ATEX Express pipeline project (upgrade) in 2013

From an Article by Sergio Chapa, Houston Chronicle, October 14, 2019

Houston pipeline operator Enterprise Products Partners is moving forward with plans to expand a pipeline to move ethane from the natural gas fields of Appalachia to the company’s processing plants and storage terminals in southeast Texas.

In a statement released on Monday morning, Enterprise confirmed that it will proceed with the expansion of its Appalachia-to-Texas pipeline. Known as ATEX, the 1,200-mile pipeline moves ethane from the Marcellus Shale and Utica Basin of Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio to Enterprise’s natural gas liquids storage complex just east of Houston in Mont Belvieu.

Estimated construction costs have not been disclosed but the decision comes after the completion of a 30-day open season for producers to book capacity on the expansion project.

“The success of the open season reflects the demand for additional, reliable ethane takeaway capacity from the Appalachian region of the country,” Enterprise Senior Vice President Michael C. “Tug” Hanley said in a statement. “Our customers value flow assurance and reliability.

The expansion of ATEX will facilitate growing production from the Marcellus/Utica Basin and will provide access to attractive markets on the Gulf Coast through Enterprise’s integrated midstream network.”

ATEX can currently move 145,000 barrels of ethane per day but the expansion project will boost that to 190,000 barrels per day. The extra capacity is expected to be achieved through improvements and modifications to existing infrastructure. If successful, the extra capacity will be available by 2022.

Ethane is experiencing high global demand by petrochemical plants to make plastics. Enterprise already handles an estimated 80 percent of U.S. ethane exports. The company is building an export terminal at Morgan’s Point to begin exports of ethylene, a chemical made from ethane that is also used to make plastics and other products.

Founded in 1968 and headquartered in Houston, Enterprise has more than 7,000 employees across the United States.

Touted as the largest exporter of crude oil and natural gas liquids in the United States, the company reported making a $4.2 billion profit on $36.5 billion of revenue in 2018.

NGL pipelines cross the Appalachian mountains in Penna.

From an Article by Harry Weber, S&P Global Platts, August 26, 2019

Houston, TX — Enterprise Products Partners has begun soliciting shipper interest in a proposed 50,000 b/d expansion of its ATEX ethane pipeline that would move more supplies from the Appalachian Basin to its NGLs storage complex in Mont Belvieu, Texas.

The operator has been looking to boost deliveries of oil, gas, and natural gas liquids (NGLs) from key shale basins in the US Northeast and West Texas to downstream markets including the Gulf Coast to serve domestic and overseas demand.

Along the Houston Ship Channel and Gulf Coast, Enterprise’s connectivity has been a growth driver. For drillers, stripping ethane and propane from the natural gas produced at the wellhead creates two more revenue streams in addition to the dry gas that remains. Midstream operators benefit by increasing volumes on their pipelines, and in Enterprise’s case it has significant export capabilities from the Gulf, with Asian demand providing a key market.

The 1,200-mile ATEX, or Appalachia-to-Texas, pipeline transports ethane from the Marcellus and Utica shale plays in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio to Enterprise’s Mont Belvieu complex. The system has access to petrochemical facilities along the Gulf Coast.

The extra capacity that Enterprise is considering, which would be achieved by a combination of pipeline looping, hydraulic improvements, and modifications to existing infrastructure, is subject to sufficient customer commitments through the binding open season. The solicitation launched Monday runs through September 25. The expanded capabilities would be in service by 2022, Enterprise said in a statement.

Enterprise’s Mont Belvieu hub also gets NGLs fed to it from the south and west, via the South Texas NGL pipeline system, Seminole NGL Pipeline, and Texas Express Pipeline. In February, the mainline of Enterprise’s Shin Oak NGL pipeline entered service.

In Enterprise’s latest quarter, NGL pipeline transportation volumes edged up to 3.6 million b/d from 3.4 million b/d for second-quarter 2018. When it released its results in July, Enterprise said it was eyeing further expansions tied to its hub along the ship channel, as well as upgrades to existing natural gas processing facilities.

The efforts tie into its NGL expansion plans, as Enterprise wants to increase market share along the entire value chain from wellhead to processing plant to storage and export facility. In the Permian, for instance, Enterprise has projected that by 2020 it will have more than 1.6 Bcf/d of natural gas processing capacity and over 250,000 b/d of NGL production capabilities, as well as 1.5 million b/d of systemwide fractionation capacity.

