Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel

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    Radical Enviros Beg FERC to Pull Plug on PennEast Pipeline

    bamboozleYet another desperate attempt by radical environmentalists to stop the much-needed PennEast Pipeline from getting built. Yesterday the New Jersey Conservation Foundation (NJCF) and Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association (SBMWA) asked (more liked begged) the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to withdraw the PennEast application, something called a “no alternative” action, and just let it die a stillborn death. Their argument to FERC seems to rely on the old tactic of “if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull$#@!.” Because a few sympathetic rads exist within government agencies like the EPA and Fish & Wildlife Service, and because those agencies were co-opted into sending negative comments about the project to FERC, the radicals at NJ Conservation and Stony Brook Watershed tell FERC it’s best just to scrap the whole thing. No sense in continuing. Move along–nothing else to see here. A nice try at bamboozling FERC, but it’s an agency wise to such deceptions…
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    Militant Enviros Turn Ugly at Trump Protest Following Speech

    protesters_duquesne_club
    Click for larger version

    MDN editor Jim Willis attended the Marcellus Shale Coalition’s Shale Insight conference last Wednesday and Thursday in Pittsburgh (see Highlights from 2016 Shale Insight, Day One and Highlights from 2016 Shale Insight, Day Two – Trump!). We had heard, via media reports, that protesters would be present to try and disrupt The Donald’s talk on Day Two of the event (last Thursday). But we didn’t hear or see anything–at least during the conference. Trump’s keynote address was the closing talk at the conference. After he finished speaking, Jim made a beeline back to the MDN booth to get started packing it away since the conference was essentially over (officially ended at 1 pm). After shipping the booth and returning to the place where Jim was staying, he decided to change and, being a fantastically sunny and warm day, head several blocks away to a Starbucks for latte and to sit and get some work done on stories for last Friday. Literally around the corner from where Jim was staying, on Sixth Avenue in Pittsburgh, is an exclusive members-only club called The Duquesne Club. In walking past the club Jim noticed a large police presence, along with a remnants of what looked like the usual suspects he sees at protest rallies–a mix of college kids and old hippies with long gray hair tied back in a pony tails. Jim also saw PA House Speaker Mike Turzai walking on the sidewalk in front of the Club. So he wondered if perchance The Donald had gone to the club for lunch following his speech. Sure enough, in checking the news, Trump held a fundraising dinner at the Club immediately following his speech at Shale Insight. Since the protesters weren’t even noticed (by the press) at the mammoth David L Lawrence Convention Center where Trump spoke, they figured they would get noticed if they jammed the street in front of The Duquesne Club instead. And sure enough, it worked. Police were there in riot gear, and it’s a good thing, because some of the protesters were borderline violent–threatening to break into the private club…
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    THE Dela. Riverkeeper Sends Letter to Congress: Shut Down FERC

    investigationMaya van Rossum, who is THE Delaware Riverkeeper (the river’s mamma), got 182 of her friends, whom she calls “organizations” to sign a letter and sent it to the U.S. Senate demanding (she always demands, never politely asks) for hearings into the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Why? Because they’re actually doing their job–and that just can’t stand. Instead, she wants FERC shut down so no new pipeline projects will get approved. That’s the only acceptable outcome for Mamma Maya. She alleges that FERC is misusing its power under the federal Natural Gas Act. One of Mamma Maya’s friends, CORNball Paul Gierosky (cofounder of COalition to Reroute Nexus, or CORN) says: “FERC is corrupt and needs to be reformed.” What hubris…
    Read More “THE Dela. Riverkeeper Sends Letter to Congress: Shut Down FERC”

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    Fossil-Fuel-Hating Sierra Clubbers Plan to Protest Shale Insight

    haterAnti-coal, anti-natural gas, anti-oil, anti-logic…the radicals who make up the Sierra Club are anti-everything. They can’t even stand themselves! Self-loathing seems to be a requirement for membership. The Allegheny sub-group of the Sierra Club is planning to protest in front of the David L Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh this coming Thursday morning. Why? Because presidential candidate Donald Trump is scheduled to speak and they HATE HIS GUTS. They also hate frackers and those who support them, like your humble editor. There’s no better unifier on the left than hatred. MDN will be on location at the event and if we get a chance we’ll snap a picture or two of the nutters out front protesting. Meanwhile, here’s the Sierra Club game plan for Thursday…
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    Obama EPA Official Called OMB “Dickheads” re Fracking Regs

