Peters Twp Gives the Middle Finger to Drillers One Final Time
Peters Township, the most populous township in Washington County, PA, is one of the seven selfish towns that sued the state over the zoning provisions in the Act 13 law, eventually winning at the PA Supreme Court level (see PA Supreme Court Rules Against State/Drillers in Act 13 Case). The Act 13 victory gives townships the right to pass local zoning ordinances that restrict–but don’t ban–Marcellus/Utica drilling. Peters has been adept at using the victory to keep drilling banned by “studying” the issue to death (see Peters Twp, PA Pretends to Debate Ordinance to Allow Drilling). That pattern of behavior continued into last year (see Peters Twp, PA Continues to Delay Drilling by “Studying” It). Sooner or later you have to come down on one side or the other, and Monday night Peters decided–to screw Marcellus drillers. Town council passed a new drilling ordinance (4-2) that says drilling is ONLY allowed in areas zoned for industrial uses, which rules out areas zoned for agricultural uses (where most drilling happens). Even the drilling in industrial areas, a grand total of 138 acres in the township, will have to be a “conditional use” with loads of permits and reviews. In other words, Peters just flipped off the drilling industry, telling them “don’t ever bother drilling here”…
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The Democrat-controlled Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled yesterday in another (hopefully final) decision on the 2012 Act 13 Marcellus drilling law passed and signed by then-Gov. Tom Corbett. Four Democrat judges have just struck down more of Act 13, leaving not much left except the part that raises money and gives it away (called an impact fee, otherwise known as a severance tax). You will recall that seven selfish towns sued the state over the Act 13 law and it’s provision that would substitute a statewide, uniform and fair set of zoning ordinances for drilling in place of a patchwork, crazy quilt system of local ordinances for oil and gas drilling. These seven selfish towns wanted their own ordinances and sued, ultimately winning at the Supreme Court (see 
Last week the Baltimore Sun ran an article (a portion of which we picked up) that said “sources” were telling the Sun that the Maryland Dept. of the Environment (MDE) would miss a deadline to submit revisions to revisions of revisions of fracking regulations that will allow the state to begin fracking on or about October 1, 2017 (see 
2 Corinthians 6:15: “What harmony can there be between Christ and the devil? How can a believer be a partner with an unbeliever?” The obvious answer to the Apostle Paul’s hypothetical question in that passage is, “There is no harmony. A believer can’t partner with an unbeliever.” Yet that’s just what is happening among the ranks of anti-fossil fuel fools. We’ll explain. On Monday the usual suspects, namely the misnamed and odious Food & Water Watch and 200 or so of their closest “friends”–including the Sierra Clubbers, Natural Resources Defense Council, et al ad naseum (people who never think for themselves)–sent a letter (full copy below) to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy asking her, begging with her, pleading with her, to pretty-please change the results of the EPA’s own scientific study, performed by dozens (hundreds?) of scientists who analyzed 950 studies on fracking, conducting nine of their own primary studies, and concluding that fracking doesn’t contaminate ground water supplies (see 
A senior official in the Obama administration who works for the Environmental Protection Agency has a potty mouth. That’s probably the rule rather than the exception. However, this particular potty mouthed person–Michael Goo (formerly the EPA’s policy chief)–has been caught colluding with radical environmentalists at the nutty Sierra Club. Goo called some of the people working at the White House Office of Management and Budget “dickheads” because they were opposed to implementing federal regulations to control fracking. Quick reminder: The U.S. Constitution leaves development of oil and gas resources up to the individual states to regulate. That is, the federal government cannot (legally) regulate fracking, a part of oil and gas development. But the Fascists inside the Obama administration earnestly lust for and desire the power to control oil and gas drilling–not only on public lands, but on private lands as well. Using a Freedom of Information Act request, the Energy and Environment Legal Institute got its hands on a text message sent by Goo to the Sierra Club lamenting about the “dickheads” at OMB. Goo has been caught red-handed using input from the Sierra Club to craft official government regulations…
Swiss-based company INEOS is a young but rapidly growing chemical company with roughly $40 billion in sales per year. INEOS’ competitors would be companies like BASF, Bayer and Dow Chemical. They have their fingers in a lot of pies. For example, the company currently has two ships that shuttle Marcellus and Utica Shale ethane from Philadelphia to Scotland and Norway (see 
Last week MDN reported researchers from Ohio State University had discovered a new form of microorganism in fracked Utica Shale wells–something they call “Frackibacter” (we call it Frackenstein). As researchers continue to pour over the research, they’ve hit upon a stunning new revelation. Those little critters may actually INCREASE natural gas output from the well. Now that is exciting news! OSU is on the case, promising to further examine Frackibacter’s origin and “more of its applications”…