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See also: Gov. Wolf tells pipeline activists he won’t shut down Mariner East pipeline | StateImpact Pennsylvania, August 26, 2019

https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2019/08/22/wolf-tells-pipeline-activists-he-wont-shut-down-mariner-east/

Sandstone bricks off Pawnee Co. Bank (9/2/16)

From Oklahoma City, Associated Press, April 7, 2018

Sandstone bricks from the historic Pawnee County Bank litter the sidewalk after an early morning earthquake in Pawnee, Oka., on Sept. 3, 2016.

COVINGTON, Okla. — The Oklahoma Corporation Commission has directed a wastewater disposal well to reduce its volume of injection after more than a dozen earthquakes rattled part of northwest Oklahoma since Friday, April 6, 2018.

The U.S. Geological Survey recorded three quakes Monday, including one near Covington now rated magnitude 4.5 after a preliminary rating of 4.3. Magnitude 3.3 and 2.8 quakes were also recorded Monday in the area about 55 miles north of Oklahoma City.

Garfield County Emergency Management Director Mike Honigsberg says there are no reports of injury or severe damage. Damage typically begins with magnitude 4.0 or stronger earthquakes, but Honigsberg notes that the area is very rural.

Many of the thousands of earthquakes in Oklahoma in recent years have been linked to wastewater injection by oil and natural gas producers.

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Parts of Oklahoma now have the same earthquake risk as California — and a new study found a scarily direct link to fracking

From an Article by Erin Brodwin, Business Insider, February 2, 2018

Oklahoma is being pummeled by earthquakes, a phenomenon scientists have strongly tied to wastewater injection and the practice of fracking.

A new study highlights just how strong that connection is. According to the US Geological Survey, the earthquake threat level in some parts of the state may now be approaching the level for some parts of California.

Over the course of a few days in August, Oklahoma was pummeled by seven earthquakes. The wave started on a Tuesday night, when five quakes struck the central part of the state in less than 28 hours. The shaking continued extended into the early hours of Thursday as two more hit.

Although none of those quakes was severe enough to cause significant damage, scientists are increasingly concerned about their cause. Rather than emanating from natural tectonic shifts deep inside the Earth, these temblors appear to be the result of human activity.

Hydraulic fracturing, more commonly known as fracking, involves jamming water deep into the Earth’s layers of rocks to force open crevices and extract the oil or gas buried inside. For several years, researchers have shown a link between wastewater injection, a process that’s used to dispose of waste fluids from a number of industrial activities and is similar to fracking, and the incidence of earthquakes in a region, but a new study highlights just how strong that connection is.

The authors of the latest paper, published this week in the journal Science, found that they could use the depth of the wastewater injection sites to roughly predict how big the earthquake they caused would be.

In other words, the deeper the injection site, the stronger the quake.

The researchers were confident enough in their assertions to make a recommendation:”Reducing the depth of injections could significantly reduce the likelihood of larger, damaging earthquakes,” Thomas Gernon, an associate professor of earth science at the University of Southampton, wrote in an article for The Conversation.

Oklahoma’s earthquake threat level is now predicted to be roughly the same as California

Until recently, earthquakes in Oklahoma were few and far between. In 2010, the state experienced just 41 tremors. By comparison, Southern California has about 10,000 earthquakes each year.

But that disparity may be shrinking. According to a forecast from the US Geological Survey, the risk of a significant and damaging earthquake in some parts of Oklahoma is now roughly the same as the risk in parts of California.

“The chance of having Modified Mercalli Intensity VI or greater (damaging earthquake shaking) is 5-12% per year in north-central Oklahoma and southern Kansas, similar to the chance of damage caused by natural earthquakes at sites in parts of California,” the forecast reads.

Over the past few years, Oklahoma has weathered hundreds of significant quakes— more than 900 in 2015 alone, according to The Conversation — as have parts of several other Midwestern states. The region is replete with eons-old fault lines that went quiet long ago, but wastewater operations appear to be re-awakening some of those faults.

Much (but not all) of that wastewater injection is associated with the fracking boom, which has led the practice to become more common in recent years, especially in Oklahoma.

“Our study is just the first step,” Gernon said. “We need the support of researchers, operators and regulators, to ensure this approach has a lasting impact on reducing man-made earthquakes.”

Toxic Oil & Gas Emissions from Fracking Operations

Interactive Map Shows Where Toxic Air Pollution From Oil and Gas Industry Is Threatening 12.4 Million Americans

From an Article by Earthworks, EcoWatch.com, June 15, 2016

Two leading national environmental groups—Clean Air Task Force (CATF) and Earthworks—unveiled a suite of tools Wednesday designed to inform and mobilize Americans about the health risks from toxic air pollution from the oil and gas industry.

