Texas Fractivist Says Fracking Equals Rape, Earthworks Agrees
If you’re walking down the street in Texas and you see a drilling rig, you darned well better RUN, because that rig may RAPE you. So says Texas anti-drilling activist Sharon Wilson. Wilson’s tweet and statements on the raping of Texans by oil and gas drillers was just too juicy for the odious “environmental” group Earthworks, so they picked it up and re-tweeted it, adding their own endorsement of her words. Wilson went off the rails and lost her cool when the Texas legislature voted to advance House Bill (HB) 40, a bill that would vest more regulatory oversight with the state rather than allowing local town boards to try and regulate drilling on their own. So-called “home rule” is the gold standard for anti-drillers like Wilson. She can go on a perpetual, never-ending tour of local town board meetings to proclaim her lies about fracking and drilling. If home rule is snatched away, why, she’ll have nothing to do!…
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Every now and again we revisit the manhunt for that vile villain and fugitive from justice–Fugitive Methane (FM for short). FM loves to escape into the atmosphere where, according to the Environmental Defense Fund, it is “a particularly powerful climate warmer – 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year timeframe.” Never mind that the biggest source of FM in the U.S. is cows burping (see 
A court case decided earlier this week by New York’s Court of Appeals (NY’s highest court), will, in our opinion, have a profoundly negative effect on oil and gas development in the state, forever. Or until another court case overturns it (which seems very unlikely). The case, as its core, is about the question of whether or not state action or inaction constitutes an extraordinary action, in essence an Act of God outside of the control of parties who sign a contract. Years ago landowners signed leases to allow oil and gas drilling, often for a few bucks and acre, long before Marcellus and fracking were common, household words. Then came delay after delay in New York–from the governor–and eventually a more or less semi-permanent ban on fracking. Energy companies argued that the leases they had signed could be extended until the day they are allowed to drill in the Marcellus because of “force majeure”–the concept that due to circumstances beyond our control we could not drill as we intended during the original term of the lease, usually five years. The NY Court of Appeals on Tuesday decided that the state preventing drilling does not qualify as force majeure after the original five-year period of a lease (full copy of the decision below). If the original lease was extended for some reason and then the driller was prevented from drilling during the extended time due to state laws preventing it, it’s not force majeure in the eyes of the “wise” justices in Albany…
It’s always a sad day when we report a death related to the Marcellus/Utica industry. Thankfully it doesn’t happen often, but the fact it happens at all is almost too much to bear. We know it’s not realistic to expect no fatalities, but still… On Monday afternoon around 2:30 pm a worker at the former Marcus Hook refinery–which is being converted into a natural gas liquids terminal–was killed after a pylon fell on him. The worker’s name has not yet been released, but it is reported he was in his 50s and from New Jersey and worked for engineering firm AECOM, a contractor working at the site. In a profoundly inappropriate manner, a member of the anti-drilling group Protecting Our Waters jumped on the death as an opportunity to push her anti-drilling message…