Ohio O&G Responds with Truth to Enviro-Lies of Thunberg, Hunkler
Anti-fossil fuel activist Jill Antares Hunkler (whom we had never heard of before) testified before the same House Committee on Oversight and Reform’s environment subcommittee that Swedish special needs child (and minor celebrity) Greta Thunberg testified before on Earth Day. The two (plus others) peddled the same tired lies they always peddle about fossil fuels in general, and the Ohio shale industry in particular. A member of the Ohio O&G industry is standing up to challenge their lies.
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We are sick and tired of the Chicken Little scaremongering that comes from so-called “independent consultants” and the reports they issue for states like Pennsylvania claiming (falsely) that average temperatures in the state are set to rise by 6 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050. It is a demonstrably false claim. Yet that’s what is now being reported as fact.
Yet another assault on natural gas pipelines coming from the federal agency that’s supposed to promote them: the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). When FERC approves a new pipeline project, the very first thing fossil fuel haters do is challenge that decision, requesting a “rehearing” or reconsideration of the decision. FERC under new Chairman Richard “Dick” Glick has just ruled that construction work on pipelines can’t proceed unless and until the rehearing request is no longer pending (FERC decides yes or no), which can take up to 90 days. In other words, FERC has just handed antis the right to delay a project by up to three months (in reality 10 months) just by filing a rehearing request.
On July 18, 2019, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed into law the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act). It is among the craziest and stupidest climate laws in the world, requiring NY to reduce so-called greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030 and by 85% by 2050 (from 1990 levels). The law creates a Climate Action Council charged with developing a scoping plan of recommendations to meet these targets. The Council has multiple “panels” to assist. One of the panels is the Power Generation Advisory Panel, filled with far-left, Big Green people. That panel is about to recommend NY State prohibit the construction of any new natural gas-fired power plants–beginning now.
While the Philadelphia Inquirer has at least one reliable and objective reporter working in its ranks–Andrew Maykuth–the same can’t be said for the lefties who populate the editorial board at the newspaper. Yesterday’s unsigned editorial declares that “Fracking jobs will disappear. Pennsylvania has to manage the decline.” Like he!!. The lefties on the editorial board base their brazen (and false) statements on Joe Biden’s plan to decimate the fossil fuel industry with his warmed-over Green New Deal vomit. The editorial board presumes Biden’s attempts will be successful. They will not.
We’re kind of speechless and dumbfounded–but perhaps we shouldn’t be. Last week President Biden announced a new program to be funded with $109.5 million aimed at figuring out how to convince fossil fuel workers to be happy taking a huge pay cut and installing solar panels and windmills instead of making far more money in a far more meaningful job working in fossil fuels. Brian Anderson, director of the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), headquartered in Pittsburgh, will lead the effort. How enormously sad that Anderson, someone we greatly admire, is out in front selling Biden’s bill of goods–the end of fossil energy.
Here’s a new truism of life you may not have heard before: Be careful that the corporation you climb into bed with actually has a spine. Interestingly, U.S. Steel in East Pittsburgh, whom you would assume has a steel spine, doesn’t have a spine at all! Merrion Oil & Gas found that out the hard way. Merrion, a privately-owned oil and gas company headquartered in New Mexico, signed a lease with U.S. Steel to drill a series of up to 18 shale wells on the Edgar Thomson Works property in Allegheny County. Following blowback from loud-mouth anti-fossil fuel nutters, U.S. Steel decided the project isn’t worth the negative press. So they caved and canceled the lease with Merrion. Shame on U.S. Steel.
Yesterday our illustrious president, Joe Biden, shot off his mouth announcing plans to cut so-called greenhouse gas emissions by 50% in the next 10 years while creating millions of “good-paying, union jobs.” It’s an anti-fossil fuel pig in a poke. Biden announced his latest brainstorm during a “climate summit” with some 40 other world leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin. We’re pretty sure both Xi Jinping and Putin were snickering at the prospect of America committing energy suicide, something they have no intention of doing.
Not content to rely on politicians alone like the weak-willed Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, radical anti-fossil fuel zealots recently visited a number of banks located in New Haven, CT, to pressure and bully bank management into divesting from energy projects that contribute to “greenhouse gas pollution.” In particular, the zealots want to defund a critically-needed gas-fired power plant in Killingly, CT.
For those of us unfortunate enough to live in New York State, we’re already screwed with a corrupt governor large and still in charge (even though his actions led to thousands of COVID deaths in nursing homes and even though he’s a sexual predator). The screwing (pun intended) continues. There are bills in both the NY Assembly and Senate that aim to increase the tax on gasoline in the state by $0.55 per gallon! In addition, the bills would increase the tax on natural gas that end users pay–those who use it to heat and cook with, residences and businesses–by an extra 26%!! Translation: Move out of NY while you still can sell your house. And don’t forget to turn the lights off when you leave.
It’s now obvious to even the dullest person that Andrew Cuomo and his completely corrupted Dept. of Environmental Conservation has one mission in mind with respect to the state’s oil and gas industry: Kill it. It began when Cuomo first placed a moratorium, later a permanent ban on hydraulic fracturing in the state (see 
Anti-fossil fuel zealots are certainly persistent in their holy mission to destroy the use of all fossil fuels. None more so than the extremists at the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC). The NRDC rounded up a group of 60 equally radicalized groups and sent a joint letter to a bunch of sympathetic radicals working in the Biden administration (Sec. of Interior, EPA Administrator, Sec. of Agriculture, among others) encouraging them to shut down a multi-billion natural gas pipeline that is 92% built and in the ground: Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP).
We spotted an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer about South Jersey Industries (owner of South Jersey Gas and Elizabethtown Gas utilities) announcing a commitment to eliminate all so-called greenhouse gas emissions from its own operations by 2040. This is what is often called net-zero carbon. Even with this major effort by SJI, the nutty Sierra Club refuses to give the company an attaboy. Instead, the Clubbers say the company should just close down all of its natural gas utility operations and…what?…let everyone freeze to death in the winter?