Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware will be impacted by this project

Update from the FracTracker Alliance, January 4, 2021

After the Delaware Riverkeeper Network again appealed the controversial construction of a second dock for liquified natural gas (LNG) export in Gibbstown, New Jersey, its construction was re-approved in a Delaware River Basin Commission meeting on December 9th. The project’s opposers continue to raise concerns over the highly risky transportation of LNG and the impacts from LNG production at the New Fortress Energy processing plant in Wyalusing Township, Bradford County, PA.

The Delaware Riverkeeper Network has compiled data in cooperation with Fractracker Alliance to produce maps indicating two probable highway routes and two probable railway routes. Along each of these routes, a two-mile-wide hazard zone and population information are displayed. View the maps here.

After this disheartening development, Empower NJ led a coalition of 100 groups, including FracTracker and Delaware Riverkeeper Network, to stop the the LNG port construction. In a December 23rd letter to Governor Murphy, the coalition expressed their concern and disappointment at the DRBC’s approval of the LNG terminal. “This is just round one, we will fight and keep on fighting no matter what,” said New Jersey Sierra Club Director Jeff Tittel.

Delaware Riverkeeper Network plans to challenge the DRBC’s decision in federal court.

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See also: ‘Bomb Trains,’ a New Book on the Deadly, Ongoing Threat of Oil by Rail | DeSmog, Justin Mikulka, July 9, 2019

See also: Forecast for 2020: More Oil Trains, Fires, Spills, and the Rise of LNG by Rail, DeSmog, Justin Mikulka, January 7, 2020

Natural gas pipeline disturbances on Nixon Ridge, Marshall County, WV

From an Article by Shelby Davis, WTRF 7News, July 30, 2019

After many unanswered attempts to save his property, one Marshall County resident reached out to 7News for some help. Steven Coladonato moved to West Virginia from Connecticut in 2012 after visiting the area to see his grandkids.

He fell in love with the land on Nixon Ridge in Moundsville and built a brand new home there in 2013. Steven described his land as beautiful, with deer roaming all over his property.

He says he could get on his 4 wheeler, and ride through the country for hours, but claims all of that has changed. Just one year ago, he signed a contract for a 12-inch pipe to run through his land.

Now Steven says the land has slipped multiple times leaving a crumbling foundation. He is blaming Clearwater Construction and HG Energy. The homeowner is fed up.

“The amount of dust factor that’s out here is insane. It’s just terrible. My whole ground has shifted down hill and my foundation. I’m about ready to lose my house because of this. My foundation is gone.”

Steven Coladonato – Marshall County Resident — says that the workers are some of the nicest people he’s met, but he is upset up with the company for what he called neglect to the land on the ridge.

WTRF 7News reached out to the company and are waiting to hear back.

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See also: NATURAL GAS — Landslides, explosions spark fear in pipeline country; Mike Soraghan, E&E News, Energywire, June 4, 2019

C & O Canal along Canal Street in Hancock, MD

From an Article by Michael Lewis, Hagerstown Herald Mail, August 20, 2019

BALTIMORE — A federal judge Wednesday upheld Maryland’s denial of an easement for a proposed natural-gas pipeline west of Hancock.

“We are pleased that the court has agreed that a private pipeline company cannot force the state to accept a pipeline under the Western Maryland Rail Trail,” Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh said in a written statement. “We will continue to defend Maryland’s right to control its public lands against any other efforts by the natural gas industry to move forward with this project.”

The decision Wednesday came from a judge in the U.S. District Court in Baltimore.

Columbia Gas Transmission, a subsidiary of TC Energy, has proposed running the pipeline from existing facilities in Pennsylvania to a new Mountaineer Gas Co. pipeline in West Virginia.

Proponents have said the new pipeline is critical to economic development in West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle.

“We will be evaluating our options in response to today’s decision,” Tim Wright, a spokesman for TC Energy, wrote in an email Wednesday. “We are committed to moving forward with this project to ensure that we can safely and reliably deliver a vital energy source to help power a region’s homes, businesses and economy.”

