Sham Study: Folks Won’t Visit Public Parks with Fracking Nearby
So four anti-drillers are sitting at a bar…no wait–that’s another story. Four anti-drilling activists who teach at three different colleges–University of Florida, Florida State University, and North Carolina State University (none of them nowhere near the Marcellus/Utica Shale)–got together and concocted a sham study that used an ONLINE survey of 225 people (i.e. unscientific) in the Marcellus/Utica region who visit public parks. Based on the GIGO survey results, the researchers say one-third of Appalachian folks ain’t a goin’ to no park with frackin’ nearby, nosiree. Of course, it’s likely they wouldn’t even know whether or not there is fracking nearby since you typically can’t tell from more than a few hundred feet away where a well is being drilled. We wonder if the researchers also asked the same 225 if they would fly in to or out of an airport with fracking nearby? If that’s your criteria for whether or not to do something, whether there’s fracking nearby, you won’t be using Pittsburgh International Airport where some 47 wells are being drilled as we write this…
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PennEast Pipeline, the $1 billion, 118-mile, 36-inch diameter pipeline that will deliver 1 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day from the Marcellus gas fields of northeastern Pennsylvania (in Luzerne County) to southeastern PA and New Jersey (terminating in Mercer County, NJ), has just announced another $50,000 of community grants, bringing the grand total of such grants up to $240,000–so far. The organizations receiving the grants are eminently worthy–mostly fire departments and EMS departments located in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey…
Earlier this week a $2.85 million compressed natural gas (CNG) filling station was opened with a large crowd of people eager to begin using it. Nexus Natural Gas, a consortium of seven different companies, unveiled their first collaborative CNG fueling station aimed at cars, trucks, tractor-trailers and buses. The state got involved with a $570,000 grant–recognizing the benefits of using natural gas as a transportation fuel (burns cleaner, natural gas is a home-grown fuel). Local utility/pipeline companies are involved too–to deliver cheap, abundant and clean-burning Marcellus Shale gas to the new fueling station. What’s that? Where’s this new CNG fueling station located–where crowds of natgas lovers congregated to celebrate? Would you believe, in New York State!…
Two sister companies based in Ohio–Valley Electrical Consolidated Inc. and Evets Oil & Gas Construction Services–will be merged together under parent company VEC, Inc. starting January 1, 2016. VEC/Evets has done construction and steel fabrication work for many Utica/Marcellus companies in Ohio and neighboring states. According to VEC’s president and owner, Rex Ferry, the realignment and merging of the two into one will allow them to better serve customers. Along with the merger of the two companies comes a few promotions, including a promotion for an MDN subscriber…
Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who is having trouble getting anyone to notice he’s running for president (predictably, nobody cares when an establishment RINO runs), will swoop in at a press conference today at 3 pm in Belmont County, OH to announce that foreigners from Thailand-based PTT Global and Marubeni Corp. of Tokyo will drop $100 million on Ohio to conduct engineering and design work for a previously announced potential ethane cracker plant in the county (see 
Pennsylvania anti-drillers from a local chapter of the Izaak Walton League, a so-called conservation organization, attempted a smear job on the Marcellus Shale industry–and it’s come back to bite them. The Izaak Walton gang has been testing water from Ten Mile Creek that runs through Washington and Greene counties in western PA for the past four years. Last year the League raised an alarm that there are high levels of radiation and other nasty things in the creek. The League immediately started pointing a finger at the Marcellus industry, accusing drillers of illegally dumping untreated wastewater in the creek (see 
We shouldn’t be, but we’re stunned. We’ve discovered that anti-drillers are funding studies to discover how best to fool you. What words, phrases, stories and lies will resonate the best, and move low information types, to oppose fossil fuels. They study it and actually publish their findings (crow about it) for all the world to see! We’ve known for a long time that so-called peer reviewed research is nothing more than bought-and-paid-for propaganda (read this recent story in the New York Times: 
Although anti-fossil fuel nutters in New York State have worked to oppose converting electric generating plants from burning coal to clean-burning natural gas (see 
National Fuel Gas (NFG), the Buffalo-based utility giant with both a drilling subsidiary (Seneca Resources) and a midstream/pipeline subsidiary (Empire Pipeline) filed an application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in March for a pipeline project they call Northern Access 2016. The $451 million project includes building 97 miles of new pipeline along a power line corridor from northwestern Pennsylvania up to Erie County, NY. The project also calls for 3 miles of new pipeline further up, in Niagara County, along with a new compressor station in the Town of Pendleton. We have a full description below for all of the new construction, modifications and add-ons that are part of the Access Northeast 2016 project. The pipeline, when complete, will flow Marcellus Shale natural gas from Pennsylvania northward to New York and on into Canada. Although NFG has bent backwards, forwards and has contorted itself into just about every yoga position there is to accommodate residents around Pendleton, nearby residents are still opposed to NFG building a new compressor station anywhere near them…
Ivan and Kathy Dubrasky are anti-drillers located in Pulaski Township (Lawrence County), PA, just across the border from Ohio and close to Youngstown. They recently hosted a tiny anti-drilling rally at their property (see 
Shell continues to act as if it has already made the decision to build a $2-$3 billion ethane cracker plant complex in Beaver County, PA, even though they continue to refuse to say they’ve made a decision. What’s our evidence? In June Shell finally purchased the land where the cracker will be built, the former Horsehead zinc smelter property in Potter that will be the primary location of the cracker plant IF it gets built (see 
A Pennsylvania Democrat in Republican clothing, Gene DiGirolamo (“Republican” House member from the Philadelphia area), along with a hard-left Democrat, Steve Stroman (director of Penn’s Woods Conservation Advocates), have penned a “bipartisan” column in the Harrisburg Patriot-News on how a “principled” and “reasonable” severance tax compromise will create education nirvana in Pennsylvania. The column is so shot full of lies we can’t even begin to count them. This is pure propaganda from two lefties who want to tax and spend PA into the ground once again, as it existed under Ed Rendell before Tom Corbett fixed it by cutting excessive and out-of-control education spending. Our pair of lefties say just a piddly little 3.2% severance tax will be all that’s required–even though until now nothing less than 5% (actually it turns out to be 17.3%, see 
A very old and trite but true saying: Q: How do you know when a politician, like NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo, is lying? A: When he opens his mouth. Our illustrious man-child governor was in Syracuse yesterday to drop off a bag of money with $50 million, and an impertinent reporter had the gall to ask His Lordship about the secession rally held in Chenango County on Sunday (see 
Last October MDN told you about an exciting project from Boardwalk Pipeline Partners’ Texas Gas Transmission pipeline that will reverse the flow from the Louisiana Gulf Coast all the way to Ohio (see 
Weeping. Wailing. Gnashing of teeth. Ripping clothes and sitting in sackcloth and ashes. That’s some of the reaction from lunatic anti-fossil fuelers in Massachusetts after the Mass. Dept. of Public Utilities (DPU) approved long-term contracts for three utilities–Berkshire Gas, National Grid and Columbia Gas–to buy natural gas supplies from the hated, evil Kinder Morgan Northeast Energy Direct pipeline. That is, the three utilities will buy more gas from Kinder IF the pipeline ever gets built. We’re still a long way from backhoes digging up ground to lay new pipeline, but we’ve just taken a big step forward with this decision by the DPU. What’s next for the loons of Mass? Yep–you guessed it. They’re planning to take the DPU to court…