Wolf’s PA Severance Tax Now Much Less Likely – Enviros Oppose
Can it be possible that the shale industry and anti-shale environmentalists (those who irrationally espouse the end of using all fossil fuels) can actually agree on something? Turns out, we can! The something we agree on is opposition to PA Gov. Tom Wolf’s plan to tax a single industry, shale drilling, $4.5 billion in order to use that money for Big Government programs.
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We should have seen this one coming (but didn’t). Yesterday MDN told you that the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) had revoked the right of the Beaver County Conservation District (BCCD) to issue and monitor permits for erosion and sediment control, two permits used in building both pipelines and drill pads (see 
In 2006 the Pennsylvania State Legislature passed a bill (signed into law) that protects certain information about pipelines from being divulged via open records requests. It’s all too easy for terrorists (foreign or domestic) to use that information to inflict pain and suffering, even death–or to stop the flows along those pipelines. Good law, good call. But now several PA House members from the Philadelphia area want to pass a new law that would repeal the 2006 law–all in the name of pipeline “transparency.”
North Carolina is going bonkers. The state Dept. of Environmental Quality (DEQ), under the direction of Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper, released a plan last week to tax carbon dioxide (get ready to hold your breath because you breathe out CO2!). The plan ultimately takes direct aim at limiting the use of natural gas by taxing it to death–Democrats’ favorite play to cater to the leftists in their base. The DEQ plan is certifiably nuts, but less nuts than that of NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo. If that’s any consolation.
There’s an issue that has been building up steam for the past year or two. We’ve commented on it peripherally on a number of occasions. There’s no mistaking the newest “in thing” for young (and old) liberals is to trash the production of plastic. Plastic straws are killing little fishies in the deep blue sea. Plastic bags are filling up our landfills and endangering Mom Earth. California (land of the strange) now has its sights set on banning all plastic bottles. Radical environmentalists are now advocating that we ban the production and manufacture of all plastic products!
When the anti-fossil fuel Park Foundation pays your salary, your “research” had darned well better reflect an anti-fossil fuel result. Or else the money spigot quickly gets cut off. That’s what explains the latest “study” published (in Europe, not the U.S.) by Cornell University professor Robert Howarth–a study that claims shale drilling is pumping catastrophic amounts of methane into the atmosphere making Mom Earth toast.
Hoping that lightning strikes twice with the “judges” at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (4th Circus) who read children’s books like The Lorax and use them in their decisions, deep-pocketed Big Green groups have filed a new lawsuit with the quirky judges asking that they overturn federal approvals issued to Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Big Green hopes the clown judges will overturn approvals for MVP the same way they did for Dominion Energy’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) project.
In Lansing, NY, just outside of Planet Ithaca in Tompkins County, the local utility (NYSEG) wanted to build a short pipeline in 2017 to supply new customers with natural gas, but was blocked by crazies who irrationally hate fossil fuels (see 
Score a (very) minor victory for THE Delaware Riverkeeper, Maya van Rossum, in her holy mission to block a new fully authorized and permitted LNG export loading facility due to get built on the New Jersey bank of her beloved Delaware River (she thinks she owns the river and “speaks” for it). Riverkeeper filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for information about a facility New Fortress Energy is planning for a former DuPont dynamite factory site in NJ.
Contrary to the media (and Big Green) narrative that environmentalists are some poor, lowly disadvantaged groups of righteous freedom fighters just trying to survive against gargantuan Big Oil companies to protect the planet, the opposite is true. Green groups are some of the most rich non-profit organizations in the U.S. (indeed, on the planet). They are controlled/funded by super-rich leftists whose goal is to twist the U.S. into a socialist state. We ran across an article, and a document, listing just how rich groups like the odious Sierra Club, NRDC, EDF and others really are. The numbers are staggering. Their revenue numbers are bigger than some oil companies!
Chester County, PA District Attorney Tom Hogan has sunk to a new low. We told you back in January Hogan and his highly-paid staff, motivated by politics, were investigating Energy Transfer, their Sunoco Logistics division and anyone/anything to do with ET’s Mariner East pipeline projects, looking for “crimes.” All he found were minor violations by two off-duty PA constables (see 
A paid political activist who is not a doctor but works for the so-called Physicians for Social Responsibility (left wing group), told a hearing in Murrysville (Westmoreland County), PA on Wednesday that she could not prove fracking leads to negative health affects on those living near the activity, but in the very next breath she essentially said it does, saying there’s a “strong correlation” between fracking an ill health. Her proof? A list of Big Green-paid for “health studies” (propaganda campaigns).
We don’t know if you watched any of the most recent round of Democrat presidential debates. We couldn’t hack it personally. But some brave souls did, including Katie Klaber, former (founding) head of the Marcellus Shale Coalition and now head of her own consulting firm. Katie points out Bernie Sanders said the oil and gas industry is willfully destroying and planet and said those of us in the industry are engaging in “criminal activity.” You might just dismiss it as “just crazy Bernie,” he always talks that way. Except other candidates said equally disturbing things about the fossil fuel industry too. Katie says it’s time for candidates to stop vilifying our industry. She’s right.