Westmoreland Gas-Fired Plant Begins Testing, Online in Dec.
In August 2016, energy giant Tenaska (headquartered in Omaha, NE) broke ground to build a 925-megawatt natural gas-fueled power plant in South Huntingdon (Westmoreland County), PA (see Groundbreaking for Tenaska Marcellus-Fired Electric Plant in SWPA). The Tenaska Westmoreland Generating Station is costing ~$780 million to build. We have super good news to report about the project. The plant is now fully built and is actively testing, with a target startup date of Dec. 1.
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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.
The “best of the rest”–stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading: Pittsburgh mayor dismisses facts, science in speech to fracking protesters; Susquehanna County produces more than 4% of U.S. natural gas!; Rabbittransit switching to natural gas for buses at Gettysburg; The plantation politics of the William Penn Foundation; Mostly outside groups pour $13.8M into redistricting proposal in Michigan; Wyoming watching Colorado’s anti-fracking ballot issue; The market for oil country tubular goods (OCTG) heats up; FERC HDD guidance – your input needed; Third quarter oil and gas deals hit $123 billion; Can U.S. gas demand keep up with surging production?; UK natural gas fracking paused following ‘Red Event’: Cuadrilla; Renewable energy, Russian natural gas and the lesson of January 2006.
Range Resources released its third quarter 2018 update earlier this week. The company shows making a $48.5 million profit for the quarter, verses losing $127.7 million in 3Q17. Quite a swing into the black! Some of the credit goes to Rover Pipeline. Range has reserved 400 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) on Rover, which is now up and running. Range is ramping up production and expects to use all of their 400 MMcf/d capacity by the end of 2018. Production in 3Q18 averaged a record high of 2.267 billion cubic feet equivalent per day (Bcfe/d), an increase of 14% compared to 3Q17.
Although EQT Midstream’s 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project has experienced a number of legal and regulatory setbacks and is currently blocked from constructing pipeline across/under/near any river, stream, or wetland in all of West Virginia and all of Virginia (some 1,100 different locations), believe it or not there are still many places where MVP can and is still installing pipeline (see 
Two weeks ago Enbridge, owner of the Texas Eastern Transmission Company (Tetco) Pipeline, announced it had put part of its Texas Eastern Appalachian Lease (TEAL) natural gas pipeline project in Ohio into service (see 
A near-capacity crowd (over 300 people) filled the Storer Ballroom at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, WV on Wednesday to hear and talk about the Mountaineer Gas Eastern Panhandle Expansion Project–a project to deliver natural gas to a new industrial facility in Berkeley County, WV, and provide gas to other local businesses and residents in the Tri-State area. The meeting (a public hearing) was hosted by the West Virginia Public Service Commission. It was moved to Shepherdstown from Charleston at the request of fussing Sierra Clubbers.
According to those who attended, the second and final day of the Shale Insight conference in Pittsburgh closed “quietly.” That is, no protesters outside the convention center. You may recall yesterday we reported that on the first day of the event a small group of Indians (dancing and worshiping water from the nearby river) and hippies gathered to rant against fracking and the use of fossil fuels (see 
We now have a date for when EQT (the driller) and EQT Midstream (the pipeline company) will split and become two separate, independent companies that will no doubt continue to work together, but will in fact be two companies. That date is November 12. In a pair of press releases issued yesterday, EQT outlined how the transition to two publicly traded companies, EQT Corporation (stock ticker EQT) and Equitrans Midstream Corporation (ticker ETRN) will happen. One of the releases names four new members for the EQT board once the split occurs, and reaffirms that current EQT CFO Robert McNally will stop “Acting” and become the full, official President & CEO of EQT.
EPA Chief Andrew Wheeler wasn’t the only speaker at yesterday’s Shale Insight event in Pittsburgh (see EPA Head Andrew Wheeler Addresses Shale Insight re “New EPA”). There were a number of other sessions addressing issues from the technical to the philosophical. A speaker from XTO Energy said the Utica Shale is only just getting started and the potential of the Utica “enormous.” A panel spoke to the critical nature of pipelines and addressed the issue of how we can better “tell our story” to the public with respect to pipelines. And another panel discussed whether and how natural gas development is affecting public health. Here’s a few select reports.