Opponents have said the pipeline, which would burrow more than 100 feet under the Potomac River, would threaten the environment and drinking water while bringing little benefit to the state.

“Really, why do we need this pipeline if it doesn’t benefit Maryland?” Brent Walls of the Potomac Riverkeeper Network said in an interview Wednesday.

The pipeline has been the subject of public meetings and debates for more than three years.

The project received permits from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Maryland Department of the Environment and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. But protests against it continued in the Tri-State region and elsewhere in Maryland.

In court documents, Columbia Gas Transmission stated it has negotiated “the voluntary acquisition of easements” for 18 of the 22 tracts in the pipeline’s path. But it still needs easements to go under the Western Maryland Rail Trail and three parcels owned by the National Park Service. Those parcels are part of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park.

Columbia is still awaiting a decision from the park service.

According to the paperwork, Columbia Gas offered the Maryland Department of Natural Resources $5,000 for the easement, which is more than the amount due as determined by an appraisal.

But in January, the state Board of Public Works denied Columbia’s easement application. Gov. Larry Hogan, Comptroller Peter Franchot and Treasurer Nancy Kopp voted unanimously.

At the time, Franchot cited “the compelling testimony of people who came down and said that they don’t think this is the right thing for the state of Maryland to do — that we weren’t gonna subject our state to all the environmental problems of this pipeline and get none of the economic benefits.”

In May, Columbia Gas Transmission sued. It asked the U.S. District Court in Baltimore to condemn about 0.12 acres for a 50-foot-wide and 102-foot-long easement, so the company can tunnel the 8-inch pipeline under the rail trail. Using a directional drilling method, the company would burrow the pipeline about 175 feet under the trail and about 114 feet under the river.

Columbia Gas argued that “time is of the essence” to meet the FERC deadline of July 19, 2020, and its “contractually committed in-service date” of Nov. 1, 2020.

But the state argued that the 11th amendment to the U.S. Constitution prevents a federal court from ordering the state to grant the easement.

Walls, the Upper Potomac riverkeeper, said he was in the courtroom Wednesday when the ruling was handed down. Walls said that, while the pipeline issue is important, another issue also is at stake.

Granting a private company the right of eminent domain over state-owned land would have “major, major implications,” he said.

Survey markers (Photo by Bill Hughes)

Push for Pipelines – Part 4

From an Article by Bill Hughes, Hoots & Hollers Blog (OVEC), January 28, 2016

Below is Push for Pipelines – Part 4. Read Part 1 here, Part 2 here and Part 3 here.

What Happened and How

I think it is safe to say that, in light of my well-known activism in documenting all things Marcellus, I am not your average Wetzel County surface owner. I have more than 10,000 photos of Marcellus operations here in Wetzel and I document every aspect of these operations, frequently contacting many state agencies and many of the gas operators directly. I knew which gas company was responsible. If this was intentional, both EQT and I would have a problem. If this was some kind of mistake, then only EQT would have a problem. But I could not fathom how this happened.

Fortunately I knew exactly who to contact at EQT in Pittsburgh.

And to their credit, the person I contacted at EQT immediately responded. It took most of the day to track down what had happen and I was told that the next day they would be out to remove the stakes and pins. The short story was that it was all a simple mistake. But a 4,300 foot long mistake. But still just a mistake. The long story follows.

The EQT representative assured me that someone would be out to remove their stakes, flags and the steel pins. I told them that they needed to be prompt and that I would not alter or move their property, and their locating points. The next day, when I got home the stakes with flags were gone, and just a small bare patch of dirt remained near my white plastic fence post marker still stood. It looked good. However, since I am a well-cultivated skeptic of long duration and also a strict adherent to the old Russian proverb, made famous by President Reagan, “Trust but Verify.” I grabbed the garden trowel shown below, dug around a bit, and clink, clink, steel on steel. Guess what. The cosmetic improvement proved rather shallow, literally. The steel pin had just be driven deeper, to look good. Just waiting for my tiller to locate someday. I profusely re-painted the pin, and photographed it and proceeded to send another somewhat harsh and very clearly worded e-mail to EQT. The pin was removed the next day.

