Faux “Conservative” Group Campaigns Against Fixing PA’s Broken DEP
A national group of antis calling themselves “conservative” are attempting to meddle in the affairs of Pennsylvania. If you’ve been reading MDN for any time, you know about the current huge, stinking mess of a budget in Pennsylvania. Republicans, which control both the House and Senate, passed an unbalanced budget of $32 billion. Problem is, there’s only $30 billion of projected revenue. So after passing the spending part of the budget, they now have to “come up with” $2 billion to cover the difference. The pressure has been intense to punish the successful Marcellus industry by stealing even more of their money (PA already takes an overly generous portion of their profits). Senate Republicans caved to the pressure and floated a spending plan that includes a severance tax (see Traitorous PA Senate Republicans Pass Severance Tax Bill). The House, so far, has resisted the siren song that wants to lure them onto the rocks of killing the Marcellus industry. So far. The Marcellus industry has, for years, complained about the sloooooooow response times in approving drilling permits by the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP). As an olive branch to the industry, Senate Republicans also included (in the budget bill) fixes to the slow DEP, to speed things up (see PA Senate’s “Olive Branch” of “Relaxed Regulations” for Drillers). Now we hear from some national group, calling themselves Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship, that the PA Senate plan to fix the DEP will create an environmental holocaust. Let us assure you, there is nothing “conservative” about Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship. They are Big Green liberals pretending to be conservative. They’re now spending big money (from their Big Green friends) to advertise, in a bid to pressure the legislature to dump the “fix the DEP” plan…
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For the past 2+ years MDN has chronicled the journey of Competitive Power Ventures (CPV) to build a $900 million Marcellus gas-fired electric plant in Wawayanda, NY, called the Valley Energy Center. Early on the project faced court challenges, but a judge gave final approval to build it in September 2015 (see 
Constant frivolous lawsuits against legal, legitimate businesses performing a valuable service for society is having a corrosive effect on our legal system. That’s the thought that hit MDN as we read, yet again, about lawsuits and actions against pipelines in Virginia and West Virginia. In Virginia, radicals from the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League are pressuring the state Attorney General to get involved to try and stop Dominion’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline–a $5 billion, 594-mile natural gas pipeline that will stretch from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina. In West Virginia, the Sierra Club and several other far-out-on-the-left fringe groups are suing the state Dept. of Environmental Protection for having the audacity to evaluate and then approve the Mountain Valley Pipeline project there. Mountain Valley is a $3.5 billion, 303-mile pipeline that will run from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County. This ongoing barrage of lawsuits and actions are meant to delay these projects–to give antis more time to whip up opposition and to figure out how to legally (or illegally) stop them. Yes, antis often engage in illegal activities when they disagree with a lawful activity, like building a pipeline. All of these legal machinations tie up our courts and, in our opinion, corrode our legal institutions, causing irreparable harm to pipeline companies. It’s time to fight back and hold these groups (and individuals) accountable. Make them PAY (money) for their strategy of delay. Only when we hold people accountable for their actions will this mess stop…
Last night the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) held one final public hearing for the Williams Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline project–in Lancaster. As we previously reported, anti-fossil fuel nutters planned to gather prior to the meeting so they could choreograph a “walkout” of the meeting, as a form of protest (see 
Jeff Tittel, the head of the New Jersey Sierra Club, last week called President Trump a “fossil fool in the White House” and panned Trump for doing his Constitutional duty in appointing new members to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Tittel’s latest titillation came in response to PennEast Pipeline sending a letter to FERC last Thursday requesting the agency move forward posthaste with granting the project a final certificate to proceed to construction–something that terrifies Tittel and his sidekick, THE Delaware Riverkeeper, Maya van Rossum. Tittel and van Rossum have staked their reputations and the reputations of their anti-fossil fuel groups on stopping PennEast. So once the bulldozers fire up and begin digging trenches, it’s all over for them. They might actually have to find real jobs. Below is PennEast’s request to FERC along with the instantaneous (and paranoid) reaction from several Big Green radical groups….