For the first time, Americans across the country—from Washington County, Pennsylvania, to Weld County, Colorado to Kern County, California—can access striking new community-level data on major health risks posed by oil and gas operations across the country.

The oil and gas industry is the country’s largest and fastest-growing source of methane emissions. And its facilities emit numerous other hazardous and toxic air pollutants along with methane—including benzene, formaldehyde, acetaldehyde and ethylbenzene. That toxic pollution presents significant cancer and respiratory health risks, underscoring the need for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to clean up existing sources of toxic air pollution without delay.

The EPA recently signed New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) that for the first time will regulate methane pollution from new and modified oil and gas facilities, preventing some of the sector’s future toxic air pollution from being released. The EPA’s current regulations addressing the industry’s toxic air pollution are limited and the NSPS does not cover the 1.2 million existing facilities in 33 states. CATF’s report entitled Fossil Fumes, and Earthworks’ Oil & Gas Threat Map focus specifically on toxic pollutants from those facilities and their resulting health impacts.

Earthworks Oil & Gas Threat Map Summary

The Oil and Gas Threat Map maps the nation’s 1.2 million active oil and gas wells, compressors and processors. Using the latest peer-reviewed research into the health impacts attributed to oil and gas air pollution, the map conservatively draws a half mile health threat radius around each facility. 

Within that total area are: 12.4 million people; 11,543 schools and 639 medical facilities; and 184,578 square miles, an area larger than California.

For each of the 1,459 counties in the U.S. that host active oil and gas facilities, the interactive map reports: instances of elevated cancer and respiratory risk; total affected population (with separate counts for Latino & African-Americans); total affected schools and medical facilities.

The searchable map allows users to: look up any street address to see if it lies within the health threat radius; view infrared videos which makes visible the normally invisible pollution at hundreds of the mapped facilities; and view 50+ interviews with citizens impacted by this pollution.

“The Oil & Gas Threat Map shows that oil and gas air pollution isn’t someone else’s problem, it’s everyone’s problem,” Earthworks executive director Jennifer Krill said.

“Our homes and schools are at risk while most state regulators do nothing. Although completely solving this problem ultimately requires ditching fossil fuels, communities living near oil and gas operations need the EPA to cut methane and toxic air pollution from these operations as soon as possible.”

Clean Air Task Force Fossil Fumes Report Summary

Fossil Fumes, CATF’s companion report to Earthworks’ Oil and Gas Threat Map, is based on EPA’s recent National Air Toxics Assessment (NATA) analysis updated to reflect the latest emissions data from EPA’s National Emissions Inventory (NEI) and the conclusions are striking.

The report finds that: (a) 238 counties in 21 states face a cancer risk that exceeds EPA’s one-in-a-million threshold level of concern, (b) Combined, these counties have a population of more than 9 million people and are mainly located in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Pennsylvania and Colorado, (c) Of these counties, 43 face a cancer risk that exceeds one in 250,000 and two counties in West Texas (Gaines and Yoakum) face a cancer risk that exceeds one in 100,000, (d) 32 counties, primarily in Texas and West Virginia, also face a respiratory health risk from toxic air emissions that exceeds EPA’s level of concern (with a hazard index greater than one)

“The Fossil Fumes report and Earthwork’s Interactive Threat Map will allow concerned citizens to learn the cancer and respiratory risks they face from toxic air pollution from the oil and gas industry,” Lesley Fleischman, CATF technical analyst and author of Fossil Fumes, said. “Armed with this information, we trust that citizens and communities will demand protective safeguards requiring industry to clean up its act and reduce these serious risks to public health.”

“The Oil & Gas Threat Map and Fossil Fumes are outstanding tools for nurses, their patients and affected communities to better understand the health risks posed by oil and gas facilities,” Katie Huffling, director of programs for the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, said.

“As nurses, we are especially concerned by the number of schools and hospitals revealed to be within a half mile of an active oil and gas facility. The best available science shows that methane and toxic chemicals emitted by these facilities threaten our most vulnerable citizens, which is why we encourage the EPA to quickly address this pollution.”

Other key findings of the map and report at the statewide level include: (1) Los Angeles County, California is home to the most impacted “vulnerable” populations: there are more impacted schools and hospitals in Los Angeles than any other county in America (226 schools and 60 hospitals), (2) There are particularly widespread impacts in Texas, with 15 counties with more than 75 percent of their populations living within ½ mile risk radius and 32 percent of Texas counties have elevated oil and gas health risks (82 out of 254),  (3) Almost 25 percent of all Pennsylvanians live within the half-mile threat radius

“The Oil & Gas Threat Map and Fossil Fumes show more than 12 million Americans need protection from oil and gas industry air pollution as soon as possible. Industry talks about voluntarily reducing their pollution, but refuses to make binding commitments,” Earthworks policy director Lauren Pagel said.

