Industrywide Issues

Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Tompkins County

Cornell President Says Fracking Genie is Out of the Bottle
September 24, 2012September 24, 2012

David J. Skorton, president of Cornell University, and Glenn C. Altschuler, vice president for University Relations at Cornell, jointly penned an opinion piece for Forbes magazine that talks about the role of universities in the fracking debate. Cornell is home to professors Robert Howarth and Tony Ingraffea who have both made a cottage industry out of bashing natural gas drilling and fracking (and infamously still maintain natural gas pollutes more than coal).

Here is the (eye-popping) concluding statement from Cornell’s president about fracking:

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Industrywide Issues | Litigation | Statewide WV | West Virginia

Important Case in WV Supreme Court This Week
September 24, 2012September 24, 2012

An important case for surface rights owners goes before the West Virginia Supreme Court on Tuesday. The court will hear a case to determine whether or not surface landowners—those without the rights to minerals in the ground—have the right to appeal oil and gas drilling permits that allow companies to erect drilling sites on their land. As with most legal matters, this one gets complicated:

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Energy Companies | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Questerre Energy

Questerre Energy Points Out Quebec’s Hypocrisy on Fracking
September 24, 2012September 24, 2012

Quebec, Canada currently has a moratorium in place on fracking shale for oil and natural gas, similar to New York State. They were due to consider lifting the ban in 2014 with recommendations from a study on how to proceed with fracking, but those hopes were pretty much destroyed last week when a member of the new “separatist” government in Quebec, Natural Resource Minister Martine Ouellet, said the government will not lift the ban any time soon and added she believes fracking cannot ever be done safely.

Part of the Utica Shale underlies Quebec, which is why this is a story of interest to MDN. Questerre Energy, a large Canadian driller, issued a press release about the Quebec situation, saying continuance of the moratorium will not affect them—but they are disappointed in Ouellet’s position. They also say, in their polite Canadian way, that Quebec is hypocritical because they import a lot of shale gas from Western Canada—gas created using the very same “unsafe” fracking technology:

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Wastewater

NJ Gov. Christie Vetoes Frack Wastewater Ban Bill
September 24, 2012September 24, 2012

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie vetoed a bill on Friday that would have banned Marcellus Shale wastewater from being treated or disposed of in New Jersey. Environmentalist groups, led by the Sierra Club, have said they’ll try and get an override of his veto in the state legislature—something that hasn’t happened since Christie has been in office.

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues

Global Frackdown Protest was a Global Flop
September 24, 2012September 24, 2012

Depending on your news source, the “Global Frackdown” series of events held on Saturday, Sept. 22 was supposedly happening in “more than 100 cities” across the globe, or “about 150 cities.” Take your pick. Either way, the Global Frackdown was a Global Flop.

Did anyone, anywhere actually see protesters on Saturday? Does anyone have a photo of a huge crowd protesting on Saturday? Did anyone count the actual number of locations with two or more protesters? No. And MDN believes the event was held in far fewer than 100 locations, and attended by far fewer than the so-called “thousands” who were said to have assembled to protest fracking. In fact, we believe there were more pro-drillers at a recent event in rural Upstate New York than showed up for the collective Global Frackdown (see this MDN story).

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Health Impacts | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Regulation | Statewide NY

Bad to Worse in NY: Martens Invokes Another Delay for SGEIS
September 21, 2012September 21, 2012

The news in New York on the future of drilling has just gone from bad to worse. True to form, and as MDN has been telling your for more than a year now, Joe Martens—the Commissioner of New York’s Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC)—has once again delayed the release of new drilling rules for the state. As near as MDN can tell, the delay is indefinite—certainly until well into 2013.

Issuing a press release yesterday (read it below), Martens says he’s requested NYS Health Commissioner Nirav Shah to conduct a “health impact analysis” of hydraulic fracturing before the DEC will release new drilling rules. Here’s the (sad, maddening, tragic) press statement from fox-in-henhouse Martens:

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Ohio | Statewide OH

NRDC Tries to Peddle Anti-Fracking Message in Ohio
September 21, 2012September 21, 2012

Ohioans beware: The National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an anti-drilling group, is attempting to export their “ban fracking” message from New York to Ohio.

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Maryland | Statewide MD

New Nonsense Report on Fracking Issued by Environment Maryland
September 21, 2012September 21, 2012

Environment Maryland, an extreme environmentalist group, released a new report yesterday titled, “The Cost of Fracking: Environment Maryland Documents the Dollars Drained by Dirty Drilling” (see a copy embedded below). The report is filled with innuendo, half-truths and outright lies about the miracle of hydraulic fracturing. Typical scare tactic stuff that radical environmentalists use to try and influence the debate on drilling for clean natural gas—because facts they ain’t got. This report is more of the same.

Here’s the press release from Environment Maryland announcing this latest fiction:

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Economic Impact | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Trucking

How Much of $6M Cost to Drill a Well is Water for Fracking?
September 20, 2012September 20, 2012

The cost of water used in fracking Marcellus Shale wells was a topic of conversation at the World Shale Oil & Gas Summit in Houston this week.

