Lawyer for NEPA Anti-Driller Vera Scroggins Tries Legal Maneuver
A lawyer for little-known (outside of northeast Pennsylvania) anti-driller Vera Scroggins was in court in Susquehanna County earlier this week trying out the latest legal maneuver. Anti-drilling lawyer Gerald Kinchy–from Sayre, PA–was trying to sucker Judge Kenneth Seamans into “joining” landowners leased with Cabot Oil & Gas to the lawsuit. That is, the lawyer wants the court to treat landowners the same way it’s treating Vera–consider them as trespassing on their own land. Sound like convoluted legal fleecing? Well, that’s exactly what it is. And the judge wasn’t having any of it.
The whole thing got started when Vera started trespassing at Cabot Oil & Gas drilling sites, taking busloads of fellow anti-drillers around to point and gawk and claim Cabot was polluting Mother Earth. Cabot finally had enough and got the court to place a restraining order on her–for her own and others’ safety (see NE PA Anti-Driller Slapped with Trespassing Injunction). Since the restraining order disallowed Vera from stepping foot on any property leased by Cabot, it prevented her from visiting her favorite grocery store, among other things. So at Cabot’s request, the judge eased the restrictions just a bit (see Judge Lets PA Anti-Driller Sip More Lattes, Attorney Claims “Big Win”). She’s still banned from active drill sites, and that apparently irritates Vera. So she got the ACLU to take up her cause and defend her. Now, her lawyer from Sayre is trying to pollute the case before it goes to trial in June (maybe having second thoughts?)…
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Everyone knows how mercenary and evil those oil and gas companies are. They’re just in it for the buck. Rape and pillage poor Mother Earth–pollute the air, pollute the water, pollute everything! Those shale drillers are actually some of the worst, ya know. That’s what the anti-drilling left would have you believe. That’s the meme constantly drummed by mainstream media. Throw in a “Halliburton loophole” and “Dimock” or maybe a “Pavillion, Wyoming” and you’re good to go with the typical mainstream coverage of our industry. Just a teeny, tiny problem…none of it is true.
Last Monday a little known anti-driller with a potty mouth from northeast PA–Vera Scroggins–had her day in court. You may recall that Vera had repeatedly trespassed on drilling sites owned by Cabot Oil & Gas in Susquehanna County and a judge slapped her with a restraining order last year. Vera said the court order prevented her from sipping lattes at the local Price Chopper grocery store (land leased by Cabot) so she got herself a lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union and asked the judge to reconsider (see 
A newly published peer reviewed study in the February Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) offers new research that we believe comes close to, if not fully, exonerating Cabot Oil & Gas over the now infamous case of methane migration into water wells in a small area of Dimock, PA. The new study has no connection to Cabot. It is written by three experts and uses (gasp) actual science–you know, in the field data? The data comes from “more than 2,300 gas and water samples collected from 234 gas wells and 67 private groundwater-supply wells” in northeastern PA and is the largest such data set ever analyzed. What did the authors find? Shallow (near the surface) methane with the same identical chemical “fingerprint” as deeper Marcellus Shale gas is naturally occurring in large quantities in northeastern PA. That is, the shallow methane under the microscope looks exactly like the methane found more than a mile below the ground, but it isn’t gas from the Marcellus because the methane near the surface that looks just like Marcellus gas, with the same chemical “fingerprint,” was lurking in water wells long before there was any shale drilling in the area.
What do you call it when a company pays money to local organizations and agencies before the project has been fully approved by federal, state and local agencies? These payments, mind you, are not fees for permits or licenses, but voluntary chunks of money offered to groups that may be affected by the project if it’s built–in this case a pipeline. Is it called, Good corporate citizenship? Being a responsible member of the local community? Or perhaps, payola?
No less than three press releases were issued by Cabot Oil & Gas yesterday. In fact, the news is coming so fast and furious from all corners, it’s hard to keep up! First, Cabot announced a deal with the Transco pipeline to ship up to 850,000 MMBtu per day on the Transco once a new section is built–estimated to go online in 2017. Second, Cabot announced proved reserves at the end of 2013 were up 42% from 2012–to 5.5 trillion cubic feet. And third, the company’s production for 2013 was up 55% over 2012 to 413.6 billion cubic feet equivalent (Bcfe)–virtually all of it in the Marcellus Shale–and all of that from a single northeastern PA county, Susquehanna County. Cabot is an incredible story. No wonder their fourth quarter 2013 profit soared 91%!
Pennsylvania released their second half 2013 production numbers yesterday and man oh man is it another sizzling hot report. Another 700 horizontal (mostly Marcellus) shale wells were brought online in the second half of 2013 in PA which brings the number of horizontal wells with reported production to 5,074. And, in what we believe is a first, Susquehanna County has displaced Bradford County as having the most production during a 6-month reporting period.
A quick note to let you know that tomorrow (Saturday, Feb. 1) you can once again download