After all the stakes, ribbons, and steel pins were removed, EQT provided further insights into the bigger picture. Multiple pipeline routes were being evaluated by EQT. Gas companies always consider a wide range of constraints to pipeline construction such as road and stream crossings, available access roads, permission and cooperation of the many landowners, steepness of the terrain, etc. At a certain point in their evaluation, EQT chose a final route, but for unknown reasons the surveyor crew was given the old, now-abandoned route on which to establish a control point. The overall error can be seen on the map below, where the bright blue line is the original path of the OVC pipeline through my property, and the red line shows where the pipeline would go, if FERC approves it. A new control point has now been established near the highway where the pipeline would cross, if approved.

NOTE: See also Appalachian Mountain Advocates for more information on natural gas pipelines in Appalachia.

Gas Pipelines & Valves (Wetzel County)

Push for Pipelines – Part 2

From an Article by Bill Hughes, Hoots & Hollers Blog (OVEC), January 28, 2016

Push for Pipelines – Part 2. (Read Part 1 here.)

How did we get to this point? Let’s review our first contact with the land agent representing EQT.

In February of 2014, the EQT land agent asked my wife and I for permission to walk our property for a preliminary evaluation of a possible route for their 30” high pressure pipe which would slice our land south to north, resulting in habitat fragmentation.

When opponents of piplines list their concerns, among them is habitat fragmentation. They usually mean splitting up the forest where the deer and squirrel and birds and other critters live. But this was my habitat EQT was planning on fragmenting.

Keep in mind that almost every landowner around here has been contacted by mail, phone or in person, many times by a great variety of land agents waving some flash of cash with verbal assurance that all will be well. The normal gas industry land agent’s procedure is to promise untold wealth. The land agent’s goal is to get a signature on a loosely-worded gas company boilerplate right-of-way land-lease contract with terms favorable to the gas company. Landowners around here have all heard a pitch that amounts to:

Just lease this, sell this, sign here. You can surely trust us, after all, we are only a multi-billion-dollar international, just down-the-street, friendly Gas Company, and all we want is complete control over much of your land indefinitely…. So, just trust us. Why worry? Sign here. Take the money. Your grand kids will not miss a little strip of dirt anyway. Besides it is mostly just a hillside. And very steep at that. Yes, sign here!

Despite this kind of pitch, I was not ready to give them surveying permission, but I was willing to let them do a preliminary walk through to hang surveyor ribbons. We had not been shopping around for a new pipeline. Weren’t in the market for one at all. But since a very large high pressure natural gas pipeline would affect all my neighbors, I agreed to allow a preliminary walk with them in exchange for getting my questions answered.

I did not give EQT permission to drive stakes or pins or anything more permanent. And even prior to the walk-through, I wanted some answers to my questions. The responses to my questions would benefit my neighbors also.

Typical Questions to ask any Gas or Pipeline Co. Wanting to put a Pipeline on Your Property:

Download (Pipelinetypicalquestions.pdf, 132KB)

Whether you want any of the letters, visits and offerings from the land agents or not, these offers usually can’t be ignored. If you fail to object or question the company’s proposals, you could be left with fewer choices later. This is because the companies seek FERC permission for many of the proposed interstate transmission pipelines.

FERC is the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. FERC is not noted for caring about communities. It’s noted more for its direct ties to the industry it is supposed to regulate and its rubber-stamping of permits. Note that there are several movements afoot to fight FERC. Here’s one proposal for the reform of FERC. And, for what it is worth, here’s FERC’s own booklet: An Interstate Natural Gas Facility on My Land? What Do I Need to Know? A notable excerpt:

The company negotiates a right-of-way easement and compensation for the easement with each landowner. Landowners may be paid for loss of certain uses of the land during and after construction, loss of any other resources, and any damage to property. If the Commission (FERC) approves the project and no agreement with the landowner is reached, the company may acquire the easement under eminent domain (a right given to the company by statute to take private land for Commission-authorized use) with a court determining compensation.

It’s the legal power of eminent domain that can leave you little choice, when (so far “when” and not “if” has been the operative word) FERC grants the final approval for the proposed pipeline.

