Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel

Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | New York | Pipelines | Spectra Energy | Statewide NY

Radical Enviro Groups File Appeal to Stop AIM Pipeline in NY/CT
April 15, 2016October 20, 2017

Click map for larger version

A group of radical environmental groups including Riverkeeper Inc., Sierra Club and Food & Water Watch (Big Green groups) have joined a federal appeal (i.e. are suing) to stop Spectra Energy from building their Alogonquin Incremental Market (AIM) Project, a project to expand the capacity of the Algonquin Gas Transmission system to flow more Marcellus/Utica gas to northeast markets. Most of the project is 20 miles of new pipeline in the Hudson Valley area of New York. In March New York’s spineless Gov. Andrew Cuomo asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to stop work on AIM near a nuclear power plant (see Gov. Cuomo Asks FERC to Halt Algonquin Pipeline Near Nuke Plant). Within a few days FERC said NO (see FERC Denies NY Request to Stop Work on Pipeline Near Nuke Plant). That didn’t make the anti-fossil fuel nutters happy at all. They thought they had a real winner by painting nightmare scenarios of the AIM pipeline blowing up and taking a nuclear plant with it. Their scare tactics didn’t work–so they’ve fallen back to the tried and true: ask a liberal judge to stop it…
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Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Industrywide Issues | Maryland | Regulation | Statewide MD

Legislature in Prince George’s County, MD Bans Fracking
April 14, 2016April 14, 2016

Taylorsville Basin – click for larger view

The anti-fossil fuel Democrat machine that runs Prince George’s County, Maryland (D.C. suburb) has voted to ban fracking in the county. Not that anyone actually wants to frack there. And not that the state doesn’t already have a moratorium in place that prevents it (see Maryland’s Pusillanimous Gov Allows Frack Moratorium to Become Law). There is no prolific Marcellus or Utica Shale running under Prince George’s County (PGC). However, there may be a portion of the Taylorsville Basin under the county, which is the excuse used by legislators in passing the ban. The Taylorsville is located mostly under Virginia (see Virginia Inches Closer to Shale Drilling in Taylorsville Basin). The PGC Dems hope their legislation will serve as a model for other counties in the state, and in fact will “lay the groundwork for a statewide ban in Maryland.” Fine. Ban it. What we hope is that all companies stop selling natural gas to Maryland and we’ll see how quickly that ban would get reversed. The people doing the banning in PGC heat their homes with natural gas, go to work in buildings that use natural gas, drive vehicles and use devices made from plastic (comes from natural gas and petroleum products). Etc. Can anyone say HYPOCRITES? More like dullards…
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Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | Kinder Morgan | Pipelines | Regulation | Tennessee Gas Pipeline

Mass. Landowners Say Patriotic Duty to Oppose NED Pipeline
April 14, 2016April 14, 2016

MDN is strongly in favor of property rights. “You don’t tell me I can’t allow drilling a shale well or a pipeline–and I don’t tell you that you must allow it.” That’s always been our guiding philosophy. It pains us when pipeline companies use eminent domain to force landowners to allow a pipeline to be built. Having said that, it’s a pipeline! It’s underground. Farmers can plant crops over top of it after it’s in the ground. After a few years, you’re hard pressed to even tell where the pipeline is buried! We say if there’s widespread opposition to pipelines in a given community, don’t bother building it there. However, if there’s a handful of holdout landowners (often driven by global warming insanity), eminent domain may be justified. Life is complex. These issues are complex. Again, forcefully using eminent domain against any landowner–even the stupid anti-drilling ones–pains us. We don’t like it. But eminent domain is part of our laws, created to benefit wider society. We spotted an article about some Massachusetts landowners who equate opposing Kinder Morgan’s Northeast Energy Direct pipeline with being patriotic, like the patriots from the original Boston Harbor Tea Party revolt. We had to laugh…
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Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Industrywide Issues

US Chamber Unmasks Environmentalist Bill McKibben & 350.org
April 14, 2016April 14, 2016

Bill McKibben – 350.org

William Ernest “Bill” McKibben is an environmentalist wacko. A true believer that mankind is a blight on Planet Earth and is catastrophically causing Mom Earth to toast by burning fossil fuels for energy. McKibben, like many environmentalist wackos, makes his living as a professor, polluting the minds of those he teaches and living in the academic world and not the real world. He’s also the founder and leader of the anti-carbon campaign group 350.org. McKibben has authored a dozen books about the environment, including his first (The End of Nature) in 1989 about so-called climate change. Unfortunately, McKibben is also effective. He led the charge to defeat building the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada into the U.S. Now McKibben has set his sights on ending the use of all fossil fuels. He has a new campaign to “keep natural gas in the ground.” The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has written an article unmasking McKibben and his deceptive campaign to defeat natural gas…
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Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Broome County | Industrywide Issues | New York

