Big Stakes: Gorsline Zoning Case Goes to PA Supreme Court
Guess who’s back with a case now before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court? Yep, the odious nutters from Big Green Groups PennFuture, THE (arrogant) Delaware Riverkeeper, and the Peters Township gang. You may recall we reported last September of the humiliating defeat suffered by these groups in the “Gorsline” case (see Major Victory for PA Landowners/Drillers in Lycoming County Case). It was a Lycoming County zoning case before the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court. In Gorsline v. Board of Supervisors of Fairfield Township, anti-drilling neighbors, including Brian and Dawn Gorsline, Paul and Michele Batkowski and others (collectively “Gorsline”) sued to stop a conditional use permit granted by Fairfield Township to allow Inflection Energy to construct a well pad on the property of Donald and Eleanor Shaheen. The case was weak, but the lowest court in the PA court system–the Court of Common Pleas (i.e. county court)–said the ninny nanny neighbors had a right to strip away the Shaheen’s property rights to allow drilling on their own property. The PA Commonwealth Court obliterated the faulty reasoning of the lower court and, significantly, redefined how courts should interpret the results of the Act 13 zoning lawsuit that allows local municipalities the right to restrict shale drilling. Unfortunately the matter won’t rest there. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has taken up the Gorsline case on appeal. The PA Supreme Court has a 5-2 majority of left-leaning Democrats. Below we have a copy of the brief filed by PennFuture on behalf of the ninny nanny Gorslines, along with “friend of the court” briefs filed by THE Delaware Riverkeeper and Peters Township. Folks, this is a dangerous case the for drilling industry… Read More “Big Stakes: Gorsline Zoning Case Goes to PA Supreme Court”
Last week we pointed out the inconsistency of Donald Trump in his public comments during an interview in Denver on frack bans. Trump said he believes local municipalities and even states should be able to ban fracking if they don’t want it–even though he personally supports fracking (see 
Since we’re taking Donald Trump to task over his wrong-headed thinking on local frack bans, we’d like to be an equal opportunity basher. Hillary Clinton’s position on fracking is far worse than The Donald’s position. If Hill has her way, she’ll end the practice. Oh, not with an Executive Order banning fracking, as Crazy Bernie promised he would do if he got elected. No, Hill is promising to enact new regulations (either via Congress or via Executive Orders) so strict, that “By the time we get through all of my conditions, I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place.” Her words. Although Hillary is a known and proven liar, we happen to believe those words coming from her mouth. First up for Hill, “fix” the so-called “Halliburton loophole.” In 2005 Congress passed new environmental standards for the Safe Drinking Water Act (managed by the out-of-control Environmental Protection Agency) and chose not to include the oil and gas industry in those standards because the EPA has no right to regulate the oil & gas industry–only the states can regulate the o&g industry under the U.S. Constitution. The proper recognition of not expanding the EPA’s authority (illegally) somehow has been twisted into a “loophole” for the industry, and Halliburton’s name was applied to the loophole in an attempt to smear then-Vice President Dick Cheney, who was previously the CEO of Halliburton. Hillary has resurrected the same old Democrat lie and smear campaign from years gone by. She says if she becomes Prez (God forbid), she’ll jam the EPA right up the o&g industry’s….operations….as far as she can…
In May the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) once again far overstepped its charter by seizing power that doesn’t belong to it. They issued new methane rules in a back-door way to try and regulate the oil and gas industry (see 
We will confess it up front: We voted for Donald Trump in the primary. We think he stands the best chance of defeating Hillary Clinton. Clinton would, in our opinion, be very bad for the oil and gas industry (as well as bad for the country in general). To each his own, right? We will not extensively cover the election–that’s already being done everywhere else. Most everyone has a strong opinion one way or the other. Trump has given some bang-up speeches supporting the fossil fuel industry (see 
StateImpact Pennsylvania is populated with partisan hacks who pretend to be reporters. One of them is Marie Cusick (who has a degree in political science, not journalism). We’ve often pointed out the extreme left-tilting political bias in StateImpact’s “articles” (i.e. propaganda). What really galls is that taxpayers help fund it, since StateImpact is a project of the Public Broadcasting Service. We hate having our tax money fund such skewed reporting. But we digress. Yesterday Marie Cusick did an interview with the Acting Secretary of the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), Pat McDonnell. You may recall that Pat’s predecessor, John Quigley, was fired for colluding with Big Green groups and using a private email address to do it (see 
The legal beagles at global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright have done us all a huge favor. Researchers have just issued a quarterly legislative action update for the second quarter of 2016 looking at previously laws acted upon, and new laws introduced, affecting the oil and gas industry in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. The “Quarterly legislative action update: Marcellus and Utica shale region” (full copy below) begins with a quick listing by state for existing or new laws introduced, with descriptions for each bill/law. This is, in one place, pretty much everything you need to know about what new laws (i.e. regulations) are coming down the pike that will affect the Marcellus and Utica Shale drilling industry…
In July 2015 Williams filed an application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for the $130 million New York Bay Expansion project, which will flow Marcellus gas to 500,000 additional New York City residents by the 2017/2018 heating season (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 2015 for a pipeline project they call Northern Access 2016 (later renamed to simply Northern Access Project, dropping the “2016” part). The $455 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 (see 