    potty-mouthA senior official in the Obama administration who works for the Environmental Protection Agency has a potty mouth. That’s probably the rule rather than the exception. However, this particular potty mouthed person–Michael Goo (formerly the EPA’s policy chief)–has been caught colluding with radical environmentalists at the nutty Sierra Club. Goo called some of the people working at the White House Office of Management and Budget “dickheads” because they were opposed to implementing federal regulations to control fracking. Quick reminder: The U.S. Constitution leaves development of oil and gas resources up to the individual states to regulate. That is, the federal government cannot (legally) regulate fracking, a part of oil and gas development. But the Fascists inside the Obama administration earnestly lust for and desire the power to control oil and gas drilling–not only on public lands, but on private lands as well. Using a Freedom of Information Act request, the Energy and Environment Legal Institute got its hands on a text message sent by Goo to the Sierra Club lamenting about the “dickheads” at OMB. Goo has been caught red-handed using input from the Sierra Club to craft official government regulations…
    Read More “Obama EPA Official Called OMB “Dickheads” re Fracking Regs”

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    NY AG Doubles Down on ExxonMobil, Investigates Writedowns

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    NY AG Eric Schneiderman

    New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is a man drunk on his own power. He’s being investigated for collusion with other AGs in targeting ExxonMobil over charges the company didn’t say, strongly enough, that they believe in the fairy tale of man-made global warming. And therefore they have “deceived” and “misled” the public (and investors) over how the evil, nasty, dirty fossil fuels they produce are killing Mom Earth. What’s really happening is that Schneiderman is trying to deny Exxon and the people who work there, their right to free speech under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. Now that Schneiderman’s sham case is falling apart and he himself is being investigated by the U.S. Congress, what does he do? He doubles down and finds another false excuse to target Exxon: this time it’s over the issue of writing down assets…
    Read More “NY AG Doubles Down on ExxonMobil, Investigates Writedowns”

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    OH Supreme Court Rejects County Frack Ban Ballot Proposals, Again

    court-gavel.jpgAnti-fossil fuel zealots in Athens, Meigs and Portage counties in Ohio are spitting and sputtering after the Ohio Supreme Court on Tuesday once again shut down their childish frack ban ballot measures–ruling that Secretary of State Jon Husted and the election boards of those counties did not violate the law in tossing out the ballot measures. The radical Pennsylvania-based Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) is particularly torqued off. It’s not the first time the Supremes have slapped them down. Their frack ban ballot measures were also tossed last year by the Supremes (see Ohio Supreme Court Keeps Frack Bans Off Ballot in 3 Counties). It’s not good for future fundraising letters when the CELDF can’t win a case. Below we have a roundup of stories about the decision, including a full copy of the decision itself, handed down on Tuesday…
    Read More “OH Supreme Court Rejects County Frack Ban Ballot Proposals, Again”

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    Obama EPA, National Park Service Try to Rain on PennEast Parade

    rain-on-my-paradeVarious government agencies populated with liberal Democrats, including the Obama Environmental Protection Agency, the Obama National Park Service, the Obama Fish & Wildlife Service, and the New Jersey Environmental Protection Agency, filed negative comments about the PennEast Pipeline with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Monday. The last day to file public comments on PennEast was this past Monday, Sept. 12. In what almost seems like a coordinated attack, various agencies all filed their highly inflammatory and negative comments at the eleventh hour. The Obama EPA’s comments were particular egregious, making fantastically wild claims like building PennEast “may” end up causing arsenic in groundwater supplies. Talk about bogus B.S. (Barbara Streisand). The question is, will this unwarranted assault by federal and state agencies cause further delays in the already-delayed PennEast project?…
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    Youngstown OH Ready to Defeat Frack Ban Proposal for 6th Time

    Groundhog DayThe longer we write MDN, the easier it gets–because the stories just keep repeating themselves. That’s how we felt when we spotted a story about the adults in Youngstown, OH pushing back against the temper tantrums of anti-fracking, childish nutters in the city who have, now for the sixth time, put a frack ban measure on the ballot for the November election. Five previous times the same group of rabid anti-fossil fuel haters have done this–and five times they have gone down to defeat (see MDN’s previous stories covering Youngstown ballot initiatives here). The antis waste everyone’s time and money by getting just enough fellow wackos to sign a petition to get the measure on the ballot each November. The adults in Youngstown must stay vigilant, so they held a rally Tuesday morning to announce opposition to the ballot measure. The mayor of Youngstown was there. So too were a number of union workers, Chamber of Commerce members, local businesses and supporters of the oil and gas industry in the Buckeye State. They were all there to recommend a “NO” vote on this asinine ballot measure, once again…
    Read More “Youngstown OH Ready to Defeat Frack Ban Proposal for 6th Time”