Crazy Bernie Comes to Binghamton, Launches Natl Anti-Fracking Ad
April 12, 2016April 12, 2016

Crazy Bernie

Senile old Communist Bernie Sanders came to Binghamton, NY yesterday (where MDN is written and published) to campaign in “upstate” New York. No, we didn’t bother to go and see him. (We think vapid college kids like him because he reminds them of the grandfather they never had.) Sanders took the occasion of his visit to Binghamton to call for a national campaign to ban ALL fracking. Essentially he wants to shut down the entire oil and gas industry–an industry that’s been fracking for more than 40 years in this country. He’s not only senile–he’s dangerous. Or he would be dangerous if he ever got elected, which of course isn’t going to happen. Sanders launched a new 30-second Big Green TV advertisement (see it below) narrated by Susan Sarandon (i.e. Big Hollywood) to complain about Big Oil. Isn’t that rich? What a screwball…
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Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | PennEast Pipeline | Pennsylvania | Statewide PA

Delaware Riverkeeper Keeps Up Aggressive Attack on FERC, New Angle
April 11, 2016April 11, 2016

THE Delaware Riverkeeper, a radical left-wing group that’s not much more than its director, Maya van Rossum, and a lawyer, continues (with big money funding from NGOs like the Heinz Endowments and the Park Foundation) to aggressively attack the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. We warned you last year that Riverkeeper was attempting to overload FERC’s approval process for the PennEast Pipeline by encouraging anti-drilling zealots to register, en masse, as “intervenors” (see Delaware Riverkeeper Scams FERC in Review of PennEast Pipeline). Riverkeeper even asked their wacko followers to register their own children as intervenors–again in an attempt to overload FERC’s workload. Riverkeeper has sued FERC God knows how many times now (see THE Delaware Riverkeeper Sues FERC, Tries to Close it Down). But since none of those efforts are working, Riverkeeper (and van Rossum) are trying yet another tactic. They want the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to conduct a “review” of FERC in hopes that somebody–Obama? Congress? another agency?–at the federal level will come down on FERC to prevent the agency from doing its job–reviewing and approving new pipelines. We have evidence…
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Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Statewide PA

PA Senate Race – Dems Try to Outdo Each Other as Anti-Frack
April 11, 2016April 11, 2016

“I hate frackers more than you do and I’ll screw them more than you will.” “No, I hate them more than you do!” And so it goes with the Democrats running in the primary for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania. The three candidates vying to run on the Dem ticket in November are all, to one degree or another, anti-fracking. The lead candidate is Kathy McGinty, former chief of staff for failing Gov. Tom Wolf and former head of the Dept. of Environmental Protection under Ed “fast Eddie” Rendell. Her challengers are accusing her of being in bed with the frackers. She says fracking is OK–as long as you regulate it to death. None of them are qualified to be Senator, but then look who’s president right now…
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Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Industrywide Issues

Rise of the New (Environmental) Nazis – Free Speech Under Attack
April 11, 2016April 11, 2016

Is this how it started in Nazi Germany in the 1920s? No, we’re not being melodramatic. Those are the thoughts flying through our heads when we read that the Attorney General from the U.S. Virgin Islands–an unincorporated “territory” of the United States–issued a subpoena to the conservative think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute demanding all communication between it and ExxonMobil on the issue of mythical “climate change.” The AG, a radical Democrat, is fishing to see if he can sue Exxon into extinction, because people at Exxon may have an opinion on climate change contrary to the radical AG’s opinion. No longer can adults have honest disagreements on important issues like climate change. Now, if you disagree and attempt to offer evidence to support your position, including communication with a “non-approved” source–you may end up in jail and your money stripped away. The parallels between what leftists today are doing and leftists did nearly a century ago in Germany are chilling. The first thing to go is freedom of expression…
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Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Crime | Energy Services | Huntingdon County (PA) | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Pipelines | Regulation | Sunoco Logistics

Sunoco Tricks Radicalized Protester – Returns and Cuts More Trees
April 8, 2016April 8, 2016

