Allegheny Twp Antis Ask PA Supremes to Consider Frack Ban via ERA
In November 2015, MDN first reported on a zoning court case in Westmoreland County, PA that’s still playing out (see 3 Western PA Antis Weigh Appeal of Court Ruling in Zoning Case). Three ladies brought a lawsuit against Allegheny Township because the town approved a permit for CNX Gas to drill a well on a farm owned by John and Anne Slike. Since the farm is about 1,200 feet from where the ladies live, they objected. The ladies’ legal argument is that fracking is a violation of the state’s Environmental Rights Amendment (ERA). After losing in lower courts, they eventually lost their case in PA Commonwealth Court in October (see PA Antis Suffer Crushing Defeat in SWPA Zoning Case re ERA). Which should have been the end of it. But it seems the pockets of Big Green groups (which are funding the lawsuit) is bottomless. The ladies and their Big Green lawyers have just appealed the case to the PA Supreme Court. Will the Supremes accept it?
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Pennsylvania has had a seriously bad problem with acid mine drainage for years–water that washes through old/abandoned coal mines that comes back out heavily laden with minerals that make it acidic and a danger to the environment. More recently, with the shale revolution, PA has also found itself with an abundance of shale wastewater–most of it “produced” water that comes from deep in the earth (not surface drinking water), also laden with all sorts of minerals. Both acid mine water and shale wastewater are not easy to treat. Some sharp kids and their professors at the University of Pittsburgh got the bright idea to combine the two together, and treat them together, at the same time. Why? Because they have opposite amounts of barium and sulfates. Combine the two and you can more easily remove the nasty stuff via “precipitation.” How cool is that?
We bring you the following story purely for your (and our) entertainment. Dominion Energy, a huge company with its fingers in many energy pies (pipelines, LNG exports, power generation, utility company), is teaming up with the world’s largest pork producer, Smithfield, to “harness methane gas from thousands of malodorous hog lagoons.” That is, they will capture methane from pig poop and use that methane to “heat homes and combat climate change.” (Excuse us while we get up off the floor from laughing so hard!) The story comes from the well known fake news purveyor Washington Post, so we can’t be 100% sure of its accuracy. But we’ll go with it, simply for laughs.
The “best of the rest”–stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading: Summit focuses on ways to improve region’s infrastructure; Giant Longaberger basket for sale – maybe someone in shale wants to buy?; Proposed change to Dallas Twp. zoning laws may help gas companies; Gravity Oilfield Services is proving that agility is the key to growth; How Shell plans to use rail and road to capitalize on opportunities in Beaver County; Cheniere ramps up feedgas deliveries to LNG export terminal in Texas; Get your natural gas in Texas for 25 cents, if you can; Reality star in Texas poised to become America’s richest oil mogul; Methanol’s U.S. revival and global growth scenarios; Saudi Aramco to attract $150bn in investment for gas programme; UK shale gas momentum builds as IGas spuds exploration well.
Still no sign from PTT Global Chemical that they will announce a final decision to proceed with building a $6 billion ethane cracker in Belmont County, OH, by the end of this year. The project was first announced in April 2015 (see 
This one will make your head explode. We’ve been warning about this for some time, or rather, RBN Energy has been warning about it (and we’ve brought you their warnings). During a recent three hour period of natural gas trading at the Waha Hub (in West Texas), the price of gas went to negative 1 cent per thousand cubic feet (Mcf). You read that right. Someone was paying someone else to buy the gas from them! Why? Too much “associated gas” being produced in the prolific Permian Basin, and not enough pipelines to carry it to other markets. The Permian is all about oil drilling. Natural gas is a byproduct, to the point it may be worth giving it away for free just to get rid of it so a driller can keep pumping oil. The proliferation of natgas in the region is driving prices into the subbasement.
In December 2014, Massachusetts-based utility Berkshire Gas Company announced the amount of natural gas they could purchase from the Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) was at full capacity. There’s no additional gas supplies to buy–unless TGP should build their Northeast Energy Direct (NED) expansion project. So Berkshire was forced to tell new customers for natural gas in portions of Franklin County they would not be able to tap into Berkshire’s line (see 
The move to dissolve MLPs (master limited partnerships) and replace them with a corporate structure continues. In March, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) took “significant action” to address the Trump tax cut legislation enacted last December (see 
Ever notice how the antis apply a different set of rules and standards to those who support fossil fuels than they do to themselves? Here’s a great example. Virginia Natural Gas (VNG) wants to complete a decades-old project by building the final nine miles of the project from Norfolk, VA to Chesapeake, VA–called the Southside Connector Project. Those who oppose the project paid big bucks to “consultants” to write a report smearing the project as unsafe (see 
Once upon a time the Clinton Sandstone layer was the most drilled rock layer in Ohio. Then the Utica/Point Pleasant came along and it seemed as if everybody forgot about the Clinton. Previously the Clinton was drilled vertically, or conventional-only. But what if you drilled the Clinton horizontally, like you do in the Utica? You might get a “Utica-lite” well, as we commented back in 2015 (see 
Earlier this month MDN brought you the exciting news that New Fortress Energy (NFE) is planning to build an LNG (liquefied natural gas) liquefaction plant in Wyalusing (Bradford County), PA in order to export Marcellus gas (see 
Earlier this month Encino Acquisition Partners (i.e. Encino Energy) completed its purchase of all of Chesapeake Energy’s Ohio Utica Shale assets for $2 billion, originally announced in July (see 
In a pattern that has repeated itself with both the Mountain Valley Pipeline and (now) the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP), a key permit that allows ACP to build under and through streams and rivers and wetlands has been, for now, revoked. The permit is called a Nationwide Permit (NWP) 12 and was previously issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to allow ACP to build through streams, etc. in all three states where it runs–West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina. Earlier this month the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals put a temporary stop on constructing the pipeline across/under/through streams and rivers in WV (see