Air Quality

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    29 States Ask Supreme Court to Stop Obama Clean Power Plan ASAP

    On January 26, 2016, 29 states and state agencies, including Ohio and West Virgina, filed an application with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking an immediate stay of President Obama’s Clean Power Plan (CPP). A week before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals denied such a stay, so the states are taking it to the final authority in such matters. The states are begging the court for a stay because the CPP will do “irreparable harm” if it is allowed to be implemented by the dictatorial Obama Administration. For background on how this horrible plan will damage natural gas and our economy in general, see 9 Fatal Flaws with Obama EPA Clean Power Plan. Energy law firm Baker Hostetler LLP is the law firm of record for the State of Oklahoma and Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality in this case. Below is an update from Baker Hostetler on the Supreme Court filing…
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    Obama’s Interior Dept. Sneaks in New Rule to Limit Methane

    Once again our Dictator in Chief, Barack Hussein Obama, is acting like a tinpot despot ruling a Middle Eastern country, not like the President of the United States. Last Friday, lost amid the Friday afternoon document dump and news about the blizzard in DC, Obama’s Dept. of Interior posted a new rule (i.e. should be a law, but they’re doing another end-run around Congress) that will make it all but impossible for oil and gas drillers to drill on federal lands. The new 298-page rule requires companies to use expensive equipment to capture every last molecule of methane, the stuff these companies already capture so they can sell it, to prevent any “fugitive” methane from escaping into the atmosphere where it contributes to mythical global warming. Obama has also hiked the price drillers will pay to drill on federal lands. The aim is, of course, to shut down drilling on all federal lands…
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    Quigley Expounds on Methane Emissions Plan: Drillers to Get Hosed

    John Quigley
    John Quigley

    On Tuesday Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf unveiled his Marcellus-killing plan to cut fugitive methane another 40% over current levels in the next five years (see PA Gov. Wolf’s Plan to Kill Drilling via Methane Emissions Regs). Interestingly, Wolf’s Sec. of the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), John Quigley, admits they don’t even know what current levels of fugitive methane emissions are–so how will they know when they’ve cut it by 40%? But we digress. Yesterday Quigley held a quick 15-minute webinar to discuss the four-point plan he and Wolf have hatched. Quigley said while the new rules may require more DEP inspectors, it “initially will require more work on the part of the operators.” Translation: Drillers and midstreamers are about to get hosed by the Wolf administration…
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    Radicals Praise Wolf’s Plan to Kill PA Drilling via Methane Regs

    As we told you yesterday, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has set his sites on reducing fugitive methane emissions from the oil and gas industry in the Keystone State, all in the name of mythical man-made global warming (see PA Gov. Wolf’s Plan to Kill Drilling via Methane Emissions Regs). We gave you a few early reactions from the far-left/radical contingent, including PennFuture, Clean Air Council, and the Sierra Clubbers–all of whom love his plan to screw the shale industry. We spotted a few more accolades for Wolf’s new plan to end drilling in the Keystone State, from Environment America (which has a “Stop Drilling Program”), and the radicals at Earthworks and the National Resources Defense Council. When this rogues gallery of antis loves something, you know it’s really bad…
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    PA Gov. Wolf’s Plan to Kill Drilling via Methane Emissions Regs

    tom wolf
    Tom Wolf

    As we predicted yesterday, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf released a new plan that purportedly targets methane emissions from oil and gas operations in a vain attempt to help ole Mom Earth with her global warming problem (see PA Gov Wolf Targets O&G Industry (Again), Via Methane Emissions). What we didn’t know is just how onerous and ludicrous his plan would be. Yesterday Wolf and his sidekick the PennFuture Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), John Quigley, released a four-point plan (full copy below) to supposedly reduce methane emissions by 40% over the next five years. Essentially it’s a plan to kill off what remains of the Marcellus industry. Looks like the millions of dollars California radical environmentalist billionaire Tom Steyer gave Wolf for his campaign went to good use–Steyer is now getting his payback…
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    9 Fatal Flaws with Obama EPA Clean Power Plan

    The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article addressing the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s lawless tendencies, including what is perhaps the Agency’s “crowning” achievement under the oversight of Barack Hussein Obama: the so-called Clean Power Plan (see WSJ: Brushing Back a Lawless EPA). We’ve written a number of stories about the CPP–primarily that it not only outright assassinates the coal industry, it mortally wounds (with intent to kill) all fossil fuels, including natural gas. MDN guest blogger Stephen Heins saw the WSJ article and created a succinct list of nine flaws with the Obama EPA CPP. Steve’s arguments are rock-solid and unmask the CPP for what it really is: fatally flawed…
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    Federal EPA’s New Ozone Standard: Air Not Cleaner, PA Jobs Killer