Note that just filing an application with FERC does not automatically grant the company eminent domain, at least so far in West Virginia. But the potential for eminent domain gives the landsmen the assumption of power over landowners. Eminent domain has been called state-sanctioned robbery of private property by corporations for profit. And so, as one might expect, the landsmen never fail to mention that future possibility, as in, “You might as well give in now since, inevitably we will be able to take your land anyway whether you like it or not.”

I never did get answers to most of my questions and I never saw the surveyors. They came and left their telltale colored ribbons. There were a few e-mails and phone conversations. I was told the pipeline would be 30 inches in diameter. They wanted 125-foot construction right-of-way and 75-foot permanent right-of-way.

At a public meeting, an EQT rep said the closest they would run the pipe to any residence would be 37.5 feet. That number is correct. I asked twice. They said they had the right to but, maybe, probably, would try not to put a pipe that close to a residence. But they could. But they would prefer not to. The 37.5 feet is just one half of the permanent right-of-way of 75 feet.

But then, a few months later, a very short e-mail said that the complete pipeline route had changed and they would not be at all near my property. Maybe my hills were too steep, or maybe my questions were even steeper. Or maybe just too many questions. But EQT said they were no longer interested in my parcel of Almost Heaven, West Virginia. Now that was good news. For now we could enjoy our privacy and peace and quiet.

But, wait there’s more! Read all about it in Push for Pipelines – Part 3, here.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Stonewall Pipeline job left unfinished in WV -- Spring 2016

Push for Pipelines – Part 1

From an Article by Bill Hughes, OVEC, January 27, 2016

For anyone who has even casually followed Marcellus and Utica shale gas exploration and production, here in the active gas fields of West Virginia or south-western Pennsylvania or Ohio, you know there are many concerns surrounding the complete natural gas production process, such as air pollution, water consumption and contamination, waste disposal, heavy big rig traffic on little roads and more.

We know that after all well pad construction traffic and the drilling and fracturing are done we must have pipelines. The pipes are needed to get the gas to compressor stations, gas processing plants and hopefully to get most of it far out of Wetzel County, WV and send it to the east, and to the far, far east. Really, Far East.

According to the gas companies we need lots of pipelines, including some really big ones. The gas industry seems to be convinced that the silver bullet to improve their operations and to achieve some semblance of stability and profitability is to increase “take away capacity.” Which means, to start in Wetzel County, and maybe some other nearby tri-state counties and start building pipelines. BIG PIPELINES. Get the gas out of Wetzel County, sell it elsewhere and we are told, that, then, all will be well.

A photo shows the congested collection of EQT pipe assemblies in downtown Mobley, WV, the birth-place of pipelines. EQT is in the midst of acquiring land in the area. While we do not like to see residents displaced for any amount of money, at this point no one should be living in this valley anymore, especially young kids.

Proposed Pipeline Problems

One of the newer, very large diameter (42”) proposed gas pipelines is the Mountain Valley Pipeline, originating at the village of Mobley here in eastern Wetzel County and the extending south-east through the national forests and over the Appalachian Mountains, on to Virginia.

(Other proposed pipelines in our area include the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, the Mountaineer Xpress and the WB XPress. The Stonewall Gathering Pipeline is already constructed.)

What could go wrong? After all, maybe the hydraulic fracturing with high pressure and high volumes of slick water in deep, long laterals was an ongoing new experiment, done live here for eight years with the resident Guinea Pigs in Wetzel County.

But we know how to build pipelines, don’t we? That is pretty basic, tried and true and understood technology, right. Well, yes; at least when compared to the fracturing process. The equipment, knowledge, and skill sets needed for pipeline construction is readily available and more commonly understood.

So, what could go wrong ? Glad you asked. Let me tell you.

Pipeline opponents express concern about habitat fragmentation, crossing of pristine streams and rivers, slipping and erosion, spills, diesel fumes, gas leaks and possible fires and explosions. These are all very valid concerns. But the potential for other errors—from very simple to potentially serious can be shown clearly in my hay field here at home. How can that be?

