Marcellus & Utica Shale Story Links: Mon, Jan 14, 2013

The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading:

New York

Oxford lets drilling moratorium slide, pursues other options
Evening Sun
A proposed nine-month moratorium on shale gas drilling within the confines of the village limits will be allowed to expire Sunday.

Gov. Cuomo on the spot as N.Y. considers fracking
Washington Times
With nearby states cashing in but environmentalists and Hollywood stars urging him to back off, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is running out of time to decide whether his state will join the natural-gas fracking boom.

Cuomo’s true colors in bluer-than-blue NY
New York Post
While Pennsylvania and Ohio are creating hundreds of thousands of jobs and taking in millions of dollars with fracking, Cuomo’s too busy pandering and ticking off the items on his liberal wish list to even mention it.

Groups deliver cases of comments on New York gas regulations
Times Herald-Record
Sean Lennon and Yoko Ono help deliver boxes of comments to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation on its proposed natural gas drilling regulations on Friday in Albany, N.Y. Environmental, health and community groups opposed to shale gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing.

Leaked record, DEC response show N.Y.’s gas quandary
Press & Sun-Bulletin
Several media outlets were able to make some hay earlier this month with a leaked document suggesting that New York state regulators were ready to embrace shale gas development without further assessing its impact on public health.

NY Times eliminates environmental news desk in nod to ‘shifting’ reporting landscape
The Daily Caller
The New York Times will soon be closing its environmental news desk and reassigning its seven reporters and two editors to other departments as part of a restructuring effort to adapt to the “shifting interdisciplinary landscape of news reporting,” reports InsideClimate News.

Ohio

Dearing Compressor Plans Another Plant Expansion
Youngstown Business Journal
Oil and gas exploration in the Marcellus and Utica shale is having such a profound effect on Dearing Compressor & Pump Inc. that the company is already feeling the need for more space just two years after a major expansion was completed.

Barges of brine on Ohio River?
The Columbus Dispatch
A Texas-based company’s plan to ship thousands of barrels of “fracking” waste into Ohio on river barges has been put on hold as federal officials investigate environmental questions.

Senator boosts shale
Tribune-Chronicle
The future of the shale industry was the primary focus during a U.S. senator’s visit to the Mahoning Valley.

Pennsylvania

Marcellus impact: Cambria authority receives $150000 housing grant
The Tribune-Democrat
While Cambria County has just a handful of Marcellus Shale natural gas wells, it will benefit from the host fees being paid by oil and gas companies to the state. The Cambria County Redevelopment Authority is receiving a $150,000 grant.

National

Should You Worry About NOAA’s Natural Gas Report?
Motley Fool
Last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the University of Colorado Boulder published joint research that found unexpectedly high methane leaks from two natural gas production sites in Colorado and Utah.

How SandRidge Energy’s CEO adapted the Chesapeake playbook
Reuters [picks a new target]
For 17 years, Tom Ward and Aubrey McClendon teamed up to build Chesapeake Energy Corp into the second-largest natural gas producer in the United States.

Tennessee gas pipeline challenged by Delaware Riverkeeper Network and N.J. Highlands Coalition
NJ.com
A petition for a stay to stop the forward movement of the Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company’s Northeast Upgrade Project was filed today by the Delaware Riverkeeper Network and NJ Highlands Coalition.

Service companies spending millions to run on natural gas
Times Record News
The low price of natural gas and the increased production of crude oil have created some interesting changes in the operation of the oil and gas industry.

Trains carrying more oil across U.S.
Toledo Blade
Energy companies behind the oil boom on the Northern Plains are increasingly turning to an industrial-age workhorse – the locomotive – to move their crude to refineries across the United States, as plans for new pipelines stall and existing lines can’t keep up with demand.

The ickiness and stickiness of fracking
Star Tribune
Which has done more in the last five years to cut America’s greenhouse-gas emissions and slow the pace of global warming? 1) Development of renewable energy such as wind and solar. 2) Increasing the fuel efficiency of vehicles, especially through hybrid technology. 3) Fracking. You see where this is headed.

‘FrackNation’ Review: Powerful Response to Green Hysteria
Breitbart.com
When a film offers a free-market perspective on the most controversial energy production technique in the country and still gets sterling reviews from Variety and the New York Times, it must be good.

FrackNation movie buries Gasland eco-fraud
Examiner.com
Premiering this week in New York and Los Angeles, the new documentary film ” FrackNation ,” by Phelim McAleer, Ann McElhinney and Magdalena Segieda, provides the science, technology and history of fracking to debunk the hysterics surrounding oil shale natural gas production by “fracking.”

U.S. LNG Profit Seen Elusive as Price Gap Closes: Energy Markets
Bloomberg
Profits from selling U.S. liquefied natural gas abroad may be elusive, belying the $60 billion race for export licenses as the price gap between Asia and North America shrinks from record levels.

A Contrarian View on the Shale Oil and Gas Revolution
Motley Fool
Over the past few years, the phrase “shale gas revolution” has become commonplace, with the phenomenon attracting interest from all types of investors from all over the world.

Western Illinois University runs on natural gas now
KHQA-7
Classes at WIU begin Monday. Students and staff at WIU might notice cleaner air this semester. The university has transitioned from coal to natural gas to power its campus. Coal-burning boilers are a thing of the past.