    In the name of protecting us, the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues rogue actions in regulating the oil and gas industry–against the express dictates of the U.S. Constitution. The latest violation from the EPA is a new regulation lowering ozone levels. As David Williams from the Taxpayers Protection Alliance and a Pennsylvania native explains below, the “simple” act of lowering the ozone standard from 75 parts per BILLION to 70 ppb won’t do much at all to actually clean the air, but will directly result is lost jobs in Pennsylvania…
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    Paris Climate Summit Jazzes Obama…Why it Doesn’t Matter

    Yesterday our Dear Leader, Barack Hussein Obama (BHO), addressed global warming nutters from around the world who came to Paris to agree to less freedom for citizens of the United States (and to sentence developing countries to lifetimes of misery). That about sums up what the United Nations twenty-first conference of the parties (COP-21) is all about. It’s about limiting economic activity in countries around the world under the pretense of man-made global warming. What’s funny about yesterday is that even one of their own, BHO, was a little too windy for the assembled nutters. Apparently you can have too much wind–who knew? BHO, like other world leaders to address the assembled warmers, was given a 3-minute time slot to spout his opinions blaming the USA for global warming. But BHO, like the Energizer Bunny, just kept going and going and going. At the nine minute mark the Frenchies started to hit the buzzer and kept stabbing it periodically to signal BHO it was time to get his @$$ off the stage. But the tone deaf BHO kept right on jabbering until he was done reading the last word the teleprompter told him to read–some 11 minutes after he began. Below we have the story of BHO’s long-winded address to COP-21, along with some rational views about what this ill-fated conference is really all about, and why no agreement BHO signs will ever see the light of day (or matter) in the good old US of A…
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    Free Book: Why Scientists Disagree about Global Warming

    All eyes are currently on Paris and the United Nations twenty-first conference of the parties (COP-21). COP-21 is an attempt to force all of the nations of the world to sign on to the myth of man-made global warming–and force them to reduce carbon output, which they believe will lower said global warming. In reality not even the people attending really believe in this nonsense–they use it as a method of controlling the citizens of the world. It’s about power–and the abuse of power. But let’s pretend there are some who do really believe this childish nonsense. What arguments do they use? One of the chief arguments is a lie so often repeated it’s now believed–that there is a “consensus” of scientists that man-made global warming is real. Something like 97% of all scientists believe it. Thing is, that statistic is pulled from an artificially low, select number of scientists. It’s not real. Yesterday, as COP-21 got under way, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) released a new book titled “Why Scientists Disagree about Global Warming: The NIPCC Report on Consensus” (get a free copy below). This important new book lays bare and refutes the claim that there is a “scientific consensus” on the causes and consequences of climate change…
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    Poo Lagoon: Turning Piles of Pig Poo into Green Money

    Blue LagoonRemember the movie The Blue Lagoon from 1980? It starred Brooke Shields stranded on an island with somebody else (who remembers?, doesn’t matter). At that time it was every young man’s fantasy to grow up on a desert island with Brooke Shields! Since it’s Friday and we’re in a lighthearted mood, we thought we would bring you the story of the “poo lagoon”–as in pig poo. And no, we’re not making this up! Smithfield Foods, operator of nine humongous pig farms in northern Missouri (with 2 million pigs) stores all of the pig poo produced in 88 “poo lagoons” (their words, not ours) where it decomposes and throws methane into the atmosphere like nobody’s business. Methane escaping into the atmosphere drives global warmers into a near-catatonic state of worry that the methane escaping will cause Mother Earth to fry. So in an effort to lessen the angst of warmers, and to make a little coin on the side, Smithfield Foods is using a European technology to harness the methane coming from all of that crap to purify it (get rid of the bacon smell) and sell it…
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    PA Big Green Groups Elated: Latest EPA Sue-and-Settle Scam Worked

    scam alertA gang of Big Green groups are tickled pink–or is it tickled “green”–that their continuous frivolous lawsuits against the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have once again yield the desired result. Radical leftist “green” groups like Earthworks, Environmental Integrity Project, THE Delaware Riverkeeper, and yes, PennFuture (where PA’s current Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection, John Quigley, used to work), had previously sued the federal EPA to force onerous new reporting rules on natural gas processing plants, using lies about the kinds of air pollutants released by the plants. The EPA cooperates with these sleazy organizations in a “sue and settle” scam. “Hey, you sue us for this, a liberal judge will ‘make us’ do it–then we can bypass Congress and everyone else and set up our own laws outside of that stupid old Constitution.” That’s how these groups collude with the EPA (see Environmentalists & Government Collude in “Sue and Settle” Cases). So a group of Big Green groups mostly located in PA were elated when the EPA confirmed their latest sue-and-settle scam had worked. So elated they issued a press release doing a happy dance–loaded up with yet more lies about the oil and gas industry. We bring you their press release below to (a) point out how many sleazy Big Green groups are engaging in this nefarious activity from the Marcellus/Utica region, and (b) point out the incestuous nature of these groups–with people like John Quigley now actually (fantastically) in charge of regulating the oil and gas industry in PA–although he used to actively work against that same industry when he worked for PennFuture…
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    EPA Visits Pittsburgh for Final Hearing on Methane Emissions Law

