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Holy Potatoes & Finnish Immigrants – Latest Tactic to Stop Pipeline

holy potatoesEver hear the phrase, “diggin’ deep”? That’s what anti-drillers are doing in New Hampshire with their opposition to a pipeline slated to come through their area in Hillsborough County. As plans for Kinder Morgan’s $6 billion Northeast Energy Direct (NED) pipeline project that will stretch from Pennsylvania through New York into Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and back into Massachusetts near Boston progress, more and more articles appear in newspapers, like the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, attempting to convince people the pipeline is from Satan himself. In fact, according to the latest article, NED may just be from Satan! The Ledger-Transcript claims the pipeline, if it follows the same route as already-built high voltage electric lines, would cut through a hay field that (151 years ago) used to be a potato field and is the site of a miracle of importance to Seventh-Day Adventists…
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Magnum Hunter About to Close 2 Deals Worth $1 Billion Cash

Last Friday Magnum Hunter Resources CEO Gary Evans along with other top MHR executives held a quarterly earnings call. On that call we learned some very important information. According to Evans, MHR is very close to raking in around $1 billion in cash from two initiatives: a joint venture on their Utica Shale acreage, and the sale of MHR’s ownership in their midstream subsidiary Eureka Hunter. Here is what Evans said about the two initiatives, their timing, and potential partners/buyers…
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Magnum Hunter to Restart Marcellus/Utica Drilling Later This Year

MDN reports in a related story today that Magnum Hunter Resources (MHR) is “this close” to closing two separate deals that will bring in around 1 billion big ones. What do they plan to do with all that money? About half of it–somewhere around $550 million of it, will be used to restart MHR’s drilling program in the Utica and Marcellus. When? Sometime in the late third to mid-fourth quarter of this year, says MHR CEO Gary Evans. Along with his comments on timing for MHR to restart their currently stalled drilling program, Evans gave the following inside information on how much (or how little) you can contract a drilling rig for these days in the Marcellus/Utica region. Used to be it cost $24,000 a day for a rig to drill your wells. But that was last year. Now?…
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Shell Lays Off 6,500 Worldwide – But Where?

Shell recently announced that the company would reduce spending by $7 billion in 2015–a 20% cut from 2014 spending levels. Ouch. Even more painful, Shell said they are cutting more than 6,500 jobs globally (they employ 94,000) in preparation for a long period of low oil prices. How will Shell’s announcement affect their northeast drilling program (SWEPI) and the planned ethane cracker plant in Beaver County, PA? We don’t know. There are rumors circulating about Shell’s Pittsburgh office–but since we can’t verify those rumors, we won’t repeat them. As for the ethane cracker plant, there’s never a shortage of rumors that say it will, and won’t, get built. Here’s what is known…
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A Basic Guide to Understanding “Impairments” for Marcellus/Utica

There is precisely one reporter at the usually anti-drilling Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Anya Litvak, who writes objectively about the Marcellus/Utica and the oil and gas industry in general. Anya used to write for the Pittsburgh Business Times until the Post-Gazette snagged her away a few years ago. It’s our opinion that the Post-Gazette keeps Anya hidden under a bushel where her light doesn’t shine nearly as brightly as it used to. Anya has just written an excellent article about something MDN recently noticed when reviewing quarterly earnings updates–this business of “impairments” or writing down the value of o&g assets on paper. As we’ve noted for a number of the quarterly updates we have reported on for the second quarter, many (most) drillers are reevaluating their acreage in the Marcellus/Utica and, according to specified formulas tied to the price of natural gas and oil, determining those assets (leases and operating wells) are not worth as much now as they were just a few months or years ago–something called an impairment…
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The Rotten Core of Obama’s Clean Power Plan: Global Warming Myth

The uber-arrogant Barack H. Obama and his bullying Environmental Protection Agency have given us an untenable Clean Power Plan that a) guts the rest of the coal industry, and b) sets its sights on gutting the natural gas industry, for power generation, too (see Obama Stabs Natural Gas Electric Plants in Clean Power Plan). The core tenant/religious belief perpetrated by Obama is the myth that mankind’s burning of fossil fuels, with an increase in carbon dioxide, is leading to a catastrophic warming of the earth’s atmosphere. There is no credible scientific proof for such a theory–it’s only a theory. But that doesn’t stop Obama and his minions from using it as an excuse to shut down legal and legitimate businesses that use fossil fuels to generate electricity. Since global warming jiggery-pokery is central to Obama’s Clean Power Plan, we thought it would be instructive to show you the headlines from six years, in the run-up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. The headlines then, as now, blare that we have “just five years left” before it’s “too late”. We’re now six years later without the beseeched onerous policies and guess what: We’re no worse off today than we were then. The planet didn’t get warmer (and hasn’t for 18 years now). In fact, the global warming meme has been circulating for 100 years (see Global Warming Meme has Been Around Nearly 100 Years). Today we bring you a guest blogger that illustrates the falseness of global warmers’ claims by comparing their predictions from six years ago (that didn’t come true) with their predictions now…
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Paul Driessan: Obama’s Clean Power Plan Will Kill Us, Literally

Paul Driessen, senior policy adviser for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) which sponsors the All Pain No Gain petition against global-warming hype, and a senior policy adviser to the Congress of Racial Equality and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power – Black Death, has penned a brilliant analysis of the Obama Clean Power Plan released last week. In black and white numbers, Driessen lays out how, if Obama’s plan is implemented, electricity rates will skyrocket. And when they do, everything we make, grow, ship, eat and do will also skyrocket in cost. The end result: “It will impair our livelihoods, living standards, liberties and life spans.” This is not hyperbole, folks. Driessen speaks the truth. Give his column a read below…
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EPA Causes Environmental Disaster in CO; Connection to Marcellus?

We’ve watched, with some interest, the unfolding story that began last week in Colorado when the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) caused an environmental disaster of incalculable proportions. EPA workers were fiddling around with, what, testing?, at the now abandoned Gold King Mine, an old gold mine where millions of gallons of wastewater used during mining was stored. During their testing (or whatever they were doing) at the site, they accidentally unplugged the wastewater storage pond and millions (originally said to be 1 million, now disclosed as 3 million) gallons of very nasty wastewater with lead, arsenic and other heavy metals flowed into the the Animas River north of Silverton, CO, turning the water “an opaque orange color reminiscent of boxed mac and cheese.” Stick with us–we’re about to make a connection to the Marcellus Shale…
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HalenHardy’s Annual Oil & Gas EHS Day – Learning + Fun!

MDN is happy and proud to announce the annual one-day oil & gas EHS Day sponsored and hosted by HalenHardy in Spruce Creek, PA next Tuesday, August 18. This year’s theme: “Reducing Costs & Eliminating Waste While Improving EHS in Tough Economic Times”. MDN friend Donny Beaver is once again hosting the annual oil and gas EHS (environmental health and safety) Day. For those who may not know, Donny owns several companies, one of them HalenHardy which develops products and services that improve worker health and safety across multiple industries, including oil and gas (see Marcellus Entrepreneur Donny Beaver: Silica Dust, Mud & Heck Out). This year’s EHS Day speakers include Roger Willis, the retired president of Universal Well Services, and Bob Slack, current director of health, safety and environment for Universal Well Services, as well as Donny himself. Come on out for a day of learning…and fun! You might win a prize too…
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