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Natural Flame Near Buffalo May Change World Shale Gas Estimates

Buffalo eternal flameAn “eternal flame,” a naturally occurring flame that burns from a source of underground natural gas just outside of Buffalo, NY (see video below) may have profound implications for energy worldwide. The source of fuel for that flame, not yet fully understood, may mean everything we thought about how much natural gas is available in shale deposits is wrong–grossly wrong. And way, way too low…
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Pompey, NY Votes to Ban Drilling, Bullies 2 Board Members

The Town of Pompey (Onondaga County), NY, near Syracuse, voted on June 3 to ban all fracking and shale drilling in the town. We’d like to take this opportunity to once again deliver a brief history lesson of how and why this is nothing short of mob rule and not classic democracy in action.

First, the news from Pompey and how three town board members (Carol Marsh, Greg Herlhy and Victor Lafrenz) bullied two other board members (Carl Dennis and Craig Smithgall) into not voting, and how those three individuals unilaterally snatched away the property rights of 15-20 landowners in the town who already have gas leases, with a single vote…
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Bloomberg: NY Dead Last in Business Because of Fracking Moratorium

An article appearing on, of all places, the ultra-liberal Bloomberg news service, compares both California and New York and their neck-and-neck race to be dead last in business friendliness. Although both states have ineffective governors and shoot themselves in the head on a number of issues, the article concludes that New York wins the dubious distinction of being “dead last” for business climate primarily because of one deciding factor: fracking.

California, even with Gov. Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown and its pot-smoking, granola-head legislature has embraced (or at least not rejected) fracking, while New York’s Gov. Andrew “Ditherer” Cuomo, frightened of his loony left, has continued to block fracking. New York is entering a fifth year of a de facto moratorium on drilling and it has killed the upstate economy.

From the article:
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The Thorny Issue of Proving Water Contamination from Fracking

Does fracking cause water contamination? Anti-drillers have repeated the claim so often, and the claim has been picked up and repeated and amplified by the mainstream media so often, that it’s now almost an article of faith. Axiomatic. Self-evident. At a minimum, a wide swath of Americans who don’t know much about oil and gas drilling have their suspicions that fracking may indeed contaminate water–primarily because of the negative media coverage they’ve heard.

Keith Hall, director of the Louisiana Mineral Law Institute and an assistant professor of law at Louisiana State University has written an excellent article appearing in the online Ohio State Law Journal Furthermore. The article is titled, “Hydraulic Fracturing Contamination Claims: Problems of Proof” (full copy embedded below). In the article, Hall addresses the problems of landowners in attempting to prove that fracking (or oil and gas drilling) has contaminated their water. He concludes it this way:
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NY Fracking Moratorium Bill in Senate Still Stalled, TY Repubs

Thank God for the Republicans in the New York State Senate. Because of the leadership (and opposition) of people like Sen. Tom Libous (Binghamton, NY) and Senate Co-Majority Leader Dean Skelos, a bill in the Senate to extend a fracking moratorium statewide until next May is still stalled and likely will not come to a vote. A similar bill has already passed the Democrat-dominated NY Assembly…
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Encana Appoints BP’s COO Doug Suttles as their New CEO

Encana, Canada’s largest drilling company and a big driller in the Marcellus Shale, has had a rough 12 months. It was almost one year ago in June 2012 that Encana was accused of colluding with Chesapeake Energy to keep the prices of oil and gas leases being auctioned by Michigan artificially low. Reuters, using pirated emails, said Encana and Chesapeake had some sort of deal not to bid against each other (see Did Reuters Break the Law with Latest Chesapeake Story?). Then in January, Encana CEO Randy Eresman suddenly and unexpectedly resigned and left the company, prompting speculation that the company may be on the market (see Encana Interim CEO Says Company is Not For Sale).

Apparently that speculation was wrong. Yesterday, Encana’s board of directors appointed a new CEO, Doug Suttles, formerly COO of BP. Suttles and the board are now in the honeymoon stage…
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WV Landowners Settle with Chesapeake Out of Court

A lawsuit in Marshall County, WV that previously escaped our notice has just been settled. Landowners David and Sharon Hall, owners of 116 acres, sued Chesapeake Energy and Statoil alleging damage to their surface property. The lawsuit also says Chesapeake did sloppy work on the drill pad, destroyed crops and destroyed timber on seven acres of the Hall’s land.

Last Friday the judge dismissed the case because it was settled out of court…
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