Fringe “Just Stop Oil” Declares UK Victory, No More Criminal Acts
This story isn’t directly connected to the Marcellus/Utica. The “environmental” group in question, Just Stop Oil, has never (as far as we can tell) done any “direct actions” in the Marcellus/Utica. However, the groups’ unrealistic aim of blocking and stopping ALL new oil and gas projects, no matter where they are in the world, implicitly includes the M-U. We have written about this radicalized group many times before (see a list of our “Just Stop Oil” stories here). The group, which tends to concentrate its focus on the United Kingdom, has just declared it won! The current UK Labour government has stopped issuing permits for all new oil and gas projects, sentencing the UK to third-world status. Because of Labour’s policies, Just Stop Oil will no longer engage in criminal activity (which they euphemistically call “direct action”) like blocking major highways, throwing paint on priceless, irreplaceable paintings, or descretating Hengestone. How big of them. Read More “Fringe “Just Stop Oil” Declares UK Victory, No More Criminal Acts”
On Monday, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia (Roanoke Division) ruled in two of five cases before it in which Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), which is now majority-owned by EQT Corporation, sued radical protesters who blocked the construction of the pipeline in Roanoke County, Virginia. The court dismissed one count in the two cases (count #4) against the protesters, which the media focused on. The media doesn’t want to talk about the fact that there are five other counts, far more serious than the dismissed count, that the court is allowing to advance. These protesters are in a world of legal hurt over their illegal blocking of MVP construction. 
This is a story from the other side of “the pond”—from the United Kingdom. But it has relevance to our own country. The ultra-liberal UK Guardian newspaper ran a story ten days ago that attempts to excuse the criminal (we’d call them terroristic) actions of so-called “protesters” who have now resorted to using sabotage in their attempt to bully and force businesses to drop support for fossil energy. The “protesters” have tipped over into full-blown criminal activity. And we’re not talking about throwing soup at paintings in museums (which is a crime, too). We’re talking about cutting internet/communications to hundreds of businesses in the middle of London and doing it in the dead of night, hiding their identities from the ever-present cameras. 
Two months ago, a video circulated on social media featuring a Biden EPA political appointee talking about “tossing gold bars off the Titanic,” intentionally rushing to get billions of tax dollars recklessly out of the agency before Inauguration Day. The EPA’s new sheriff, Lee Zeldin, has located $20 billion of those gold bars sitting at a bank. The money is meant to fund radical anti-Trump efforts related to the environment. Zeldin is demanding the money be returned pronto. 
In early 2018, the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) collected a whopping $1.7 million fine from Energy Corporation of America (ECA) for violations at 17 well sites in Cumberland, Jefferson, and Whiteley Townships in Greene County, and Goshen Township in Clearfield County (see 
In January, Joementia announced he would “pause” any approvals for new LNG export plants (currently 17 requests in the pipeline) for at least one year while his people fart around pretending to figure out how to measure global warming as a new consideration for whether or not to approve such projects (see 
Yet another out-of-state protester temporarily blocked workers’ access to one of the few Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) construction sites remaining in Montgomery County, VA, yesterday morning. She was swiftly removed and arrested. According to Virginia State Police, 25-year-old Elsa Schlensker of Cleveland, Ohio, was taken into custody “without incident” and transported to the Montgomery County Jail, where she was charged with obstructing the free passage of another.
Here’s a sad story that, as far as we can tell, is not directly connected to the Marcellus/Utica. However, it’s a cautionary tale related to the oil and gas industry in Appalachia. Mark Edward Holbrook and his son Marshall Holbrook, both from Kentucky, worked in a family-owned company called Puissant Industries. The company sources natural gas by “drilling wells” and “acquiring gas rights.” We assume, given the small nature of the company, that these are conventional (vertical-only) wells and rights. When the price of gas dropped in 2015/2016, the company and the Holbrooks hit hard times. So, the two compensated by manipulating meters on the gathering pipelines that flowed their gas, making it look as though they were selling more gas than they did. In a word, it was theft — getting paid for something they didn’t provide.
We’re just a few weeks away from the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) going online, flowing 2 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of yummy FRACKED natural gas from the Marcellus/Utica to southern Virginia and beyond. And that fact is driving the insane, unhinged left even more insane and unhinged. Yesterday, a man (who refused to identify himself as a man) tied himself to two barrels full of concrete in the middle of the road in the Bent Mountain (Roanoke County), VA, area, blocking access to an MVP work yard. The protester was spewing anti-Israel statements (a bigot and anti-Semite), along with nonsensical statements about the oil and gas industry. Truly unhinged. State police arrived to deal with the situation.
In January 2023, Pennsylvania State Senator Scott Martin (from Lancaster, PA) hosted a reelection fundraiser at an Italian restaurant in nearby Harrisburg. A pretty swanky fundraiser, too, at $1,000 a plate. Like it or not, this is how it works in the world of politics. Martin happens to be a Republican and a supporter of fossil energy. Those two things send leftists into orbit. A small group of far-left (professional) protesters showed up at the entrance of the restaurant to make a lot of noise and to make silly asses of themselves (which they excel at doing). One of them tilted over into criminality. He obstructed the doorway to the restaurant and would not let anyone enter or leave — a fire hazard at a minimum. Justice was finally rendered on Wednesday in a Dauphin County courtroom.
We think our headline about says it all. We’ve seen this type of thing many times before — out-of-town (actually, out-of-state) “protesters” show up and disrupt legal construction activity because, well, because they’re looney tunes. They’ve drunk the global warming Kool-Aid and are convinced, against all reason and rationality, that using natural gas and oil is going to destroy Mom Earth. This time around, it was a married couple well past their prime, a couple of old hippies making silly asses of themselves. They sat inside a huge plywood structure made to look like an opposum, blocking access to a Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) construction site in Virginia for several hours.
