Prominent Enviro Proposes “Climate Dictatorship” based on China
You often read on MDN of our disdain for “radical” environmentalists and the “Big Green” organizations that do so much harm to our economy, our liberties and our way of life. Occasionally we’ll get an email asking, “What do you mean by radicals?” or “Who is Big Green?” On a regional scale we’re talking about THE Delaware Riverkeeper, various Mountain Keeper organizations, [fill in the blank] organizations against pipelines. On a national scale it’s the odious and evil Sierra Club, Food & Water Watch, National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and a variety of others. Behind the curtain, pulling strings by donating large sums of money, are people like Mamma Teresa Heinz Kerry (Heinz Endowment), billionaire leftie Tom Styer, the Rockefellers, etc. What interests us is most is that at their core–whether local flakes or California billionaires–is an irrational hatred of fossil fuels. The mythology that mankind is catastrophically causing the earth to warm is their rallying cry–and their “righteous” cause is to stop it, by any means necessary. Since their pathetic ideology cannot and will not gain traction with enough people in a free society to enforce the changes they want on the entire population, these people often tip over into fascism and/or Communism. In their heart of hearts they seek to overthrow free democracies. How do we know? One of them, a European, has just admitted it–for all the world to see. Jørgen Randers, professor of “climate strategy” at BI Norwegian Business School–a mainstream climate guy–is calling for a “climate dictatorship,” along the lines of the Chinese government. You know, do it right–like the people responsible for the Tiananmen Square massacre. That’s how professor Randers wants to handle those of us who are “climate deniers”…
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The director of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Craig Butler, continues to go off the rails with a major grudge against Rover Pipeline (see 
We find this story amusing. A group of left-leaning Catholic nuns in Lancaster County, PA, whipped up by radical environmentalists with ties to Big Green organizations, got it into their heads to try and block a very-safe natural gas pipeline from crossing their property–the Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline being built by Williams. The Sisters call themselves Adorers of the Blood of Christ. We call them Sisters of the Corn, because they put a couple of wooden park benches in a cornfield on their property (leased to a local farmer), christening it a “chapel” and claiming because the pipeline would run through the middle of their so-called chapel, building a pipeline is a violation of freedom of religion. In September a federal judge tossed the lawsuit (see 
An off-hand comment by a Pennsylvania Gov. Wolf staffer has landowners in northeast PA hopping mad–and with good reason. Speaking on the topic of PA landowners getting screwed out of royalty payments by drillers deducting inflated post-production costs (sometimes sending royalty statements where landowners OWE the drillers money!), Wolf deputy policy director Sam Robinson said this: “I think there was a crescendo of that kind of claim in 2015 to 2016…There’s been real movement in a positive direction on that issue.” Really? Not according to Bradford County Commissioner Doug McLinko and National Association of Royalty Owners (NARO) PA president Jackie Root. Not only is the issue not resolved, but the industry, under the prompting of EQT, snuck through an “environmental rider” in the recently passed-and-signed-into-law Fiscal Code bill (called Section 1610) that gives drillers a back door to reactivate old, non-producing wells after they have not been producing (and the lease considered terminated) under certain conditions (see 
The guy who runs the investment firm Jana Partners, Barry Rosenstein, is a corporate raider. He invests millions in a company he’s targeted in order to get one or two people elected to the board of directors. Those people then agitate and force the company to lay off hundreds or thousands of employees, and sell off assets, in a bid to make the stock price jump. When the price does jump, corporate raiders like Rosenstein then sell their shares, making a profit on the new/higher price (buy low sell high). It may be legal, but we consider it immoral. In June, EQT, one of the biggest drillers in the Marcellus/Utica, announced a deal to buyout and merge in Rice Energy, another sizable M-U driller (see 
Last week National Fuel Gas Company, headquartered in Western New York State with drilling subsidiary Seneca Resources and pipeline subsidiary Empire Pipeline, issued its fourth quarter (everyone else’s third quarter) 2017 update. In the accompanying analyst phone call, CEO Ronald Tanski blamed the delay of the Northern Access Pipeline project (delayed by the NY Dept. of Environmental Conservation) for lower earnings than the company would have otherwise realized. Thanks, business UNfriendly NY! You may recall in July NFG filed a lawsuit against the DEC for arbitrarily rejecting the project (see 
