DRBC Adopts Meaningless Prohibition on Shale Wastewater Disposal
The leftists of the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) voted yesterday to approve a final rule prohibiting the discharge of wastewater from high-volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF) to water or land in the Delaware River Basin. The final rule also “clarifies” the circumstances in which water, including wastewater, may be exported from or imported into the Basin. The bottom line from yesterday’s action is that nothing has materially changed. Fracking is currently banned in the Basin under a previous action by the Commission. And nobody discharges frack wastewater on the ground or in streams and rivers anywhere, including in the Delaware River Basin. So what did the vote accomplish for the rabid left? Just more virtue signaling.
Read More “DRBC Adopts Meaningless Prohibition on Shale Wastewater Disposal”
Most New Yorkers are clueless about a law passed in 2019 called the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (or “Climate Act”), which limits carbon dioxide emissions to zero (an impossibility) by 2050 (see 
In April, the New York State Assembly passed Assembly Bill A7389C. In June, the New York State Senate passed the same bill, sending it to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s desk for a signature (see 
National Grid is desperately trying not to run out of natural gas for its customers in Brooklyn and Queens (on Long Island). For several years the company has fought a battle to run a tiny pipeline to its Greenpoint, Brooklyn facility to provide extra natural gas. That project is being investigated by the Biden administration on charges of racism (see 
Politics is fascinating for us (in case you couldn’t tell when reading MDN). This site often features articles about the intersection of politics and energy. Living in New York State, editor Jim Willis has long advocated for shale drilling. Fracking in NY was the reason Jim started this blog/news site! MDN began in 2009 when shale drilling in NY seemed about to take off. And then, a series of unfortunate events led to the profoundly corrupt Andrew Cuomo becoming governor, seizing power in the Empire State. Cuomo not only temporarily blocked fracking in NY, he ultimately signed a bill into law permanently banning it (see 
In September, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that the state senators who represent Pennsylvania landowners living in the Delaware River Basin, primarily in Wayne and Pike counties in the northeastern corner of Pennsylvania, don’t have “standing” to sue the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) to overturn its ban on fracking (see 
Last Friday, the New York Power Authority (NYPA) released a report of the results of mixing so-called “green” hydrogen with natural gas and using the fuel to generate electricity with reduced emissions from a retrofitted General Electric combustion turbine. The experiment was conducted at NYPA’s Brentwood Power Station on Long Island. NYPA experimented with fuel blends from 5% to 44% hydrogen. The study found CO2 mass emission rates were reduced by approximately 14% by mixing in a 35% blend of hydrogen.
Two New York City Councilmembers recently introduced a resolution to block the construction of gas vaporizer expansions in National Grid’s Greenpoint Newtown Creek facility. The resolution calls on the state Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to deny a permit, and for the state Public Service Commission to deny allowing National Grid to fund it. National Grid is desperately trying not to run out of natural gas for its customers in Brooklyn and Queens (on Long Island). Antis are trying to force National Grid to do just that–run out of natural gas, leaving citizens in the cold in the dead of winter.
You’ve heard mainstream media and the Democrat Party’s attempt to brainwash you by renaming the millions of illegal, invading aliens crossing our southern border as “undocumented immigrants” or other laughable labels. The name change seems to have worked so well, it’s now being used by the government’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) with oil and gas wells. Ever hear of an “undocumented” oil/gas well? For most of us, they’re known as orphaned or abandoned wells. NETL is calling them undocumented because, well, there’s no official documentation that shows where they are located. NETL is hitting the road–to western New York State–to “find and characterize undocumented orphaned oil and gas wells.”
It grieves us to write this, but New York State and its uber-leftist, very destructive Governor, Kathy Hochul, is running rings around Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia with respect to attracting one of four $2 billion hydrogen hubs. Hochul has just orchestrated adding two more states to what is now a six-state coalition aimed at grabbing the hub. In addition to six northeastern states, the NY coalition boasts the participation of 14 private sector industry leaders, 12 utilities, 20 hydrogen technology original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), ten universities, seven non-profits, two transportation companies, and three state agencies. There are over 60 partners cooperating to lay the groundwork for attracting the hydrogen hub to New York State.
Tennessee Gas Pipeline’s (TGP) plan to flow more Marcellus gas to Westchester County, NY, and New York City, to be used for Consolidated Edison customers, is called the East 300 Upgrade Project. The East 300 project took a giant leap forward in April when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued permits that allow TGP to upgrade two existing compressor stations (in PA), and build a brand new compressor station in West Milford (Passaic County, NJ), just across the border and not far from Westchester County (see 