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For the second time in as many months, the PennEast Pipeline Co. has issued a report to hype its proposed 110-mile natural gas pipeline.
The new report is an analysis of presumed consumer benefits authored by Massachusetts-based Concentric Energy Advisors. Its cheery tone is reminiscent of that of the economic impact analysis that PennEast paid Drexel University and Econsult to produce in February. According to the authors of that report, there are no economic downsides to cutting a pipeline through communities, farms, parks and the Delaware River.
Just how enthusiastic Concentric is in reporting benefits might have a lot to do with who’s paying for the analysis. Philadelphia City Council paid the same firm at least $425,000 to analyze the proposed sale of PGW, the city’s gas works, last October. That report referred to “caveats” with the PennEast pipeline and the Diamond East, a pipeline proposed by Williams. It stated: “First, even though current futures prices indicate that Marcellus prices are likely to remain low, as new pipeline capacity is developed that allows Marcellus gas to reach new markets, the Marcellus prices are likely to eventually increase (and basis differentials relative to the Gulf Coast decrease). This will decrease the potential benefits to PGW’s sales customers from a new pipeline that connects the Marcellus to the Philadelphia market area.”
The report’s tone proves to be as hyperbolic as it is cheery. It highlights high gas and electricity prices from a few days in the 2013-14 winter rather than consider regional trends. If they’d chosen the 2014-15 winter instead, the entire argument would go up in smoke as gas prices in this region only went above $10 per million BTUs once, according to Natural Gas Intelligence. Furthermore, in the past three months alone, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has approved an additional 835,000 dekatherms per day of gas capacity to eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey along the Columbia and Transco lines. That is just shy of what PennEast would carry, yet it was completely ignored in the report.
Concentric cherry-picked the data, just as Drexel University and Econsult did in February when they cheered in press statements, with carefully chosen language, that the pipeline would “support” over 12,000 jobs. A more detailed examination of the report itself revealed that the vast majority of those jobs would be supported for the seven months of the pipeline’s construction and that they would include jobs like that of the taco truck operator who shows up at the construction site at lunch every day. The total number of permanent jobs supported across six counties in Pennsylvania and New Jersey? Eighty.
Pipeline projects are serious business. The public deserves the facts. The dissembling reports commissioned by PennEast do a disservice. Fortunately, public opposition on both sides of the Delaware has been strong. Citizens are educating themselves and are not swayed by PennEast’s desperate attempts to mislead them.
Karen Feridun
Founder
Berks Gas Truth
Kutztown