Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel

Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Crime | Industrywide Issues | Lancaster County | Pennsylvania | Pipelines

Wrath of Kann: Lancaster Anti-Driller Guilty of Disorderly Conduct
July 23, 2015July 22, 2015

Back in April MDN told you about a loud mouthed anti-drilling protester in Lancaster County, PA who was arrested and removed from a public meeting for disorderly conduct. That is, she wouldn’t shut her mouth. So the officials running the meeting removed her (see Wrath of Kann: Lancaster Anti-Driller Arrested/Ejected from Mtg). The meeting was an educational forum about home rule and what role the town can and should play when it comes to regulating things like pipelines. Audience members were permitted to ask questions only, but that didn’t sit well with a local anti-driller who refused to ask questions and instead pontificated. The audience was clearly agitated with her (watch the video below) so police present at the meeting arrested and removed her. A judge has found her guilty as charged…
Read More “Wrath of Kann: Lancaster Anti-Driller Guilty of Disorderly Conduct”
Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | PennEast Pipeline

Minor Speed Bumps for PennEast Pipeline in NJ
July 23, 2015July 22, 2015

New Jersey residents who are somewhat ignorant, being stoked with fear by Big Green groups like the NJ chapter of the Sierra Club and THE Delaware Riverkeeper, are not allowing access to surveyors of the PennEast Pipeline. Because of it, the NJ Dept. of Environmental Protection refuses to issue permits for the pipeline stating they don’t have enough information to make a determination–because PennEast can’t provide it because irrational residents are not allowing them on their property because their fears are being fed by Big Green/Sierra Clubbers/Riverkeeper. So anti-fossil fuelers are claiming victory and believe they have vanquished the evil pipleine. PennEast is saying (yawn) knock yourselves out. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) will make the decision anyway and your silly little protests will ultimately mean nothing…
Read More “Minor Speed Bumps for PennEast Pipeline in NJ”
Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Industrywide Issues | Ohio | Statewide OH

PA’s CELDF Unmasked as Troublemakers in Ohio Utica Shale
July 23, 2015August 14, 2015

Energy in Depth is out with a dynamite expose that rips the face off the Pennsylvania-based anti-drilling organization behind much of the anti-drilling mischief happening in Ohio. The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) seeks to ban fracking and anything to do with it, like pipelines, in every community with a sympathetic (and undiscerning) ear. CELDF founder, Thomas Linzey, is a real piece of work. EID’s expose shines the light on the unapologetic Linzey and his outrageous assertions–like instead of humans having rights he thinks nature should have rights. In fact, the potty-mouthed Linzey says, on camera (watch the video) that there should be a ballot initiative that bans all finance companies in New York City from funding new projects “that exasperate climate change.” Talk about a Cuckoo Bird. The worst part is Linzey’s arrogance and smugness–he really believes this stuff, and he believes he’s better (and smarter) than you and me. He’s on a mission to tear apart this country and our Constitution from the inside out to further his radical environmental agenda. Here, read and listen for yourself…
Read More “PA’s CELDF Unmasked as Troublemakers in Ohio Utica Shale”
Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Athens County | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | Ohio | Regulation

Athens, OH Antis Win Court Approval for Anti-Injection Well Vote
July 20, 2015July 20, 2015

You have to give the anti-drilling nutjobs one thing: they’re persistent. And we need to be just as persistent if we’re going to overcome their lunatic objections to fossil fuels. Case in point: In February the Ohio Supreme Court, once and for all, struck down so-called “home rule” legislation passed by local municipalities where anti-drillers are able to convince enough citizens to vote for it (see OH Supreme Court Strikes Down Home Rule in Gas Drilling Case). When it comes to creating local laws and zoning ordinances that prohibit or otherwise try to control oil and gas drilling and associated activities, Ohio state law stipulates only the State regulates it–not towns and villages and cities. That’s the law, and that’s the law the Supreme Court upheld. Athens County, hotbed of anti-drilling radicalism, has put numerous ballot measures before its citizens in an attempt to stop shale drilling. They finally won one last November (see 3 of 4 Frack Ban Ballot Measures in Ohio Fail – Athens Exception). However, the Supreme Court decision renders the Athens ballot initiative null and void. But that doesn’t stop the crazies in Athens. They’re back again with another ballot measure–this one targeting wastewater injection wells. A lower court judge gave them clearance last week to put their proposed measure, illegal as it is, on the ballot in November…
Read More “Athens, OH Antis Win Court Approval for Anti-Injection Well Vote”
Anadarko | Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Energy Companies | Industrywide Issues | Lycoming County | Pennsylvania | Regulation | Southwestern Energy

