) billion ethane cracker in Belmont County, we’ve lost track of the number broken deadlines. Don’t get us wrong. We still hope and believe the project will happen, but we’ve grown weary of the delays in an announcement. And we don’t even live in the region!
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Weinberg Food Bank and natural gas industry make community health a priority; Ohio gas company fined $400k for gas line rupture that caused home fire; New York AG fights Exxon allegations of misconduct in climate probe; 3rd Circ. reverses fraud conviction under Speedy Trial Act; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: An off ramp for natural gas would benefit pipeline communities; NATIONAL: Green New Deal: Not About Energy (video); Venture Global’s Calcasieu Pass LNG gets DOE permit; Select Energy sees growth in shale water sector; Pipelines vulnerable under TSA’s watch; Federally-funded NPR joins the Green New Deal chorus, citing a flawed climate disaster study; Forecasting the oil price for fun and profit (but not accuracy); How will producers respond to the coming natural gas glut?; INTERNATIONAL: Canada’s second largest natural gas producer uses digitization to streamline; Mexico will depend on U.S. natural gas despite energy sovereignty push.
Even though Rice Midstream doesn’t exist anymore, it can still be fined. Rice Midstream became part of EQT when EQT bought out and merged in Rice Energy in 2017. Last year EQT, under pressure from investors, split itself in two–into EQT (the driller) and Equitrans (nee EQT Midstream, the pipeline company). What was Rice Midstream is now part of Equitrans. Yesterday the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) levied a $1.5 million fine on Rice for work done in late 2017/early-to-mid 2018.
Gloom, despair and agony on me. That’s how we would describe the reaction of fossil fuel haters who thought they had successfully bullied Virginia’s Water Control Board members into revoking a permit earlier granted to the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project. But last week the Board voted to NOT revoke the previously issued permit. That sent the antis into despair…and into a rage.
We thought the tree sitting weirdos trying to block construction of Equitrans’ Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) in Virginia had long returned to earth. The last of the sitters, at least in Franklin County, VA, came down last May (see 
Williams recently issued its 2018 and 4Q18 update. High on the list of kudos handed out by CEO Alan Armstrong was the Atlantic Sunrise Project, a $3 billion expansion of the Transco Pipeline in 10 northeastern Pennsylvania counties to carry Marcellus gas south, and Williams’ northeast gathering and processing (G&P) pipeline system.
We spotted an interesting announcement from NGL Energy Partners that the company has just closed on the purchase of seven natural gas liquids terminals in the Eastern United States, purchased from DCP Midstream for an undisclosed amount. What’s interesting is that some of the terminals, most of them located in the Marcellus/Utica region, are capable of exports. NGL Energy says they plan to export butane from one of them. Might that be M-U butane?
Water is expensive. Marcellus/Utica producers are spending millions of dollars on solutions to better handle water–the water they need for drilling and (perhaps more importantly) the produced water they must treat and/or dispose of. At the end of March, a group of M-U producers, regulators and other experts will gather in Pittsburgh to share their secrets to lowering the cost of water management. Should you be there too?
Southwestern Energy, one of the largest Marcellus/Utica drillers, issued its 2018 (and 4Q) update last Friday. The company reports growing M-U production 21% in 2018, to 702 billion cubic feet equivalent (Bcfe). That works out to be 1.9 Bcfe per day. Quite an accomplishment when you consider those numbers happened even after Southwestern sold off their Fayetteville Shale assets last year.
On Friday TransCanada, owner of Columbia Gas Transmission, issued a press release to say the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has approved the startup of the remainder of the Mountaineer XPress pipeline project. Just last week we told you that FERC had approved more (but not the rest) of the project to go online (see