Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel

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    Inflection Energy Defeats Delaware Riverkeeper in Lycoming Co.

    It doesn’t happen often enough, which is why we make a big deal of it when it does: An energy company (in this case Inflection Energy) completely, utterly, and humiliatingly defeated THE Delaware Riverkeeper in an important court case in Lycoming County, PA. Less than a month ago we brought you the news that a Lycoming County judge had told an anti-driller, backed by Delaware Riverkeeper and Riverkeeper attorney Jordan Yeager, that the case they had filed to prevent Inflection Energy from drilling a legally permitted well was frivolous. The judge said he would allow the case to go forward, but only if the anti (and Riverkeeper) put up big bucks as collateral for the eventuality that they would likely lose (see PA Judge to Antis Seeking Drilling Delay: Put Up $5.69M or Shut Up). Turns out making these sleazeballs put their money where their mouth is, is good medicine. Riverkeeper and its “client” (the local anti-driller) have bowed out. The case is now closed and can’t be re-opened–and it sets a precedent for similar cases. In other words, the good guys won this time!…
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    FANG Protesters Strike RI Compressor Station Again, 8 Arrested

    FANG logoJust like a bad case of gout that keeps returning, or perhaps more relevantly like a flareup of herpes, radical protesters keep using illegal actions to oppose the expansion of a compressor station in Rhode Island–Spectra Energy’s Burrillville, RI compressor station. They used illegal actions in August (see FANG Protesters Chain Themselves to RI Compressor Station Gate). They did it again in September (see FANG Protesters Strike RI Compressor Station Again, 3 Arrested). And they did it yet again this past weekend. This time eight protesters were arrested, including a nun who has forsaken her first love, Jesus, and replaced Him with worship of Mother Earth. The protesters illegally trespassed on Spectra’s property and were arrested and removed. Once again, the protest was organized by the threatening-sounding group that calls itself FANG (yes, that is their logo, not something we made up)…
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    Jefferson Hills, PA Antis Oppose EQT Well Near Future School Site

    A battle is heating up in Jefferson Hills (Allegheny County), PA where EQT has (so far) applied to drill a single shale well, near where a new school will be built. Because notifications of the neighbors requires EQT to list the maximum number of wells that may eventually get drilled at the well pad site, EQT has said that eventually that pad may support 20 wells. Note they are not planning on drilling 20 wells at the site. Further note: we’ve never even heard of 20-well site drilled anywhere in the state! Facts don’t matter in this debate. Anti-drilling radicals have latched on to the 20-well number and are raising a fuss, attempting to stop EQT from drilling even a single well. The primary objection seems to be because it will be near a school–a school not yet built…
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    Anti-Fracking Jackets for Sale at Local Craft Fair in Pittsburgh

    Ever been to a local craft fair? They’re fun. You usually find everything on display and for sale from potholders to original paintings to wooden toys to kettle corn. It’s always eclectic–you never know what you’re going to find at such a show. The one thing we’ve never seen (or heard of), until now, is anti-fracking items for sale. Such a booth turned up at a recent craft fair held in Pittsburgh. It’s just, well, unseemly. Out of place. Kind of like a drunken relative who shows up for a family gathering–someone whom no one wants to be there…
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    Binghamton Newspaper Extreme Anti-Drilling Bias on Display

    This is what passes for “journalism” at the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin (P&SB), MDN’s hometown newspaper. Once upon a time the P&SB had a lefty reporter working for them, Tom Wilber. We’ve highlighted Tom’s anti-fracking articles in the past. Tom is a good writer, and fancied himself an Author, so he left the P&SB to write a book on fracking, “Under the Surface: Fracking, Fortunes, and the Fate of the Marcellus Shale.” Perhaps Tom thought he could retire in style after attacking shale energy. The book bombed. Tom had to get a day job again and ended up working for the P&SB (surprise!). He recently penned a rehashed diatribe against shale drilling in a series on shale energy appearing in the pages of the P&SB. We found it, quite frankly, boring. If we’re bored, you will be too–which is why we didn’t bother to comment on the series. Fortunately, MDN friends Tom Shepstone and others “took one for the team” and analyzed Tom’s latest anti-drilling diatribe (see NGN: Is That All There Is, Tom Wilber?). Tom (Shepstone) deserves hazard pay for reading it all. Our point: Tom Wilber is what the P&SB considers to be a fair, impartial journalist. Well, no they don’t, not really. They know he’s as biased and unfair as the editors at the P&SB, which is why they run his articles. They present his work as impartial journalism. To further highlight just how unfair and biased the P&SB is, we spotted two opinion pieces in the Sunday edition (yesterday). You know how newspapers run side-by-side “for and against” op-ed pieces? This time it was “against and against”–both op-eds were against fracking and shale energy. That’s what passes for “fair” in the P&SB…
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    PennEast: The Long, Careful, Deliberate Road to Pipeline Approval

