Marcellus & Utica Shale Story Links: Wed, Jun 27, 2012

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

An expanded natural gas focus is no-brainer
AEI
I was going to write this week about the post-Supreme Court landscape on health care policy, but the court’s schedule took that one off the table. I decided to write about energy, motivated in part by a Floyd Norris column last week in The New York Times about the compelling reasons to have a major program promoting natural gas vehicles.

Town Board to Discuss Possible Local Laws on Natural Gas Activity
MadisonCountyCourier.com
Lebanon town officials agreed to invite environmental attorneys David and Helen Slottje, the architects of a current local law being used by local municipalities to ban natural gas development in Upstate New York.

Ohio shale drilling tidbits
Ohio.com
Here is a collection of recent Ohio news items on Utica shale drilling…

Ignore Marcellus lobbyists: Protect DEP permit system
PennLive.com
The state House is about to endorse a “fox guarding the hen house” approach to environmental protection. It didn’t end well for the hens in the children’s tale, and such a move wouldn’t end well for Pennsylvanians.

Drilling boom reaches Wayne County
Ohio.com
Oklahoma-based Devon Energy Corp. has obtained a state permit for a horizontal well east of Wooster in East Union Township, according to information from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and its Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management.

Plan of partial hydrofracking in NY stirs more controversy
Utica Observer Dispatch
The clock continues to tick in New York on whether the state will allow hydraulic fracturing. According to a recent New York Times story, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration is pursuing a plan to allow hydrofracking in portions of several struggling New York counties along the border with Pennsylvania, only in communities that express support for the technology.

AG wants longer sentence for Pa. wastewater dumper
Centre Daily Times
State prosecutors want a judge to reconsider a probation sentence given to a southwestern Pennsylvania man whose company dumped millions of gallons of wastewater into streams and mine shafts.

Ohio’s big oil and gas boom should come in 2014-15
Crain’s Cleveland Business
The oil and gas industry likely “will hit its peak phase in the Tuscarawas Valley in 2014 and 2015,” with as many as 4,000 wells drilled in the Utica shale play in eastern Ohio by then, according to this story from The Times Reporter of Dover-New Philadelphia.