TransCanada Plans to Move Western Canadian Gas into New England
TransCanada has 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 we can’t get a single new pipeline project approved to flow Marcellus gas a few hundred miles away into New England. Something is seriously wrong with this picture.
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Eclipse Resources, which is about to be merged with Blue Ridge Mountain Resources (the old Magnum Hunter Resources), just posted its fourth quarter and full year production results, along with 2018 proved reserves numbers. The update is short and not-so-sweet.
Blocking pipelines into New York State and New England has real-world consequences. Lack of natural gas supplies is causing multiple local utility companies in New England and New York State to put moratoriums on new customers from hooking up to natural gas. Another local utility yesterday announced a moratorium–this latest one in Massachusetts.
Although there are still a few regulatory hurdles to jump, Equitrans Midstream (nee EQT Midstream) announced yesterday during their quarterly/annual update that the company’s 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project is still on track to be done and online by the end of this year.
Last month the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) gave permission to TransCanada’s Columbia Pipeline group to start up a portion of the Mountaineer XPress Pipeline in West Virginia (see 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Williamsport explorers beat Ithaca winers, once again; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: India’s Petronet lines up Driftwood LNG equity investment; Waha price collapse signals worsening gas supply glut in the Permian; NATIONAL: Dominion Energy adds two new directors; Bill Barr steps down; Natural gas processing capacity in the lower 48 states; US rig count falls 15 on week to 12-month low; Upstart pitches plan for the cheapest U.S. natural gas exports; EIA adds new play production data to shale gas and tight oil reports; Can U.S. gas production keep up with demand?; Increased use of natural gas exposes U.S. to cyber attacks, FERC chairman says.
Here’s something we didn’t know: In West Virginia there’s a regulation on the books, put there decades ago (pre-shale), that stipulates wells targeting “deep” formations including the Utica Shale must be at least 3,000 feet apart.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s foolish policies have finally come home to roost. You can only overtax and overregulate for so long before a state’s economy comes tumbling down–and that’s just what’s happening to poor Andy, who went hat-in-hand to the White House on Tuesday to beg and plead with The Donald to tweak the newly implemented tax federal tax cut.
Earlier this month Toby and Derek Rice, formerly executives with Rice Energy (before it sold to EQT), launched a proxy war to nominate board members who will appoint Toby CEO of EQT (see 
Utility company Consolidated Edison recently announced it will slap a moratorium on hooking up new customers for natural gas in Westchester County (NYC suburb) beginning March 15 (see 
Last week ExxonMobil and Qatar Petroleum announced a final investment decision (FID) to build Golden Pass LNG terminal, on the Texas side of the Sabine-Neches Waterway. That’s a stone’s throw from Cheneire Energy’s Sabine Pass LNG terminal on the Louisiana side of the waterway. Marcellus/Utica gas flows to the Cheniere facility. Will it also flow to Exxon’s when it’s built?
It’s no secret that getting a gas pipeline project of any kind approved in New York State is an uphill battle because our governor, Andrew Cuomo, blocks all new pipelines in a bid to keep his left wing supporters happy. An important project from Williams, the Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) which would beef up capacity along the Transco pipeline system going into New York City, is about to get two hearings with the state Dept. of Environmental Conservation.
Yesterday MDN began our lead story about a big fine for Antero Resources by saying, “This has to be a record-high amount for a fine plus remediation work, at least in the Marcellus/Utica.” We humbly admit we were wrong. In checking our records, we found that in a similar case from 2014, Trans Energy paid even more, quite a bit more. We researched what this whole business is about, why Antero and others were fined, interviewing a top Antero official, and we now have a far better understanding of what happened and why.
In 2013 some 10,000 West Virginia landowners/rights owners filed a class action lawsuit against EQT over their practice of post-production deductions from royalty checks. The lawsuit was scheduled to go to trial last November, but at the last minute, it didn’t. Word leaked that EQT had settled out of court (see