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    Bought & Paid For “Research” Says 2 Marcellus Pipelines Not Needed

    cest-fauxTwo Democrat-run anti-fossil fuel organizations–the Southern Environmental Law Center and Appalachian Mountain Advocates–pooled their donated money together and went out to find a consulting firm with the veneer of respectability that could be bought off to produce a faux “report” slamming two much-needed pipelines. They found an easy mark in Synapse Energy Economics, headquartered in ultra-liberal Massachusetts. The “report” Synapse produced says neither Dominion’s $5 billion, 594-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (a natural gas pipeline that will stretch from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina), nor EQT’s $3.5 billion, 301-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County, VA) are needed. The sham report, titled “Are the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the Mountain Valley Pipeline Necessary?” (full copy below) is getting picked up by lazy (or propagandist) mainstream news organizations and reported as real news. It’s nothing of the sort. It’s a joke…
    Read More “Bought & Paid For “Research” Says 2 Marcellus Pipelines Not Needed”

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    NJ Sierra Club Game Plan – Kill Pipelines by Slowing Approvals

    PennEast in NJ
    PennEast in NJ – click for larger version

    An Associated Press article tackles the issue of the dozen plus natural gas pipelines planned to carry new supplies of Marcellus/Utica gas into New Jersey, and how/why those projects are moving along so slowly. Today is the final day for public comment on the much-needed PennEast Pipeline from the Wilkes-Barre, PA region southeast to the Trenton, NJ area. The next step is an environment study, to be done by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). THE Delaware Riverkeeper (aka Maya van Rossum) along with other virulent anti-fossil fuel nutters, like the NJ Sierra Club, are vigorously opposed–throwing as much horse manure and legal roadblocks at the project as they can. In other areas of the country it would take a project like PennEast about seven months to get approved. So far it’s been over two years for PennEast, with an end now in sight IF construction begins next year. The article is an update on the PennEast, with comments mostly against (a few for). The interesting part of the article is, for us, the very last sentence. We’ve told you for years that the game plan from antis is to delay and slow down approvals in hopes of getting projects canceled. We’ve had a front row seat of that (very effective) strategy here in New York State. The interesting final sentence in the AP article is an admission by the NJ Sierra Club that delay of PennEast is indeed their game plan, with the intent to “kill the pipeline”…
    Read More “NJ Sierra Club Game Plan – Kill Pipelines by Slowing Approvals”

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    DCNR Blocks New Marcellus Drilling on PA State Lands

    DCNR logoWhat happens when you put a virulent anti-driller in charge of a state’s forestry service, a state that previously had a small, safe, healthy program to allow some shale drilling, giving taxpayers a break with a source of new revenue? Of course the anti-driller immediately tries to quash any more new drilling efforts. And that’s just what has happened with former PennFuture president and current Secretary of the PA Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR), Cindy Dunn. We called for her firing back in June when she was caught using–we’d say misappropriating–taxpayer money to send her staff to Big Green reeducation events (see Time to Fire Cindy Dunn, Last of Wolf Admin’s PennFuture Radicals). But no. She remains at her post, obstructing drilling in any way she can. The latest in her efforts is an updated plan from the DCNR’s Bureau of Forestry, which manages 2.2 million acres of state lands, in which the DCNR pledges to block any new Marcellus drilling on state lands and outlines their plans to begin hassling those who own mineral rights under state lands (and can legally extract shale gas) by requiring “definitive proof” that they own the mineral rights. In other words, they’re going to try and tie rights owners and drillers up in so much red tape, they’ll never even think about drilling a new well on state land…
    Read More “DCNR Blocks New Marcellus Drilling on PA State Lands”