Well, almost two years ago, EQT wanted to survey my property for their proposed 30-inch diameter Ohio Valley Connector pipeline. The application for it has now been filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The project’s FERC docket number is CP15-41-000.

The below map shows a section of the EQT Ohio Valley Connector as proposed almost two years ago. The red outlined area is our property here in Wetzel County. The yellow line shows the proposed path of the 30-inch pipeline through our land. It is an example of what one of the initially proposed routes would look like. It would have gone right through my hay field, and through and under our stream. Multiple routes were being explored at first.

Let’s temporarily set aside both the short- and long-term, specific and valid concerns of those who might oppose these large, high-pressure, big-diameter pipelines. What else could go wrong? We shall see. We will use my recent personal experience as a clear-cut, detailed and documented example of how a perfectly and professionally surveyed location on my home property contained an error of almost one mile. Yes, you read that right. How was our home, farm and property the target of a pipeline surveying error of more than 4,000 feet?

We must explain the contradiction of how two perfectly placed surveyor pins missed the mark by almost a mile. And, we wonder, could this happen again?

To find out, read Push for Pipelines – Part 2, here.

See also: www.ohvec.org

Photo exhibit in Pittsburgh documents fracking’s effects

From an Article by Kurt Shaw, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, May 8, 2016

When: Through July 31 from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays; 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturdays; noon-4 p.m. Sundays, Admission: $5 suggested donation

Where: Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, 6300 Fifth Ave., Shadyside

Details: 412-361-0873 or pittsburgharts.org

It’s been a few years since photographer Brian Cohen and Laura Domencic, executive director of Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, first began the Marcellus Shale Documentary Project, along with a group of five regional photographers. Now, they are back with an expanded view in an exhibit of the same title, which opened May 5 at the center.

“When we began work on the Marcellus Shale Documentary Project several years ago, unconventional gas exploration — now commonly known as fracking — was neither well known nor understood in the region,” Cohen says. “But time has since passed, and the supposed advantages and disadvantages of drilling for natural gas have been exposed widely for public scrutiny. People today are much more likely to have an opinion, one way or another, about fracking.”

To that end, Cohen, who lives in Squirrel Hill, says he wanted to do a couple of things with this round of the project. First, to return to a community — The Woodlands in Connoquenessing — that had, famously, been suffering with health and water-quality problems in a neighborhood associated with gas drilling. “I felt it was important not simply to walk away from that story, and I wanted to see how, if at all, things had changed,” he says.

Second, Cohen wanted to see what lessons might have been learned from these stories elsewhere, in an area of Ohio where fracking was newly arrived.

Take, for example, an image of a farmhouse in Ohio where a gas company has begun preparing to build a well pad. “Due to the existence of an old shallow well on the property, the owners had little say in whether the company would drill: Negotiations revolved more around where to situate the well pad,” Cohen says. “This image shows the road the company ran through the property. The oak tree was spared after the owner threatened to frustrate the proceedings.”

Scott Goldsmith of Edgewood chose to focus his camera closer to home with an untitled image of frack sand spilled from railroad cars near Downtown Pittsburgh. “These sand particulates are highly carcinogenic to lungs because they are much smaller than playground sand and can lodge in your lungs and stay there,” Goldsmith says. “None of the workers on the train tracks wear protection. The sand is used during the fracking process, and the people working on the drill site do not use respiratory protection.”

Another untitled image shows a woman being arrested during the inauguration of Gov. Tom Wolf. She was part of a group that interrupted Wolf’s inauguration speech by chanting “Ban fracking now.” Goldsmith says six people were arrested during the protest. “Events like this help create awareness of fracking dangers,” he says.

As Goldsmith is quick to point out, “The dangers of fracking are around us everywhere in Western Pennsylvania — from water contamination, air contamination, land contamination and food chain contamination. We need to do more to spread the word of dangers associated with fracking, and I feel this project is a good vehicle to do that.”

For “Marcellus Shale Documentary Project: An Expanded View,” Martha Rial of Edgewood focused on trains moving through Pittsburgh.

