Mass. Attorney General Continues Campaign Against NED Pipeline
Does the shrill-sounding Massachusetts Attorney General, Maura Healey, belong to any radical environmental groups like the Sierra Club? Because she sure sounds like she does. Healey is doing everything in her power (and she wields a lot of power) to inject herself into the federal government’s role of approving or not approving Kinder Morgan’s proposed Northeast Energy Direct (NED) pipeline project–a project that would stretch from Pennsylvania into New York, through Massachusetts into New Hampshire and finally back into Massachusetts near Boston. It is a mammoth $5.5 billion project meant to address the economic hardship situation in New England where they pay 4x what other areas of the country pay for electricity and natural gas. Yet the shrill-sounding Healey continues to file letter after letter with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the agency tasked with reviewing the project, hoping she can convince them to reject the pipeline. Healey is one of the many unreasonable (not able to be reasoned with) anti-fossil fuelers against the project–because it’s a fossil fuel. Here’s her latest tirade, filed with FERC last Friday, the last day for public comments on the NED project…
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One of the Pennsylvania Democrat in-house publishing operations is the Harrisburg Patriot-News. Owned by Dems, run by Dems, slavishly supportive of Dems. That about sums up the Patriot-News. They don’t even pretend to be unbiased in their “reporting” on issues like the Marcellus Shale. This past Monday the Patriot-News began running a series of lying hit pieces against the Marcellus industry–in a transparent attempt to help their boy Gov. Tom Wolf in his bid to hike taxes on the drilling industry. We’ve read some of the articles. Lie after lie after lie. We haven’t commented on it here in MDN because it’s just more of the same. Why bother? The paper is obviously agenda-driven and cares nothing whatever about reporting real, actual news. However, MDN friend Tom Shepstone has put together a brilliant expose of their lies, so we’re bringing you a copy (from his always-excellent 
The legal beagles at energy law firm Babst Calland are raising the alert that another “sue and settle” lawsuit has been filed against the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by seven radical environmental groups. This is the latest attempt at forcing the EPA to comply with a lawsuit that they intentionally lose. What? Yes, they intentionally lose the lawsuit and then tell Congress that they “have to” comply with a court order “forcing” them to enact certain unlegislated rules and regulations in order to comply with a judge’s order–in effect giving them one more weapon in their arsenal to illegally regulate the oil and gas industry. Regulation of oil and gas is Constitutionally left up to the individual states. The EPA, especially under Obama, has been innovating ways to circumvent the Constitution and Congress and cease regulation authority. So-called “sue and settle” lawsuits are one of the ways they do it. Here comes another one. This time radical environmental groups (which should be sued themselves) have sued the EPA to force them to regular oil and gas drilling wastes under the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). Here’s a summary of what’s happening…
In December President Obama will travel to Paris to sign a climate treaty that forfeits the sovereignty of the United States of America–the country he swore to protect. The Paris climate treaty is another in a long line of attempts (like Kyoto) to convince stupid Americans to give up the right to control their own country and destiny–to sell ourselves out and let non-American, un-elected socialists from other countries determine how we will live in the future. They use the bogeyman myth of global warming to do it. They are all aiming to commit mass energy suicide by outlawing fossil fuels–but it won’t work if we don’t play along. We pray Congress stops this madness, but now we despair. You see, big business is in bed with big government and funds the political ruling class in Washington and in return the politicians pass laws favorable to them. Some 81 of the biggest big businesses (who contribute heavily to Congress and receive preferential treatment in return) have signed on to a pact to support Obama’s climate madness. They actually want him to sign the treaty that gives up our national sovereignty. Without these 81 big businesses (full list below) you literally could not live–from Walmart to Hershey to Nike to Apple to Google to Kellogg’s to American Express…the list goes on. Sadly, even some in our own industry have signed on, including Invenergy. Shame on them. If we were to boycott them (as should happen) we’d have to live like hermits in the wilderness. No one can live without the goods and services provided by this list of 81 mega corporations. And each and every one of them have sold us out. It’s truly a sad and depressing day…
What many rank and file members of the New York anti-fracking movement may not realize, or perhaps chooses to ignore, is that the people at their rallies and meetings standing behind the microphones are being paid to do so. The organizers of groups like New Yorkers Against Fracking and Frack Action are funded by the odious Park Foundation to pedal their smears and lies against fossil energy. The Park Foundation gave New Yorkers Against Fracking $125,000 earlier this year, in part to pay for organizers to travel across the country spreading the word (i.e. lie) that a little rag-tag bunch of protesters convinced the mighty Andrew Cuomo of the righteousness of their cause–and you can do it in your state too. In other words, the anti-fracking movement has become a cottage industry where people get paid to mouth off at rallies, before reporters–before anyone who will listen. They are paid by the Park Foundation and other Big Green groups to do so…