“Some states like Colorado have stepped up, but other states like Texas have vowed never to regulate greenhouse gases and associated toxics. It is only the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that can act to protect all Americans, their health and the climate from this pollution.”

See also: Pollution in People: Cancer-Causing Chemicals in Americans’ Bodies

ATEX Ruptures, Limiting Key Appalachian Ethane Deliveries

From an Article by Jamison Cocklin, NGI News Daily, January 26, 2015

A section of Enterprise Products Partners LP’s (EPP) Appalachia-to-Texas Express (ATEX) pipeline, which entered commercial service a year ago, ruptured and caught fire early Monday, limiting service on a critical ethane outlet that serves the Marcellus and Utica shales, a company spokesman said.

The incident occurred at about 10:40 a.m. EST on a 20-inch diameter section of the pipeline in Brooke County, WV, roughly 50 miles west of Pittsburgh, said EPP spokesman Rick Rainey. According to local news media reports, residents in the area reported seeing a large fireball burst into the sky. Although emergency responders from several different agencies in the region had responded and managed to gain control of the blast, the fire was still burning Monday afternoon. Authorities planned to let the fire extinguish itself.

“Our controllers detected an abnormal pressure drop at a pump station in Brooke County, WV, and then shortly afterward it was confirmed we did have a rupture on the pipeline,” Rainey said. “We then began to immediately isolate the pipeline and dispatched personnel to work with local emergency responders to secure the area.”

The 1,265-mile ATEX began commercial service in January 2014. It originates in Washington County, PA, in a liquids-rich portion of the Marcellus Shale and terminates at EPP’s Mont Belvieu, TX, complex. It has a capacity of 125,000 b/d, and at the time it was commissioned, EPP said that 65,000 b/d were already contracted.

The pipeline has four injection points and two were impacted by the blast. Rainey said deliveries are still being made downstream of the rupture site, but those coming from Washington County have been limited. He added that it was unclear what caused the rupture. The section that exploded, Rainey said, was part of a 369-mile segment that was only recently built for the system.

West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection spokeswoman Kelley Gillenwater said the agency had dispatched an inspector to the scene, but added that the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) has jurisdiction because ATEX is an interstate line. PHMSA officials could not be reached to comment.

No injuries were reported in the blast and the Brooke County Sheriff’s Department said only one nearby home was evacuated as a precaution. Rainey said EPP has mobilized equipment and personnel that “will commence repairs once it’s safe to do so” and after PHMSA allows it.

NOTE:  West Virginia Gas Pipeline Explodes, Marking Fourth Major Pipeline Incident This Month

See also:  www.FrackCheckWV.net

Debating the validity of climate change is a waste of time.
… … …  Debating what to do is not !

Editorial, Houston Chronicle, May 19, 2014

The recent report on climate change from the U.N.-chartered Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a sober reminder that what we as individuals happen to “believe” about global warming – unless we happen to be climate scientists – has absolutely no bearing on whether the phenomenon is a vast hoax perpetrated by 99 percent of the scientific community or a looming crisis that, as the report underscores, will affect everybody on this planet.

Skepticism on most issues is, indeed, healthy, but in any number of areas, whether it’s relying on M.D. Anderson for cancer treatment or a Texas A&M-trained civil engineering fund to erect bridges and skyscrapers, we have to trust the experts. So it is with measuring and assessing the evidence of climate disruption. As conservative columnist Michael Gerson pointed out in the Washington Post recently, “Our intuitions are useless here.”

The report from the scientists, economists and other experts on the IPCC panel is about as sobering as it can get. The panel warned that the planet is indeed warming, that humans are primarily responsible and that we are not anywhere near prepared for the dire consequences.

What’s coming if we can’t or won’t change our ways are low-lying island nations disappearing, coastal cities going the way of Venice (at best), abnormal weather patterns and growing seasons and tropical pathogens migrating into formerly temperate zones.

In Texas and elsewhere, change already is upon us. We’re seeing increased rates of water loss, depleting water resources, increased wildfires and the spread of invasive species. Our grandchildren and their children will see a rise in sea level from 1 to 4 feet by the end of the century.

“Climate change is no longer a future issue,” Katherine Hayanoe, director of Texas Tech’s Climate Change Science Center, told the Chronicle recently. “For the United States as a whole, climate change will affect our lives through its impacts on our health, our water resources, our food, our natural environment and our economy.”
Debating the validity of climate change – or whether we believe in climate change – is a waste of time; debating what to do in response is anything but a waste.

