Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | NEXUS Pipeline | Ohio | Pipelines | Statewide OH
DC Court Allows NEXUS Case (to Emasculate FERC) to Proceed
Yesterday the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the court that handles challenges to regulatory agencies like the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), refused to toss out a case filed by the City of Oberlin, OH and a regional anti group (with the backing of Big Green lawyer$). The lawsuit challenges FERC’s approval of the NEXUS Pipeline project. Even though NEXUS is built and flowing, and even though Oberlin settled with NEXUS, meaning there is no longer a reason to sue, that doesn’t matter to antis. There’s a larger issue at play, and the D.C. Circuit played right into the hands of Big Green manipulators.
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A recent article on the Forbes website helps crystallize and expose the strategy of a group we call global warming fundamentalists in their religious quest to block fossil fuels by blocking pipelines. That strategy works this way: Mount enough legal challenges to ramp up costs and ultimately convince pipeline builders to walk away from projects. “Ground zero” in pipeline wars right now is, according to the author, two projects: the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, and the Mountain Valley Pipeline. Both projects are right here in the Marcellus/Utica.
Global warming fundamentalists (our new term for radical environmentalists who irrationally hate all fossil fuels) are ramping up to oppose a plan to prevent a now-closed coal-fired electric power plant in Baltimore from reopening powered by natural gas. Because you know, global warming. And because we MUST dump the use of all fossil fuels by 2050 (the new “it” date) or earth will explode. This plant would have a useful life much longer than 2050. Can’t have that.
A group of enviro-Nazis has sunk to a new low in their holy mission to block Marcellus Shale drilling. A group of colluding Big Green groups along with sympathetic (and sycophantic) “reporters” (i.e propagandists) from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette are exploiting the pain and suffering of southwestern PA families of children who have cancer in their attempt to stop shale drilling. It’s disgusting and sick.
Ann Bristow, Professor Emeritus at Frostburg State University and resident of Garrett County, is once again trying to foment irrational fear of the fossil fuel industry. Bristow was one of the “experts” that kept fracking out of Garrett County (one of two Maryland counties with commercial shale deposits), harming its citizens economically. Now she’s trying to whip up opposition to a regional ethane storage hub that won’t even be located in Maryland.
Pennsylvania antis from the Philadelphia area who don’t want pipelines running through their neighborhoods (NIMBY types) have beat the drums of war so loud and for so long, they’ve finally begun to intimidate the non-partisan, shouldn’t-be-intimated PA Public Utility Commission (PUC). The PUC last Thursday launched a “major review of its safety regulations for hazardous liquids pipelines” in response to pressure from Mariner East 2 pipeline foes. It’s sad to see a government body cowed by a few loudmouthed troublemakers.
So-called environmentalists in the Albany, NY area are fine with a 333-mile underground electric cable that will pass through the area to bring hydro power from Quebec to New York City, but they object to a 7-mile underground natural gas pipeline that will increase supplies of natgas to the region–because natgas is vile and filthy “fracked gas” and these so-called environmentalists have an irrational (certifiably nuts) aversion to using fossil fuels as an energy source. It truly boggles the mind. Will anyone be left in New York State in another 20 years?
There is a truly dreadful, jobs-killing piece of legislation in New York State that may get passed in the next few weeks. It’s called the Climate Community Protection Act (CCPA). The bill, if it becomes law, would mandate the New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to eliminate all so-called greenhouse gas emissions from any major source in the state by 2050. The following manufacturing industries in the state would likely close and/or move out of the state: glass (say goodbye to Corning), steel, cement, auto, metal casting, food, pulp and paper, aluminum, plastics, ceramics and chemicals. Yeah, pretty much all of Upstate would close.
Shale driller Huntley & Huntley (H&H), headquartered in Monroeville (Allegheny County), PA, organized a private meeting last night in Plum, PA for “officials from local municipalities, the state Department of Environmental Protection and the oil and gas industry.” The meeting was an effort at good communication, so local officials know what is and is not allowed, and who regulates what, when it comes to shale drilling. Of course anti-drillers got wind of the meeting and pitched a fit until H&H opened up the meeting to let them attend.
In May MDN told you about a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision that allows shale drilling to happen *anywhere* in a township, so long as such drilling satisfies standards to protect public health, safety and welfare (see 
Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City who owns 12 houses, a private jet and a helicopter and has a bigger “carbon footprint” than some small states, presumes to know more about how you should get your electric power than you do. Cause, you know, he’s just smarter than you. Bloomberg has partnered with two of the absolute worst of the leftist/Communistic “environmental” organizations on the planet–the odious Sierra Club and Earthjustice–spending $500 million to launch a new “Beyond Carbon” campaign–to deny you the right to buy electricity from either coal OR natural gas-fired plants.
A lawsuit brought by greedy lawyers (ab)using a group of 21 ignorant children against the United States for not doing enough about mythical man-made global warming is once again in the news. The lawsuit aims to force the end of using all fossil fuels in the United States, to address so called man-made global warming.
Three families who lived near a former drill site and frack wastewater impoundment in Washington County, PA sued Range Resources in May 2012 claiming the air they breathe and the water they drink had been contaminated by Range’s operations at the site (see