    what you believeYour beliefs matter. For example, if you believe in the fairy tale of man-made global warming (see Inconvenient Global Warming Fact: Avg Temp Hasn’t Risen in 18 Yrs), then you will attempt to force the greatest country on earth–the United States–to abandon the extraction and burning of fossil fuels. It is that erroneous belief that animates the Kool Aid drinkers in the so-called environmental movement. If you’re a real creep, you try to prey on the unthinking public’s fears that the planet will bake and your health is at risk by continued extraction of fossil fuels. The federal EPA is preying on those fears with their latest power grab to illegally regulate the oil and gas industry through the back door by creating new, unlegislated laws to reduce so-called methane emissions from oil and gas drilling. Regulation of oil and gas drilling is Constitutionally left to the individual states. The EPA wants to corrupt that and was in Pittsburgh yesterday for a final public hearing on their draconian new unlegislated laws on methane emissions. The EPA got an earful–from both anti-drilling wackos and from the oil and gas industry…
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    PA DEP Supports Fed EPA Effort to Control “Fugitive” Methane

    fugitiveThe Obama Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will be in Pittsburgh tomorrow to conduct a hearing into how they can illegally regulate oil and gas drilling through the back door of so-called “fugitive” methane emissions, which they claim are insanely high in shale plays like the Marcellus/Utica (announcement of EPA hearing). The PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), headed by the PennFuture Secretary of the DEP, John Quigley, will be on hand to support the EPA’s illegal effort. The DEP is planning their own draconian regulations for controlling so-called “fugitive” methane emissions–even though it’s in the best interests of the industry to trap every last molecule of methane they can (it’s what they sell!) and even though year after year the industry gets better at doing it–virtually eliminating fugitive methane. Makes no difference–the heavy hammer of government is preparing to come down to make extracting natural gas more expensive and less profitable with senseless new regulations by Big Brother…
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    Big Green Groups File to Block Shell Cracker Air Quality Permit

    Simply amazing. Two Big Green environmental groups–the Philadelphia-based Clean Air Council and the Washington, DC-based Environmental Integrity Project–are trying to scuttle the Shell ethane cracker in the Pittsburgh area that would bring thousands of new jobs and eventually pump something like $20 billion into the regional economy, with a ripple effect of jobs and prosperity for the entire tri-state region. The two groups have just filed an appeal with state regulators saying the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) erred when granting an air quality permit that will allow the plant to operate (see Shell Receives Air Quality Permit from PA DEP for Cracker Plant). These two litigious Big Green groups hope to tie the whole matter up in court and “encourage” (scare) Shell away from its investment. It’s hard to put into words the depth of depravity of people who do disgusting things like this…
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    “Researchers” Take to the Sky to Locate Marcellus Methane Leaks

    Tower: “Global Warming Nutjob One–you’re cleared for takeoff on runway three.” GWNO: “Roger. Global Warming Nutjob One is taxiing and will takeoff from runway three. Have a nice, carbon-free day Tower.” Tower: “Er, thanks, we think.” As the Twin Otter airplane takes off into the sunrise, it burns copious amounts of fossil fuels and belches carbon like a dragon as it heads off to monitor whether a teeny tiny amount of methane (natural gas) is leaking from Marcellus Shale drilling sites. Anyone else see the irony here? The Philadelphia Inquirer has written an (article? propaganda piece? promotional advertisement?) about a “research” project under way between Penn State, University of Colorado and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to fly over Marcellus Shale drill sites in Pennsylvania to see if they can catch drillers in the act of leaking methane…
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    US Supreme Court Knocks Down Draconian EPA Emissions Rule

    Too little, too late is what sums up yesterday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision that slaps the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for not considering cost when implementing draconian new rules limiting certain emissions from coal-fired electric power plants. Many coal plants have already shut down and many more are in the process of shuttering–driven out of business by the EPA’s draconian (unlegislated) laws. The small victory is that it pushes back against an out-of-control Obama EPA–perhaps slowing them down just a bit. One analyst said the Supreme Court decision translates into a “big win” for natural gas. How? Because the draconian new rules won’t go into effect right away, that means natural gas will continue to pick up momentum as the best alternative to coal, shutting out solar and wind power as alternatives. Nothing against solar and wind (we love them both), but they’re WAY more expensive than natural gas–and last time we checked, we still live in sort-of free country that sort-of uses capitalism and sort-of has free choice when it comes to power. Which is sort-of good news for natural gas…
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