Tag: natural gas

Mountain Valley Pipeline Bursts During Pressure Testing In Virginia

A landowner observed sediment-laden water in her pasture on Wednesday morning and reported it to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.

A section of the Mountain Valley Pipeline ruptured during pressure testing Wednesday in Roanoke County, Virginia, according to a report from the state’s environmental agency.

A landowner observed sediment-laden water in her pasture on Wednesday morning and reported it to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.

The agency sent a construction compliance expert to investigate the origin of the water.

“The origin of the sediment-laden water reported in the complaint was from the rupture of a section of pipe during hydrostatic testing the morning of 5/1/2024,” wrote the expert, John McCutcheon.

The 300-mile MVP is undergoing pressure testing with water in anticipation of beginning operations later this month.

MVP’s builder, Equitrans Midstream, has asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for permission to put the natural gas pipeline in service after May 23.

The company entered an agreement with the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration last year to ensure sections of pipe that had been exposed to the elements had not lost their corrosion-resistant coating.

Court challenges led to long pauses in construction until Congress last year required the project’s completion.

In its first quarter earnings report Tuesday, Equitrans Midstream said the project’s cost had increased to $7.85 billion, more than twice the original estimate.

McCutcheon’s report indicated that crews were preparing the site of the rupture for repairs.

Hope Gas Asks PSC To Block Pipeline From Supplying Pleasants Plant

Quantum Pleasants is talking to a pipeline developer, Icon New Energy Pipeline, about an agreement to supply the plant with the volume of gas it needs and at a lower cost.

Hope Gas has asked the Public Service Commission to block another supplier from providing gas to the Pleasants Power Station.

The Pleasants Power Station was sold last year to a California Company, Omnis Technologies, that plans to produce graphene and graphite and run the power plant on the hydrogen byproduct.

That will require a lot of natural gas: 100 million cubic feet a year by the end of 2025. The plant, now Quantum Pleasants, told the PSC in a Wednesday filing that Hope Gas cannot supply that volume.

Instead, Quantum Pleasants is talking to a pipeline developer, Icon New Energy Pipeline, about an agreement to supply the plant with the volume of gas it needs and at a lower cost than Hope.

Hope wants the PSC to review whether the arrangement would violate state law because the plant is an existing customer.

Omnis said the law doesn’t apply because the company has never been a customer of Hope. It asked the commission to dismiss Hope’s request.

In its own filing Wednesday, Icon said the PSC does not have jurisdiction over the company except for pipeline safety. It told the commission it supported the Omnis motion to dismiss.

The potential closure of the Pleasants Power Station, which dates to 1979, caused considerable outcry from lawmakers.

The plant shut down, briefly, last June but was reactivated when Omnis agreed to buy the plant from Energy Harbor.

State lawmakers had passed a resolution urging Mon Power to purchase the plant. The sale to Omnis made it moot.

PSC Approves Construction Of Gas Power Plant In Doddridge County

The PSC granted a siting certificate to Competitive Power Ventures to build a $3 billion combined-cycle natural gas power plant a few miles southeast of West Union.

The West Virginia Public Service Commission has given its approval for the construction of a gas-fueled power plant in Doddridge County.

The PSC granted a siting certificate to Competitive Power Ventures to build a $3 billion combined-cycle natural gas power plant a few miles southeast of West Union.

The plant will generate 2,060 megawatts of electricity, which will be sent to the regional grid on the wholesale market.

The plant’s Massachusetts based owner also plans to incorporate carbon capture and storage into the operation, with a tax credit that was part of the Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022.

Construction is to begin in the fourth quarter of next year.

“West Virginia is pleased to welcome yet another business to our state,” PSC Chairman Charlotte Lane said.

Despite being one of the top U.S. gas producers, West Virginia has no other combined-cycle plants, which are more efficient. In contrast, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia have built dozens, largely displacing coal.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rules for power plants announced last week require new gas-fired power plants as well as existing coal ones to capture at least 90 percent of their carbon dioxide emissions.

The plant will be called the CPV Shay Energy Center. Shay is a type of geared steam locomotive used on West Virginia’s logging railroads in the early 20th century.

EPA Foes Vow To Block Power Plant Rules. It May Not Matter

Regardless of whether the rule stands or falls, the standards it sets could happen anyway.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued its final rule to limit carbon dioxide emissions from power plants Thursday, and the reaction from state officials was swift.

