78% of Southeast Ohio Voters Support Utica Shale Drilling
The Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program (OOGEEP), a nonprofit energy education and public outreach organization, recently commissioned a poll of Ohio voters in eight eastern counties–in the Ohio Valley area. The counties surveyed include those with the most active Utica Shale drilling in the state. The poll asked residents’ about their views on shale drilling and its related activities. Some 88% said the natural gas and oil industry is important to their community, and 78% support natural gas and oil development in the Ohio Valley area.
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Delays in building new pipelines, like the PennEast Pipeline, have real, tangible costs for natural gas customers. In the case of PennEast, natgas customers in southeastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey are paying billions in higher gas costs because PennEast is not yet built. Even worse, there’s a looming shortage coming in New Jersey.
This is so outrageous we don’t even have words for it. New York State’s highest court, with its judges appointed by Gov. Cuomo, ruled in 2014 that local municipal “home rule” laws to block fracking are just fine (see 
New York State is experiencing the worst possible nightmare–and we can’t wake up. Following the November 2018 election, Democrats now control not only the governorship, but also both houses of the legislature–for the first time since 1964. Sure we’ve always had a Democrat-controlled Assembly (the lower chamber), but the Senate stayed in Republican hands, providing a check against rampant socialism. That check and balance disappeared beginning this year and the state’s far-left Democrats have used it to great advantage. Many of our Constitutional freedoms have disappeared *this year* in NY State. It’s sad and tragic. Before the Senate changes back to Republican control in the future, the state’s radicalized Democrats want to pass a permanent (instead of the existing temporary) ban on fracking statewide.
For months MDN has brought you bits and pieces of news from individual drillers, detailing plans to cut back on spending for new drilling in the Marcellus/Utica in 2020. It’s not just happening in the M-U–it’s happening across the country. The experts at RBN Energy have a terrific new post that pulls information about major drillers scaling back into one place. They analyze spending by three different groups of drillers: oil-focused, diversified, and gas-focused drillers. In the third category, all but one of the gas-focused drillers have major operations in the M-U. The stats are sobering. As a collective group, M-U gas drillers have pledged to cut their 2020 budgets 25% from the already-lower spending that happened this year. Ouch.
Keystone Clearwater Solutions, a company that provides water services for shale drillers in the Marcellus/Utica, is “coming home” in a sense. We told you in November that SC Water, LLC, a Pennsylvania-based natural gas and oil industry investment group, announced it had signed an agreement to buy Keystone Clearwater from American Water for an undisclosed amount (see 
The Heinz Endowments, a grantmaking organization in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that sits under the thumb of Mamma Teresa Heinz Kerry (wacko lefty Democrat), has long been viewed as a community pillar in western Pennsylvania. What you may not know is that Heinz Endowments has spent over $120 million in “environmental grants” between 2008 and 2016, much of that money funding anti-shale and anti-fossil fuel campaigns. The Heinz Endowments is no friend to the working class in western PA.
Last month MDN warned readers that we were likely at a peak, the point when the Marcellus/Utica would, after many years, begin to produce less natural gas each month than it had the month before (see 
West Virginia’s co-tenancy law was signed into law by Gov. Jim Justice in March 2018 (see 
In August the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) ruled that the New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) took too long to deny a federal Clean Water Act “Section 401” water crossing permit for the Williams Constitution Pipeline project (see 
The Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) issued third quarter 2019 numbers for Utica shale oil and gas production last Friday. Drum roll please! The numbers show new state record highs for quarterly oil AND natural gas production, the most ever since quarterly reporting began in 2013. Through the roof! Utica oil production was up 29.8% over 3Q18, and Utica natural gas production was up 11.3% over 3Q18.
In Nov. 2017 the Ohio Attorney General’s office under then-AG Mike Dewine (RINO swamp dweller, now governor) sued Energy Transfer at the prompting of the Ohio EPA claiming the company’s Rover Pipeline project was guilty of “polluting state waters while constructing a natural gas pipeline across Ohio” (see 