Although there is still quite a bit less drilling than there was in 2014-2015, for a number of reasons, there are plenty of jobs to be had in the Marcellus/Utica Shale–especially in southwest PA. Companies that do work in the industry held a job fair last Thursday night at the Deer Lakes High School, looking for truck drivers, roustabouts and construction workers. Seems like a week doesn’t go by now that we don’t read about a job fair somewhere in the Pittsburgh region. Yes, there may be less drilling, but there’s still plenty of jobs to be filled, especially with Shell’s cracker plant construction ramping up. Below is news about last week’s job fair–who was looking, and what they’re willing to pay…
Recently the profoundly biased mouthpiece for Big Green groups, PBS StateImpact Pennsylvania, ran an article about the political fallout around the construction of what will be Pennsylvania’s largest natural gas-fired electric generating plant, located near Scranton. Invenergy is currently building the Lackawanna Energy Center, a 1,480 megawatt plant in Jessup, PA that will cost “well over $1 billion” according to an exclusive MDN source working on the project. The PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) approved the plant in December 2015 (see 
In September 2016, Chesapeake Energy filed disclosure forms with the Securities and Exchange Commission which says the U.S. Dept. of Justice (DOJ), a number of states, and even the U.S. Postal Service have served the company with subpoenas for information (see 
In January of this year, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) voted to approve and issue a certificate to Columbia Pipeine’s Leach XPress and Rayne XPress pipeline projects (see 
Exciting! We have a brand new pipeline project to tell you about–located in the Greater Philadelphia area. Although the project is new, the pipeline is old–already in the ground. Talen Energy, birthed in June 2015 from a combination between PPL Energy Supply and certain assets of Riverstone Holdings, is one of the largest competitive energy and power generation companies in North America. Talen’s core business is building and operating electric generating power plants. One of the assets Talen inherited in the merger is an 84-mile pipeline called the Interstate Energy Company which runs from Northampton County, PA through Bucks, Montgomery, and Chester counties, terminating in Delaware County at Marcus Hook. Talen announced yesterday they’ve sold the Interstate Energy Company (the pipeline) to Adelphia Gateway, a subsidiary of New Jersey Resources, for $189 million. The northern 34 miles of the pipeline was converted to flow natural gas back in 1996. The southern 50 miles currently flows oil, but Adelphia (NJ Resources) announced yesterday they will convert the oil portion of the pipeline to instead flow natural gas. The bottom line is that a wide swath of Greater Philly is about to get a new source of clean-burning, abundant fracked PA natural gas…
The odious Sierra Club is at it again. Using what appears to be endless supplies of money from people like the Rockefellers, the Sierra Club, along with a mishmash of other radical environmental groups, filed an emergency motion in federal court on Monday, asking the court to stop any further work on the Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline. Atlantic Sunrise is a $3 billion, 198-mile natural gas pipeline project running through 10 Pennsylvania counties to connect Marcellus Shale natural gas from northeastern PA with the Williams’ Transco pipeline in southern Lancaster County. Williams, the company building/owning the project, broke ground in September (see 
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) continues its quest to put Mariner East 2 (ME2) Pipeline construction under a microscope. Two days ago MDN told you that the DEP had issued a Notice of Violation (NOV) for ME2 work in Lebanon County, PA, for spilling LESS THAN 1 gallon of non-toxic drilling mud (see 
In July, President Trump nominateed Kevin McIntyre, co-leader of the global Energy Practice at the Jones Day law firm, as the fifth (and final) FERC commissioner (see 
Hold on or you might get whiplash. In March, the West Virginia Dept. of Environmental Protection (WVDEP) issued a federal water crossing permit for the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP)–a $3.5 billion, 301-mile pipeline that will run from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County, VA (see 
In something of a good omen ahead of a vote on Nov. 9 by shareholders of EQT and Rice Energy to approve a merger, one of two EQT-shareholding corporate raiders, D.E. Shaw, supports the merger. In point of fact, Shaw has not opposed the merger since it was announced in June. Shaw’s “issue” has been that the merged EQT/Rice should immediately split itself in two–into upstream (drilling) and midstream (pipelines). Shaw’s pressure seems to be one of the (main?) reasons why EQT moved up the timing to consider such a split (see