An interesting “new” technology from Canadian company GASFRAC uses an alternative to water and sand in the hydraulic fracturing process:
For landowners who belong to the Central New York Landowner’s Coalition (a very large coalition in Upstate NY), there will be an all-coalition meeting on Saturday, April 9th to discuss recent developments by those opposed to drilling. The coalition believes drilling permits are likely to start being issued soon, and those who oppose drilling are now “taking the fight” to local town boards in an attempt to regulate and prevent drilling. The coalition wants to address that issue.
MDN will be on hand to cover the proceedings of this event.
From the announcement:
CNY LANDOWNER’S COALITION ALL-COALITION MEETING
Saturday, April 9th, 2011
The Unadilla Valley Central School
4238 State Highway 8, New Berlin, NY 13411
The SGEIS is due out in 2 months, negotiations are heating up and the anti-gas activists are trying to sway your town boards to ban drilling. It’s time to hear the latest info on our chats with the industry and to unite on a strategy to protect your landowner rights at the town level. Our coalition maps will be posted and committee members will be available for your questions. Plus we’ll equip you with everything you need to be sure your town doesn’t strip you of your landowner rights and privileges.
9:30-11:30 Meeting – Last Names beginning with A-K
1:30-3:30 Meeting – Last Names beginning with L-Z
This is an important meeting to attend. If the state continues on the path to complete the SGEIS and allow permitting, and if we win the battle on the town level, our next meeting after this one very well could be the one meeting that we have been waiting for. However, if we don’t come to this meeting to be equipped to win at the town level, we may be waiting for a long time to see any drilling take place in our region. We look forward to seeing you on the 9th.
Drilling in the Marcellus Shale in New York State has been on hold now for more than two years. Last year, the State Department of Environmental Conservation (“DEC”) issued new draft guidelines for drilling, but fierce opposition arose from some, including powerful people in the state like New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and so the DEC retreated from its plan to move forward. Then-Gov. David Paterson issued an executive order late last year placing a moratorium on drilling until June 1 of this year to give the DEC more time.
Since the Paterson moratorium went into effect, New York has installed a new governor (Andrew Cuomo), and a new head of the DEC (Joe Martens). As MDN has chronicled, Mr. Martens was a loud voice against drilling before he was appointed to head the DEC (see here). He now seems to be singing a different tune and has made noises about moving forward with drilling. A few weeks ago in an interview with National Public Radio, he said that the new Marcellus Shale drilling regulations should be ready sometime “this summer,” giving new hope to landowners in the state.
Last year some 40 landowners separated from the Windsor & Colesville Oil and Gas Lease Coalition to sign a deal to lease their land to Inflection Energy. Collectively the breakaway group holds about 3,000 acres. The rest of the coalition decided against signing in hopes of a better deal once drilling is allowed to begin in New York. The deal signed with Inflection was supposed to yield a signing bonus of $2,750 per acre, due to landowners by March 3rd. But that payment did not happen.
Read More “Infection Energy Delays Signing Bonus Payments for Landowners in Windsor, NY Area”
Norwegian driller Norse Energy Corp. recently meet with New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Commissioner Joe Martens, and they were encouraged by the meeting, saying that Martens asserted his confidence in the DEC to complete plans to release its Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement on horizontal hydraulic fracturing in the Marcellus Shale this summer.
Norse Energy has good reason to care what happens in New York—they have a significant land position of 180,000 net acres in the state. Norse Energy also owns a natural gas marketing business and operates pipeline systems in New York and Pennsylvania for gathering and transmission of natural gas.
The headline of a recent editorial in The New York Post says “Frack, baby, frack!” in a play on the oft-quoted phrase “drill, baby, drill.” It is a short but good piece, summarizing where New York stands on drilling in the Marcellus Shale. It encourages newly elected Gov. Andrew Cuomo to either lift the drilling moratorium immediately, or let it expire in July, so drilling can (finally) go forward.
One of the interesting points made in the editorial is that the motives of environmental groups in opposing drilling are not 100 percent pure as the wind-driven snow, which is what they want you to believe. The truth is, opposing Marcellus drilling is “good for business.”
Read More “Motives of Anti-Drilling Groups Exposed in NY Post Editorial”
For landowners who belong to the Central New York Landowner’s Coalition (a very large coalition in Upstate NY), there will be an all-coalition meeting on Saturday, April 9th to discuss recent developments by those opposed to drilling. The coalition believes drilling permits are likely to start being issued soon, and those who oppose drilling are now “taking the fight” to local town boards in an attempt to regulate and prevent drilling. The coalition wants to address that issue.
