Dominion Energy | Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | New York | Otsego County | Pipelines | Regulation | Statewide NY
Cooperstown Snobs Fighting Dominion Pipe Say “We’ll be Back”
Guess we should have seen this one coming. Last week MDN told you that U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected an appeal by the rich snobs from Cooperstown that call themselves Otsego 2000, challenging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) approval of Dominion Energy’s New Market Project to build two new compressor stations in Upstate NY (see Fed Court Rules Against NY Antis in “Landmark” Dominion Pipe Case). The snobs just won’t let it go–they hate being told “NO” by anyone…
Read More “Cooperstown Snobs Fighting Dominion Pipe Say “We’ll be Back””
You know who anti-vaxxers are, right? The parents who won’t give their children vaccines because they fear the vaccines may give their kids autism or allergies. Because of this anti-vaxxer movement, there’s been a recent resurgence in measles–particularly in New York City. A group calling themselves Physicians for Social Responsibility is trotting out scare tactics to oppose a pipeline compressor station in Weymouth, Massachusetts. One writer calls them the anti-vaxxers of energy. We love it!
The so-called trade war with China has just been ratcheted up a notch–by China. In a move to cut off their own nose to spite their face, the Chinese have hiked tariffs on LNG imports coming into their country from the United States–from a 10% tax to a 25% tax. Given only two LNG cargoes from the U.S. have landed in China this year, we suspect there won’t be any more LNG shipments from us to them for the foreseeable future. Depending on who you talk to, this is either no big deal, or a complete economic disaster for our shale gas industry.
Several so-called environmental groups, including one calling itself the Sane Energy Project, converged on Albany, NY yesterday to protest two new natural gas pipeline projects. How many committed, dedicated, climate warriors showed up from these “several” groups? Thousands? Hundreds? How about two dozen. Nobody would have noticed the protest except sycophantic media outlets arrived to plaster the event all over the airwaves (and newsprint). Rather disheartening is that an 11-year-old boy who’s been brainwashed was among the protesters. Of course the media loved it.
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Natural gas facility restrictions, renovation projects top Longmeadow Town Meeting warrant; Gulf Coast Express set to reshuffle some Permian gas outflows; NATIONAL: Greenhouse deception (video); The new green serfdom; INTERNATIONAL: Fabian Cancellara says criticism of Ineos cycling sponsorship ‘not fair’; Shale industry to be profitable in 2019 – IEA.
Is Summit Midstream teeing up their Marcellus pipeline gathering system for a sale? Late last week Summit Midstream, which has a meaningful presence in the Marcellus/Utica region, released its first quarter 2019 numbers and held a conference call to discuss the company’s performance. As was the case for fourth quarter and full year 2018 (see 
A landowner in Jessup Borough (Lackawanna County, PA, near Scranton) has filed a lawsuit against the Borough Council as a whole (and the individuals who serve on it), claiming they rezoned the landowner’s property, cutting them out of millions of dollars, as retribution because the landowner had the audacity to sell property to the Marcellus gas-fired Lackawanna Energy Center (LEC) power plant.
TransCanada, which recently changed its name to TC Energy, is on a mission to sell more natural gas produced in Western Canada to New England and the East Coast of Canada. TC Energy’s Mainline pipeline system, that pretty much spans the continent, has just won its third rate cut by the Canadian National Energy Board (NEB), making Western Canadian gas that much cheaper to cart over 1,000 miles away to markets in the east.
Last week the Pennsylvania House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee held an informational meeting to hear from the regulated community, including the shale industry, on their experiences with Dept. of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) permit review processes. By all accounts legislators (and the DEP) got an earful.
Here’s a cool story: Energy Transfer, the company building the Mariner East 2 Pipeline in Pennsylvania, has just committed to funding the Pennsylvania Special Olympics to the tune of $450,000 over the next three years. MDN editor Jim Willis’ wife works with special needs kids, so he has a soft spot for programs like Special Olympics. Jim thought: “Hey, this is a good news story. Surely someone in the media will have picked up the Special Olympics press release by now and published an article about this, right?” Nope. Total media blackout. We couldn’t find a single news outlet that has covered this news, now four days old.
We haven’t written about Weatherford International, the world’s fourth largest oilfield services (OFS) company, since last December when the New York Stock Exchange threatened to de-list their stock (see 
Antis pinned their hopes that they could get the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to overturn a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approval for Dominion to build a couple of compressor stations in upstate New York, thereby forcing FERC to consider mythical man-made global warming in ALL pipeline decisions. The case had the makings of being a “landmark” case. Yesterday antis lost their landmark case when the court ruled the party bringing the lawsuit, Otsego 2000, didn’t have standing to bring the lawsuit in the first place.
Hey Westchester County, NY: You have a model to look at for your own moratorium on (blocking of) new natural gas customers. It’s located upstate, in Lansing, NY, just outside of college town Ithaca. The local utility (NYSEG) wanted to build a short pipeline in 2017 to supply new customers with natgas, but was blocked by crazies who irrationally hate fossil fuels (see