According to the IPCC report, emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases grew faster between 2000 and 2010 than over the previous three decades. That disturbing statistic is despite real progress being made in some parts of the world. In Germany, for example, Chancellor Angela Merkel has laid out a plan to fill more than 40 percent of her nation’s energy needs from renewable sources. The United States has reduced its carbon emissions by nearly 10 percent since 2005, in part because of stricter automobile fuel economy standards but also because of the lingering recession. Progress, though, pales in contrast to the increase in emissions by China and other rapidly industrializing countries.

We know what needs to be done, but if we can’t summon the political will and the sense of worldwide urgency to implement some kind of carbon tax or to develop new technologies that limit future carbon emissions, then we need to begin preparing for the worst. That means reassessing where we live and where we build, how we feed ourselves, how much water we use, among numerous other major adjustments. Gondolas in Kemah, anyone?

NOTE: The question at the end of the above editorial asks whether Texans will welcome sea level rise, given that Clear Lake will rise into the streets of Kemah, a lakeside community near Houston and the Gulf of Mexico.

CLEAR LAKE in Greater Houston & Gulf of Mexico

Four (4) states confirm water pollution from drilling

From an Article by Kevin Begos, Associated Press,  January 5, 2014

Associated Press review of complaints casts doubt on industry view that it rarely happens

Story Highlights

• AP requested data on drilling-related complaints in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Texas
• Extracting fuel from shale formations requires salt, chemicals, heavy metals and radiation
• Most common type of pollution involves methane gas, not other chemicals

PITTSBURGH (AP) — In at least four states that have nurtured the nation’s energy boom, hundreds of complaints have been made about well-water contamination from oil or gas drilling, and pollution was confirmed in a number of them, according to a review that casts doubt on industry suggestions that such problems rarely happen.

The Associated Press requested data on drilling-related complaints in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Texas and found major differences in how the states report such problems. Texas provided the most detail, while the other states provided only general outlines. And while the confirmed problems represent only a tiny portion of the thousands of oil and gas wells drilled each year in the U.S., the lack of detail in some state reports could help fuel public confusion and mistrust.

The AP found that Pennsylvania received 398 complaints in 2013 alleging that oil or natural gas drilling polluted or otherwise affected private water wells, compared with 499 in 2012. The Pennsylvania complaints can include allegations of short-term diminished water flow, as well as pollution from stray gas or other substances.

More than 100 cases of pollution were confirmed over the past five years.

The McMickens were one of three families that eventually reached a $1.6 million settlement with a drilling company. Heather McMicken said the state should be forthcoming with details.

Among the findings in the AP’s review:

— Pennsylvania has confirmed at least 106 water-well contamination cases since 2005, out of more than 5,000 new wells. There were five confirmed cases of water-well contamination in the first nine months of 2012, 18 in all of 2011 and 29 in 2010. The Environmental Department said more complete data may be available in several months.

— Ohio had 37 complaints in 2010 and no confirmed contamination of water supplies; 54 complaints in 2011 and two confirmed cases of contamination; 59 complaints in 2012 and two confirmed contaminations; and 40 complaints for the first 11 months of 2013, with two confirmed contaminations and 14 still under investigation, Department of Natural Resources spokesman Mark Bruce said in an email. None of the six confirmed cases of contamination was related to fracking, Bruce said.

— West Virginia has had about 122 complaints that drilling contaminated water wells over the past four years, and in four cases the evidence was strong enough that the driller agreed to take corrective action, officials said.

— A Texas spreadsheet contains more than 2,000 complaints, and 62 of those allege possible well-water contamination from oil and gas activity, said Ramona Nye, a spokeswoman for the Railroad Commission of Texas, which oversees drilling. Texas regulators haven’t confirmed a single case of drilling-related water-well contamination in the past 10 years, she said.

In Pennsylvania, the number of confirmed instances of water pollution in the eastern part of the state “dropped quite substantially” in 2013, compared with previous years, Department of Environmental Protection spokeswoman Lisa Kasianowitz wrote in an email. Two instances of drilling affecting water wells were confirmed there last year, she said, and a final decision hasn’t been made in three other cases. But she couldn’t say how many of the other statewide complaints have been resolved or were found to be from natural causes.

In Pennsylvania, the raw number of complaints “doesn’t tell you anything,” said Rob Jackson, a Duke University scientist who has studied gas drilling and water contamination issues. Jackson said he doesn’t think providing more details is asking for too much.

“Right or wrong, many people in the public feel like PA-DEP is stonewalling some of these investigations,” Jackson said of the situation in Pennsylvania.

