Steel Nation CEO Pushes Back on Post-Gazette Cancer Stories
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette continues to get a lot of negative reaction to its grossly irresponsible series of stories attempting to connect shale drilling to several cases of childhood cancer in southwestern Pennsylvania (see Response to Pittsburgh Newspaper Smear Campaign re Child Cancer). The founder and CEO of Steel Nation, a company deeply involved in the Marcellus/Utica shale industry, is the latest to push back against the Post-Gazette‘s irresponsible series.
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MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: PUCO threatens to shut down natural gas company; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: U.S. Department of Energy approves LNG exports from Gulf LNG; Bakken gas muscling out Western Canadian supply from Chicago market; NATIONAL: Rystad Energy finds employment is shifting from shale to offshore; Hurricane Barry knocked 700,000 barrels of oil per day offline and hardly anyone noticed; Bill improving natural gas pipeline safety advances in Congress; INTERNATIONAL: Google’s celeb-obsessed search for climate change answers is a hypocritical joke.
CNX Resources, formerly the CNX Gas division of CONSOL Energy, released its second quarter update yesterday. The big news is that during 2Q CNX drilled the longest new Marcellus well ever…at 19,609 feet! The company reports production jumped 10%, from 123 Bcfe last year to 135 Bcfe in 2Q19, and net income jumped 216% from $61 million last year to $193 million in 2Q19.
PTT Global Chemical continues to behave is if it’s going forward with building a $7.5 billion ethane cracker in Dilles Bottom (Belmont County), Ohio. The latest evidence? The company is actively buying up homes close to the proposed site. Over the past two months the company has snapped up six homes and is in discussions right now with others.
Equitrans, formerly known as EQT Midstream (formerly a division of EQT), released its second quarter update yesterday. Among the things we learned: The Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project is now 85% complete and will be done and online in mid-2020. EQT (the driller) remains committed to the MVP project and contrary to false rumors, EQT is not pulling out (it would cost them north of $3 billion to do so!). The project cost for MVP will be around $5 billion–a new high.
America’s natural gas and oil industry announced “a landmark partnership” in late 2017 called the Environmental Partnership, to “accelerate improvements to environmental performance in operations across the country” (see 
Lee Wasserman is director of the Rockefeller Family Fund, a New York-based charity started in 1967 by heirs of oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller. Wasserman is a man-causes-global-warming Kool Aid drinker, and he uses the considerable money available to him to “fight climate change.” For a smart guy he’s really, really dumb. In a New York Times editorial last week, Wasserman paraded his ignorance for all to see by declaring the petroleum industry’s continued search for oil and gas is “rampant corporate irrationality.”
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Unrealistic energy policies sting American consumers; CNX COO announces retirement; NY grid reliability at risk; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: California grid operator warns regulators on natural gas-fired plant retirements; Don’t let state regulators limit energy choice in California; Tesla unleashes Megapack battery to take on natural gas plants; Howell planners approve New Jersey Natural Gas training facility; NATIONAL: Flaring natural gas is the safer environmental option; Natural gas exports are giving US a key edge; Mid-decade milestone for US LNG exports; Inslee’s climate bubbles (video); INTERNATIONAL: TC Energy reaches agreement to sell Ontario natural gas-fired power plants for $2.87 billion; Surf’s Up…Second wave of LNG is here; Don’t ‘demonize’ energy firms: BP boss says climate activists should avoid polarizing society.
The last time MDN reported on Tug Hill Operating was more than two years ago, a story about Tug Hill’s XcL Midstream subsidiary working to build a new gathering pipeline system in West Virginia to flow gas that would come from Tug Hill’s THQ Appalachia drilling subsidiary (see 
The actions of one man seeking access to confidential risk assessments and plans for the Mariner East pipelines in the Philadelphia area will, if successful, put information into the public domain that terrorists can potentially use. Note we don’t believe it is the intent of this man to grant access to sensitive information to terrorists. But that is the consequence, the outcome, the result of his actions–if a court now reviewing the case grants his request.
Canada’s National Energy Board (NEB) has approved TC Energy’s agreements with natural gas retailers in Eastern Canada, to flow Western Canadian gas to Canada’s East Coast and New England. TC Energy (formerly called TransCanada) cooked up a plan to expand an existing pipeline in New England and connect it to a point in Quebec to flow gas from the opposite side of the continent, Western Canadian natural gas (over 1,000 miles away), into New England and from there back up into Canada (see 
Columbia Gas of Massachusetts (NiSource) continues to recover (physically and reputationally) from a series of explosions last September in its local delivery pipelines north of Boston (see