The current moratorium on high volume hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in New York is exactly 4 years and 6 months old today. MDN keeps a handy “Moratorium Clock” in the right sidebar to remind people how long New York landowners have been denied their Constitutional property rights to allow drilling on their land in the People’s Republic of New York. Here’s how it looked this morning:
We believe we’ve seen this movie before… NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo released his proposed 2013 budget yesterday. Not included in the budget was money to hire new inspectors for the Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to inspect oil and gas drilling—inspectors that will be needed if shale drilling finally begins in the state this year.
Is the omission of money for new inspectors important, and does it indicate which way the governor is leaning with his career make-or-break decision? According to the governor himself, don’t read too much into it…
Read More “NY Gov Cuomo Omits Money for Drilling Inspectors in 2013 Budget”
Will there be Marcellus Shale drilling any time soon in the two western Maryland counties that have Marcellus Shale? The short answer: no. You need to have drillers who want to drill, and as of now, applications to drill in the Marcellus from the four drillers who filed them with the state Department of the Environment have all been withdrawn.
Read More “MD Marcellus Drillers Withdraw Applications, No Drilling for Now”
An excellent report on natural gas pipelines in Pennsylvania issued in December has just come to our attention. The report (full copy embedded below) was created by PA Gov. Tom Corbett’s Energy Executive, Patrick Henderson, as a requirement under the state’s new Act 13 drilling law. The report provides a brief history of natural gas pipelines in the state with an excellent overview of how pipelines are regulated and who regulates them, followed by 16 recommendations for lawmakers to consider in crafting new policies.
Among the recommendations: Run new pipelines along existing local and state road right-of-ways; make it easier to share pipeline capacity without forcing a pipeline into becoming a public utility (with the associated nightmare of heavy regulation); and the state’s Public Utility Commission should create and maintain a comprehensive map displaying the routes for all shale gas pipelines.
Read More “PA NatGas Pipelines: Coming to a Roadway Near You?”
Anti-drillers in and around Kent, Ohio have some helpful suggestions for elected officials in Kent: ban fracking. And if you can’t ban it, make zoning so onerous that the practical effect would be to ban it. And if you can’t do that, be sure to pass a law that blocks access to all water supplies around Kent so drillers have no way of fracking. And if you can’t do that… See a theme developing here?
Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP): Prepare for a painful anal exam, coming courtesy the newly elected PA Auditor General Eugene DePasquale. That was the gist of a letter sent by DePasquale to Michael Krancer, Secretary of the DEP, on DePasquale’s first day on the job (a copy of the full letter is embedded below).
The DEP’s response to DePasquale? Bring it on…
Read More “PA Auditor General Targets State’s Marcellus Drilling Industry”
Yesterday a one-year temporary moratorium on fracking in New Jersey expired—hardly anyone noticed. Nobody wants to drill in New Jersey. The Marcellus Shale that clips one small corner of the state most likely has no gas in it (being on the outer fringe of the Marcellus). But that doesn’t stop anti-drillers from continuing their insistence that the state adopt a full-out ban on fracking.
RINO NJ Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon, Jr. (“Junior”) is still pushing his “ban it until the EPA says it’s OK” bill in the legislature (see NJ Bill Would Ban Fracking Until EPA Report is Done). Of course the real aim for Junior and other anti-drillers, as expressed by Environment NJ’s Doug O’Malley, is a permanent ban that will “send a strong message.” The now expired one-year moratorium? That was just a “fig leaf” according to O’Malley…
Read More “NJ Fracking Moratorium Expires (Yawn) – Junior Still Wants Ban”
Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy is mailing an anti-fracking brochure (killing precious trees from the Catskills to provide the paper, no doubt) to 190,000 residents throughout the Southern Tier area of New York—a region that desperately wants and needs drilling, and the area that will see drilling when/if the current moratorium is lifted. The brochure is pure propaganda and full of outright lies, but hey, this is still Ameritopia where the First Amendment is alive and well, for people on the left anyway.
An electronic copy of the brochure is embedded below so MDN’s fellow NYers know what they can use to line the bird cage with when it arrives.