Antis Ask PA Gov Wolf to Stop New Drilling in Loyalsock Forest
July 16, 2015July 16, 2015

Representatives from a dozen far-left anti-fossil fuel groups sent a letter to Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf on Tuesday asking him to illegally prevent drilling in the Loyalsock State Forest–where the mineral rights are owned by private individuals and not the state. Groups like PennFuture (most of whose employees now work in the Wolf Administration), the Sierra Clubbers and the League of [Liberal Democrat] Women Voters are signatories to the letter urging Wolf to wave his magic wand and prevent drilling in the Loyalsock. Of course their pleas and demands ignore the fact that drilling is already happening in many state forests–INCLUDING Loyalsock. Their objection is to the addition of more drilling in the Clarence Moore Lands area of the Loyalsock…
Read More “Antis Ask PA Gov Wolf to Stop New Drilling in Loyalsock Forest”
Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Crude Oil | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Statewide PA

Director of Philly’s Emergency Mgmt to Dela. Riverkeeper: Stuff It
July 14, 2015July 14, 2015

The director of Philadelphia’s Office of Emergency Management, Samantha Phillips, has told anti-drilling zealots to (in our words) “stuff it” with respect to their demands to know the city’s emergency plans in case a trainload of oil derails in or near the city. Phillips will not disclose detailed emergency plans–rightly so–for fear that terrorists could potentially use the information should such a disaster ever occur. Of course public safety is the last thing on the minds of anti-drillers like those in THE Delaware Riverkeeper–a group attempting to incite unrest in Philly by sponsoring “scare them to death” rallies. Phillips is holding firm and will not release details to Riverkeeper to sleazily use in furthering their own twisted agenda…
Read More “Director of Philly’s Emergency Mgmt to Dela. Riverkeeper: Stuff It”
Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Butler County | Energy Companies | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | Pennsylvania | Rex Energy

ACLU Bullies Threaten Butler County Landowners over Martian Lawsuit
July 13, 2015July 13, 2015

The most anti-American group on the planet that we know of, aside from ISIS/ISIL/Al-Qaeda, is the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). So we find it truly rich that the ACLU–always on the lookout to squash anything to do with the American way and freedom and apple pie–has now involved itself in what we loving call “the Martian controversy.” A small group of rabidly anti-drilling (and liberal) parents in the Mars School District in Middlesex Township (Butler County), PA 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 MDN’s list of Mars School stories). Four local residents used two non-profits backed by Big Green money and from the opposite side of Pennsylvania–THE Delaware Riverkeeper and the Philadelphia-based Clean Air Council–to file a lawsuit against the little town of Middlesex to stop any kind of drilling, a move that has so far cost local taxpayers over $35,000 in legal defense fees (see Dela. RiverKeeper, Clean Air Council Cost Middlesex Residents $35K+). So a group of 12 Middlesex landowners and a business launched their own lawsuit against the two Big Green groups and the four local residents claiming (rightly) that they are being economically harmed (see Shoe Now on Other Foot: Landowners Sue Martian Anti-Drillers). What do the anti-drilling, liberal, wacko parents and Big Green groups do? They go crying like little girls to the ACLU and now the Big Bully ACLU has ridden into town to tell the 12 landowners and local business they have no right to file a lawsuit! In America!!!…
Read More “ACLU Bullies Threaten Butler County Landowners over Martian Lawsuit”
Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | Medina County | NEXUS Pipeline | Ohio | Pipelines

NEXUS Pipeline Sues 4 Medina County Landowners for Survey Access
July 13, 2015July 13, 2015

A small group of Ohio landowners in Medina County are resisting requests by NEXUS Pipeline to allow surveyors on their property. We told you about one such old geezer who threatens to shoot surveyors coming on to his property (see Medina, OH Landowner Says He’ll Meet NEXUS Surveyors Packing Heat). Old Walt Giebeler, the geezer in question, can put his 12 gage shotgun away. NEXUS isn’t interested in his property. But they are interested in four other properties where landowners have refused to let them in to simply survey–so NEXUS has filed a lawsuit against them, asking a judge to allow them access. Without a survey, NEXUS can’t finish their application for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which is, of course, the entire point of denying surveyors access…
Read More “NEXUS Pipeline Sues 4 Medina County Landowners for Survey Access”
Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | New York | Regulation | Statewide NY

