Disaster at NY DEC: Cuomo Nominates Anti-Driller to Helm Agency
It appears that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is attempting to shove the teetering oil and gas industry in the state over a metaphorical cliff and put it completely out of business. Last Friday Cuomo nominated an anti-driller, Basil Seggos, to be the next Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC)–the organization that oversees oil and gas drilling in the state. Seggos will replace another anti-driller, Joe Martens, complicit in Cuomo’s decision to ban fracking. Seggos will continue and likely expand the same policies begun by Martens. Seggos previously worked for seven years as the chief investigator and lawyer (chief litigator) for the radical environmental organization Riverkeeper. That alone should disqualify him from serving in such an important position–but in New York, the inmates run the asylum. You can tell Seggos will be a disaster (for the oil and gas industry) in his new position by the list of anti-drilling organizations falling all over themselves to congratulate Cuomo on the appointment. Seggos’ appointment is another in a string of disastrous decisions by the corrupt Andrew Cuomo administration…
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What is it about some anti-drillers (actually, anti-fossil fuelers) that makes them closed-minded and unreasonable? A Colorado research chemist and two technology students from Singapore set out to answer the question of whether or not shale oil should be produced. All three attended a 10-week intensive course focusing on Utah’s vast oil reserves (no, this story is not about the Marcellus/Utica per se, but it is illustrative nonetheless). Although the three had intended on submitting a research paper at the 35th Annual Oil Shale Symposium being held yesterday and today in Salt Lake City, the research paper ended up being a 116-page e-book they’re selling on Amazon, called “
Sometimes you have to reach out to the other side (i.e. the unreasonable enemy of fossil fuels) to try and convince them that the oil and gas industry is not Satanic. We don’t bother with trying to convince them (lost cause in our opinion), but kudos to those who have the patience to try it. Case in point: Cabot Oil & Gas recently hosted a delegation from the Big Green/radical group Trout Unlimited (TU). TU, you may recall, is the sad story of a once great group co-opted into being a radical green group (see 
Some 35 anti-fossil fuel wackos, apparently with no jobs, show up during a slow news day at the Statehouse in Trenton, NJ to protest the PennEast Pipeline and news outlets report it as a major story, implying there’s a huge movement against the pipeline. What about the 366,500+ residents who also live in Mercer County and who aren’t opposed to the PennEast and who didn’t turn out to protest it? Is that worth a story? Apparently not. Of course this tiny protest wasn’t spontaneous–it was organized, planned, hyped and paid for by nutty Sierra Clubbers and THE Delaware Riverkeeper (Maya van Rossum)…
Your beliefs matter. For example, if you believe in the fairy tale of man-made global warming (see 
It’s heartbreaking, but not surprising, to see residents in a North Carolina make the same mistakes made by residents in New York State. Monday night the Stokes County (NC) Board of Commissioners voted to enact a three-year moratorium on potential shale drilling in the county. Well-meaning but completely ignorant residents agitated and cajoled the commissioners into voting for no drilling. Stokes, located in northern NC, is part of the Dan River sub-basin, which in turn is part of the larger Triassic Basin. Earlier this year the state cleared the way for fracking to begin (see 
We don’t like bashing Pope Francis–honest. We have a very healthy respect for the Catholic Church. But Pope Francis is a Marxist–and he’s pedaling Marxist dogma instead of Christian dogma and he needs to be called out for it. During the Pope’s visit to the U.S. this past week, mainstream liberal media went wall to wall with the visit–euphoric over his pronouncements on the environment and his belief in the fairy tale of man-made global warming. Pope Francis is a big hit with godless atheists in this country–which should tell you something. We spotted a refutation of the Pope’s misguided philosophies when it comes to dumping fossil fuels, offered by the bright minds at The Heartland Institute. We found their comments to be spot on and the best possible refutation and correction of the errors delivered by il Papa during his U.S. visit…
THE Delaware Riverkeeper, Maya van Rossum, and a bunch of her anti-fossil fuel pals delivered a letter on Wednesday to America’s most liberal governor, PA Gov. Tom Wolf, asking him to immediately suspend all further Marcellus drilling in the state and while he’s at it, stop building any new pipelines. They also “demand” (their words) that Wolf shut down his Pipeline Infrastructure Task Force which he created back in May (see 
The PennFuture Secretary of the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection, John Quigley, continues to promote a hard-left agenda inside a once-great agency. Any time a Democrat like Quigley pairs the word “justice” with another word, like “environmental”, you know it’s a bad idea. Quigley is promoting the concept of creating an “office of environmental justice” within the DEP. What does that even mean? Is Quigley implying we currently have environmental “injustice” running rampant through the Commonwealth? Quigley also wants to use revenue raised from an obscenely high severance tax on Marcellus Shale drilling to fund more DEP inspectors to hang out at drill pads. Must be Quigley didn’t get the memo from Wolf that ALL of the severance tax money, if Wolf is lucky enough to get such a tax passed (very much in doubt), has already been promised in a quid pro quo agreement to teachers’ unions that helped get him elected…
In early September MDN told you that the Massachusetts Dept. of Public Utilities (DPU) approved long-term contracts for three utilities–Berkshire Gas, National Grid and Columbia Gas–to buy natural gas supplies from Kinder Morgan’s Northeast Energy Direct (NED) pipeline–if it gets built (see 
Only in America, and only in Ohio (slowly shaking our heads). Last Thursday, the Ohio Supreme Court voted 7-0 to force an anti-fracking ballot measure that has been on the ballot in Youngstown, Ohio four times previously to be added to the ballot once again in November–for a fifth time. Even though (as the justices acknowledge) the ballot measure itself “may be” unconstitutional, as their own court recently found (see 
Question: Where did Robin Hood live? Answer: Sherwood Forest. Everybody knows that! Don’t look now but those evil, vile, filthy frackers want to begin fracking in Sherwood Forest. Yes, THE Sherwood Forest where the mythical Robin Hood once roamed with his merry band of outlaws. Believe it or not, and against all odds, the United Kingdom recently re-elected a conservative government, by a strong majority, and that government is pushing forward with a program to encourage shale drilling in merry ole’ England–including in Sherwood Forest…
It seems anti-drillers love to launch lawsuits, but when the shoe is applied to the other foot and lawsuits are filed against them, they don’t like it so much. Hypocrites. A small group of anti-drilling parents in the Mars School District in Middlesex Township (Butler County), PA–folks we call Martians–want to prevent the legal, legitimate, and now fully permitted right of Rex Energy to drill a few Marcellus Shale wells three-fourths of a mile away from the Mars School. We’ve long chronicled this battle (see