New Marcellus Shale gas pipeline proposed for Pa., NJ

The Philadelphia Inquirer has the details on a proposed $1 billion pipeline project to bring natural gas from the Marcellus Shale to customers on the east coast.
Wyomissing-based PennEast Pipeline Company said the pipeline would start in Luzerne County and travel about 105 miles to hook up with Transco’s Trenton-Woodbury interconnection in New Jersey. The company estimates the 30-inch diameter line would provide natural gas for about 4.7 million homes in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
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UGI Energy Services, a subsidiary of UGI Corp., of Valley Forge, would build and operate the interstate pipeline. UGI’s gas utilities serve 45 Pennsylvania counties, including outlying portions of Bucks, Montgomery and Chester Counties.
Affiliates of South Jersey Gas, New Jersey Natural Gas, and Elizabethtown Gas in New Jersey are also investors in the project.
“This project serves to meet that growing demand in the mid-Atlantic marketplace, while providing greater system resiliency and reliability for local utilities,” John Walsh, UGI’s chief executive, said in a statement.

Planning and regulatory approvals are expected to take more than two years. Construction would begin in 2017.
Business leaders hailed the plan as a boost to Pennsylvania’s natural gas industry. PennEast said the project would employ 2,000 people during construction.

The pipeline is expected to face opposition from environmental groups and landowners as similar projects in the region have.
“The latest pipeline pronouncement will, as with all pipelines, cut a damaging path through public and private lands for the private profits of industry,” Delaware Riverkeeper Maya van Rossum told the Inquirer.

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