Everyone’s Talking Lawsuit over New York DEC Frack Ban
July 7, 2015July 7, 2015

Everybody knows a lawsuit is coming against the New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation’s “Findings Statement” that bans fracking (see It’s Official: Cuomo Bans Economic Opportunity & Prosperity in NY). Anti-drillers, including DEC Commissioner Joe Martens, the guy hired by the Rockefellers to ban fracking who is now leaving the DEC to return to a Rockefeller job at his previous organization (the Open Spaces Institute), certainly expects there to be a legal challenge to his non-science-based political decision to ban fracking…
Read More “Everyone’s Talking Lawsuit over New York DEC Frack Ban”
Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Statewide PA

Anti-Drilling PennFuture Gets New President to Replace Cindy Dunn
July 7, 2015July 7, 2015

Since most of the staff from one of Pennsylvania’s biggest anti-drilling groups, PennFuture, has moved to Harrisburg to work in the Gov. Tom Wolf administration (often referred to as the PennFuture administration around the halls of the Capitol), it’s time to appoint a new anti-driller to head the remaining husk of the organization left behind. John Quigley, now Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection used to work for PennFuture. So did John Hanger, Wolf’s Secretary of Planning and Policy. Cindy Dunn, the current Secretary of the Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources was, until she moved to DCNR, the head of PennFuture. Her departure left a hole that has now been filled by another trusted anti-driller, Larry Schweiger, someone with enviro street cred who worked for the National Wildlife Organization, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, and the partisan environmental committee of the Pennsylvania General Assembly. He’s also good with a Kodak camera–snapping pictures of the BP oil spill in the Gulf (before all of the oil disappeared three weeks after the leak was fixed)…
Read More “Anti-Drilling PennFuture Gets New President to Replace Cindy Dunn”
Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Cuyahoga County | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | Ohio | Regulation

The Mad Moms of Broadview Heights Remain Mad over Tossed Lawsuit
July 6, 2015July 6, 2015

The Mad Moms of Broadview Heights, OH (a suburb of Cleveland) say they’re “not going away” when it comes to opposing fossil fuels in their neighborhood. MADION (Mothers Against Drilling in Our Neighborhood) are appealing a tossed-out lawsuit filed by the group following a defeat handed to them by the Ohio Supreme Court. In March, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled a 2012 so-called Community Bill of Rights law adopted by Broadview Heights that prohibits drilling is unconstitutional (see OH Antis Handed Crushing Defeat in Broadview Hghts Home Rule Case). That didn’t sit well with the (stark raving) Mad Moms (see Broadview Heights, OH Moms: Don’t Frack With Us). The Mad Moms filed a new lawsuit to stop the drilling. Last week Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Timothy McCormick tossed the new lawsuit citing the Supreme Court decision. The Mad Moms plan to appeal Judge McCormick’s decision…
Read More “The Mad Moms of Broadview Heights Remain Mad over Tossed Lawsuit”
Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Athens County | Industrywide Issues | Ohio | Regulation | Statewide OH | Wastewater

Athens County Asks Gov Kasich & ODNR to Stop New Injection Wells
July 2, 2015July 2, 2015

Athens County, OH Commissioners have just passed a resolution calling for a ban on new injection wells in the county. The resolution has zero force and no weight of law–it’s not a legal document and if it were, it would be illegal. Only the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) can decide whether or not to issue permits for Class II injection wells in Ohio. Local municipalities have no say in the matter. But that doesn’t stop the nutters in Athens County from mouthing off (the thing they do best). Here’s their latest haughty communication requesting the Governor and the ODNR immediately and indefinitely refrain from issuing any more injection well permits not only in the People’s Socialist Paradise of Athens County, OH, but throughout the entire state of Ohio as well…
Read More “Athens County Asks Gov Kasich & ODNR to Stop New Injection Wells”
Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Regulation | Statewide NY

With Frack Ban Mission Accomplished, Joe Martens Leaves NY DEC
July 1, 2015July 1, 2015

A day after issuing the final nail in the coffin of fracking in NY (see It’s Official: Cuomo Bans Economic Opportunity & Prosperity in NY), the guy doing the nailing is leaving. Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Commissioner Joe Martens is leaving the DEC to go back to the anti-drilling Open Spaces Institute–the organization where he was employed before coming to the DEC. It certainly appears like the main purpose in hiring Martens was to slow down, and then stop the momentum to allow fracking in NY. Now that Martens’ mission has been accomplished, he’s ready to make more money again, working for an organization dedicated to stopping any kind of development on land–including and particularly oil and gas development. MDN has been around long enough to have seen Martens come, and now go. We’re proud to say from his very first day on the job we questioned his appointment and commitment to seeing that fracking happens in the Empire State (see our article from February 2011: Gov. Cuomo’s Nomination to Head the NY DEC: Will the Real Joe Martens Please Stand Up?). We’ve always suspected, and shared with you our suspicions, that Martens is anti-drilling. We were right–not that being right feels any better because Martens has royally screwed every landowner in our beloved home state…
Read More “With Frack Ban Mission Accomplished, Joe Martens Leaves NY DEC”
Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Electrical Generation | Industrywide Issues | Lackawanna County | Pennsylvania

