PennEast Pipeline to cut through two NJ Counties

A Pennsylvania company is seeking approval of a 100-mile long, natural gas pipeline that would cut through two western New Jersey Counties. The $1 billion pipeline would bring low-cost natural gas to Pennsylvania and New Jersey homes and businesses.

What the proposed pipeline will look like.

PennEast Pipeline Company LLC, based in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, is a joint project supported by several partners including AGL Resources; NJR Pipeline Company, a subsidiary of New Jersey Resources; South Jersey Industries; and UGI Energy Services—who have a total customer base of 1 million people. The consortium will split the cost of the project.

The project aims to bring natural gas, produced in the Marcellus Shale region in northern Pennsylvania, to homes and businesses in southeastern Pennsylvania and western New Jersey. The pipeline will begin in Luzerne County, just north of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and run south to a new connection on Transco’s Trenton-Woodbury lateral, just east of Lambertville.

According to John Walsh, president and CEO of UGI Corporation, the intent of the project is to bring cheaper natural gas services to approximately 4.7 million homes.

"In response to the abundant supplies and low price of natural gas, customer demand has increased significantly," he said. "This project serves to meet that growing demand in the mid-Atlantic marketplace, while providing greater system resiliency and reliability for local utilities."

Despite this, Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Chapter of the Sierra Club, said in a statement to mycentralnewjersey.com, that he is not in favor of the project.

"There is no need for this pipeline other than to promote tracking and burning of fossil fuels that impact clean water and promote climate change," he said. "Pennsylvania gets the money, New York gets the gas, and we get the pipe."

According to the most recent assessment of the United States Geological Survey, the Marcellus Shale contains about 84 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered, recoverable natural gas and 3.4 billion barrels of undiscovered natural gas liquids.

The PennEast Project is still pending several approvals from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the agency that regulates natural gas pipelines across the United States.

If the project remains on track, construction will commence in 2017 and will take approximately 7 months to complete, creating approximately 2,000 new jobs.

PennEast says it will begin contacting property owners along the route this fall in order to conduct property surveys. If a property is selected for the final route, PennEast will ask the property owners to enter into a right-of-way agreement giving the company permission to use part of the property to construct its pipeline. Landowners will be offered financial compensation in exchange for a permanent easement.

PennEast will hold a number of public hearings along the proposed route to keep federal, state and local officials informed of the project’s progress.

For more, visit the company’s website.

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