We wonder, do the liberal editors of the Democrat propaganda machine known as the Scranton Times-Tribune consider it “fair” to close down legitimate businesses that provide jobs and tax revenue to the state by targeting them with even higher taxes, forcing them out of business because they no longer turn a profit? Is “profit” a bad word around the news room of the Times-Tribune? Is the word “capitalism” banned from so-called reporters’ lips at the Times-Tribune? Those are the kinds of thoughts that roll around our brain box when we read yet another sycophantic “we need to tax the Marcellus industry more than we do already” editorial from the brainiacs at the Times-Tribune…
If landowners along the route of the PennEast Pipeline don’t sign a lease with the company, PennEast says they will be forced to (and will) use eminent domain to gain lease rights. The PennEast, as a reminder, is a proposed pipeline costing $1 billion that will run from Luzerne County, PA (near Wilkes-Barre) all the way to Mercer County, NJ (just outside of Trenton), flowing 1 billion cubic feet of clean-burning Marcellus Shale gas each and every day. Landowners along the pipeline’s route will still own the land, but there will be restrictions–you can’t erect a building over top of a pipeline, for example. PennEast looks at eminent domain as an absolute last resort. However, according to the radicals at the PA Sierra Club who are opposing the pipeline, around two-thirds of the landowners along the pipeline’s route have not yet signed a lease to allow the pipeline across their land. PennEast recently filed their official application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (see 
Two days ago MDN told you that the U.S. Coast Guard has approved of a project off the coast of New York and New Jersey that would import natural gas from Trinidad (see 
Last month MDN told you that a county judge in Butler County, PA dismissed a lawsuit brought by a business and group of Middlesex Township landowners against two Big Green groups and four anti-fossil fuel parents from the Mars School District–whom we refer to as the Martians (see 
Even the election of judges for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is political, sadly. Extreme leftist environmental groups in PA, including Clean Water Action, the Pennsylvania Sierra Club, PennEnvironment, and Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania are engaging in political activities (in violation of their non-profit, tax-exempt status) by endorsing a slate of candidates and pushing their members to vote for those candidates. We know this will be a complete shock for you, but the three candidates running for three open seats on the Supreme Court being pushed by the enviro extremist groups are all (gasp) liberal Democrats who are likely to vote against the Marcellus Shale industry on cases that come before the high court…
More evidence of the insanity of well-funded Big Green groups like Food & Water Watch, THE (arrogant) Delaware Riverkeeper, Clean Air Council and others. Not getting enough traction on their own, 20 Big Green groups have decided to collude in violation of their non-profit status. The 20 groups held a “massive” joint rally yesterday in Philadelphia (pictures look like there’s maybe three dozen people present) to announce the formation of a new coalition called Green Justice Philly. The object of the coalition is to push back against the plan to make Philadelphia an energy hub in the northeast–like Houston is in the southwest. The gang of 20 have pledged to coordinate their lies and attacks on the fossil fuel industry, hoping to stop forward progress against fossil fuel companies, which they call “lawbreakers.” The gang of 20 is pressuring Philadelphia City Council to decline new permits for companies like Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES)–which operates the East Coast’s largest refinery on the banks of the Delaware River–hoping to prevent PES from building anything new or expanding their existing operation any further in Philadelphia. The gang of 20 wants to choke off new jobs and new investment if those jobs and investment comes from the evil, vile fossil fuel industry. Boggles the mind…
Last month MDN told you about the a group of politicians in Stokes County, North Caroline (Board of Commissioners) who voted to pass a three-year moratorium on shale drilling in the county (see 
A Bloomberg article published yesterday perfectly captures what MDN has been saying now for at least five years: the real opposition to fracking and pipelines is not because of health concerns or environmental damage or any of a dozen or more surface arguments. Those issues are all weapons used in a public relations war–used to confuse casual news consumers who don’t bother to read or listen to more than headlines. The real reason–the core reason–why people oppose fracking and pipelines and all the rest is because the disease of global warming belief has metastasized in their liberal brains, and they irrationally want to end the use of all fossil fuels. It’s in black and white, stated plainly, in the Bloomberg article. The article mentions the Marcellus and the Constitution pipeline. It also highlights the activities of serial protester and founder of FANG (Fighting Against Natural Gas), Nick Katkevich, someone we’ve reported on previously (see 
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 
Early last week MDN told you about NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s disastrous new pick to run the Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC), the agency that oversees oil and gas drilling in the Empire State (see