23 Pipeline Protesters Arrested for Blocking VA Governor Mansion

A group of hippies–young hippies to old hippies–got tired of just parading like horses rear-ends for three days in front of the governor’s mansion in Richmond, Virginia and decided they’d like to go to jail instead. The group of so-called protesters, people there at the bidding of the radical Chesapeake Climate Network, were there to protest against fossil fuels. Specifically they don’t want to see the Mountain Valley Pipeline built–a $3.5 billion, 301-mile pipeline that will run from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County, VA. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission recently indicated the project is on the path to approval (see FERC Gives WV to VA Mountain Valley Pipeline Provisional Thumbs Up). The governor can’t do anything about the pipeline as it is regulated by the federal government, but you can’t teach spoiled rotten leftists about things like the rule of law. They want VA Gov. McAuliffe (a fellow Democrat) to somehow stop the pipeline. Oh, plus they wanted to get their picture in the newspaper. So the lined up like the childish babies they are to block the entrance to the governor’s mansion–and got themselves arrested…
Read More “23 Pipeline Protesters Arrested for Blocking VA Governor Mansion”

Speakers at this weeks Energy Dialogues LLC’s North American Gas Forum in Washington, DC were up on their high horses lecturing the natural gas industry that if we only can get our heads out of our backsides and clamp down on fugitive methane emissions we might actually get to stay around a few more decades, providing fuel to power the world. That’s the gist of the comments we read by so-called environmental “leaders” who spoke at the event. (Arrogant snobs, if you ask us.) But the one thing that really caught our attention was the statement that it may be possible to capture and control carbon from burning natgas to the point that it becomes a “zero-emitter.” Bet you never thought you would see “natural gas” and “zero carbon emissions” in the same sentence, eh?…
Duke University, as MDN has chronicled, has a long history of pumping out faux research that bashes fracking and fossil fuels, “research” that’s bought-and-paid-for by the Park Foundation, one of Duke’s major contributors (see 
In 2014 David Hughes from the so-called Post Carbon Institute made one of the stupidest remarks he’s ever made when he said, “I think the Marcellus is getting pretty close to the peak in [total] production…I wouldn’t be surprised to see a peak in the Marcellus this year, maybe next year at the latest.” Dumb. Marcellus (and Utica) production has done nothing but go up since that time. Oh, the last few months the EIA has reported that Marcellus production is declining–a little bit. But that’s because of a lack of new drilling due to low low prices, a situation that is right now turning around. You can expect Marcellus production to pick up again very soon. The fact is, there is decades (perhaps centuries) of Marcellus/Utica Shale gas supplies waiting to be tapped–with no let-up in sight. Forbes contributor Jude Clemente, one of our favorite Forbes writers, goes on a riff to talk about the huge amount of gas available in the northeast, and its key role in U.S. production…
Peters Township, the most populous township in Washington County, PA, is one of the seven selfish towns that sued the state over the zoning provisions in the Act 13 law, eventually winning at the PA Supreme Court level (see
Something noteworthy is happening in southwest Pennsylvania. Landowners and pro-gas supporters are turning out at local hearings to support more drilling. Case in point: Range Resources had applied for a permit to build a drill pad near a local elementary school in Mt. Pleasant (Westmoreland County), PA. Moms Clean Air Force and other anti-drillers turned out to oppose the plan. A local town board meeting was packed to capacity. However, a majority of those packing the meeting were pro-gas and wore t-shirts with “Land Owners United” printed on them. Cool! About time our side began to turn up for these meetings to support the industry…
2 Corinthians 6:15: “What harmony can there be between Christ and the devil? How can a believer be a partner with an unbeliever?” The obvious answer to the Apostle Paul’s hypothetical question in that passage is, “There is no harmony. A believer can’t partner with an unbeliever.” Yet that’s just what is happening among the ranks of anti-fossil fuel fools. We’ll explain. On Monday the usual suspects, namely the misnamed and odious Food & Water Watch and 200 or so of their closest “friends”–including the Sierra Clubbers, Natural Resources Defense Council, et al ad naseum (people who never think for themselves)–sent a letter (full copy below) to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy asking her, begging with her, pleading with her, to pretty-please change the results of the EPA’s own scientific study, performed by dozens (hundreds?) of scientists who analyzed 950 studies on fracking, conducting nine of their own primary studies, and concluding that fracking doesn’t contaminate ground water supplies (see
Yet 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…
Maya 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…
Anti-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…
A 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…
Anti-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
Various 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?…