From the announcement:
Below are the slides shared at a public meeting held on March 4, 2011 at the West Middle School Auditorium titled “Marcellus Shale in Our Community: What’s in it for All of Us.” The meeting, attended by some 200 people, was sponsored by the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York (JLCNY). Speakers included: Scott Kurkoski, attorney for the JLCNY; John Holko, president of Lenape Resources; Richard Nyahay, manager of geology for New York State, Gastem; Michael Joy, attorney and oil & gas law professor at SUNY Buffalo; and Bob Williams, landowner and coalition member from the Windsor, NY area.
Among the many interesting slides: Several slides showing the economic impact drilling a single Marcellus Shale gas well would have on the Broome County municipality of Maine, NY. (Hint: Over $1M in revenue each year!)
Read More “Slides from Recent Marcellus Shale Meeting in Binghamton, NY”
To answer the question posed in the headline with brutal honesty: Maybe.
Disturbing Observation #1: Yesterday the New York State Senate unanimously confirmed Joe Martens to lead the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). The DEC, for those who don’t live in New York, is the agency charged with overseeing drilling in the Marcellus Shale—in fact oversight for all oil and gas drilling in the state. New York has been caught in a holding pattern on Marcellus Shale drilling for over two years, and New York’s landowners are growing weary of the delays in adopting new regulations for drilling in the Marcellus, meaning no permits for drilling in the Marcellus have been issued.
Read More “Has New York Already Missed the Marcellus Shale Drilling Boom?”
At the conclusion of the meeting titled “Marcellus Shale in Our Community: What’s in it for All of Us” held on Friday evening March 4th at the West Middle School auditorium in Binghamton, NY, the audience of about 200 people was encouraged to ask questions of the panel. Below is a list of the questions asked, and the answers received. The answer to the last question of the evening was an eye-opener for MDN, and should be for any landowner in New York.
MDN, along with about 200 other people, attended a meeting titled “Marcellus Shale in Our Community: What’s in it for All of Us” on Friday evening March 4th at the West Middle School auditorium in Binghamton, NY. The audience was, for the most part, composed of landowners and those generally in favor of drilling in the Marcellus Shale in New York. The meeting was sponsored by the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York (JLCNY).
If you live anywhere near the Binghamton, NY area, Marcellus Drilling News editor Jim Willis invites you to attend a local meeting on drilling in the Marcellus tonight, Friday, March 4. Be sure to hello! I’ll wear a big MDN badge so you can recognize me.
And if you’d like to admit reading MDN 
, I’d like to snap a picture of you to post on this website.
Below is the meeting announcement. MDN thanks Dan Fitzsimmons, President of the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York, for organizing the meeting and sending us the announcement.
Read More “Join MDN in Attending a Landowner Community Forum Tonight, March 4, in Binghamton”
Newly elected Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, will be a key figure (perhaps the key figure) in determining whether or not drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale goes forward in the state. His appointment of Joe Martens on Jan. 4 to be head of the Department of Environmental Conservation which oversees drilling was not a good sign to those who favor drilling (see MDN’s story here). But Mr. Martens seems to be signing a different tune these days.
Read More “A Glimmer of Hope for Marcellus Drilling in New York State”
Yesterday saw the first round of hearings by the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), four hearings total—two in Honesdale, PA and two in Liberty, NY (afternoon and evening sessions at both locations). The hearings were for public comment on the DRBC’s proposed new extra layer of drilling regulations for Marcellus Shale gas wells drilled within the Delaware River watershed, which includes portions of Pennsylvania and New York where Marcellus drilling occurs.
Yesterday, a debate on horizontal hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”), the process used to extract natural gas from the Marcellus Shale, was held on the campus of the State University of New York at Cortland. “Debating the Pros and Cons of Gas Drilling” featured Professor Anthony R. Ingraffea from Cornell University on the anti-drilling side, and Professor Donald Siegel from Syracuse University on the pro-drilling side. Unfortunately MDN could not be in attendance. Since those opposed to drilling focus almost exclusively on the issue of fracking, one would expect this event to be heavily covered by the media. But checking news sources in the Binghamton, Cortland, Syracuse and Ithaca areas finds only a single report from all of the news outlets, from Binghamton’s WBNG-TV Channel 12 (embedded below).
Read More “Hydraulic Fracturing Debate at SUNY Cortland, Ingraffea vs Siegel”
The Town of Windsor, located in Broome County, NY is about to get a new natural gas pipeline built that will connect gas wells across the border in PA (where drilling is happening) to the Millennium Pipeline which runs through Broome County. Yesterday the New York Public Service Commission (PSC) gave the green light for construction to begin*. The pipeline, being built by Laser Northeast Gathering Company, will be about 9.8 miles long on the New York side of the border, out of a total 33 miles.
Read More “PA Marcellus Gas Coming to Broome County, NY via New Gathering Pipeline”