New England Gas Co. Spending $1M on “Alternatives” to Gas Heat
A company that’s in the business of selling natural gas to homeowners and businesses, Berkshire Gas Co. (in Massachusetts), can’t get more gas supplies nor build a short 14-mile pipeline in order to add new customers to its system, so they have put an ongoing moratorium (we call it a permanent ban) on any new customers from signing up for their gas service (see New England Utility Makes Ban on New Gas Hookups Permanent).
Read More “New England Gas Co. Spending $1M on “Alternatives” to Gas Heat”
The Natural Gas Innovation Fund (NGIF) was created by the Canadian Gas Association to “support the funding of cleantech innovation in natural gas.”
We’re not intentionally picking a fight, but we can’t ignore a big, glaring issue we’ve noticed for some months. A reporter at the Charleston Gazette-Mail is now funded by Big Green backers, and his reporting has taken a decided and noticeable turn against the shale industry.
A very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to MDN readers! MDN will now take a break from daily publishing until after the New Year–until Wednesday, Jan. 2.
The “best of the rest”–stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading:
As we previously reported, an explosion and fire last week at the MarkWest Energy natural gas processing plant in Chartiers (Washington County), PA sent four people to the hospital–carried there by helicopter (see 
The Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) issued third quarter 2018 production numbers for Utica shale oil and gas production yesterday. And what a report it is! Natural gas production was up an amazing 31% over the same period last year (after being up 42% in 2Q18). Utica natgas production broke another record, hitting a new all-time high of 605 billion cubic feet (Bcf) in 3Q18. But perhaps the biggest story was Utica oil production. In 1Q18 Utica oil production was down 3.6%. In 2Q18 Utica oil production was up 11%. But in 3Q18, Utica oil production soared, going up 32%.
Two separate cases before U.S. District Judge David S. Cercone (in Pennsylvania) were settled yesterday by EQT. One of class action cases, brought against EQT, alleged the company had intentionally misclassified employees as independent contractors to avoid paying overtime. The settlement awards “more than 100” workers back wages totaling $2.8 million. The other class action case is similar, except it was filed against Rice Energy before Rice was bought out by EQT. Now that Rice is part of EQT, it is EQT paying the bills. In the Rice Energy lawsuit, some 90 workers are being paid $2.9 million for unpaid overtime. Wednesday was an expensive day for EQT.
Remember the Carrington’s from the 1980s prime time soap Dynasty? Or how about the Ewings, as in J.R. and Bobby, from the prime time soap Dallas? No, we’re not talking about the remakes of those shows appearing in recent years. We’re talking about the originals. Both shows revolved around oil families of immense wealth–one in Colorado, the other in Texas. We have a real-life version of Dynasty and Dallas playing out right now–in Pittsburgh–with the Rice brothers and EQT. Not all the sex stuff–get your head straight! We’re talking about the backroom deals and bare-knuckle politics stuff. Last week we told you that Toby and Derek Rice, formerly of Rice Energy, have launched an effort to take over the company they sold Rice Energy to (see 
The CORNballs are still at it. Even though NEXUS Pipeline, a $2.6 billion, 255-mile interstate pipeline that runs from Ohio into Michigan, partially started up in October, and went fully online in November, the Coalition to Reroute NEXUS (CORN), along with the City of Oberlin, Ohio, is asking the D.C. Court of Appeals to reverse the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s original decision to approve the project. Yes, the CORNballs (our name for CORN) want to shut it all down–even though the pipeline is in the ground spreading economic cheer throughout the region, and even though all of the scary nightmare scenarios predicted by CORN and Oberlin with respect to building the pipeline have now been proven false. The CORNballs and Oberlin are sore losers and apparently have endless gobs of money for lawyers to file frivolous lawsuits in federal court. The same two groups tried this stunt in a different court, the Sixth Circuit, where the lawsuit was tossed out last March. They’ve gone court shopping to try it all again.
In October 2017, the radical Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) published a “report” that makes the preposterous claim that New England customers have overpaid utility bills by $3.6 billion due to collusion between the natural gas and electricity industries (see 
Last week the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Eastern States Office ran another oil and gas lease auction for federal land on the eastern side of the country. Up for auction was 2,456 acres in Ohio, Michigan and Mississippi. Only half of the property listed for auction actually brought bids and sold. Of the 2,456 acres offered, a piddly 75 acres, in two parcels, was located in Ohio’s Wayne National Forest (WNF)–in Monroe County. That is, 3% of all the acreage in the BLM sale was in the Ohio Utica–and yet that 3% brought in 69% of the revenue from the sale: $15,720 total. However, the amount paid per acre for the WNF parcels seems to be small–just $209 per acre. So who picked up the 75 acres for a song?
It seems all of New England hates natural gas pipelines of any kind–whether large interstate pipelines to bring low-cost, clean-burning Marcellus gas into the region, or tiny new extensions of existing local distribution pipelines (the local gas company), especially after the tragedy near Boston (see 