An editorial in yesterday’s New York Post takes aim at New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s indecisiveness on the issue of fracking. They mince no words when they say the problem is, in a word, “leadership.” Here’s a portion of the editorial:
Is there any chance that New York will move forward with releasing new shale gas drilling rules by Nov. 29, the one year anniversary after the last public hearing on the new rules (and by which the rules must be released or the rulemaking process restarts)? No. Not a chance.
Why? NY State Health Commissioner Nirav Shah has only just yesterday named three outside “experts” to help conduct a “health review” of New York’s proposed drilling regulations. The deadline given the experts to complete their review? “Mid-February.”
Binghamton’s failed mayor, Matt Ryan, was in Albany yesterday to stir up trouble on the fracking issue. (First Dimock, now Albany…seems Mayor Ryan’s pass time is to cause trouble somewhere else while your own city is crumbling around you.)
Mayor Ryan has started his own cultic anti-fracking group called Elected Officials to Protect New York. The group, meeting in Albany yesterday, said that if drilling is allowed in New York, it will create an “invasion” of crime and social unrest. Here’s the scoop:
An editorial in today’s Jamestown, NY Post-Journal endorses shale gas drilling in New York. The editorial writers rightly point to the overwhelming results from last week’s election in which the pro-drilling candidate won in every major, and in most minor, races where drilling was an issue. The P-J conclusion? Cuomo needs to wake up and get off the dime:
Piedmont Natural Gas, a natural gas utility with more than one million customers in North and South Carolina and Tennessee, has decided they want a piece of the Marcellus Shale gas action. Piedmont is investing $180 million in the yet-to-be-built Constitution Pipeline that will run from Susquehanna County, PA to Schoharie County, NY. Williams, the company building the new pipeline, and Piedmont collaborate on other projects too. Piedmont is also a customer of Williams’ Transco natural gas pipeline.
Here’s the announcement from Piedmont on why they’ve decided to invest in the Constitution Pipeline project:
Grassroots Environmental Education, a leftist anti-drilling organization in New York State, released a biased report last week that says, in essence, if fracking is allowed in New York, radiation will poison us all for centuries to come. Another week, another faux report issued by a “scientist” with the viewpoint that all fossil fuels are evil. Film at eleven.
(Yes, we grow tired of reporting this claptrap, but you need to know about it because mainstream media is too lazy to evaluate it critically.)
According to Dan Fitzsimmons from the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York (JLCNY), the elections last week produced an excellent result—at least locally in the Southern Tier of New York State. The most visible anti-drillers—candidates running on an anti-drilling platform—went down to defeat.
Here’s the letter sent out by the JLCNY late last week:
Norse Energy is the plucky drilling company still holding on in New York State. MDN has written quite a bit about Norse. They rolled the dice and bet on acreage in New York State (brave people). Norse currently holds some 130,000 acres of leased land in New York. Problem is, there’s no shale gas drilling in New York and there hasn’t been for 4 1/2 years. All of which has caused Norse to do everything but sell off the kitchen table in an effort to “hang in there” until the day New York does finally allow drilling.
Yesterday Norse released their third quarter financial and operational update. Oil and gas revenue for Norse was down 33% from one year ago. The company says they produced less gas, and the gas they did produce was sold for less money (due to the low commodity price) than gas from a year ago, which led to the decrease in revenue.
In an unusual reversal, the New York Times tells the story of how some areas in New York City stayed online—lights burning and warm heat blowing—in the midst of power failures all around the city from Hurricane/Storm Sandy. How did these little islands of energy do it? You guessed it: because they were burning natural gas—using it for both heat and to generate their own electricity.
Of course the “article” was posted in the opinion section of the NYT site (they can’t be seen running a positive story about natgas in the news section, ya know). Still, it’s a startling turnabout for the bash-natgas newspaper of record. The article starts this way:
MDN friend and “partner in crime” Ed Camp (from ShaleNavigator) released a press release on Friday to call attention to some of the latest and greatest features he’s added to the ShaleNavigator service—the web’s premier cloud-based shale mapping system. Ed’s ShaleNavigator maps are the basis for the MDN Marcellus and Utica Shale Databook series (see here for more info on the Databook).
We’re happy to bring you Ed’s latest press release, along with his offer of a free 7-day trial:
The Joint Landowners Coalition of New York (JLCNY) has provided New Yorkers with a handy list of endorsements from their organization for the upcoming election in a 14-county region (see the full list below). The offices they cover are either county, state or federal elections—mostly for New York State Senate and Assembly, with a few congressional and other offices on the list. The JLCNY has not endorsed candidates at the local town board level, instead referring voters to their local landowner coalition for guidance.
While New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo dithers about whether or not to allow fracking in the state, two court cases that will have a profound effect on where fracking can happen (should he finally make up his mind) continue to work their way through the court system. Those cases address of the issue of whether or not local municipalities should have the right to completely ban fracking within their borders—sometimes referred to as “home rule.”
Not long ago MDN updated you on the status of those cases with word that oral arguments are likely to take place in February with a decision by late spring (see this MDN story). A new development in those cases: 53 municipalities have filed a request with the court to join the cases on the side of pro-ban/anti-fracking:
We interrupt this blog post to bring you the following news: New York’s unemployment rate is 8.2% (a full 9% in Chemung County). The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 345 out of 372 metro areas in the country (93%) have lower unemployment rates than the New York State average. The lowest unemployment rate in the country? North Dakota—at 2.2%.
Why is ND’s unemployment rate so low? And why is NY’s so high? Is there a connection?
Sadly, but predictably, movie star Robert Redford is lending his star power to the anti-fracking movement in New York, no doubt because his long-time friend Debra Winger (Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy) asked him to. Redford has cut five radio commercials misrepresenting the miracle of hydraulic fracturing, encouraging New Yorkers to contact and tell Gov. Andrew Cuomo “fracking is a bad deal for New York.”
Unfortunately, either knowingly (or perhaps ignorantly) Redford repeats the lie that fracking is somehow responsible for the contamination of drinking water “all across the country.” That statement is 100% false. Give this latest anti-fracking lie a listen (below).
More New Yorkers now support fracking in the state than at any time in the past according to the latest Siena College Research Institute Poll. By a clear majority, 42% of New Yorkers support fracking vs. 36% who oppose it. In August, the numbers were 39% supporting vs. 38% opposing—so clearly there has been a shift over the past three months since Siena last polled on this question.
A new article by Platts asks the question MDN is often asked: “If shale drilling is allowed in New York State, will any drillers bother to show up and drill?” The Platts article quotes a number of experts who say, in a word, “no.” MDN has heard the same “no” sentiment from other experts as well. We’ve grappled with this issue in the past (see this MDN story from March 9, 2011).
These days, MDN has a contrary-to-popular-opinion position on the question of whether drillers will want to drill in New York soon after it’s allowed. But first, the viewpoints of those who say no: