NG Advantage Looks Beyond Fenton, NY to Build Virtual Pipeline
In a sad postscript, it appears that NG Advantage, which had once hoped to establish a virtual pipeline operation (compressing natural gas from the Millennium Pipeline) in the Town of Fenton (suburb of Binghamton), has finally given up on building the project in Fenton and is instead looking elsewhere. At least that’s our impression based on a couple of sources. We have no confirmation nor comment from NG–so this is purely our own speculation. However, a local television station in Binghamton recently noticed that NG is loading pipes onto a trailer, moving them out of the former construction site. The Town of Fenton Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) ruled in February that the facility does not qualify as an allowed use under existing zoning regulations (see NG Advantage Loses Zoning Vote for Virtual Pipe Near Binghamton). The Fenton Town Board is in no mood to overrule the ZBA decision, according to Suervisor Dave Hamlin. Case closed–unless NG plans to sue the town to recover costs, or try to force the issue of building the plant–which we don’t see happening. At any rate, MDN has heard scuttlebutt around the virtual water cooler that NG is looking at several other locations–in and out of Broome County. It would be a tremendous loss for Broome if NG locates outside the Greater Binghamton area. Meanwhile, MDN continues to spot XNG trucks (from a virtual pipeline in Susquehanna County, PA) passing through the Vestal, NY area–through densely populated centers–each and every day. They are the very same kind of trucks NG had proposed to use in Fenton. Yet not a peep about the XNG trucks that pass through our community…
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The Adorers of the Blood of Christ, a group of nuns in Lancaster County, PA, simply can’t stay away from sacrificing Christ on the alter of politics. The Sisters didn’t want the Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline project passing through their property. They own several buildings (one of them an old folks home heated with natural gas) on the very same property. The pipeline was due to run through a nearby field owned by the Sisters that they lease to a local farmer who grows corn on it. The Sisters took up with radical anti-fossil fuelers from Lancaster Against Pipelines to protest the project, putting a few wooden park benches and a flower tressle in the middle of the corn field, calling it a “chapel” (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.
The “best of the rest”–stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading: DEP wants comments on proposed Greene County, PA electric plant; Shale Crescent USA reports good showing at Houston conference; OH landowner groups take on left-wing Center for Biological Diversity; PA gov works with OH & WV to promote fracking, while he also promotes ban in DRB; source of Rover pipe contamination still unclear a year later; natgas enters “injection season” on a low note; TransCanada settles rate issue with NGTL shippers; and more!
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has been obstinate in demanding onerous new drilling rules for the conventional, as well as unconventional (shale) drilling industry since he took office. Reworked drilling rules for both conventional and shale drillers were done and ready to go under previous Gov. Tom Corbett. Then Corbett lost to Wolf, and Wolf demanded changes to the common sense rules everyone had already agreed to (see 
The shale industry produces a lot of water. You read that right. The industry not only *uses* a lot of water (roughly 5 million gallons per well for fracking), it also *produces* a lot of water. Some 80% of the water used in fracking never comes back out of the ground–it seeps into the ground and stays there. However, there is naturally occurring water from the depths–from far below what we think of as “the water table” that sits a few hundred feet down. When you drill a hole in the ground a mile, or two miles down–there’s water down there too. It’s super-salty (full of minerals), which is why it’s called brine. In the industry the phrase used to describe this naturally occurring water is produced water. And it comes out long after fracking is over and done. It comes out for years–decades even. Drillers have to dispose of it somehow. The preferred method is to recycle it and use it for other drilling. When brine is recycled and the minerals (i.e. salt) is removed, the salt can be put to good uses, like spreading it on roads during the winter. Antis paint a scary picture of environmental holocaust in using “fracked salt”–but it’s nonsense. A bipartisan bill in Ohio is getting fresh attention, a bill that will allow for the sale of “fracked” brine for deicing roads in the Buckeye State during winter…
In August 2016, Millennium Pipeline, which stretches from Corning, NY to just outside New York City, filed an application for what it calls its Eastern System Upgrade (see 
Tom Gellrich, founder of Top Line Analytics–a consultancy focusing on downstream shale gas development like ethane crackers–spoke Wednesday at Kallanish Energy’s “Crackers, Storage & Pipelines 2018” event at Southpointe. He had some interesting things to say. Among them: The Marcellus/Utica region has enough ethane to easily support up to eight ethane cracker plants–plants the size of the massive Shell cracker being built now in Monaca (Beaver County), PA. So far only Shell has pulled the trigger and begun to build such a plant. PTT Global Chemical, based in Thailand, is actively considering (and likely) to build a second regional cracker plant in Belmont County. So the multi-billion question is this: Why aren’t more companies building crackers in our region, given the abundance of cheap ethane? Gellrich had some thoughts on that…
If the so-called “tree sitters” in Jefferson National Forest who are trying to block tree cutting for the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) get themselves hurt, Monroe County Circuit Court Judge Robert Irons will be the one to blame. Well actually, the protesters can blame themselves (they’re idiots), but Irons is certainly complicit. On Tuesday Judge Irons refused to grant MVP a court order to remove the radical protesters. Apparently they are 7 feet outside of the right of way zone for tree felling. Have you ever cut a big tree down? Trees don’t care if they fall 7 feet this way or 7 feet that way when they fall. MVP wants to ensure the protesters don’t get hurt, and wants them gone before they cut trees near them. But because the radicals technically, according to the judge, are not in the actual right of way, they can stay up the trees where they’ve been for the past 25+ days. There are two suspended tree houses (platforms), held in the trees with ropes. Up to seven people have been living in the two magic tree houses, eating, breathing and defecating up in the trees (harming the environment they profess to be protecting). MVP technically has a deadline of March 31 to fell trees along the path of the pipeline. We suspect MVP has a Plan B for this segment where the loons have perched themselves up a tree. We predict sitting up a tree will get old sooner or later–and MVP can wait them out…
Two Pennsylvania Senate committees–the Environmental Resources and Energy and the Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure committees–held a joint hearing on Tuesday supposedly on the topic of “pipeline safety”–but instead the hearing turned into a bash Sunoco Logisitcs and the Mariner East 2 (ME2) Pipeline hearing. A variety of witnesses testified. Unfortunately, State Sen. Gene Yaw (RINO from Lycoming County), chairman of the Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, didn’t invite Sunoco to testify, so it was a one-way bash fest. Sunoco was not allowed to respond. Thanks Gene. It wasn’t a court hearing, so we can’t call it a kangaroo court. Perhaps we can call it a kangaroo Senate hearing? While the discourse in the hearing was mostly civil (although it was nonstop bashing of Sunoco), a group of rabble rousers nearby was not. A group of 10-15 (depending on the news source) marched on Gov. Tom Wolf’s office. They were there to serve Wolf with a mock “Notice of Probable Violation and Summons,” which the malcontents say requires Wolf to appear in Chester County before families impacted by construction of ME2. The small mob was met with locked doors and Capitol Police who turned them away…
Sunoco Logistics Partners (aka Energy Transfer Parnters) has had its challenges in constructing the twin Mariner East 2 (ME2) pipelines across Pennsylvania. Earlier this month MDN told you that underground horizontal directional drilling (HDD) work in Chester County had led to a third sinkhole developing in that area (see