Sham “Study” from Johns Hopkins Says Fracking Makes Athsma Worse
The anti-frackers at the Johns Hopkins-Bloomberg School of Public Health are out with another bought-and-paid-for (by anti-drillers) “study” that implies the presence of fracking in Pennsylvania leads to causing or making worse asthma attacks. You may recall the same group of antis pushed out a study last October that supposedly shows fracking leads to premature births (see New Junk Science Claims PA Fracking Leads to Premature Births). That study was quickly debunked (see EID’s Devastating Critique of PA Premature Birth “Study” and Another Devastating Critique of Fracking/Premature Birth “Study”). This newest study, “Association Between Unconventional Natural Gas Development in the Marcellus Shale and Asthma Exacerbations,” evaluates thousands of health records from the Geisinger Clinic in PA, looking for patterns between people showing up with asthmatic symptoms and correlating it to how close they live to shale wells being drilled. The incredible thing about this latest run at smearing the miracle of fracking is this: the authors (most of them students) admit in their own study they only have theories, no proof that ties fracking to asthma. You read that right–there is no proof, no smoking gun. Only wild theories that are unsupported by the data. Yet fawning (and frankly stupid) reporters at places like the AP, PBS StateImpact Pennsylvania and USA Today are trumpeting this “study” as scientific proof of a link that fracking kills ya. It seems the Johns Hopkins-Bloomberg School of Public Health doesn’t produce science–it produces politics dressed up as science…
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When will anti-fossil fuel madness that seems to spread like the Zika virus begin to subside? Anti-fossil fuel madness is just as destructive as Zika for those it infects. Take the case of the proposed merger/buyout of Piedmont Natural Gas by utility powerhouse Duke Energy for $6.7 billion (see 
A pair of companies operating in the Marcellus Shale announced late last week that they are laying off a collective 175 jobs in West Virginia between them . Energy Corporation of America (ECA), which ranked 20th for most production in the Marcellus Shale in 2015 according to NGI’s 
FirstEnergy is one of the nation’s largest investor-owned electric systems, serving customers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia, Maryland and New York. FirstEnergy loves the shale industry. In April, MDN reported that FirstEnergy’s construction crews had begun erecting steel poles for a new 18-mile high voltage power line that will run through Harrison and Doddridge counties in WV (see 
A year ago MDN told you about a new gathering pipeline project in Butler County, PA. Rex Energy contracted with Stonehenge Energy Resources to build a gathering system in Butler County (see 
The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania has sided with landowners in a dispute with Shell’s shale drilling arm, called SWEPI (Shell Western Exploration Production Inc.). SWEPI signed a lease with two landowners who own a collective 1,036 acres in Lycoming County. SWEPI promised a $4,000 per acre signing bonus, but a few months after signing SWEPI decided they didn’t want the acreage after all and tried to cancel the lease and the bonus payment. The judge ordered SWEPI to pay $2,072,000 to each of the two landowner families…
Some interesting Marcellus-related items were included in the recently adopted Pennsylvania state budget that have largely flown under the radar. There are also a few things that weren’t in the budget bill–previously intended to be part of it–that didn’t survive the process. At the top of the list is lack of a severance tax. But right behind that (for us) is that a gross receipts tax on natural gas use, which we thought would be part of the final deal, was not. As MDN previously reported, a gross receipts tax taxes end users of natural gas, in essence targeting low-income households (see 
Fairmount Santrol, an Ohio-based sand producer that sells sand as a proppant for use in Utica and Marcellus Shale drilling, released their preliminary second quarter 2016 results last week. Although the company expects to lose between $91-$93 million for the quarter (compared to a profit of $14.1 million a year ago), things are not all bad. Yes, it’s been tough for Fairmount and other companies in the oil and gas industry. Really tough. But Fairmount’s CEO Jenniffer Deckard, said this: “…we are also encouraged by the early signs of improvement we are seeing in the proppant market.” In other words, a crack of light is peeking through the door and we’re beginning to see the great slowdown in drilling come to an end…