Norse Energy Appeals Town Ban Case Back to NY High Court
In April MDN reported on the rumors that Norse Energy, the ill-fated company that bet big on New York State with 180,000 acres of leased land in NY, had been sold at bankruptcy court (see Highest Bid for Norse Energy $2.65M – Was it Sold & Who Bid?). As we pointed out in the story, we don’t know if the company was actually sold, and if it was, who the actual buyer was. We still don’t know. What we do know is that the only thing left to sell were Norse’s leases, since they had already sold off all of the hard assets (see Lights Turned Off, Door Closed – Good Night, Norse Energy). However, the Norse trustee retained at least some of the leases assets so the company could continue their lawsuit against New York for bankrupting them. Try to get back at least some of that money. Then the double-whammy: The New York Court of Appeals (our highest court) ruled against Norse and said local towns can ban fracking (see Shale Drilling in NY is Over – High Court Upholds Town Bans). The new news, just coming to light for us, is that Norse appealed that decision back to the Court of Appeals for a second time, based on a recent decision in a Colorado court…
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Hack “researchers” will collect research others have done, run some numbers in a spreadsheet to bias the outcome, and then make off-the-wall pronouncements like burning coal is less damaging to the environment than drilling for natural gas (see 
The next round in so-called anti-drilling research into the “health impacts” from fracking have arrived in the form of a study about to be published in the National Institutes of Health journal Environmental Health Perspectives. Titled “Proximity to Natural Gas Wells and Reported Health Status: Results of a Household Survey in Washington County, Pennsylvania” (full copy embedded below), this latest salvo in the fracking wars is DOA. Why? The anti-drilling Heinz Endowments, led by Mamma Teresa Heinz-Kerry, the Schmidt Family Foundation, founded by former Google CEO (and big-time anti-driller) Eric Schmidt, and the Philadelphia-area Claneil Foundation, funder of many anti-drilling “studies” are the main sponsors of this latest “study” that tabulates self-reported ailments of skin rashes and coughing from 492 people (in 180 families) living in Washington County, PA. Guess what they found? If you read the USA Today headline, they found “People near ‘fracking’ wells report health woes,” to which we say, those who don’t live near fracking wells report health woes too! The study itself says this: “…these results should be viewed as hypothesis generating…proximity of natural gas wells may be (emphasis added) associated with the prevalence of health symptoms including dermal and respiratory 3 conditions in residents living near natural gas extraction activities. Further study of these associations, including the role of specific air and water exposures, is warranted.” That is, nothing conclusive was found from this small sample of 180 households in a single county. But let’s not let “nothing conclusive” get in the way of spinning yet another tall tale that fracking causes health problems. Crank up the media lie machine…
Long before the words “Marcellus” and “Utica” entered the public discourse and consciousness of Ohioans, there was the Clinton Sandstone. For years conventional drillers have been sinking wells in the Clinton, which is found 4,500 feet below the surface (the Marcellus and Utica Shale layers are deeper). The Clinton lies under 25 counties in eastern Ohio. Over the years, some 35,000 conventional (vertical) wells have tapped the Clinton Sandstone in Ohio. EnerVest, one of the largest acreage holders in the Utica Shale (and in the Clinton Sandstone), has embarked on a great experiment. What if you turned a Clinton Sandstone well horizontal, like a Utica or Marcellus well? Would it work? Could you get more gas out of the sandstone by fracking it like shale? EnerVest has drilled seven horizontal wells so far, with a permit to drill another and a request to drill a ninth. Here’s the details, along with the differences between a Clinton horizontal well and a Utica horizontal well…
In the summer of 2012, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) began a groundwater survey in Pike County, PA. Pike, located in northeastern PA, is one of the counties with the dubious distinction of being under the regulatory purview of the Delaware River Basin Commission which has, so far, refused to allow any Marcellus Shale drilling. The survey’s purpose is to provide baseline numbers prior to any Marcellus drilling activity. So, just to be clear, there has been NO drilling thus far in Pike nor anywhere near Pike. And yet, what did the USGS survey, published in July 2014 (full copy below) show? Some 80% of the water wells tested in Pike have “detectable concentrations of methane” and 10% of the wells (2 of the 20 tested) have high levels of methane. Not only that, 85% (!) of the wells tested have (gasp) really high radon levels–over the proposed safe limit of 300 picocuries per liter. One well was as high as 4,500 picocuries! But it gets worse–there’s also measurable quantities of nasty stuff like barium, strontium, and the dreaded chloride (salt). And yet, not a Marcellus Shale well in sight. Now how can that be?…