Rolling Stone Shale Gas Hit Piece, Chesapeake Responds
Last week Rolling Stone magazine ran a hit piece on the natural gas industry in general, and Chesapeake Energy and its CEO Aubrey McClendon in particular. The article, titled “The Big Fracking Bubble: The Scam Behind the Gas Boom” tries to recycle the theme already postulated by Ian Urbina in the New York Times some months ago that energy companies are vastly overstating just how much gas there is, and that they are in essence perpetrating a fraud on investors by covering it up. Rolling Stone, the NYT and other anti-drilling “media” outlets (I’d call them propaganda outlets) all use the same language and same arguments, trying to drive into readers’ psyche that shale gas drilling is a “Ponzi scheme” hoping to connect Bernie Madoff with gas drilling in your mind. Nice try Rolling Stone.
On Saturday, Chesapeake issued the following response, exposing the fallacies and lies found in the Rolling Stone article:
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Residents who live in New York townships that can’t seem to wait to ban drilling should be aware of something. These bans are bans of all gas drilling, not just horizontal hydraulic fracturing. That’s what residents in Enfield (Tompkins County), NY found out on Wednesday at a meeting with the town attorney. The Enfield town board plans to vote to enact a one-year moratorium in late April or early May, and the moratorium is on vertical as well as horizontal gas well drilling.
A second court case decision in New York, this one in Middlefield (near Cooperstown) has ruled that local municipalities have the right to ban shale gas drilling within their borders. On Friday, Feb. 24 Acting Supreme Court Justice Donald F. Cerio, Jr. ruled that a previously passed drilling ban in the Town of Middlefield in Otsego County, NY is legal. A copy of the judge’s decision is embedded below. (Note: Thank you to an MDN reader for providing this exclusive copy of the decision that comes direct from the judge’s chambers.)
Yesterday, Tompkins County (NY) Supreme Court Judge Phillip Rumsey handed anti-drillers a first, and likely short-lived, victory. He ruled that the Town of Dryden, located near Ithaca, has the right to ban shale gas drilling. As with many legal issues, this one is complicated, so let’s take a look at the case, Judge Rumsey’s decision, and what happens next.
The Town of Caroline in Tompkins County, New York is about to pass a one-year ban on hydraulic fracturing. The question is, is it legal to do so? Attorneys who understand New York State’s oil and gas law say no.