    The latest theme/meme being pedaled by groups like THE Delaware Riverkeeper (Maya van Rossum) and other anti-fossil fuel groups is that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is just a big ole rubber stamp for Big Oil and Big Gas. FERC, they say, never met a pipeline project they didn’t approve. FERC is in the back pocket of the fossil fuel industry. Yada yada yada. Some of the crazier of the crazies took to attending open FERC meetings in Washington, DC and disrupting those meetings (see FERC Clears the Room at DC HQ After Riff Raff Start Mouthing Off). Once they were banned from attending, they began to illegally block entrance to the building (see 24 Anti-Drilling Protesters Arrested by Homeland Security in DC). FERC has been made a kindergartenish bogyman by those who oppose pipelines. To counter some of the nonsense pedaled by these groups (and their willing accomplices in the media), PennEast Pipeline recently published an article to set the record straight. FERC doesn’t simply rubber stamp a pipeline application like PennEast’s–a pipeline proposed to run from Wilkes-Barre, PA to Trenton, NJ. PennEast faces a “gauntlet of approvals”–including 11 federal, state and local agencies that must approve thousands of pages of plans, much of it stringent safety requirements. Approving a pipeline is an intense, detailed, and LONG process in which no stone is left unturned. There is no rubber stamp except in the childish minds of irrational anti-fossil fuelers…
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    Water Well Testing Near OH Injection Wells Comes Back Negative

    Athens County, OH is infested with liberal Democrats who irrationally hate fossil fuels. Let’s just get the facts out there on the table, shall we? The ninny nannies in Athens finally (after years of agitation) browbeat their neighbors into voting for a frack ban last year (see 3 of 4 Frack Ban Ballot Measures in Ohio Fail – Athens Exception). Whatever. Athens County hosts eight wastewater injection wells and that drives the crazies every crazier. They’re doing their damnedest to get all eight shut down, and to deny a permit for a ninth well (see Athens County Asks Gov Kasich & ODNR to Stop New Injection Wells). One of their strategies is to prove that the existing wastewater injection wells are causing pollution of nearby water wells and groundwater supplies. So a study was done, testing nine different water wells for the presence of volatile organic compounds–a signal that wastewater is leaking into the wells. Guess what they found? Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero. The injection wells are not contaminating groundwater and water well sources. What do the crazies want? More testing! More more more more more. They want to test until they find something–or rig the tests so something gets found…
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    Shale Gas Faces Double Trouble: Low Prices & Pipeline Opposition

    According to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), the natural gas industry faces a double “new normal” that hobbles the industry: (1) low prices for natural gas for the foreseeable future, and (2) public opposition to pipeline expansion, especially in New England. Here’s what IEEFA’s executive director, Sandy Buchanan, says about this double threat to our beloved industry…
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    Paris Climate Summit Jazzes Obama…Why it Doesn’t Matter

    Yesterday our Dear Leader, Barack Hussein Obama (BHO), addressed global warming nutters from around the world who came to Paris to agree to less freedom for citizens of the United States (and to sentence developing countries to lifetimes of misery). That about sums up what the United Nations twenty-first conference of the parties (COP-21) is all about. It’s about limiting economic activity in countries around the world under the pretense of man-made global warming. What’s funny about yesterday is that even one of their own, BHO, was a little too windy for the assembled nutters. Apparently you can have too much wind–who knew? BHO, like other world leaders to address the assembled warmers, was given a 3-minute time slot to spout his opinions blaming the USA for global warming. But BHO, like the Energizer Bunny, just kept going and going and going. At the nine minute mark the Frenchies started to hit the buzzer and kept stabbing it periodically to signal BHO it was time to get his @$$ off the stage. But the tone deaf BHO kept right on jabbering until he was done reading the last word the teleprompter told him to read–some 11 minutes after he began. Below we have the story of BHO’s long-winded address to COP-21, along with some rational views about what this ill-fated conference is really all about, and why no agreement BHO signs will ever see the light of day (or matter) in the good old US of A…
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    PA Supreme Court to Hear Case on Banning Drilling on State Lands