“Many of us have a romantic view of trains,” she says. “The sound of a train whistle used to be comforting, but I sense an uneasiness now due to so many trains crisscrossing our region carrying crude oil, liquified petroleum gas or frack sand. I am struck by how ominous the tanker cars look, especially perched on top of aging trestles.”

Her photograph “Rook Railyard at Dusk” was made in 2014. “Rook opened in 1904, and in recent decades only saw a few trains a week until the natural-gas boom transformed the rail yard,” Rial says. “Rook Rail Yard was originally part of the Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway and is now owned by Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway. Traffic has declined at the rail yard in the past year due to low natural gas prices.”

Wanting to take a panoptic view, Joe Seamans, the newcomer to this group of six photographers, says he became interested in this issue before Cohen and Domencic put the project together.

“In 2009, I became obsessed with trying to figure out how to look at fracking from some sort of objective perspective,” says Seamans, a Point Breeze-based documentary filmmaker and photographer. “Not so much pro or con, but from a documentary point of view, trying to find a vantage point to look at it above the fray, as it were. Trying to find a perspective to look at what was happening without drinking anyone’s Kool-Aid, if that makes any sense. I wasn’t interested in provocative images like flaming faucets, which Josh Fox was putting out there, though I was really affected by all that.”

Seamans says there’s a scale problem documenting fracking with a camera. “It’s hard to get close and get the big picture,” he says. “It’s hard to get the big picture and get the impact on people. Literally, it’s hard to see a well site and understand the context that surrounds it. There’s a real visual perspective issue.”

His answer was to try using a gigapan camera head, which takes a matrix of images and stitches them together after the fact. “It allowed me to look at a very large panorama in great detail,” Seamans says. “So a viewer can see the well site and surrounding activity in the context of the local geography.”

At the same time, the high resolution of the image allows the viewer to look at very specific details: the toys in the backyard; the tails on the cows in the pasture, the brand of truck parked in the lot where drillers are working, etc.

“The landscape image in the show, which I made on a hillside in Washington County, is an attempt to bridge the vast scale of fracking,” Seamans says. “I think it evokes the Western Pennsylvania geology, as well as the individual households which are impacted by drilling.” The image is 5 feet tall and 20 feet wide.

“It doesn’t read like much when it’s small,” Seamans says. “But writ large, perhaps there’s an epic quality in the size of the image which matches the epic scale of the drilling. I imagine this image or something like it repeated almost 10,000 times, which is the number of wells drilling in this state since fracking began.”

When Philadelphia based-photographer Noah Addis first started photographing for the project in 2011, he was living in Columbus, Ohio.

“I didn’t know much about fracking or the gas industry,” he says. “So, I really wanted to learn more about what was going on and to produce a series of photographs to begin a conversation about the issue.

“Photography tends to be very ambiguous, and I think that’s one its strengths. Obviously I hope that the project will raise awareness of how the gas industry is affecting people and the environment. But if it raises more questions than it answers, that’s OK, too.”

Addis decided to focus on the landscape. “On a basic level, I was interested in what these operations look like and how they are changing the rural landscape,” he says. “It’s a difficult subject to photograph, since a lot of the activity happens deep underground, and many of the environmental effects aren’t visible. But there’s also a huge network of pipelines, processing plants and other infrastructure that is dramatically changing the rural landscape in the region.”

Addis made a series of portrait photographs of people who have been directly affected by the gas industry.

“It might seem counterintuitive since the story is about the environment, but I decided to remove people from their environment by photographing them in a simple, direct way on a plain white background,” Addis says. “I really wanted to focus attention on the people themselves. They’ve been through a lot, and it shows on their faces.”

Addis’ portrait of Mollie Caryll is one such example. In it, Caryll poses for a portrait at her home in Valley Grove, W.Va.

Caryll, who lives near several well pads and a large compressor station, told Addis her health has been affected by energy industry activities. “She said she was forced to leave her job as a bank manager due to extreme fatigue, headaches, skin rashes and endocrine disorders, all of which began suddenly after the start of drilling activity in the area,” Addis says. “She and her husband, Dan, moved to the house six years ago, hoping for a quiet place to retire. ‘We did everything right,’ she said, ‘then it all changed overnight.’