Anti-fossil fuel zealots in Athens, Meigs and Portage counties in Ohio are spitting and sputtering after the Ohio Supreme Court on Tuesday once again shut down their childish frack ban ballot measures–ruling that Secretary of State Jon Husted and the election boards of those counties did not violate the law in tossing out the ballot measures. The radical Pennsylvania-based Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) is particularly torqued off. It’s not the first time the Supremes have slapped them down. Their frack ban ballot measures were also tossed last year by the Supremes (see 
The longer we write MDN, the easier it gets–because the stories just keep repeating themselves. That’s how we felt when we spotted a story about the adults in Youngstown, OH pushing back against the temper tantrums of anti-fracking, childish nutters in the city who have, now for the sixth time, put a frack ban measure on the ballot for the November election. Five previous times the same group of rabid anti-fossil fuel haters have done this–and five times they have gone down to defeat (see 
There is precisely one main reason why the United States produces 40% less carbon dioxide now than it did five years ago. Must be the onslaught of solar, right? Nope. How about wind. Yeah, wind power is coming on strong–I see those ugly windmills all over the place now. Must be wind power, right? Nope. Hydro? Nope. Biomass? Nope. There is only one main reason why we pump less CO2 into the atmosphere (if you care about that sort of thing), and it’s this: because fracked shale gas has replaced coal in electric generating plants. You would think environmentalists would celebrate. They don’t and they won’t, pointing out their uber-hypocrisy…
Imagine this: a backhoe sinks its bucket into the ground, scoops out some dirt, and the dirt is used to build a road. No big deal. Now imagine this, a very long drill goes down into the earth and digs out dirt. Because the dirt comes from deep down, some of it may be mixed with minerals not found near the surface, so a company processes the deep down dirt to remove any extra minerals, and the dirt is then essentially the same chemical composition as the dirt from near the surface–and it’s used to build a road. The dirt from deep down is called drill cuttings. Environmental Nazis repeat the magical incantation, “It’s been fracked!” and therefore they begin to hyperventilate that “fracked waste” is being used to build a road. Our example illustrates antis’ intellectual dishonesty about what drill cuttings are. When we spotted a story that a private hunting club in Lycoming County (Williamsport area) in PA will build a new road using processed drill cuttings, and the spin job done by the anti-drilling shills at the taxpayer-funded PBS StateImpact Pennsylvania, we had to laugh…
Chemists at the University of Texas at Arlington published a new study last week that indicates certain activities on top of the ground at shale drilling sites are the cause of nasty emissions–and not the fracking process itself. The study, “Point source attribution of ambient contamination events near unconventional oil and gas development” published last week in Science of the Total Environment, found “highly variable levels of ambient BTEX, or benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene, and xylene compounds, in and around fracking gas drilling sites in the Eagle Ford shale region in South Texas.” BTEX compounds are nasty, and in high concentrations can be carcinogenic (cancer causing) and have harmful effects on the nervous system. The good news is that recognizing where BTEX emissions are coming from can lead to fixes. Nobody, the industry included, wants to harm workers or nearby residents’ health. We reckon this study under the category of “real science” that leads to industry improvements…
We’ve commented on the impending election this November a few times. We try to keep our opinions about the disastrous Hillary Clinton out of MDN as much as possible, realizing not everyone agrees with us. (Have we told you lately what a DISASTER she would be as president?) However, energy–in particular fracking and shale–is a key issue in the upcoming election. Nowhere is that more obvious than the official party platforms recently adopted at each national party’s convention (in Cleveland for the Republicans, and in Philadelphia for the Democrats). The National Association of Royalty Owners (NARO) has done us a favor. NARO, a non-partisan organization, has extracted statements from each party platform with respect to energy issues (see it below). IT IS STRIKING. The Republican platform is pro-fossil fuel and the Democrat platform is anti-fossil fuel. There is no other conclusion you can draw. The Democrat platform calls for bizarre policies like requiring energy from so-called renewables to power 50% of our electricity within 10 years–an impossible goal that would destroy our country’s economy. Folks, there is no other way of saying this than to say it: A vote for Hillary is a vote to end your own job (if you work in and around the energy industry). Are you insane? No, we didn’t think so. Prove it by voting for Trump…
Just last week MDN warned that anti-drilling radicals running King George County, VA were contemplating a vote to ban fracking in the county (see