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    OH Anti-Pipeliners Allege Some Letters to FERC were Forged

    pot-kettle-blackVirulent anti-fossil fuel nutters who are opposed to Spectra Energy’s $2 billion, 255-mile NEXUS interstate pipeline that will run from Ohio through Michigan and eventually to the Dawn Hub in Ontario, Canada, have stayed up late at night reading through all of the comments sent to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The habit of antis is to generate a blizzard of negative comments to FERC on any given project, sometimes using the names of their children (see Delaware Riverkeeper Scams FERC in Review of PennEast Pipeline). The antis say after reading thousands of comments supplied to FERC, they’ve found “maybe 200” that support the pipeline that are suspicious. In one case they said a letter was signed by someone who has been dead since the 1990s. In other words, the antis are alleging fraud–that pro-drillers or even Spectra Energy itself is engaged in fraudulently sending letters of support from people that don’t support the pipeline. Which is kind of funny, since antis themselves are typically the ones who engage in this kind of fraud! We guess it takes one to know one…
    Read More “OH Anti-Pipeliners Allege Some Letters to FERC were Forged”

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    Radical OH Groups Lie About Fracking & Asthma in Kids

    junk-science.jpgTwo radical environmental groups in Ohio–Ohio Environmental Council and the Clean Air Task Force–have just released a 100% bogus “report” that attempts to tie asthma in children to fracking. If lying to the public were a crime, they’d be in jail right now. Here’s how these sleazy groups make such a claim: They claim, from looking at medical records, that there are 7,129 childhood asthma attacks in the Columbus metro area, and 7,558 in the Cleveland metro area each year. Absolutely no context as to whether those numbers are higher or lower than elsewhere in the country, or whether or not the numbers are increasing year over year. These groups just toss out numbers. They claim the asthma attacks are because of smog in those cities. They further claim smog comes from burning oil and gas and ergo, childhood asthma attacks are the result of fracking, because fracking extracts more oil and gas which is burned and causes smog which causes asthma. It is a heaping mound of cow manure. The problem is that otherwise good news sources, like the Akron Beacon Journal, push this manure out as news…
    Read More “Radical OH Groups Lie About Fracking & Asthma in Kids”

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    PA RINO Wants to Slow Marcellus Drilling with $2M Bond per Well

    Tom Murt - RINO
    Tom Murt – RINO

    Pennsylvania State Rep. Thomas Murt, a RINO (Republican In Name Only) from the Philadelphia area, has introduced House Bill (HB) 2277 that would require drillers in the state to post a $2 million bond for each shale well they drill. The current bond is between $4,000-$10,000. This is yet another attempt by the same cast of anti-drilling characters to slow down or stop Marcellus drilling altogether in the Keystone State, by erecting regulatory hurdles to hassle drillers under the pretense of protecting PA’s environment. Adopting such a law would actually indicate that PA has turned aggressively against the drilling industry–sending the clear signal the Keystone State prefers drillers to operate elsewhere, in other states. Fortunately, with Republicans in control of both the House and Senate, this “misguided proposal,” as the Marcellus Shale Coalition calls it, is DOA…
    Read More “PA RINO Wants to Slow Marcellus Drilling with $2M Bond per Well”

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    Chamber Report Details Why ‘Keep it in the Ground’ a Disaster

    off limitsA new report issued by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce addresses the question, “What If…Energy Production was Banned on Federal Lands and Waters?” (full copy below). The short answer to that question is, it would be an unmitigated disaster for this country. There is a movement underway by radical environmentalists with the catch phrase of “Keep It In The Ground”–meaning we should stop extracting oil and natural gas. It is an acutely ignorant position to take. The report says, “Instituting a ban on future federal-lands leasing and stopping the current production of these resources would increase energy prices for consumers by removing low-cost resources from the available supply stream. The impact would be immediate and severe to the U.S. economy, leading to the loss of hundreds of thousands of American jobs, and robbing the federal government and primarily eastern states of potentially billions of dollars in revenues in the form of lost royalties.” Keep It In The Ground boobs don’t own land and sip lattes at Starbucks in large cities with their radical friends. They don’t care about lost jobs and lost royalty revenue–because it doesn’t affect them. Opposing “nasty, dirty fossil fuels” makes them feel good about themselves. They are dangerously stupid. This report (read it below) illustrates just how catastrophic it would be to ban fossil fuel extraction on federal lands. The report finds that the U.S. economy would lose 400,000 jobs and $70 billion in annual GDP if we were to abandon energy development on public lands, as President Obama and presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton and the entire Democrat Party advocate…
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