    Pennsylvania’s Democrat Supreme Court will take up the issue of whether or not private property rights still exist in the Keystone State. That’s the clear legal issue before the court over whether or not the State of Pennsylvania can continue to allow oil and gas drilling on state lands and use the revenues it receives as part of the general fund. Lower courts have all ruled that yes, the state can legally lease its own property, and allow drilling under public land for which it doesn’t, in some cases, own the mineral rights. But radical environmentalists are attempting to abuse the state’s highest court–now packed with liberal Democrats–to achieve what they can’t achieve by any other means. They’re hoping the high court will find a new cockamamie “right” to protect the environment that trumps public and even private property rights in the process. That is, they’re hoping the Supremes will rule that the state MUST ban drilling on state-owned land, in order to protect Mother Earth…
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    Antis Ramp Up to Discredit EPA Study that Found Fracking is Safe

    It was certainly a major blow to radical environmentalists when, after studying fracking for more than four years (reviewing some 950 studies, including conducting several original studies of its own), the federal Environmental Protection Agency announced what everyone already knew: fracking is safe (see EPA Draft Report Says Fracking Doesn’t Pollute Groundwater Supplies). Science is science and facts are facts. The announcement took the wind out of the sails for anti-fossil fuel nutters who thought they could convince everyone to return to the stone ages and eliminate the use of fossil fuels. However, science has been corrupted and politicized–just witness the global warming debate. Radical environmentalists knowing they can never convince the hoi polloi, the great unwashed, the people they consider idiots, to go along with their holier-than-thou energy plans to eliminate fossil fuels, if fracking is perceived as anything but evil–are fighting back. Here’s the plan. Get the EPA to discredit its own study. That process is now underway. In October the usual radical suspects showed up at EPA HQ to demand they turn their backs on their own study (see Anti Groups Try to Convince EPA They Got it Wrong with Water Study). Apparently they got through to at least a few sympathetic “scientists” who are members of the EPA’s own Scientific Advisory Board…
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    Natural Gas is Killing City Trees! Tree Whisperer Tells All

    Here’s one more reason to dump evil, nasty, rotten fossil fuels–like natural gas. It kills trees. Yes, methane is a TREE KILLER. Who knew? In yet another laughable “all fossil fuels are evil” meme from the usual suspects at the Democrat house organ called StateImpact Pennsylvania, we get the latest anti-fossil fuel story about how methane leaks in cities are killing poor, defenseless trees that can’t stand up to that nasty bully, fugitive methane. Seems there’s a good business to be had being a tree whisperer…
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    Anti-Frackers Out of Control at Athens Mtg on Wayne Natl Forest

    Correction: We labeled the publication reporting on the BLM meeting in Athens as “the Athens Post.” It is, more correctly, “The Post,” a student newspaper published at Ohio University’s Athens campus. We have yet another glaring example of the outright lies and distortions of not only national, but local liberal media. In this case from the student-run  The Post — a publication of Ohio University – Athens. A “reporter” (leftie stenographer) is repeating propaganda from anti-drilling crazies who attended a recent meeting hosted by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the U.S. Forest Service about the plan to begin fracking in the Wayne National Forest. As they usually do, a group of hippie and hippie wannabe nutters turned out to harass people who support drilling. The antis behaved badly–as they always do. They threw things (paper airplanes, namely), they spat on fracking supporters, hollered and chanted and in general, behaved in an aggressive manner. At one point, when it became apparent the meeting was getting out of hand, a U.S. Forest Service officer used his baton to push some of the crazies back. A very short clip, taken out of context, shows it happening–and that became the focus of the story published by The Post. From start to finish the “story” is a lie. These aggressive (we’d call them terrorist) nutters are demanding the Forest Service agent lose his job for doing his job in protecting the peaceful people at the meeting…
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    Susan Sarandon Supports Anti-Pipeline Movement in Massachusetts

