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PA Dem Legislators Make Severance Tax Dance Video – LOL

NaeNaeDemocrats in Pennsylvania, in their desperation to sink a money well into Marcellus drillers to fund Big Education and teachers’ unions, have gotten even nuttier than they usually are. So nutty, we’re laughing out loud–at them. Representative Patty Kim (D-Dauphin), someone whose constituents voted for her to go to Harrisburg to get work done, has decided she would rather dance than do the hard work she was sent to Harrisburg to do. Kim’s eight year-old daughter told her mom about the Nae Nae after returning home from summer camp. It gave Kim her latest “brilliant” idea. What’s the Nae Nae? It’s a dance routine, apparently. So Kim, hoping to make a viral Youtube video, enlisted six other legislators, all of them hardened Democrats in favor of a Marcellus-killing severance tax, to dance the Nae Nae with her, on camera, making asses of themselves (watch it below). The message at the end of the video requests viewers to ask their legislators to support a Marcellus-killing severance tax. Kim used $1,000 of her own campaign funds, funds given to her by contributors who thought she was a serious candidate, to make this silly video. At one point the video also films children in a dance routine. What a shame to trick innocent children into supporting your own twisted political agenda. But that’s how Dems operate–brainwash ’em early and often…
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Aubrey McClendon Takes on the World: New JV in Mexico

The CharmerWe don’t know how he does it, but it seems Aubrey McClendon can charm money out of just about anyone. Not even two weeks ago we told you that McClendon cut a deal to lease 21.5 million acres in Australia for shale drilling (see Aubrey McClendon Leases 21.5 MILLION Acres…in Australia?!). Apparently not content with the U.S. and Australia, McClendon announced today he’s charmed money out of Mexico’s EIM Capital to “jointly pursue” opportunities in oil and gas drilling south of the border. The press announcement below seems to indicate that McClendon is the one doing the investing–into EIM Capital. But that makes no sense. McClendon is up to his eyeballs in debt (see Has Aubrey McClendon Finally Hung Himself with High Debt?). Which leads us to say, Aubrey has the unusual ability to charm money from just about anyone (and make them think Aubrey’s the one doing the investing!)…
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PA DEP Nixes Plan to Use Drilling Cuttings for Tioga Airport Runway

drill cuttings
Drill cuttings seen through a microscope

Clean Earth Inc., the biggest company along the East Coast that decontaminates contaminated soil (some 3 million tons a year) partnered with the Wellsboro-Johnston Airport in Tioga County, Pennsylvania to provide 400,000 tons of treated and safe drill cuttings to extend a runway at the airport. At least, that was the plan. But that plan has now been axed by the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection which says, after conducting survey after survey, including public hearings, that they don’t have enough enough information, that Clean Earth’s application is “incomplete” and that Clean Earth has “withdrawn” the application (i.e. told to withdraw it or else). What’s next? If you dig more than 10 feet down, you won’t be allowed to use the rock and dirt you dig for building purposes? That’s about what has happened in this situation. Folks, this is rock and dirt. A drill bit, with a bit of non-toxic drilling mud to lubricate the bit, eats away at rock and dirt. The rock and dirt coming out of the hole is what is called drill cuttings. The cuttings are always tested to be sure there’s no radioactivity in the rock and dirt. The drill cuttings are then combined with Portland cement and there is nothing, no way, anything can “leak” out of it, including glow-in-the-dark radiation. And yet people are willing to believe any fairy tale horror story. Folks near the airport rose up in fear that the dirt used for the runway would be “contaminated” and would contaminate them…
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Southern Tier Pro-Drillers Rally to Secede from New York State

Plan to divide New York StateDo #UpstateLivesMatter? Apparently not to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Upstaters are officially fed up with being told what they can and can’t do–through the prism of New York City liberal values. New York City gets its water supply from upstate and therefore believes upstate is nothing more than a serfdom–its residents exist at the pleasure and will (and direction) of their overlords in NYC. We are at the beck and call of downstate–here only to serve at their leisure. One way downstate is controlling upstate is Gov. Cuomo’s attempt to disarm the citizens of the state, denying them their Constitutional right to bear arms (no doubt afraid of that power) via the misnamed SAFE Act. Cuomo also told upstaters they can’t drill for natural gas under their own land–sentencing family farms to a life of poverty–in the name of environmental and “public health” protection. Upstaters have had enough of downstate interference and are pushing to have their counties either secede and join the great state of Pennsylvania, or divide the state into two autonomous districts, each with their own governor. It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. What started as a fringe movement is going mainstream, as evidenced by a rally held this past Sunday in Bainbridge, NY. The secede or divide movement has anti-frackers worried…
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Massachusetts Protesters Admit Their True (Irrational) Motivation