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said he’d take the case to court. Republican U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said she’d introduce a repeal resolution in the Senate. Democrat Joe Manchin, who’s not running for re-election, said he’d support her measure.

Regardless of whether the rule stands or falls, the standards it sets could happen anyway.

Morrisey was successful in his bid to block President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan. The U.S. Supreme Court sided with him in West Virginia v EPA two years ago.

The policy never took effect. But as Amanda Levin, director of policy analysis for the Natural Resources Defense Council, points out, the goals it set were met, and earlier than planned.

“That was also a rule at that time, there were concerns about whether or not the power sector would be able to achieve it, and it ended up achieving those standards 11 years early, even though the rule was stayed,” she said.

Now, as then, critics of the rules, including some in the electric power sector, say they can’t be achieved. Manchin points to the 2021 winter storm in Texas that caused deadly power outages.

“We saw what happened in Texas, how many people’s lives were lost, how much was disrupted in the economy, went to heck in a handbasket down there when their gas lines froze up.” he said.

The failures in Texas, and more recently in the eastern United States in late 2022, were mostly of fossil fuel infrastructure, especially natural gas. Renewables and battery storage helped hold the Texas power grid through last summer’s heat.

Levin says the new EPA rules come at a time when electric utilities are rapidly building wind, solar and battery storage. They’ve already surpassed coal and even nuclear.

“Clean energy sources are now the cheapest and fastest growing source of new power generation,” she said.

Even West Virginia is building more solar and will soon begin building storage batteries.

Mon Power activated the largest solar facility in the state in January in Monongalia County and is building another one in Harrison County.

Form Energy is building a long-duration storage battery plant in Weirton. Other companies coming to West Virginia, including steelmaker Nucor, wanted access to renewable power.

Phil Moye, a spokesman for Appalachian Power, which operates three coal plants in West Virginia, says the company is looking at the EPA rules to see how they affect plant operations and future investments.

“The development of new dispatchable generation resources and storage technologies will be critical in determining how quickly the industry can meet the requirements of the new rules,” he said.

Appalachian Power is an underwriter of West Virginia Public Broadcasting.

Mountain Valley Pipeline Seeks Late May Approval To Start Operation

The company wrote that the 303-mile project will be mechanically complete by May 22 and seeks FERC’s approval by May 23.

The builders of the Mountain Valley Pipeline are seeking federal approval to begin operations within weeks.

MVP has sought approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to begin operations in late May.

The company wrote that the 303-mile project will be mechanically complete by May 22 and seeks FERC’s approval by May 23.

It says its customers with long-term contracts for natural gas from the pipeline become effective on June 1.

The $7.5 billion pipeline has been delayed and cost more than projected as environmental groups and landowners challenged the project in court.

The MVP is under a consent decree with the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration over a corrosion-resistant coating that may have degraded while large sections of pipe were exposed to weather during the delays.

That’s after groups challenged the safety of the exposed pipe. The company agreed to take corrective measures to eliminate any safety risk.

Various legal challenges to the pipeline’s construction ended last year when Congress passed, and President Joe Biden signed, a spending agreement that approved all remaining permits.

While some opponents continue to press forward, it appears they have few options remaining before the pipeline goes into service.

The MVP has a capacity of two billion cubic feet of gas a day. It will connect north-central West Virginia with southern Virginia and open up West Virginia gas production to new markets in the mid-Atlantic.

Coal Production Lags In First Two Weeks of April, Federal Data Show

U.S. coal production fell below 8 million tons the first two weeks of April, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Coal has seen a slump in production this month, according to federal data.

U.S. coal production fell below 8 million tons the first two weeks of April, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

A year ago, the United States produced about 10 million tons of coal during the first half of the month. Year to date, coal production is down more than 16 percent.

Coal was once the dominant fuel for producing electricity but it has been overtaken in recent years by natural gas and increasingly renewables such as wind and solar.

Further data show that coal’s market share for U.S. electricity has been under 15 percent for the past two months.

At its peak in 2008, the country produced 23 million tons a week and it commanded more than 40 percent of U.S. electricity generation.

The sector will lean more heavily on exports, the Energy Information Administration reported, though the temporary closure of the Baltimore export terminals will dent those numbers as well.

Production in West Virginia is down 14.5 percent from a year ago, according to the agency, and 13.5 percent in Appalachia.

A mild winter can cut into electricity demand, and natural gas prices are lower as well, eroding coal’s competitiveness.

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