Energy Stories of Interest: Mon, Feb 11, 2019
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Dimock fractivists and funders throw friends under the bus; ME 1 still offline with no end in sight; work on Ohio Tetco explosion continues too; Pit bull escapes home, leads police back to save owner from gas leak; New York’s top environmental regulator won’t be stepping down after all; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Oil and gas industry warns against proposed New Mexico fracking moratorium; NATIONAL: Does the U.S. oil rig count still matter?; Chevron, Exxon ask 2nd Circ. to sink NYC’s climate suit; INTERNATIONAL: Why did France just save Nord Stream 2?
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The latest edition of the MDN Weekly Digest is now ready. The digest is the meat and “essence” of each story for all posts appearing on the MDN website during the past week, collected in a single PDF document capable of being downloaded and printed. The Weekly Digest is available to paying subscribers only as part of your 
EQT CEO Rob McNally and board chairman Jim Rohr are in a pitched battle to maintain their control of the company. They dismiss a plan by Toby and Derek Rice to enhance EQT’s production at a lower cost as something that worked for small potatoes Rice Energy, but couldn’t work for a big, important company like EQT. The Rice boys shoot back that EQT is bloated and lumbering and needs a good house-cleaning. So what is the essence of the Rice plan to get EQT back on track? What’s the Rice boys’ secret sauce?
Three families who live near a former drill site and frack wastewater impoundment at the Yeager Marcellus Shale site in Washington County, PA sued Range Resources in May 2012 claiming the air they breathe and the water they drink had been contaminated by Range’s operations at the site (see 
We spotted a couple of op-eds yesterday commenting on the obtuse position taken by New York State (Andrew Cuomo) in blocking natural gas pipelines. One of the columns, by MDN friend Katie Klaber, makes a brilliant point. Want to know where New York is heading energy-wise? Just look at Venezuela.
The West Virginia House Energy Committee passed a bill yesterday that appears to be picking up steam and possibly headed for approval by both the House and Senate. It’s an interesting bill that allows local natural gas utilities to pay drillers to drill new gas wells in areas where there is not a reliably sufficient supply of gas.
The folks at Argus Media have done an analysis of the number of shale well permits issued in Pennsylvania for January 2019. The numbers show the number of new permits issued during January were up 72% from the number issued in December 2018, but down 11% from the number of permits issued in January 2018, one year earlier. Can we divine anything from this mixed bag of numbers?
Dominion Energy’s 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) is facing serious delays and cost overruns mainly due to lawsuits brought by Big Green groups (see 
One of the long-running complaints from shale drillers across Pennsylvania has been the amount of time it takes the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) to issue a simple permit–like an erosion and sediment control permit.
Perhaps two unrelated cases of individual landowners challenging Energy Transfer’s Mariner East 2 (ME2) Pipeline–one in court, the other with regulators–doesn’t make a trend, but it is worth noting. Our antennae are up.
Pieridae Energy wants to build an LNG export plant in Nova Scotia, Canada. The Mi’kmaq (pronounced mic-mac) indigenous peoples of Nova Scotia (i.e. Indians) have never formally surrendered their “ownership” claim of Nova Scotia–a claim long disputed. In order to build and operate the Goldboro LNG export facility, Pieridae has agreed to pay off the Mi’kmaq. Call it “leave us alone” money.