Dominion Energy | Energy Services | Equitrans/EQT Midstream | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | Pipelines
US District Court Throws Out ACP/MVP Eminent Domain Case
We’ve lost track of how many lawsuits have been filed by anti-fossil fuel groups against EQT Midstream’s Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), and Dominion Energy’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP). Among the flood of never-ending lawsuits was a lawsuit against both pipelines from a group of 50 or so landowners who tried to overturn the constitutional use of eminent domain to force hold-out landowners to accept the pipeline. The landowners tried to court-shop and find a court to aide them in their cause. Last Friday the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia rejected that effort.
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Earlier this year the federal EPA approved a new injection well for Plum Borough in Allegheny County, PA (see 
We’re going to dub Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, “Tommy One Note.” Wolf participated in a debate with his far-more-qualified-to-be-governor opponent, Scott Wagner, Monday evening in Hershey, PA. It was/is the only debate that will be held between the two. The debate (if you can call it that) was “moderated” by Jeopardy host Alex Trebek. During the debate Wolf indicated that if he is elected to a second four-year term, he will keep fighting every single year, year in and year out, to pass an exorbitantly high severance tax to pay back teacher’s unions for voting for him.
Columbia Gas of Massachusetts continues to try and recover from early missteps in how it responded to a series of explosions in its local delivery pipelines north of Boston in mid-September (see 
Environmentalists who buy into the fairy tale of man-made global warming have a new tool to force their will on the American people: Get liberal governors to abuse state review authority granted to them under the federal Clean Water Act (CWA) in order to block federal pipeline projects. NY Gov. Cuomo was one of the first to bastardize the intent of the CWA in this fashion. It is a hijacking of the CWA and its intended purpose–and it must stop.
The “best of the rest”–stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading: Possible ethane cracker plant will impact communities outside Belmont County; Making big bucks in the Marcellus/Utica industry; Corporate Citizenship award winner: Chevron Appalachia; Philly-area Senators to introduce partisan pipeline siting bill; Connecticut state lawmakers want review of gas pipelines; GE ousts CEO John Flannery in surprise move after missed targets; Good riddance to Obama’s gas flaring rule; Shell approves long-awaited Canadian LNG project; Panama Canal in LNG tanker transit milestone; LNG prices leap on strong Chinese demand.
It’s this kind of story that makes our blood boil–we won’t lie. EQT tried to shaft an elderly couple in Ritchie County, West Virginia out of royalty money by slipping in not only post-production deductions never agreed to in the contract, but also by slipping in a deduction for WV severance taxes owed by EQT itself. Maddening!
In early 2017 at the beginning of a new session of the Pennsylvania Legislature, PA State Senator Gene Yaw introduced a pair of bills he dubbed the “Oil and Gas Lease Protection Package” (see 
In September, MDN told you that the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that a ballot measure backed by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) in Columbus, OH, a measure meant to ban fracking to send a “you’re not welcome” message to Utica drillers, is in fact illegal and will not appear on the November ballot (see 
Without natural gas, modern life as humans know it would cease. And no, that’s not hyperbole or bluster. And yet, non-thinking anti-fossil fuel protesters refuse to acknowledge that basic truth. We spotted an excellent article in Forbes that outlines the vital importance of shale gas (specifically the ethane that comes as part of shale gas extraction). We love the straightforward simplicity of the article in describing how the shale ecosystem works–and how it touches on virtually every aspect of our modern existence.