In contrast with the limited information provided by Pennsylvania, Texas officials supplied a detailed 94-page spreadsheet almost immediately, listing all types of oil and gas related complaints over much of the past two years. The Texas data include the date of the complaint, the landowner, the drilling company and a brief summary of the alleged problems. Many complaints involve other issues, such as odors or abandoned equipment.

Scott Anderson, an expert on oil and gas drilling with the Environmental Defense Fund, a national nonprofit based in Austin, notes that Texas regulators started keeping more data on complaints in the 1980s. New legislation in 2011 and 2013 led to more detailed reports and provided funds for a new information technology system, he said.

Anderson agreed that a lack of transparency fuels mistrust. “If the industry has nothing to hide, then they should be willing to let the facts speaks for themselves,” he said. “The same goes for regulatory agencies.”

Millennium gas pipeline project

Marcellus natural gas takeaway pipeline projects advance

From an Article by Brett Wessler, Dairy Herd News, February 21, 2014

Last week, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved three projects to increase natural gas takeaway capacity from the Marcellus Shale formation. On February 11, FERC approved the TEAM 2014 project expansions on Spectra’s Texas Eastern Transmission Co. (Tetco) pipeline. TEAM stands for Texas Eastern Appalachia to Market. The next day, FERC issued an environmental impact statement (EIS) on a new pipeline and related compressor station project—Williams’s Constitution Pipeline and the Iroquois Pipeline’s Wright Interconnect Project (WIP). The EIS recommended conditional approval for the two projects, pending the adoption of measures to mitigate their environmental impact. WIP has a projected in-service date of March 2015, while the Constitution Pipeline projects the beginning of service in late 2015 or 2016.

The TEAM 2014 project would provide Tetco with capacity to move an additional 0.59 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) out of the Marcellus from interconnects in southwestern Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Expansions would allow for bidirectional flows on portions of Tetco that currently only flow gas from the Gulf and Rockies Express Pipeline into the Northeast. Two shippers—Chevron and EQT Energy—have contracted for the full amount of the capacity expansions. Rockies Express deliveries into the Northeast have declined over the past two years, and in November, FERC upheld a petition from Rockies Express Pipeline LLC allowing for the establishment of firm agreements to reverse direction and move gas east-to-west on the pipeline.

Chevron booked 0.29 Bcf/d of capacity to move gas on the expanded Tetco pipeline from Uniontown, Pennsylvania, to Lambertville, New Jersey, where Tetco connects with Spectra’s Algonquin Gas Transmission (AGT) pipeline. EQT Energy booked the remaining 0.29 Bcf/d of firm capacity to move 0.24 Bcf/d of Marcellus gas south to Tetco’s AA market zone in the Gulf of Mexico region, and 0.05 Bcf/d west to Lebanon, Ohio, where Tetco connects with the Rockies Express system. Outflows from the Northeast to other parts of the country as a result of these expansions would further decrease net flows of natural gas into the northeastern United States. These decreased flows have largely resulted from increasing Marcellus production, which enabled the Northeast to satisfy a greater portion of its own demand, and increasingly, send gas to other regions. TEAM 2014 would also help alleviate capacity constraints in transporting natural gas to northeastern markets, which contribute to high natural gas and power prices during periods of peak demand.

FERC also issued an EIS that recommended the construction, with modifications to the original plan, of the Constitution Pipeline. This pipeline would deliver up to 0.64 Bcf/d of Marcellus gas from Susquehanna County, in northeastern Pennsylvania, to Wright, New York, where the Wright Compressor Station is currently located. Iroquois would build a new compressor station at an adjacent facility under WIP, and modify the existing compressor station. Cabot Oil & Gas has a binding agreement for 0.49 Bcf/d of firm capacity on the Constitution Pipeline, while Southwestern Energy has an agreement for the remaining 0.15 Bcf/d.

The Iroquois Pipeline currently transports gas south to the Wright Compressor Station from its interconnect with TransCanada’s Canadian Mainline in Waddington, New York. At Wright, Iroquois interconnects with Kinder Morgan’s Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) northern 200 line, which can flow gas to New England customers via its interconnect with AGT south of Boston, but has delivered increasing amounts of natural gas to the Canadian Mainline via its Niagara Falls interconnect with TransCanada.

The Constitution Pipeline’s ability to move Marcellus production to northeastern consumers would significantly benefit from construction of TGP’s planned Northeast Expansion Project. This project would take gas from Wright to Dracut, Massachusetts, where it would connect with TGP’s existing pipeline as well as a line jointly operated by Spectra’s Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline and the Portland Natural Gas Transmission System. Open season for firm capacity agreements on the Northeast Expansion Project began on February 13, and will continue until March 28. Project capacity could range from 0.60 Bcf/d to 2.20 Bcf/d, according to TGP documents.

