Energy Stories of Interest: Wed, Feb 13, 2019
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Meeting set on CNX gas well failure near Bear Run reservoir; Richmond-area charities receive more than $1.2 million as a result of 2018 Dominion Energy Charity Classic; Stockholm Syndrome: Westchester folks ask Cuomo for help with ConEd; New York State Teachers Retirement System raises stake in Chesapeake Energy; NATIONAL: Top 10 US shale portfolios; McConnell plans to bring Green New Deal to Senate vote; Power blocks in natural gas-fired combined-cycle plants are getting bigger; Pipeline fight drags on, tempting intervention from Trump; Green is the new Red; Natural gas lobby taps energy heavyweight; INTERNATIONAL: Pieridae Energy setting up $20 mln share sale; Germany, US seek to set aside spat over natural gas supplies.
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This has to be a record-high amount for a fine plus remediation work, at least in the Marcellus/Utica. Antero Resources has cut a deal with three government entities–the U.S. Dept. of Justice, federal Environmental Protection Agency, and West Virginia Dept. of Environmental Protection–to pay a $3.15 million fine and spend another $8 million to mitigate and restore 32 sites in West Virginia.
Yesterday the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) granted TransCanada’s Columbia subsidiary permission to begin a partial startup of the Gulf XPress Project that adds additional compression to the Columbia Gulf Transmission pipeline to flow more Marcellus/Utica gas to the Gulf Coast.
Ohio’s current Governor, Mike DeWine, is an establishment-type swamp dwelling Republican. DeWine was Attorney General for Ohio in November 2017 when he was manipulated into suing Energy Transfer claiming the Rover Pipeline project was guilty of “polluting state waters while constructing a natural gas pipeline across Ohio” (see 
The folks of Weymouth, Massachusetts have for years tried to block a new compressor station project, part of a Spectra Energy/Enbridge project to beef up capacity along the Algonquin Gas Transmission pipeline. Algonquin filed a lawsuit against Weymouth Town and its conservation commission in District Court of Massachusetts. The court ruled in Algonquin’s favor and the town appealed the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
It is beyond bizarre that the Sierra Club, which claims it defends the environment, works so hard to stop electric generating plants from converting from coal to natural gas. As we pointed out yesterday, gas-fired plants produce a small fraction of nasty pollutants like sulfur dioxide, compared with coal (see 
Yesterday MDN brought you the story of a so-called acid rain permit issued to Pennsylvania’s largest natural gas-fired electric generating plant (see 
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has just declared full-on war with Energy Transfer and its Sunoco Logistics subsidiary by directing the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) to suspend all reviews of clean water permit applications and other pending approvals for all of ET/Sunoco’s pipeline projects in the state, including Mariner East 2 (ME2) and the Revolution pipeline project.
CNX Resources say they think they know why a Utica well they were fracking in Westmoreland County, PA suddenly lost pressure as they were fracking it–with gas escaping into nearby conventional wells.
Pennsylvania’s largest operating natural-gas fired electric generating plant, Lackawanna Energy Center (LEC) near Scranton (in Jessup), will soon receive a permit officially allowing and capping sulfur dioxide emissions from the plant. Should nearby residents be concerned?
The Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) is doing a happy dance that they’ve shaken down XTO Energy $425,000 to settle a violation by XTO for drilling a shale well in Belmont County a year ago that exploded and caught fire.
The following story highlights what should be, in our opinion, a crime: Foreign liquefied natural gas (LNG), in record amounts, is coming to Boston and being offloaded into the Algonquin Gas Transmission pipeline in order to meet the high demand of New Englanders for gas. In fact, a new record has just been set for the amount of foreign LNG imports flowing for a single day. Maddening.
NEXUS Pipeline, a $2.6 billion, 255-mile interstate pipeline that runs from Ohio into Michigan, began a partial startup in October, and was fully online in November. Although there was early opposition to the project, and some complaints from landowners along the route of construction, the project is noteworthy for the just how little complaining there actually was.
Last August Eclipse Resources announced it had sold itself to Blue Ridge Mountain Resources, the renamed remnant of Magnum Hunter Resources (see