Marcellus & Utica Shale Story Links: Thu, Jan 17, 2013

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

New York

Not all communities are opposed to fracking
Press & Sun-Bulletin
The one thing that I noticed to be missing from [recent] news is that almost all of the officials that were cited in [a recent Gannett] article represent communities in which no gas exploration is likely to occur.

Gas Protest Message T-Shirts For Sale, Made with Natural Gas
Energy in Depth – NMI
Well, our opponents are at it again! They are using petroleum-based and natural gas-cured products to protest – you guessed it – natural gas. Our friends on the other side are selling T-shirts intended to send a message of opposition to hydraulic fracturing. There’s just one little problem. Natural gas from hydraulic fracturing is required to deliver it.

Pennsylvania

Marcellus Shale, movie star
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
By Terry Engelder and David Yoxtheimer: In “Promised Land,” the new movie set in rural Pennsylvania where a big company is looking to drill for natural gas, the main character played by Matt Damon acknowledges to a crowd gathered in a school gym that there are real environmental risks associated with Marcellus Shale drilling.

National

Vitter: ‘Political purposes’ behind EPA fracking study
The Hill
Political motives and shoddy science marred a controversial Environmental Protection Agency study that first linked hydraulic fracturing to water pollution, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) wrote in a Thursday letter obtained by The Hill.

Gas-to-Liquids Plants: No Longer Exclusive to Larger Players
Forbes.com
Recently, British Airways announced an agreement to purchase $500 million of jet fuel converted from landfill gas.

Energy industry moves into social media to compete in environmentalist-heavy space
SNL Financial
Catalyzed by an increasing need to communicate more directly with the public, the energy industry has begun to develop a presence in social media, often competing with environmental groups that already seem at home on sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr.

EPA changed course after gas company protested
AP/Yahoo! News
When a man in a Fort Worth suburb reported his family’s drinking water had begun bubbling like champagne, the federal government sounded an alarm: A company may have tainted their wells while drilling for natural gas.