Time to Stop Antis Gaining “Intervenor” Status with FERC
MDN first alerted you to a sleazy tactic used to slow down the pipeline approval process in October 2015 (see Delaware Riverkeeper Scams FERC in Review of PennEast Pipeline). In short, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has a process known as a motion to intervene. Individuals, towns and organizations with a vested, *legitimate* interest can file to “intervene” in a pipeline project application, which gives them special standing to receive updates from FERC and to ensure their views are fully considered by FERC. THE Delaware Riverkeeper and others began registering everyone–including their own children–as “intervenors” which essentially overloads FERC’s system and greatly slows down the permitting process (ses FERC Confirms “Intervenors” Slowing Down Pipeline Approvals). It is an abuse of the system, but then anti groups are no strangers to violating the rules, or laws. After Riverkeeper began to use this tactic it caught on with other anti groups (see Intervenor Contagion Catching on with Radical Green Groups in NE). It has become a serious issue. Finally, one company is fighting back. Rio Grande LNG recently filed a request with FERC asking the agency to reject many/most of the applications to intervene in approving their LNG project. Lawyers for Rio Grande say the intervenor applications are not filled out properly and missing important information–and that FERC should deny those requests. It’s about time! Other companies, including pipeline companies in the northeast, need to do the same thing. It’s time to fight fire with fire…
Read More “Time to Stop Antis Gaining “Intervenor” Status with FERC”
Earlier this month MDN shared with you the news that Munroe Falls (Summit County), OH had filed yet another frivolous lawsuit against Beck Energy to prevent drilling–after already losing a similar case before the Ohio Supreme Court (see 
The litigious Sierra Club, an environmental organization that may have been founded for good reasons long ago but has become radicalized in their opposition to all fossil fuels, was dealt a serious legal blow last week. None other than the very liberal District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the Sierra Club–responding to a lawsuit brought by the Sierra Club that tries to force the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to consider factors not within their purview when deciding on whether or not to issue permits for LNG (liquefied natural gas) facilities. The court decision directly affects two Gulf Coast LNG facilities but also has implications for the Cove Point, Maryland LNG export facility currently under construction by Dominion, now about half completed. The Sierra Club tried to argue that the more LNG you export, the more drilling (i.e. “upstream”) activity is needed, and drilling activity and what it produces (natural gas) is causing man-made global warming. Ergo FERC should be required to consider those “impacts” when making its decision on permitting such facilities. The problem is, under FERC’s charter they are specifically NOT allowed to consider such peripheral considerations. FERC is to make its decisions based on real science: Would a potential project impact the local ecology and environment in a negative way? If so, it doesn’t get a permit. The normally chatty Sierra Club went silent following the court’s decision…
As MDN reported two days ago, the Maryland Dept. of the Environment (MDE) held a public hearing in Baltimore to elicit feedback on changes to the state’s proposed fracking regulations–already the tightest, harshest such regulations in the country (see 
Once again a group of so-called religious leaders, including a serial criminal, were arrested in Boston blocking work on a very short, 5-mile pipeline (West Roxbury Lateral) that will bring cheap, abundant, clean-burning Marcellus Shale gas to local residents in the Boston area. Some 26 were arrested, some of the same nutters were arrested in May (see 
A few days ago MDN told you about the fruitless efforts by anti-drilling zealots in Youngstown, OH in delivering a petition for a sixth vote on a frack ban measure for the November ballot (see 
MDN previously chronicled an insidious effort being spearheaded by the odious New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman in an attempt to criminalize free speech by accusing Exxon Mobil of “knowing” man-made global warming is “true” but suppressing that knowledge (see 
Last December MDN ripped the mask off a group of extremely partisan, virulently anti-drilling Democrats who call themselves the innocent-sounding Multi-State Shale Research Collaborative (see 
Last weekend the United States Conference of Mayors held their annual conference in Indianapolis, IN. Following the meeting, a small group of 30 mayors–a few from larger cities like Pittsburgh and Charlotte, but most from small cities–signed a letter urging state and federal officials to allow local municipalities (like theirs) to ban fracking. It’s all couched in terms of “home rule” language, but the desire is to allow local governments to deny their citizens their Constitutional property rights. Near as we can tell, all 30 of the mayors signing the letter are liberal Democrats. The press release and letter were issued by the virulently anti-drilling Environment America, a Big Green group…
Three radicalized environmental groups–the Allegheny Defense Project, the Appalachian Mountain Advocates and Damascus Citizens for Sustainability–have filed a motion with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to challenge FERC’s approval of three tiny pipeline expansion projects in Pennsylvania. Kinder Morgan’s Tennessee Gas Pipeline’s 300 line is proposing to expand three different segments of the line, serving different customers, and rightfully asked FERC to consider the three projects as separate and to not commingle them together. The radicalized groups are insisting FERC evaluate all three bundled together, in an attempt to slow down and hopefully stop progress on the projects…
It’s time to sue the nutjobs at the Sierra Club out of existence. The “non-profit” so-called environmental organization is a menace to all Americans. It’s a vipers nest of lawyers who exist solely to line their own pockets. The way they do it is to file lawsuits and “petitions” by the dump truck-load (generating work for lawyers). One of the projects they’re trying to stop is the much-needed Dominion Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a 550-mile, $5 billion project that will run from West Virginia into Virginia and on into North Carolina–benefiting the residents of all three states (see 
How many times will the antis who pretend to be concerned about people’s health, but really are irrationally afraid of emitting carbon (although they do it with every breathe), demand a vote on a frack ban in Youngstown that nobody wants? So far the loons have managed to fabricate enough signatures to get a frack ban measure on the ballot five times, most recently in November 2015 (see