Last week MDN told you about the daughter of a Huntingdon County, PA landowner radicalized by Big Green groups–as evidenced by her association with well known protesters previously arrested–who took to a tree on her mom’s property in order to illegally stop crews working on tree clearing for the Mariner East 2 pipeline (see PA Anti Literally Goes Up a Tree to Stop Mariner East 2 Pipeline). Even though she was breaking the law–and a judge’s order–local law enforcement couldn’t be bothered with climbing the tree to arrest her (see ‘Wackos in the Trees’ Protest Continues in Huntingdon County, PA). Nor, does it seem, did they arrest her after she came down on April 1. She stayed up a tree until April 1 because crews can no longer clear trees for fear of harming the threatened Indiana bat species that sometimes hangs out in those trees. Or at least, that’s what we thought. In a very clever move, tree clearing crews returned to the property this week, after April 1, and cleared more trees previously inhabited by the nutty landowner’s daughter. Don’t worry, they got permission…
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Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Industrywide Issues | Pipelines

NJ Residents “Get Rowdy” in Opposition to NY-NJ Pilgrim Pipeline
April 8, 2016April 8, 2016

Yesterday MDN reported on the antics of anti-fossil fuelers in New York in their quest to stop an oil pipeline from Albany to New Jersey (see NY Antis Attempt to Stop Pilgrim Pipelines with Local Bans). Antis in NY aren’t the only ones up in arms over the Pilgrim Pipeline project. A “rowdy” group of New Jerseyites are also miffed and want their county government to put the kibosh to the pipeline plan…
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Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Industrywide Issues | New York | Pipelines | Regulation | Statewide NY

NY Antis Attempt to Stop Pilgrim Pipelines with Local Bans
April 7, 2016April 7, 2016

“Whoa, take ‘er easy there, Pilgrim.” – John Wayne in the movie “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” (1962) In November, MDN told you about Pilgrim Pipeline Holdings, developing an East Coast pipeline to carry refined petroleum products such as gasoline, diesel, heating oil, and jet and aviation fuel northbound from Linden, New Jersey to Albany, New York (178 miles). In addition, a second Pilgrim pipeline will carry crude oil from Albany south to NJ and other locations. Two pipelines, side by side, liquids flowing through them in different directions (see Will Pilgrim Pipeline be Allowed to Settle in the NY World?). Anti fossil fuel nutters who infest New York State are, however, attempting to block both pipelines by using a 107 year-old law and local bans. Will the antis succeed yet again?…
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Albany County | Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | New York | Pipelines | Statewide NY | Williams

RFK Jr Invokes Religion at Anti-Pipeline Rally in Albany, NY
April 6, 2016April 6, 2016

A group of around 200 anti-fracking activists–or fractivists–protested at the steps of the New York State Capitol Building in Albany, NY yesterday. They were there nominally to protest Gov. Cuomo’s inevitable cave to allow the Constitution Pipeline to be built across the eastern portion of the state. However, the language from the speakers–in particular from the rather nutty Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (i.e. “Junior”)–was instructive. These people are fossil fuel haters–and their speeches dripped with their irrational hatred for all fossil fuels. Junior called fossil fuels “the dirtiest fuels from hell,” and then he called so-called renewable energy “patriotic fuels from heaven.” Some of you have laughed and poked fun at MDN, some of you have written us in anger, some have even unsubscribed when we have commented in the past on the hysterical and irrational antics of anti-fossil fuelers, pointing out that their belief in man-made global warming is religious and faith-based and NOT rooted in science. Junior’s own words yesterday are 100% vindication of our position. He couches the debate over fossil fuels in religious language. We were, and always have been, right about anti-drillers. The vast majority of antis don’t oppose drilling because of “water contamination” or “air pollution” or “methane migration” or any of a hundred other red herring excuses. They object because they fervently choose to believe in global warming, with no scientific evidence whatsoever, making all fossil fuels “evil” in their twisted worldview…
Read More “RFK Jr Invokes Religion at Anti-Pipeline Rally in Albany, NY”
Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | New York | Orange County | Pipelines | Spectra Energy | Westchester County

Hypocrites Protest “Fracked Gas Infrastructure” in Hudson Valley
April 5, 2016April 5, 2016