Southwestern Energy CEO Steven Mueller had this to say about how much it costs to move (truck) the water for a single Marcellus well, on average:

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Regulation | Statewide NY

NY Biz Group Launches Ad Campaign to Convince Cuomo to Frack
September 20, 2012September 20, 2012

RebuildNYnow, a group of businesses across New York State joining forces to raise awareness about the state’s crumbling infrastructure (roads, bridges and more), is weighing in on the fight to allow fracking.

The group has just launched a new ad campaign designed to pressure Gov. Cuomo to allow drilling:

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Exporting | Industrywide Issues

Will Marcellus & Utica Shale Gas be Exported Any Time Soon?
September 20, 2012September 20, 2012

Twelve applications have been made to the federal government requesting permission to set up export facilities for liquefied natural gas (LNG), some of those for Marcellus and Utica shale gas. Japan desperately needs natural gas in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster which is shutting down all of Japan’s nuclear power industry. Most of Europe is impotent to begin fracking their own shale deposits (thanks to the iron grip of extreme environmentalism).

The U.S. has plenty of gas and other countries want it. But one thing stands in the way of exporting it—the Obama Dept. of Energy and a study they are conducting to evaluate how much natural gas prices will go up here at home if we start exporting it. The study was due to be completed early this year. Then “by end of summer.” And now? End of the year. Kind of sounds like the DEC in New York with their “study” of drilling!

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About MDN | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Statewide PA

MDN to Attend Shale Gas Insight in Philly this Thu/Fri [Free]
September 19, 2012September 19, 2012

MDN editor Jim Willis will attend Shale Gas Insight 2012 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, PA on Thursday and Friday, Sept. 20 & 21. He’ll be hanging out at the NGI Shale Daily booth (#433). If you’re an MDN reader, please stop by to say hello in person! Jim would like to meet you.

It seems, however, that more than just luminaries like Jack Welch (former CEO of GE), Tom Corbett (Governor of PA), Ted Koppel (former Nightline host) and the CEOs of Range, XTO and MarkWest will be there. Anti-drillers will also converge on the Convention Center in a spectacle they call Shale Gas Outrage, featuring minor celebrities like Josh Fox (of Gasland infamy), Bill McKibben (350.org), Sandra Steingraber (ecologist), and Doug Shields (former president of Pittsburgh City Council). Hey, it ought to be a real party!

Here’s what the Philadelphia Inquirer says about the upcoming event:

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Industrywide Issues | Jobs | Statewide WV | Upshur County | West Virginia

Tangible Evidence of the Change from Dry to Wet Gas Drilling
September 19, 2012September 19, 2012

For some time there have been rumblings of how drilling activity is moving from “dry gas” (methane only) to “wet gas” (methane plus natural gas liquids like ethane, pentane and butane) areas. It seemed you couldn’t read a quarterly financial update from an energy company that didn’t mention such a move. And while slowdowns were apparent in some isolated areas, frankly, the actions just didn’t seem to match the words.

Here’s a bit of news that provides tangible evidence of the change from dry to wet gas drilling. Great Plains Oilfield Rentals, a company that employs 120 people in and around Buckhannon in Upshur County, WV (center of the state), is moving—to the upper panhandle area of West Virginia. Why? Wet gas drilling.

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Regulation | Statewide NY

List of Upstate NY Elected Officials who Oppose Drilling
September 19, 2012September 19, 2012

Some New York State elected officials—particularly those outside of the Southern Tier where drilling may someday, possibly, perhaps, after numerous lawsuits, see a teeny tiny bit of drilling—are anti-drilling and attempting to get themselves noticed. Fortunately, they’ve given us a handy list of who they are—so you can either vote for or against them, depending on your viewpoint, in the next election (see the complete list of anti-drilling elected officials below).

Yesterday a group of elected officials held a presser in Utica, NY to announce the Utica Shale may be a “target” for fracking:

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Industrywide Issues | Litigation | New York | Statewide NY

Anti-Fracking Group Sues NY Gov. Cuomo & DEC over FOIL Request
September 19, 2012September 19, 2012

Talk about an ill-advised strategy… Even though New York Gov. Cuomo’s office and the state Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has been holding secret meetings with anti-drillers, asking for their opinions and advice on how to proceed with fracking in New York State, some of those same groups have turned around and sued Gov. Cuomo and the state claiming a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request they made earlier this year for the records about meetings between the governor, the DEC and the drilling industry have not been fully disclosed.

Hello anti-drillers! This is not how you win friends and influence people (like Andy) to your cause. The topper? The group suing isn’t even from New York.

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Regulation | Statewide NY

Environmental Groups Ask Cuomo to Ban Fracking Permanently
September 19, 2012September 19, 2012

Yesterday, a group of the usual suspects of radical “environmentalist” groups, including 350.org, Catskill Mountainkeeper, Delaware Riverkeeper, et al, sent a letter to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo urging him to permanently ban fracking and instead pursue the fantasy of alternative energy for the state (letter embedded below). The signatories claim that clean-burning natural gas is not a bridge to their so-called clean energy nirvana future. Different day, same old stuff.

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