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Natural gas pipeline firm eyes $2 billion expansion in Pa.

Pittsburgh Post Gazette (Associated Press), February 21, 2014

Tulsa, Okla.-based Williams Partners says it’s planning to seek approval for a $2.1 billion natural gas pipeline project in Pennsylvania that it hopes to complete in 2017. Williams said the proposed Atlantic Sunrise project is designed to transfer more natural gas from Marcellus Shale-producing areas in northern Pennsylvania to heavily populated East Coast markets.

The project will include adding capacity and compression to the Transco Leidy line near Wilkes-Barre and adding a new section, the Central Penn Line, to connect it to the Transco mainline about 100 miles away in southern York County, Williams officials said. It has yet to get permits or seek approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Williams Partners is a subsidiary of The Williams Companies Inc., which operates 15,000 miles of interstate natural gas pipelines.

Houston Residents Get Asthma

Houston is preview to Shell’s proposed Beaver County cracker plant?

Allegheny Front, October 25, 2013

HOUSTON ­­– The largest chemical hub in the Americas courses through this city in a seemingly unending line of plants that produce about a quarter of the country’s petrochemicals. These plants have helped fuel the city’s economic rise. But they also have added to its poor air quality, with emissions that have been linked to asthma, cancer, and heart attacks.

In recent years, Houston has found ways to reduce air pollution, in part by zeroing in on chemical plant emissions. Experts say Houston’s experience may show others how to keep chemical emissions down, even as the industry expands along the Gulf Coast, and possibly into Pennsylvania.

From Pennsylvania to Texas, the chemical industry is building new plants to take advantage of vast deposits of natural gas opened up by the fracking boom. Shell Chemical is eyeing building an ethane cracker in Monaca in Beaver County. The plant would take ethane from the Marcellus shale and convert it into ethylene—a key building block for plastics and chemicals—through the ‘cracking’ process.

Shell’s Pennsylvania cracker would be northwest of Pittsburgh, in a region that already fails federal air quality standards for ozone and other pollutants, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Ozone is an oxidant that can burn lung tissue, aggravate asthma and increase susceptibility to respiratory illnesses like pneumonia and bronchitis, according to the agency.

Ozone is formed when volatile organic compounds (VOCs) mix with other forms of pollution in the presence of sunlight. Air quality experts say the biggest impact a cracker plant would have in Pittsburgh would be through releases of VOCs.

The company has said differences in local permitting rules and the type of raw materials it would use make it hard to project what kinds of emissions a Pennsylvania cracker would produce. The company has used Shell’s Norco plant in Louisiana in the past as a reference when it proposed its Pennsylvania cracker. Norco produces roughly twice the VOCs of U.S. Steel’s Clairton Coke works, currently the highest emitter in Southwestern Pennsylvania, according to the EPA.

Shell recently agreed to spend $115 million to clean up emissions at its Deer Park, Texas, refinery and ethylene plant near Houston after the Department of Justice filed a complaint alleging the plant’s flares were emitting improper amounts of VOCs and cancer­-causing pollutants.

Joe Osborne of the Group Against Smog and Pollution, an environmental advocacy group in Pittsburgh, said the Beaver County plant would likely be a major source of new pollution, with more than 50 tons per year of VOCs and 100 tons of nitrogen oxides, another key component of ozone, though he has yet to see any estimates from the company.

“I expect it will be a large source of ozone precursors, and this would be located in an area that’s already failing to meet federal health-­based standards for ozone,” he said.

Looking to Houston

One study linked high ozone incidents to increased instances of cardiac arrest in Houston; others have found high rates of asthma and childhood leukemia in neighborhoods near the chemical industry.

Adding difficulty to the issue is the fact that Houston has no zoning laws, which means some residents live across the street from huge refineries and chemical plants. But in the last decade, Houston’s air has improved, in part because regulators have targeted the petrochemical industry.

The city’s air quality nadir was in 1999. “We were the capital of ozone,” says Elizabeth Hendler, a former state regulator who now works as an environmental consultant to industry. In that year, Houston surpassed Los Angeles as having the highest ozone levels in America. “That was kind of a wake­up call,” Hendler said.

Not long afterward, in 2003, Toyota decided against locating a plant in the region because of the city’s air. Hendler says the number of air monitors in Houston doubled in a few years.

