NJ Antis Rally Against Williams NE Supply Enhancement Compressor
The Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) is a Williams Transco Pipeline project meant to increase pipeline capacity and flows heading into northeastern markets (see Time to Support Transco’s Northeast Supply Enhancement Project). There are a number of components to NESE, but the key component, the heart of the project, is a new 23-mile pipeline from the shore of New Jersey into (on the bottom of) the Raritan Bay–running parallel to the existing Transco pipeline–before connecting to the Transco pipeline offshore. Williams wants to build a compressor station on the Jersey side to help push the gas through. Antis rallied yesterday just prior to a NJ DEP public hearing on the project, to express their opposition to the Franklin Township (Somerset County) compressor station.
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We’ve covered, it seems endlessly, news about two important new pipeline projects coming in the Marcellus. One is EQT Midstream’s (now Equitrans Midstream) Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), a 303-mile pipe from West Virginia to southern Virginia. The other is Dominion Energy’s 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP), from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina. MVP will, when it’s done, carry 2 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of natural gas to southern markets, and ACP will carry 1.5 Bcf/d. Both pipelines chart a similar path south. And both pipelines are now stalled, dogged by frivolous lawsuits filed by so-called environmental groups. Both have announced delays for their final completion dates. Our friends at RBN Energy look in detail at both projects, and what a delay may mean for drillers in the Marcellus/Utica. Are more pipeline constraints on the way in our region?
We’re not much of a fan of the federal Environmental Protection Agency–especially the agency under the jackboots of the Obamadroids. The Obama years saw egregious abuses and wild new regulations that tried to stamp out the fossil fuel industry. In March 2016, we told you about a new “voluntary” program set up by the Obama EPA called the Natural Gas STAR Methane Challenge Program (see 
Each year the International Energy Agency (IEA) issues a special 
The “best of the rest”–stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading: Syracuse’s BlueRock Energy sells big chunk of its business; LNG tanker docks at Cheniere’s Corpus Christi plant as 1st shipment nears; The pre-winter rapid rise in U.S. natural gas prices; The new bear market in oil; Big Data adds up to big savings for upstream players; Toshiba exiting U.S. LNG to focus on core businesses; Ahead of Trump-Xi meeting, record-setting oil exports to China at zero for 2nd month.
The last time we checked in (June) on a brewing frack ban in Penn Township (Westmoreland County), PA, a challenge to a local ordinance which allows Apex Energy and Huntley & Huntley to drill and operate wells rested with a county judge. Things have since rapidly progressed. We’re guessing the local judge ruled in favor of allowing the wells to be drilled because the case was appealed to PA Commonwealth Court. Late last week the judges in Commonwealth Court issued a ruling in favor of Penn Township’s “special exception” permits awarded to Apex Energy, allowing them to drill shale wells.
Utility giant Eversource (formerly Northeast Utilities), one of the companies backing the Access Northeast pipeline project, is calling it quits on the project. At least for the foreseeable future. Access Northeast, a proposed ~$3 billion project, would connect four different pipeline systems: Texas Eastern, Algonquin Gas Transmission, Iroquois and Maritimes & Northeast. Eversource desperately needs the gas that would flow through the connected system, but after the Columbia Gas tragedy near Boston in September (see 
Last week MDN brought you the exciting news that New Fortress Energy is planning to build an LNG (liquefied natural gas) liquefaction plant in Wyalusing (Bradford County), PA (see 
Last week MDN picked up on news shared by top management for Energy Transfer that their long-delayed Mariner East 2 pipeline system will be up and running by the end of the year (see 
The battle continues to rage in the lib Dem socialist utopia of Ithaca (Tompkins County), NY over a plan to convert a local coal-fired electric generating plant to use much better-for-the-environment and far-less-polluting natural gas. Yet local antis, who irrationally (and we mean clinically insane) hate fossil fuels, continue to object and preen themselves at county board meetings to object to converting the plant. They object to the conversion because natural gas is a “fossil fuel”–the modern form of eeeeevil in their eyes. And so (once again, demonstrating clinical insanity), they prefer to keep the plant burning coal. The plant will have to burn something. We don’t see any of these same antis volunteering to unhook themselves from the electric grid. The electricity flowing to their homes needs to get generated somehow, and it sure ain’t renewables doing it.
Trout Unlimited (TU), previously outed as an anti-fracking organization (see 
Events related (or of interest) to the Marcellus and Utica Shale, primarily pro-drilling events. To have your event included (or if you are aware of a worthy event you believe should be on this page), please send the details and/or a link to have it included to the calendar@marcellusdrilling.com email address.
Yesterday the muckety-mucks from Energy Transfer (ET) held a conference call with Wall Street analysts to discuss the company’s third quarter 2018 update. Inevitably on such calls there’s talk about what’s coming up in addition to what happened in the previous quarter. ET is a big midstream (pipeline) company. Among their projects are the mighty Rover Pipeline, which reaches from Pennsylvania, West Virgina, and eastern Ohio all the way into Michigan, and the Mariner East 2 Pipeline, which runs from eastern Ohio all the way through Pennsylvania to the Philadelphia area. Rover flows natural gas, ME2 (and ME2X) will flow NGLs, mainly ethane and propane. According to Tom Long, ET’s Chief Financial Officer, ME2 will be up and running sometime this quarter. Since the end of this quarter is around Christmastime, we prefer to think of ME2 as a Christmas present for Marcellus/Utica drillers.
Last week MPLX (i.e. MarkWest Energy) issued its third quarter 2018 update. MarkWest, since merging into Marathon Petroleum, has become a big, major player in a number of shale plays across the country. Our interest and focus is, of course, on the Marcellus/Utica. Did this recent update yield any interesting insights? It sure did! Gathered and processed volumes in the Marcellus/Utica are up, significantly, for MarkWest. The amount of gas (and NGLs) gathered in the M-U was up a huge 35% from the same period last year (3.1 Bcf/d), and processed volumes at MarkWest plants was up 10% year over year (5.5 Bcf/d). Here’s a look behind the curtain at MarkWest/MPLX.
It must really grate on Big Green supporters that their hero, lib Dem Tom Wolf (who just won reelection as governor of PA), continues to support fossil fuel projects. It must doubly grate on them that Wolf’s Dept. of Environmental Protection, when funding such projects, calls them “clean energy.” We love it! The PA DEP announced yesterday, two days after the big election, that they’ve just awarded $2.6 million in grants to 16 different “clean energy vehicle” projects. When you look at the list, all but $32,077 of that amount is going to fund either CNG or propane-powered vehicles. That is, fossil fuel-powered vehicles (mostly buses and trucks). And the DEP has the *audacity* (in the opinion of Big Green nuts) to call all of these projects “clean energy”! We’re laughing our considerable rear-end off.