CNX Midstream Sues Contractor for Walking Away from Pipe Project
On Monday, CNX Midstream sued West Virginia contractor Ronald Lane Inc. claiming the contractor “without warning or justification ceased work on the Project and abandoned the Project,” the Project being a package of water and gas pipelines in Greene and Washington counties in PA. And that, “Lane informed [CNX] that Lane intended to redirect all of its forces and efforts to other projects that Lane considered to be more profitable than the Project. Lane made it clear to [CNX] that Lane had no intention to perform any more work on the Project.” Lane was the winning bidder for the Project in late 2017 at a total cost of $7.1 million. According to the lawsuit, CNX claims Lane began construction in March and abandoned the Project in June.
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MDN has run a number of stories on the recent wild fluctuations in the price of natural gas. As we always explain, there is no one “price” of natgas for everyone–but there is the Henry Hub price, which is used for trading futures contracts (NYMEX). That price is watched like a hawk by everyone who trades natural gas. A casual observer of the market might think, based on media coverage, that the swings in the NYMEX price mean something bad. Negative. “The price I’ll pay this winter will go high, and it will stay high, and the shale “revolution” was always just a mirage and this proves it!” Whew. Take a chill pill. The chief economist for the American Petroleum Institute recently penned what we call a natgas price explainer, looking at the recent spikes in the price, providing context for understanding that the price we pay for gas is still, on average, at historic lows. And no, the sky is not falling.
Although the Democrats will seize control of the House of Representatives come January, putting Nancy Pelosi in charge, fortunately the Senate will remain under Republican control. However, as happens each two years, a number of committee assignments and chairmanships and ranking member assignments will change. One of those changes is in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin (Democrat) may become the ranking (longest serving) Democrat on the committee, and because of tradition, he would then assume the role of Ranking Member of the committee. That prospect doesn’t sit well with the radical children of the Big Green movement–because Manchin is from WV and he loves and supports the coal industry and he loves and supports natural gas. Worse yet, Manchin sometimes (not often, but sometimes) votes with Donald Trump (gag). The petulant children of Big Green groups like “Friends of the Earth” are stomping their feet, demanding that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer deny Manchin the Ranking Member position.
What if the shale revolution had never happened? We’d be another $250 billion in the hole with our trade deficit. That’s the finding of a new report released by IHS Markit titled “Trading Places: How the Shale Revolution Has Helped Keep the U.S. Trade Deficit in Check.” The report finds the total U.S. merchandise trade deficit in 2017 was $250 billion lower than it otherwise would have been if the petroleum (crude oil, refined products and natural gas liquids – petroleum liquids separated out from natural gas and also known as NGLs) trade deficit had remained at its 2007 level. Thank God for shale! The report also examines the impact of rising U.S. oil, natural gas and chemicals production on the domestic trade merchandise balance and how the U.S. position in energy and chemicals may evolve in coming years. Interesting stuff.
The “best of the rest”–stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading: Natural gas panel highlights potential and challenges; The Atlantic Coast Pipeline is a vote for the future; Equitrans Midstream plans to simplify structure, eliminate IDRs; Inside Puerto Rico’s quest for 100% renewables: A clash over natural gas; Trump’s best play: Stand aside and let coal country become gas country; Weather, low storage, drive up the price of natural gas; Big Oil battles gender problem that may take decades to fix; Big Green tries to grow scope of Clean Water Act by using courts.
Last week MDN friend and ace reporter Rick Stouffer from Kallanish Energy hosted a one-day event in Pittsburgh called “Kallanish New Horizons: Appalachin Basin.” One of the speakers was Denise Brinley, senior energy advisor for the Pennsylvania Department of Community & Economic Development. She addressed the topic of an NGL (ethane) storage hub. We’ve written a number of posts on what was originally billed as a $10 billion project, to be located somewhere in the Marcellus/Utica region–most likely West Virginia (see 
Continuing on the topic of the NGL storage hub that is today’s lead story (see Appalachian NGL Storage Hub Enters Phase 2 – Built in 2-3 Years?), a number of politicians previously lobbied the U.S. Department of Energy to study the issue of if, and where, a natural gas liquids (NGL) storage hub should be located. Namely, West Virginia’s two U.S. Senators, Shelly Moore Capito and Joe Manchin, were behind the request for a DOE study (see 
Russian native Boris Brevnov, a former Enron executive, and banker Charles Ryan, a Radnor native who was once chief country officer in Moscow for Deutsche Bank, have just landed themselves a sweetheart deal with Philadelphia Gas Works to build a small LNG plant that will export Marcellus gas. The Philadelphia Gas Commission voted to approve a deal yesterday with Liberty Energy Trust. We frankly have mixed emotions about the news. We’re glad to see another LNG export facility, this one in PA (albeit quite small), but unhappy that these particular people are the ones building and operating it. Yes, there’s a lot of history to cover in this story.
This is the kind of news we love to share! Keystone Clearwater Solutions, which was once majority owned by Rex Energy until they sold it to American Water Works in 2015 (see 
Every three years the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection is required, by state law, to produce an update to the state’s so-called Climate Action Plan. The fact that they have such a plan boggles the mind–a plan to address global warming (the operative word being “global”) from one state. To be fair, a number of states and even large cities also have such plans. These plans are all arrogant nonsense. No entity, especially not a single state, can do a darned thing to affect the temperature of Mom Earth, but they pretend they can. And they use the existence of such plans as a manipulative political tool to force policy changes that inflict great economic harm on their citizens–all in the name of saving the planet. They’ve brainwashed our children into believing we’ll die if we don’t give up fossil fuel use. The DEP recently released their triennial update, and it’s as crazy as ever.
It’s kind of unusual, but we suppose not totally unheard of, for a township in the heart of the Pennsylvania Marcellus region in the northeast to essentially reject the Marcellus industry and tell the industry it isn’t wanted in their town. That’s the very loud and clear message just sent by Dallas Township (Luzerne County, near Wilkes-Barre) in adopting new zoning regulations that limit businesses related to the Marcellus industry from operating anywhere but in ~10% of the town. And we’re not talking about drilling–there is no Marcellus drilling in Dallas, in fact none in Luzerne County at all. We’re talking about things like “compressor stations, metering stations, processing facilities, hydraulic fracturing water withdrawal and treatment services.” And such restrictions do impact the industry, especially those related to pipeline infrastructure.