“There’s so much propaganda out there about fracking, on both sides,” Addis says. “Even if it’s for a good cause, I have no desire to add to that flood of propaganda. Fracking is such a divisive issue, I think if one tries to tell the viewer what to think, it just ends up making people tune out. I try to take a more subtle approach.”

Kurt Shaw is the Tribune-Review art critic.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

STAR = Gas sources in WV, PA, OH

Another Pipeline Sneaks In – WB Express Pipeline of Columbia Gas Transmission

From S. Tom Bond, Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV, April 10, 2014

At the April 9 meeting the Upshur County Commission was asked to support still another large bore pipeline. This one is called the WB Express Project, which is being pushed by Columbia Gas Transmission. Subsequent research has shown it would run across the entire state from about the point where Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia come together to a point near the South most extension of the Eastern panhandle, with zigs and zags.

I have expressed dismay with the unplanned explosive development by the fracking industry, which is an uncoordinated between companies rush to get a limited resource out of the ground, which has shown thoroughly rottin’ results. The only science is how to do it, not on how it will affect the community where it is done, nor the cheapest way between companies. Costs are pushed off on landowners, the local and state governments, and lease contracts are strained far beyond the intentions and perceptions of those who signed it, made a net of words for the single purpose of capturing a fortune for those who cast it.

The new pipeline bonanza seems to be repeating the mistakes of the first line fracking industry, no coordination between companies about transportation of gas, vast capital costs, and no clear idea of how much gas is in the ground to be eventually moved. I have characterized that rush as having the character of a gang of exuberant 13 year olds who weren’t raised properly, and this one seems to be more of the same. The first rush has driven many of the companies to danger of bankruptcy and gas prices below production cost. There is such excess of supply it will be some time before the backlog is worked through and prices can rise to reflect the cost of removal.  It seems the natural gas liquids are carrying the industry, and they will be gone long before the dry gas.

The new pipelines lead to two goals: export and electrical generation with natural gas. Let’s deal with export first. I read a decade after WWII that “the quality hematite iron ore the United States originally had now lays on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean,” that what was left (in considerable abundance), was taconite, a very hard (low grade) stuff. The resource now produces 52 million metric tons, eighth in the world, between South Africa at 67 and Canada at 40. China produces 1320 million metric tons of iron ore.

All of us on earth are similarly situated with many raw materials. The United States is behind Australia, Canada and Japan in tonnage of raw materials used per capita, according to this Bloomberg article, but the other countries export a lot, the first two raw materials, and Japan manufactured products.

We import much finished product, the raw materials for which not shown in this diagram. And the US has a military larger than all the rest put together, certainly no accident. The easy, high quality hydrocarbon energy of the US is gone. Is it wise to export the product of expensive extraction, last dregs of natural gas in the country?

The enthusiasm for using gas for electrical generation is unbounded, as you will find from this 2012 article in Forbes. It quotes a few paragraphs from the National Petroleum Council 2007 paper “Electric Generation Efficiency.” He quotes efficiencies with no recognition of how coal is used, nor the losses of methane from the production and transportation of natural gas. Theoretically, gas generation will produce 57% as much carbon dioxide as coal to generate the same amount of electricity if it is used for heat only. If it is run through a gas turbine and the heat is then used, the theoretical goes to 45% as much carbon dioxide.

However, production of natural gas and transportation results in considerable loss of methane, an even more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, so the difference in effect is not great. And, of course, no one cares about damage to land and water, or effects, on the people who live there, including sickness.

So how did the Upshur County Commission handle this potentially county transformative technology? It was strictly ho-hum stuff. Agreeing to cooperate with the FERC process took less than a minute. The Chairman read the item of business: “Correspondence from Columbia Gas Transmission, LLC providing explanation on the WB Xpress Project and inviting the Commission to participate in the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Pre- filing review process.”

And another moved to pass the item, then a vote and it was approved. Just like paying a bill or raising pay of an employee who had reached the statutory time in office for a raise. Nothing from the gas company and nothing from the audience was evident. Not even where it would go in the county!