MDN Interprets NEPA Editorial on Coal, Natgas, Electric Generation
July 1, 2015July 1, 2015

Sometimes you need a plain language guide to help you decipher the gobbledygook editorials issued by liberal newspapers. It’s like, what do they really mean? What are they trying to say? Why don’t they just use plain English to say what they mean? We spotted such an editorial in the Scranton Times-Tribune with respect to coal, natural gas, electric generation and so-called alternative energy sources, like wind. Below we’ve interpreted what the editorial writers really wanted to say in their otherwise indecipherable editorial…
Read More “MDN Interprets NEPA Editorial on Coal, Natgas, Electric Generation”
Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Regulation | Statewide NY

It’s Official: Cuomo Bans Economic Opportunity & Prosperity in NY
June 30, 2015June 30, 2015

Let the lawsuits begin! Yesterday the anti-drilling, anti-fossil fuel head of the New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC), Joe Martens, did his master’s bidding (his master being Lord Andrew Cuomo, Earl of the Hamptons) by imposing an official, TEMPORARY (not permanent) ban on hydraulic fracturing in the Empire State. The document issued yesterday by Martens is called a Findings Statement (full copy below) and it provides the DEC’s official rationale for the action they are taking in not granting permits for high volume fracking in the state. News coverage is blaring the trumpets that New York has “banned” fracking. Well, yes, in a sense that’s true. But the implication is that it’s a permanent ban–which is not true. Far from it. Martens uses profoundly weak arguments in the Findings Statement to justify his political action. One of his central arguments is what fracking “may” do to water supplies. A few weeks ago the federal EPA, after four years of intense study, found fracking is perfectly safe for water supplies (see EPA Draft Report Says Fracking Doesn’t Pollute Groundwater Supplies). We’d be embarrassed to try and peddle this horse manure if we were Martens–but he’s shameless. One thing is for sure: landowners and their lawyers, who have had their property rights illegally stripped away by Cuomo and Martens, are reading the Findings Statement and preparing lawsuits even now…
Read More “It’s Official: Cuomo Bans Economic Opportunity & Prosperity in NY”
Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | CNG/LNG | Crestwood Midstream | Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | New York | NGLs | Schuyler County | Statewide NY

Binghamton Newspaper Runs Anti-LPG Propaganda as “News”
June 29, 2015June 29, 2015

A well-known activist and anti-driller flying under the label of “reporter”–Tom Wilber–was actually paid to write six, possibly seven articles for the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin appearing in the print edition on Sunday. The so-called “Watchdog Report” in the P&SB takes aim at an underground liquefied propane storage facility proposed by Crestwood Midstream along the shore of Seneca Lake (in a depleted salt cavern) and is what laughably passes as “news” these days in the People’s Republic of New York–where the only “news” allowed in Democrat rags like the P&SN is bad news when it comes to the shale industry. In most newspapers the entire section appearing in the P&SB, which amounts to free advertising for the virulent anti-drilling group Gas Free Seneca, would properly be labeled as an “Advertisement” or “Advertising Supplement.” But not in the P&SB. Unsuspecting readers of the P&SB are treated to a couple of front page stories about “environmental concerns” about the very safe underground storage facility planned near Seneca Lake. When you look further in, the entire first section of the newspaper is jammed with more stories–six in all–plus a seventh that was almost certainly written by Wilber labeled as an “editorial” from the newspaper itself. Example of the extreme bias: one of the stories is about railroads, tossed in to create FUD–fear, uncertainty and doubt–about the LPG facility by stating that LPG from the Crestwood facility will be hauled by railroad over a creaky old railroad bridge through historic Watkins Glen State Park with its beautiful gorges and waterfalls. The image is what would happen if there was an accident and the train fell into the gorge. Of course Wilber doesn’t bother to report that carloads of really nasty, toxic chemicals traverse that same railroad bridge each week–it’s only LPG (simple propane that would evaporate) that has him concerned. Wilber calls it a potentially “epic hazard.” What a joke…
Read More “Binghamton Newspaper Runs Anti-LPG Propaganda as “News””