Every now again we go on a rant about the hypocrisy, indeed the stupidity, of those who claim we can just stop using fossil fuels altogether–now–and switch to so-called renewables. If we only had the political will. According to the fantasizers, solar and wind and hydro and other non-fossil fuel sources could eliminate the need for fossil fuels. But what they fail to understand or grasp or admit (or perhaps all three), is that without fossil fuels they would not have clothes, houses, cell phones, vehicles for transportation and a host of other modern conveniences. Frankly, without fossil fuel extraction, we would immediately be plunged back into the Stone Ages–with cruel, very short, lifespans. Antis fail to recognize the key role fossil fuels play in our everyday lives. Our ongoing prediction, which will be proved long after we’ve exited this world, is that fossil fuels are here for at least the next 100 years. We spotted a local letter to the editor from a numskull spouting this “fossil fuels will kill us all” meme, and on the same day, an article by the always-excellent David Blackmon, writing for Forbes, which outlines many of the ways life would change without fossil fuels. Together these two pieces show the stark contrast between those who think, and those who don’t…
The CORNballs of Ohio are not happy campers in their quest to try and shut down the $2 billion, 255-mile NEXUS interstate natural gas pipeline that will run from Ohio through Michigan and eventually to the Dawn Hub in Ontario, Canada. CORN stands for Coalition to Reroute NEXUS. CORNballs is what we affectionately call the group–as a way of pointing out their nutty real purpose, which is to try and shut the NEXUS project down. Their aim has nothing to do with “rerouting” and everything to do with shutting it down. In May 2017, the CORNballs revealed their true colors when they filed a lawsuit in federal court in Akron, OH (see 
In May, MDN told you that virulent anti-drillers in Youngstown, OH, puppets of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), have once again circulated a petition to put a so-called Community Bill of Rights ballot measure on the ballot this November (see 
Energy Transfer’s Sunoco Logisitics unit has struck a deal with the devil–the devil being the Philadelphia-based (and odoriferous) Clean Air Council, THE Delaware Riverkeeper and Mountain Watershed Association–that will ultimately lift the current ban on underground horizontal directional drilling (HDD) for the Mariner East 2 NGL pipeline project. The three Big Green groups (well funded by colluding leftist organizations) filed an appeal with the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board to block all HDD work following several drilling mud leaks, one of them fouling a water aquifer in Chester County (see 
Rover Pipeline is Energy Transfer’s $3.7 billion, 711-mile Marcellus/Utica natural gas pipeline that will run from PA, WV and eastern OH through OH into Michigan and eventually into Canada. On April 13, Rover workers experienced an “inadvertent return” of “horizontal directional drilling fluid”. That is, they sprung a leak and spilled nearly 2 million gallons of drilling mud (see 
We’ve noticed a meme, largely started by an Associated Press article endlessly repeated and published in dozens of news outlets across Pennsylvania, that the recent budget deal (with a severance tax) passed by the traitorous Republican-controlled PA Senate “jams a shale tax and industry permits into unhappy package” that now sits before a House that essentially has no choice but to adopt it. Here’s the establishment “received wisdom” in a nutshell: Drillers don’t get what they want (a severance tax), but they do get what environmentalist wackos don’t want (streamlined approvals for permits). And guess what? “That’s politics.” And if you don’t like it, on either side of the equation, you’re an unrealistic dope who doesn’t know anything about politics. We manifestly reject that assertion. Here’s why this deal is one sided–a severance tax only deal. Big Green groups with endless pockets to fund litigation factories are already talking about how if this budget is passed with what they want (a high severance tax) but also with what they don’t want (streamlined approvals for permits), no problem. They’ll just sue to remove the streamlined permits part, leaving drillers with the high severance tax. That’s how “fairness” works for Democrats and antis. Get part of what you want, then litigate the rest–force it on people who don’t want it. That’s the strategy laid out in the AP article claiming both sides are unhappy, implying it’s a good deal because both sides are getting something they want and something they don’t want. The clear signal being sent by environmentalists is that they’ll litigate their way to happiness. Meanwhile the Marcellus industry will get the shaft, which is why the House MUST reject this budget as written…
As MDN has previously reported, Mountaineer XPress Pipeline includes 165 miles of new pipeline with approximately 2.7 billion cubic feet (Bcf) per day of transportation capacity from existing and future points of receipt along or near the Columbia pipeline system–most of it located in West Virginia (see 
In March, MDN told you about a small group of radical protesters who established a protest “camp” on a private farm along the path of the Williams $3 billion, 198-mile Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline in Lancaster County, PA (see 
The radicals at the Sierra Club are taking another run at stopping Dominion’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) project in its tracks–before the first inch of pipe is laid. ACP is a $5 billion, 594-mile natural gas pipeline that will stretch from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina. This time Sierra Club nutters are using a novel approach to try and stop ACP. They’ve asked North Carolina regulators to revoke approval of affiliate agreements by Duke Energy to use the gas that will flow through the pipeline. The Sierra Club’s argument is that the agreements, signed in 2014, are no longer valid. Duke doesn’t need as much natural gas (for electric generation) as they thought they would. And therefore to stay locked into the agreement would be an unfair burden to Duke’s rate payers. If Duke were to pull out of the deals, the ACP project would collapse, which is what Sierra Club happens. Duke has responded that the gas will be used for more than electric generation. Given that NC now has a Dem governor who doesn’t like fracking (see