We spotted a story from the Hudson Valley area of New York State–close enough to New York City that it’s infested with anti-drilling liberals–that caught our attention for a couple of reasons. It’s a story of about a protest held yesterday in Peekskill, NY. The protest was against Spectra Energy’s work on their Algonquin Incremental Market (AIM) pipeline project. From all appearances, four protesters showed up for the protest–and yet it got big news treatment. Most Sundays there are more than four people who show up at MDN HQ for lunch (when our kids come home to visit). The local newspaper hasn’t ever shown up to cover these momentous (for the Willis household) events. Perhaps if we held up a big banner outside that says “Welcome Home Children” the local news outlets would arrive and cover it? But we digress. The other aspect of the story that caught our attention is the admission by one of the protesters that they not only oppose the AIM project–they oppose all “fracked gas infrastructure” projects. She is demanding that NY “transition to safe, clean, renewable energy, which is wind, water and solar.” That is, the protesters are animated and motivated by an irrational hatred of all fossil fuels. How did the protesters arrive at their protest? Driving cars that burn fossil fuels riding on tires made from petroleum products and sitting on seats made from plastic (a petroleum product) wearing clothes on their bodies and shoes on their feet made from petroleum products. Holding up signs objecting to…petroleum products…
Read More “Hypocrites Protest “Fracked Gas Infrastructure” in Hudson Valley”
Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Industrywide Issues

Democrat Attorney Generals Back Away from Al Gore, NY AG
April 4, 2016April 4, 2016

Remember the story we ran last week noting a big climate change meeting in New York City where Al Gore partnered up with the New York’s odious, anti-drilling Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to smear fossil fuel companies and threaten them with lawsuits if they don’t admit global warming is real and that their companies are killing the earth (see Climate Change Hucksters, Incl. NY AG & Al Gore, Threaten O&G)? Along with Gore and Schneiderman there were attorneys general from 11 states also attending–and got their picture taken with the King of Climate Change himself. Turns out it was all just a photo op. While Gore and Schneiderman wanted the world to think that all of these states are prepared to sue fossil fuel companies, the attorneys general from 9 of the 11 states are backing away. They don’t want to sue fossil fuel companies. Only California and Massachusetts joined New York in the threat. So the entire thing was a charade, a scam, one more in a line of scams from Gore…
Read More “Democrat Attorney Generals Back Away from Al Gore, NY AG”
Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Crime | Energy Services | Huntingdon County (PA) | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Pipelines | Sunoco Logistics

‘Wackos in the Trees’ Protest Continues in Huntingdon County, PA
April 1, 2016April 1, 2016

Yesterday we told you about a Big Green effort to stop tree clearing for the Mariner East 2 pipeline in Huntingdon County, PA–about a young woman who climbed 40 feet up a tree to sit in a tree house so crews could not cut down the trees around her (see PA Anti Literally Goes Up a Tree to Stop Mariner East 2 Pipeline). She’s still “up a tree.” Looks like her publicity stunt worked because starting today crews can’t legally cut any more trees for fear of hurting an Indiana bat. (We say it’s more than bats that are batty in Huntingdon County.) The young woman’s mother, who happens to own the property and the trees, was arrested approaching the cutting crews (after being told by a judge to stay away) because, she says, she feared they would cut a tree close to her ~~blithering idiot~~ daughter and hurt her. There’s also another nutter up a tree on the property. Even though the tree climbers prevented harvesting of a few trees, Sunoco Logistics, the builder of the pipeline, says it’s no big deal–they got almost all of the trees cut they needed to and come fall it won’t take long to nip the last few. Here’s how anti-drilling PBS (funded in part with taxpayer dollars) reported the ongoing “tree-sit,” as they call it…
Read More “‘Wackos in the Trees’ Protest Continues in Huntingdon County, PA”
Air Quality | Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Statewide PA

Philly Green Group Throws Temper Trantrum After Energy Hub Meeting
April 1, 2016April 1, 2016

Petulant, spoiled rotten children often grow up to be petulant, spoiled rotten adults–adults who throw temper tantrums when they don’t get their own way. Such is the case with members of Green Justice Philly, a coalition of anti-drilling groups opposed to fossil fuels and opposed to a plan to bring more fossil fuels to Philadelphia as part of a northeastern “energy hub” concept. Yesterday we told you about Wednesday’s closed-door meeting where a new study was released, a “road map” that can be used to bring more natural gas and natural gas liquids to the City of Brotherly Love (see Philly Chamber Publishes Roadmap to Turn Region into “Energy Hub”). There certainly wasn’t much love displayed by a handful of boisterous protesters outside of the meeting. The meeting was private and the disruptive protesters were not allowed inside to conduct their normal mischief. And therein lies the winter of their discontent. Following the event Green Justice Philly issued a press release to pout like little children crying that mommy wouldn’t let them into the room. Awww, poor babies…
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