The state undertook a wide-­ranging series of studies. Aircraft from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration flew over the ship channel with special emissions-­sensing equipment.

They found big leaks at the plants. The worst were from chemical plants with ‘crackers’ that made ethylene and propylene, two basic building blocks of plastic.

“The plants were having 1,000 pound releases, 5,000 pound releases, 20,000 pound releases, in one case 200,000 pound releases,” said Harvey Jeffries, a retired University of North Carolina chemist who studied Houston’s air and advised business and research groups on Houston’s air problems.

Ethylene and propylene—the two main products made in a cracker— ­are considered ‘highly reactive’ VOCs, meaning they can create large plumes of ozone in a matter of hours under the right conditions.

“When that stuff gets emitted in the daytime—it cooks up the highest amount of ozone you’ve ever seen,” Jeffries said.

When they looked at Houston’s industrial corridor, scientists realized chemical plants had been chronically under­-reporting their emissions. A lot of this pollution was ‘fugitive’ emissions—leaks from valves, flanges, tiny holes in pipes, and incomplete combustion of waste gasses in the plants’ flares.

To get the city’s air under federal air pollution limits, Texas implemented a suite of environmental reforms. The state created special limits on emissions of highly reactive VOCs like propylene and ethylene, and implemented a cap­-and-­trade program for Houston’s petrochemical plants.

What happened next?  “Well, ozone went down—­­a lot,” Hendler said. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality estimates the city’s ozone levels have decreased about 20 percent since 2001.

The number of days when the air in Houston exceeds the EPA’s current eight­-hour average for ozone of 75 parts per billion went from around 100 a year in 2005 to under 35 days in 2012. Emissions of other pollutants, including carcinogenic chemicals released in petrochemical manufacturing, also decreased.

Progress, but no cure

In spite of recent strides, Houston still struggles with air quality. The city will see huge expansions of its petrochemical sector in the next few years, thanks to the fracking boom. Several new or expanded ethane crackers are slated to go online to take advantage of cheap natural gas. This has some clean air advocates worried.

“We’ve made significant progress,” said Larry Soward, a former regulator for the Texas commission and president of Air Alliance Houston. “But let’s not pat ourselves on the back too much. So far we have not met a single (federal) standard for ozone ­­and we’re talking about adding all these new pollution sources.”

Steve Smith, technical advisor to the industry­-funded Houston Regional Monitoring Network, which operates around a dozen air pollution monitoring stations around the city, says the key to keeping emissions low is simple: Keep an eye on it. “If you monitor, it will get better,” he said. “That’s exactly what happened here.”

Smith’s group tests for more than 150 pollutants to help oil, gas and petrochemical businesses meet federal air quality mandates. “We set up a network early on, where if we saw a value too high, we sent out a notice to the companies, saying ‘Look at what’s happening. See if you have something that’s going on.’”

More Data Missing in WV

Are the Gas Workers from WV or from TX and OK?

From Article by Ken Ward, Charleston Gazette

Date:  October 27, 2013

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Last week, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin’s administration told state lawmakers that the boom in natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale field “continues to have a positive impact on West Virginia’s economy.”

Employment in oil and gas industries grew by just more than 20 percent in 2012, according to a report from the Department of Commerce’s Workforce West Virginia division. Average wages also increased, from about $70,000 to $75,600, the reports said.

But the annual report left out some important information: How many of the jobs created by the Marcellus rush are going to West Virginia residents, and how many to out-of-state workers?

For the second year in a row, the Tomblin administration report did not provide that key — and legislatively mandated — data about the residency of natural gas industry workers.

The Commerce Department added information about the race, ethnicity and gender of gas industry workers to this year’s report. But, “Unfortunately, there are still some details we are unable to provide,” an agency spokeswoman said.

As companies race to tap into the Marcellus gas reserves and build associated pipelines and gas-processing facilities, organized labor groups have complained that companies were bringing in out-of-state workers to fill too many of the new jobs.

During a special session in late 2011 that focused on new environmental rules on drilling, a few lawmakers tried to address the workforce issue. They proposed language to require companies to submit new reports to the state to provide an employee residency breakdown.

Industry lobbyists objected to this language, and it was removed during closed-door negotiations between the Tomblin administration and those lobbyists.

A committee bill, approved in the House after months of discussion at interim meetings, had required companies to disclose the information. But the governor’s bill, which eventually passed, instead mandated a government study by the Commerce Department.

Under the final version, the state’s report was required to include, among other things, a review of the number of jobs created for legal West Virginia residents and non-residents and a review of “the number of employees domiciled” in West Virginia.

See also:  www.FrackCheckWV.net