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MDN Goes to See Gasland 2 & Josh Fox at Binghamton Screening

CheetosMDN editor Jim Willis attended a screening of Gasland 2 in Binghamton last Wednesday night. This article is my impressions of the movie, of Josh Fox (who was there) and of the crowd of 300 or so assembled to watch it. Let me start with a review of the movie itself, which runs about 2 hours long. When the movie was over I had to leave before the Q&A with Fox got underway–off to pick up my 16 year-old son from a late after-school activity. On the way home he asked me about the movie and I told him about the opening 10 minutes:

Fox somehow, secretly hired a helicopter to give him a ride over the BP oil spill from the Deepwater Horizon platform in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Fox talked about the spill and showed stunning pictures of oil stretching for miles on top of the waves. He then interviewed local government officials from Louisiana who claimed BP was putting nasty chemicals on the oil in order to “sink it down” to the bottom of the ocean, where it would, according to Fox, accumulate into some sort of sludge laying barren that part of the ocean and its ecosystem.

My son stopped me: “What does that have to do with gas drilling, dad?” My response: “Exactly son. You asked the exact right question–a question that 295 of the 300 people in that audience tonight will never ask themselves.”
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OH Route of Proposed NEXUS Gas Pipeline Revealed

Last September MDN told you about a new $1.5 billion Utica Shale natural gas pipeline that would run from Ohio through Michigan and eventually into Canada, delivering Utica Shale gas to Midwestern markets (see New Utica Shale Pipeline to Midwest Announced). The project is called the NEXUS Gas Transmission (NGT) pipeline and is being built by DTE Energy, Enbridge amd Spectra Energy. Since the pipeline was announced, we’ve had precious few details on the proposed route. Until now…
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Rockford/Primoris Lands $92M in Marcellus Pipeline Contracts

Pipeliner company Rockford Corporation, a subsidiary of Primoris Services Corporation, announced last week they’ve landed five projects in the PA and WV Marcellus Shale to construct new pipelines–some of them wet gas, some dry gas–work totaling $91.9 million.

The Primoris press release details the specs for each project, including where they will be built:
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PA Anti-Drillers Beat a Dead Horse with New Anti-Pipeline Report

Recipe for the perfect anti-drilling, anti-pipeline “meatless” report: Start with anti-drilling politicians in six southeastern Pennsylvania towns who hypocritically use fossil fuels themselves but demand others not use them; add in a few environmental-sounding names from surrounding areas like “Big Woods” and “French Creek”; talk about the breeding habits of bog turtles; use a lot of pretty pictures of wilderness landscapes, flowers, plants and even a few predatory animals; throw in some pictures of humans walking in said pristine landscapes; and sprinkle phrases like “exceptional value” or “high quality” throughout. The result? A so-called report titled “Important Resources of the Hopewell Big Woods and the Potential Impacts of Pipeline Development on the Landscape” (full copy embedded below).

The report is so devoid of any real analysis and science one of the (obviously carnivorous) anti-drillers who commissioned it said it was too light on substance and he wants to see a report “with some meat on it”…
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Impotent DRBC Killing Farmers in Wayne County, PA with Moratorium

Sadly, there’s a large swath of land in northeastern Pennsylvania, in Wayne and surrounding counties (see map below), that has the same disease as all of New York State. It’s called a shale drilling moratorium. Why is there a moratorium in Wayne County? Most of Wayne, all of Pike County and parts of a few other NE PA counties are located within the Delaware River Basin Commission’s jurisdiction, which has had a ban in place since 2010. The DRBC is controlled by five voting members: the governors of Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware and New Jersey, plus a member of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It’s hard enough to get one state government to sign off on drilling–but four? Including NY?? Good luck with that.

An article in yesterday’s Wilkes-Barre Citizens’ Voice looks at how the impotent DRBC is killing farmers in NE PA with their moratorium…
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Grads: Want a High-Paying Job? Look in the Marcellus/Utica

Not that we haven’t already covered the topic of “get a job in the gas industry if you want to make really really good money” many times before. At this time of year with high school graduations aplenty, it doesn’t hurt to remind new graduates about the facts one more time.

So, how much money can you make working in the gas industry? A lot…
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