Ohio Protester Stops Work on MVP for 7 Hours, in Jail with No Bail
It looks like the radical left is running out of locals (people in Virginia and West Virginia) willing to get arrested and jailed to block work on the 99% completed Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project, so they’re importing them. Madeline ffitch (last name spelled correctly, not a typo) is an obscure writer and activist from Ohio who works for a group called Appalachia Resist! It is a so-called direct-action group, meaning they get aggressive and commit crimes in order to make a point. Ms. ffitch had a fellow leftist put her in a “sleeping dragon” contraption connected to a piece of MVP excavating equipment in the Jefferson National Forest (Virginia side in Giles County) on Monday. It took police about seven hours to cut it off her and haul her away to jail, where she still sits, having been denied bail.
Read More “Ohio Protester Stops Work on MVP for 7 Hours, in Jail with No Bail”
Here’s one instance when antis may have a legitimate point. In 2018, Equitrans Midstream, the builder of the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), proposed to extend MVP (when it’s done) by an extra 75 miles from the current terminus in Pittsylvania County, VA, to Alamance County, NC, to provide natural gas for heating and electric generation. The 75-mile extension is called MVP Southgate. Last year, Equitrans asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to extend Southgate’s project timeline an extra three years. FERC agreed in December (see 
Last November, CNX Resources CEO Nick Deiuliis signed a voluntary deal with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro to expand drilling setbacks and several other regulatory steps not mandated for shale drillers under PA law (see 
Last Friday, Joementia announced he is putting “a temporary pause on pending decisions of Liquefied Natural Gas exports.” The reason? The so-called “climate crisis” is “the existential threat of our time.” It’s all rubbish. The real reason is that he bowed to radical leftists in his own party. He needs them if he has a prayer of a chance of winning reelection in November (God forbid). The action supposedly affects 17 projects in the pipeline that have requested approval from the Dept. of Energy to export LNG to countries without free-trade agreements. But now, antis say Biden’s pause can potentially help them with their existing lawsuits against facilities already approved by the DOE.
The White House has made official what we warned you about yesterday (see 
Anti-fossil fuel fanatics in Ohio (and beyond) still can’t accept that they lost a battle to block drilling under (not on) Ohio state-owned land, including some Ohio state parks. In November, the Ohio Oil & Gas Land Management Commission (OGLMC) met in a public forum and voted to allow shale drilling under three state-owned tracts of land: (1) all 20,000 acres of Salt Fork State Park in Guernsey County, (2) more than 300 acres of Valley Run Wildlife Area in Carroll County, and (3) 66 acres of the Zepernick Wildlife Area in Columbiana County (see 
The Algonquin Gas Transmission pipeline (owned by Enbridge) transports up to 3.09 Bcf/d through 1,131 miles of pipeline. Algonquin connects to Texas Eastern Transmission (TETCO), Millennium Pipeline, and Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline and supplies New England with critically needed natural gas supplies for power generation and consumer use. As we told you in September, Enbridge conducted an open season to gauge interest in expanding Algonquin’s capacity to flow more gas into New England — mainly from the Marcellus/Utica — called Project Maple (see 
Two weeks ago, MDN warned you that the Bidenistas were conducting a secret “review,” being led by the Department of Energy (DOE), to evaluate whether regulators should consider mythical “climate change” when deciding whether a proposed natural gas export project meets “the national interest” (see 
Pennsylvania House Bill (HB) 170, introduced early last year, would increase setback distances for shale wells from 500 feet to 2,500 feet — effectively killing any new shale well drilling anywhere in the state (see 
In May 2023, MDN brought readers the sad news that New York State has fallen and is now under a Communist dictatorship, with the freedom to choose energy sources now gone (see 
During a Pennsylvania House Republican Policy Committee hearing on strengthening rural communities held on Wednesday, Rep. Bud Cook (R-Waynesburg) didn’t hold back when assigning blame for why the state’s rural communities are losing population and experiencing economic growth. Cook said, “The overriding impediment is Governor Shapiro’s DEP,” referring to the Dept. of Environmental Protection. One of Cook’s chief complaints is how long it takes to get a simple permit issued from the DEP.
The Bidenistas unveiled a new regulatory proposal targeting natural gas on Friday that would introduce an obscene new tax on the fossil fuel industry, punishing natgas producers that exceed a certain level of methane emissions. The Biden EPA, which took point on introducing the new federal methane tax, said it will help “tackle wasteful methane emissions” from the oil and gas sector, encouraging facilities with the highest emissions levels to meet or exceed higher levels of performance. The proposed rules would create a so-called Waste Emissions Charge, which begins at $900 per metric ton of wasteful emissions in 2024, and increases to $1,200 for 2025 and $1,500 for 2026 and beyond. Bonkers!