    What do Hollywood celebrities do to boost a sagging career? Celebrities who were once “A” list but have sunk to “B” and “C” list status? Celebrities like Mark Ruffalo and Susan Sarandon found notoriety in supporting the anti-fracking movement. But the problem with “success” when it comes to anti-fracking (a la New York’s ban), is that once you’ve won, what do you do then? You see, antis like Ruffalo and Sarandon always need another bogyman–another “cause” to inject (a) notoriety, and (b) meaning into their otherwise meaningless lives. Like a junkie who needs another fix, these people need to be in the news, their face and name plastered everywhere, or they don’t think anyone “loves” them anymore. It’s a shame what depths they sink to, really. At least Sarandon has talent–Ruffalo has no talent. Sarandon (or more properly, her agent) has (surprise!) found a new cause to promote–time to prop up that sagging career. Sarandon has thrown in her lot with the crazies opposing the Kinder Morgan’s Northeast Energy Direct (NED) pipeline project–the massive $5 billion expansion of the Tennessee Gas Pipeline system from Pennsylvania into New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and back into Massachusetts where it will end near Boston. Sarandon recently issued a statement through the Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust, whose director, Leigh Youngblood, has been at the forefront of opposing any new pipelines in the Bay State…
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    NY Town Supports, Antis Fundraise Against, Waterless Fracking

    MDN editor Jim Willis is often asked, when people learn of his occupation of writing about shale drilling, “What’s up with New York? Will there ever be any drilling in the state?” Jim’s answer is always the same: some day. But likely not until we excrete out of office our current man-child governor, Andy Cuomo. The one potential bright spot for fracking in the Empire State is a plan by a small group of farmers in Tioga County, NY to use waterless fracking technology to drill a test shale well (see NY Landowners File to Frack Horizontal Well w/Waterless Tech). The Snyder Farm Group, as it’s called, has filed an application with the state Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC)–owned and controlled by Cuomo–so that’s where the application now sits, with nothing happening so far as we can tell. Sooner or later the Snyder Group will have to sue the DEC to move things along. In the meantime, we have two bits of news to share with respect to the Town of Barton waterless fracking proposal. One bit of news is about support for the plan in Tioga County, and the other is about opposition to the plan from the usual suspects who oppose ANYTHING to do with fossil energy, not because it’s somehow inherently dangerous to extract natural gas, but because it IS natural gas. An irrational hatred of carbon molecules (the stuff you breathe out with every breath)…
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    PA County Judge Rules Rex Can Begin Drilling First Martian Well

    My Favorite MartianAs we have long chronicled, a few anti-drilling parents from the Mars School District (Butler County, far western part of the state), backed by a couple of Big Green groups from the other side of the state (in the Philadelphia area), sued Middlesex Township to stop shale drilling in rural portions of the county. Rex Energy had applied for, was legally permitted for, but still hasn’t been allowed to drill a series of wells some three-fourths of a mile from the Mars School (for background, see our long list of “Martian” stories here). This is the outrage: These very same anti-drillers fought hard to overturn a portion of the 2012 Act 13 law that took zoning of oil and gas out of the hands of local towns and put it in state hands. The zoning portion of Act 13 was overturned by the PA Supreme Court. The antis got what they wanted–except, it seems, they got a little too much of what they wanted. They didn’t factor that in some towns there would be a majority who favor fracking and shale drilling–like in Middlesex. Middlesex ran an extensive series of nine hearings over seven months and eventually adopted zoning ordinances that allow Rex to drill. So the antis sued to stop what they previously sued to achieve. Eventually a group of landowners counter-sued the antis (rightfully so) for denying them access to allow drilling on their own land. That lawsuit is still playing out in the courts. Last Thursday a Butler County judge ruled, once again, that the zoning ordinances adopted by Middlesex are legal and therefore drilling can commence. The antis will appeal the decision and continue to try and block local landowners from legally using their own property as they see fit…
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