Read More “Anti-Fracking Group Mails Propaganda Brochure to 190K NYers”
The stumbling, bumbling governor of Maryland, Socialist/Democrat Martin O’Malley, finally figured out that if the fracking study he himself ordered back in 2011 is ever going to get done by 2014, he’ll need to find money in the budget to do it. So in a blinding acknowledgement of the obvious, he included $1.5 million in the proposed budget he delivered to the legislature yesterday.
Of course, $1.5 million in Maryland is a rounding error in the state budget, but until now anti-drillers in the state have used lack of funding for the study as a convenient excuse to continue a moratorium on drilling. Look for the state’s Dems to neuter out the $1.5 million and then throw up their hands and say “no funding, no study, no drilling.” Typical.
Read More “Maryland Gov Finally Allocates Money for Fracking Study in Budget”
Want to kill something? Just keep studying it. So says a very perceptive Maryland State Delegate, Wendell Beitzel, who represents Garrett County, MD. Beitzel wants to move forward with Marcellus drilling in Maryland. He faces an uphill battle. There’s a movement on right now to delay drilling by studying it to death (apparently Maryland is taking their cue from New York in that regard)…
Read More “Maryland Shale Drilling Moratorium to be Debated in Legislature”
Keeping a campaign pledge—because it’s always good to keep a pledge if you’re an anti-drilling Democrat, but it’s OK to conveniently forget all the other pledges you made—the newly sworn-in Auditor General for Pennsylvania, Eugene DePasquale, has targeted the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) in what can only be described as a political attack in his very first day on the job:
Read More “Newly Elected PA Auditor General Targets DEP First Day on Job”
An interesting twist…MDN has followed, with some interest, the future of three federal officials (besides Lord Obama Himself) who potentially have the most influence over oil and gas drilling in the U.S. In case you don’t know, regulation and oversight for oil and gas drilling is specifically left to the individual states under the U.S. Constitution—something the lefties in this country are desperately trying to circumvent by claiming aspects of it come under federal laws like the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act.
The three federal officials who have been complicit in attempting to overthrow states’ rights in regulating oil and gas drilling are…
We suppose it’s no surprise, really, but the left-leaning Albany Times Union, a newspaper no doubt read by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, ran an editorial yesterday that dredges up all of the hackneyed, debunked, half-thought-out and simply untrue reasons why New York should ban fracking—and the Times Union went on record supporting an ongoing ban.
Let’s apply a little logic to answer the nagging angst experienced by the Times Union editorial writers, since logic seems to escape them. We’ve interspersed MDN’s comments throughout to provide perspective and answers.
Read More “Albany Times Union Goes on Record as Anti-Fracking”
It’s a sad and ironic day: The town for which the Marcellus Shale is named, Marcellus, NY (Onondaga County, near Syracuse), has voted to ban the Marcellus—as in no Marcellus Shale drilling will be allowed in the township.
By a 5-0 vote last night, the town board illegally stripped away the Constitutional property rights of all of its citizens in contravention to New York State law…
Read More “Irony: Marcellus, NY Votes to Ban Marcellus Shale Drilling”
The magic date by which the New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) must release new rules to allow fracking is and has been Feb. 27—which is the end of the 90-day extension period we’re currently in. However, there’s a closer, more important date to watch for those who support fracking and want to see it go forward, and for those who don’t. That date? Feb. 13.
Here’s why is Feb. 13 is a critical date and likely the “real” deadline for the DEC to decide yes or no…
Read More ““Real” Deadline for NY DEC to Decide Fracking Issue: Feb 13”
Hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas is an economic, technological miracle—hands down. There are some negatives associated with the practice, but fracking in no way pollutes ground water aquifers as claimed by people who simply hate all fossil fuels (and must justify their hatred with specious arguments like “it pollutes water”).
A recent column in the New York Post does a stellar job of putting the miracle of fracking—and New York’s angst over it—in context by using a little known story of actual events that happened in Sweden during the 1700s—events that had to do with one of MDN’s favorite addictions: coffee. It’s the kind of column we wish we had written…
Read More “What Do Fracking, Coffee & Secret Reports have in Common?”