true confessionsA dozen aging protesters (some of them former hippies) paced back and forth with apparently with nothing better to do, in front of an office building in Pittsfield, Massachusetts where Kinder Morgan has a small office. The protesters were there to demand that New Englanders continue to pay 4x what everyone else across the country pays for electricity, and to protest in favor of rolling blackouts in New England when electricity supplies dip because of high demand and lack of generating capacity, and to protest the availability of abundant, cheap, and clean-burning natural gas to heat their homes. Yep, they are stark, raving mad–and taken seriously by the liberal media in Massachusetts which covers this tiny minority of wackos as if they represent “everybody” in New England. The protesters, in their own words, told reporters why they oppose Kinder Morgan’s Northeast Energy Direct pipeline that will bring cheap, abundant and clean-burning Marcellus Shale gas to Massachusetts and other New England states: because they hate all fossil fuels, including clean-burning natural gas…
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FERC Delays New England Pipeline to Allow More Public Comment

expect delaysYet another delay for Kinder Morgan’s proposed Northeast Energy Direct project–an extension of the Tennessee Gas Pipeline from the shale fields of northeastern Pennsylvania through New York, into Massachusetts, then New Hampshire before ending near Boston. It is a $6 billion project with 177 miles of new (greenfield) pipeline construction meant to alleviate the severe shortage of natural gas in New England. Last Friday the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the government agency in charge of permissioning the project, issued a memo stating they have extended the deadline for public comment on the plan. A new deadline has not yet been decided. The delay delights anti-fossil fuelers…
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Crestwood Equity/Midstream Announce Date to Merge Two Companies

mergerMore high finance stuff–this time in the midstream world. Crestwood Equity Partners LP and Crestwood Midstream Partners are, on paper, two different companies. Crestwood Equity Partners is a master limited partnership (MLP) that operates an NGL supply and logistics business and currently owns, on paper, 4% of Crestwood Midstream Partners, a pipeline business operating in multiple U.S. shale plays. Crestwood Midstream also has an NGL business. The two Crestwood companies merged with and took over Inergy Midstream in an $8 billion deal in October 2013 (see Crestwood/Inergy Complete Their Merger Today, Worth $8B). Now, in a move they call “simplification,” Crestwood is combining the two companies, Equity Partners and Midstream, into one. Yesterday the two companies jointly announced a special meeting on September 30th to vote on the proposed merger/simplification. Back in May when the company announced plans to merge the two together, Wall Street didn’t like it, sending Equity Partners’ stock down 17%…
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Banks Recertify Gastar Exploration’s $200M Line of Credit

line of creditGastar Exploration, which concentrates its shale drilling program in Oklahoma and West Virginia, earlier this year announced they would not drill any new wells in the Marcellus/Utica until commodity prices in Appalachia improve (see Gastar 1Q15: NE Production Up 5%, No New Marcellus Wells in 2015). They reaffirmed that strategy in August (see Earnings Call Reveals More Details on Gastar’s Marcellus/Utica Plans). Even though they are not currently drilling any new wells in our neck of the woods, the company continues to drill in the Midcontinent, and they continue to need money to keep the doors open. Yesterday Gastar announced their bankers have performed a review and have certified the company worthy to continue maintaining a $200 million line of credit from which they can borrow for drilling and other purposes. Currently Gastar has borrowed $65 million of the $200 million available credit line…
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Top Exec for Bankrupt Alpha Natural Res. Quits, Finds Another Job

I QuitIt was only three weeks ago that MDN reported Alpha Natural Resources, a coal company driven into bankruptcy by Barack H. Obama’s draconian EPA, filed for bankruptcy (see Alpha Natural Resources in Bankruptcy – What about Marcellus?). Alpha, as we noted, has dipped its toe into the Marcellus with a couple of joint ventures, in an attempt to diversify. But is it too late for the company? Who knows. What we can tell you is that one of their top executives, Brian Sullivan, who was the acting executive vice president and chief commercial officer, quit last week “in order to pursue another employment opportunity”…
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