There is a movement afoot in Philadelphia to turn it
into an "energy hub".
“Philly has the best ports, the best workforce, the best transportation and roads, great educational institutions and two very healthy refineries,” said Michael Krancer, a former secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, now a lawyer working with some of the energy companies involved in pushing for the city to become an energy center.
“To put it mildly, eastern Pennsylvania is where the opportunity is to valorize our shale industry,” he said.
Well, that's that. Makes sense! This Krancer guy
worked for the
DEP for God's sake!
Under Krancer, right-to-know requests for inspectors’ notes about drilling-related water complaints were denied. Requests to speak directly to DEP field officers were denied because “they were too busy” to talk. Calling to DEP staffers at home for interviews was decried as “unacceptable” and “unprofessional” behavior.
Oh. I get it. However, as with almost every part of the United States, there is a desperate need to create jobs and bring
money into the state and local economy.
“If you've only got people talking about the benefits and others only talking about the costs — i.e., environmentalists — you’re not going to get a deal,” said Mark Alan Hughes, the director of the Kleinman Center on Energy and Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “The big challenge is, can we overcome this political divide?”
Much of the plan hinges on a facility southeast of Philadelphia, Marcus Hook, where Sunoco Logistics Partners is converting a refinery that used to handle oil into one that can handle natural gas. The conversion will take place regardless of whether other parts of the project go through as Sunoco tries to take advantage of cheap natural gas prices in the state. Once the plant is converted, it could be the first in a string of other development plans around Philadelphia.
There are other great ideas on how to overcome some of the "challenges" to getting the actual gas from
one place to another for delivery and use.
It would face enormous political and regulatory challenges, including threading a pipeline of more than 3 feet in diameter through Philadelphia's densely populated suburbs.
One route under discussion would avoid populated areas by burying the pipeline in the bed of the Delaware River, connecting underused waterfront properties to an energy superhighway.
Also, that Sunoco company referenced above? Well...
there's a story about them:
- Engineers and industry insiders assess the explosion risk from the re-purposed pipeline as a “recipe for disaster”.
- Landowners and municipalities oppose Sunoco’s twisted attempt to use “public utility” status to evade local zoning regulations and to use eminent domain for land grabs,.
Environmental groups are disturbed by the climate impacts of the pipeline, which would export more than 50% of its contents (volatile fracked gas liquids, ethane and propane) overseas.
- Community and environmental groups oppose the large-scale cumulative impacts on water, air and land from the fracking, refinery processing, pump stations, storage and export facilities which are all part of the Mariner East project.
- Public health and human rights advocates are angered by the air pollution and drinking water contamination in communities impacted by fracking from cradle to grave, exemplified by the massive toxic smoke released by the MarkWest refinery in Houston, Pennsylvania, which is the western starting point of the Mariner East pipeline.
But, I'm sure those are just hippie accusations.
Calm down, hippies!
Shell Oil Co. and Sunoco Inc. will pay $35 million to settle the state of New Hampshire’s claims that they added a controversial chemical to gasoline sold in New Hampshire knowing that it would contaminate groundwater supplies, the state said Thursday.
New Hampshire sued Shell, Sunoco, and many other refiners and manufacturers in 2003 over the addition of methyl tertiary butyl ether to gasoline that was supplied to the state. It estimates the damages caused by the chemical in the environment to be about $772 million. The Shell and Sunoco deal is the largest so far among defendants who have settled with the state.
That was two years ago last month. Boom goes the dynamite.