Josh Fox, Maya & Friends Plan to Protest Any FERC Appointments
You know it’s a slow week for anti-fossil fuel crackpots like Josh Fox and Maya van Rossum (THE Delaware Riverkeeper) when they have to hold a conference call to begin protesting something that hasn’t even happened yet. The Donald has been a busy boy, trying to weed out Obamadroids deeply embedded in the federal government. The President is responsible to appointing something like 5,000 people to positions throughout the federal government. Most of them pass through Presidential Personnel (an office MDN editor Jim Willis once worked in during the Reagan Administration, back in the Jurassic period) and do not require Congressional approval. But one agency of primary concern for us, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), is still missing three of five Commissioners. Trump has not (yet) put forward nominees to staff it, nominees who will have to be approved by the Senate. But lack of nominees isn’t stopping Josh Fox, Maya van Rossum, a PA pig farmer and others with an abject hatred of FERC because FERC is responsible for evaluating and approving pipeline projects. You know, pipelines that flow evil, disgusting, horrible fossil fuels that are poisoning Mom Earth. On a conference call scheduled for tomorrow, Josh, Maya & friends will outline their opposition to ANYONE Trump puts forward. Doesn’t matter who it is. The Dalai Lama? Against him. BH Obama? Against him too. Meryl “hates Donald Trump’s guts” Streep? Against her, even though she’s a hater. Queen Hillary? She’s yesterday’s news. Mickey Mouse? Set out a mousetrap. That will be the strategy outlined on tomorrow’s conference call…
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Ding dong–Lush is calling. A British cosmetics company (think UK version of Avon), looking to get bought-and-paid-for publicity here in the states, has donated $22,000 to the anti-Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline group, Lancaster Against Pipelines (LAP). Anti-drilling losers like those in LAP would flare out if not for the backing of companies and Big Green groups with deep pockets. Which cosmetics company did the donating? The name is Lush. You’ve never heard of them and almost certainly have never purchased any of their forgettable products–which is why they donate money to groups like LAP, to get far more exposure than advertising can buy. There’s enough nutjobs out there that will buy products from companies like Lush to make “donating” money for “causes” to these groups a profitable venture. Another funder of LAP? The Universal Unitarian Church in Lancaster, which forked over $5,000 of parishioner contributions to LAP. Hello IRS! Will you please investigate the non-profit Universal Unitarian Church for giving money to an overtly political cause? Who else is donating money to the small group of LAP rabble-rousers?…
The Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), charged with overseeing potential impacts on the Delaware River and the various tributaries that feed it, has stepped outside of its legal bounds with plans to review the PennEast Pipeline, part of which will run through the Delaware River Basin area. In 2014 the DRBC tried to tell PennEast and its sponsors that the pipeline will need their approval before it can be built (see 
A fake report recently issued by the anti-drilling, radically left and biased Public Herald (populated with activists masquerading as “journalists”) claims that some 9,400 residents in Pennsylvania have filed complaints that fracking has caused them ill-health in one way or the other. It is, according to anti-drillers, a public health “crisis.” How do we know this so-called report is TOTAL BS? Look at who wrote it, and look at who funded it: community organizers wrote it, the Heinz Foundation funded it. This is another sterling example of Joseph Goebbels-like propaganda. The Harrisburg Patriot-News allowed one such community organizer/anti-fossil fueler to run an article on the opinion-editorial page touting the report as legitimate. You can fool some of the people some of the time…
Cabot Oil & Gas is one of the premier drillers in the Marcellus Shale. They drill in a single Pennsylvania county–Susquehanna County. They consistently have 15 of the top 20 producing shale wells in PA. By our back-of-the-envelope estimation, Cabot, all by itself, drilling in one county, delivers something like 3% of all the natural gas produced in the entire country! It is an amazing story. What’s even more amazing is the big heart the company has. Woven into the Cabot DNA is giving back to the communities where they drill. It would take several posts to recount all of Cabot’s largess. We’ll mention just two cases. In 2012 Cabot donated $2 million and helped raise another $2.2 million (for a total of $4.2 million) to help build a new physicians clinic/hospital in Montrose, PA (see 
Several southwest Pennsylvania Republican lawmakers (and a Democrat lawmaker) addressed the League of [Liberal Democrat] Women Voters at the group’s annual question-and-answer session with area legislators in Washington, PA on Friday. The Lib Dems attending likely got more than what they bargained for, as the legislators who addressed them stuck up for fossil fuels. The moderator asked a question about so-called clean energy jobs and investing, and promptly got schooled about REAL clean energy–i.e., fossil fuels!…
An interesting article in the Harrisburg Patriot-News looks (favorably) at a trouble-making anti from Lancaster County, PA who participated in the illegal activities at Standing Rock, ND. He earnestly hopes he can attract that kind of disruption and mayhem to peaceful Amish Country in an attempt to stop the Transco Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline project from getting built. But just like Standing Rock, this effort will fail. What we found interesting is that this is an open admission of something we’ve been reporting (warning about) for months–that some of the miscreants from North Dakota are targeting the Marcellus/Utica for their next round of anarchy. There’s nothing “peaceful” about what these people do…
Anti-drilling zealots are sometimes maddening, sometimes funny, and often just plain bizarre. As they are with their latest publicity attack (aided and abetted by PBS reporters) by claiming a couple of townships along the pipeline’s proposed route have ordinances in place that would potentially stop the pipeline in those locations “if only” those lazy, corrupt townships would just enforce the ordinances. That’s the upshot of the argument. One of the towns, Thornbury (Delaware County, a Philly suburb) has a requirement that the subdivision where the pipeline will run must maintain at least 40% of the land in the subdivision as “open space.” The antis claim the pipeline will use enough acreage to reduce the “open space” to below 40%. Ah, Mr. & Ms. Anti, did you know that the pipeline will run underground? And that pipelines lead to MORE permanent open spaces? Nice green fairways that are well-maintained? Lawyers from the usual radical suspects are getting ready to file lawsuits for “force” the townships to pay money defending against this latest inanity…
As we reported earlier this week, Sunoco Logistics Partners has begun active construction activities related to building the twin Mariner East 2 pipelines (see 
It’s always breathtaking, and disturbing, when a small group of individuals decide to take away the Constitutional property rights of their fellow citizens. We always wonder, is this how it started in 1920s Germany? The Augusta County (VA) Board of Supervisors voted 6 to 1 Wednesday night to illegally take away the property rights of every citizen in the county by enacting a total ban on fracking in the county. Is there any shale in the county to frack? No idea, but we doubt it. To be fair, the first county in Virginia to become lawless in this regard was King George County, last summer (see 
A group of radical, waaaaaaay left Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives sent a letter to President Trump on Wednesday requesting that Trump appoint new members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission post haste. Get ‘er done–now. The ring leader of the House Dems sending the letter is Massachusetts Congressman Joe Kennedy III. Wait a minute. Democrats hate FERC because FERC is “nothing more than a tool of big oil and gas” and a “rubber stamp” approving pipeline projects. Why would Kennedy and his merry band of Lib Dems want Trump to appoint three new Republican members of the Commission? When you figure out the answer to that one, please share it with us–because this makes zero sense to us…
There’s always a few holdouts, no matter how hard you try to be reasonable. We’re talking about landowners who refuse to negotiate in good faith with pipeline companies. Earlier this month amidst a flurry of activity, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) handed Williams a final final final approval for its Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline project–a $3 billion, 198-mile pipeline running through 10 Pennsylvania counties to connect Marcellus Shale natural gas from PA with the Williams’ Transco pipeline in southern Lancaster County (see