ExxonMobil & Employees Contribute More than $50M to Higher Ed
You know how money-grubbing, cheap, careless and in general no-good those Big Oil companies are, right? They only care about themselves. They seek to rape and pillage Mom Earth, keeping piles of gold in their coffers, killing humankind in the process. That’s the picture painted by anti-fossil fuel nuts. Here’s the real picture: In 2016, between employees and the corporation, Exxon Mobil donated more than $50 million to colleges and universities across the United States. That is a staggering number. Many of those colleges and universities were located in the Appalachian basin (Marcellus/Utica), including $2.7 million in PA, $800K in OH, $1.4 million in VA, $3.2 million in NY and $1.2 million in NJ. Just the opposite of the negative picture painted by the enemies of fossil fuels… Read More “ExxonMobil & Employees Contribute More than $50M to Higher Ed”
Here’s one that really gets us hot and bothered. MDN is written from Upstate New York (near Binghamton). We covered, extensively, the battle to allow fracking (and now, natural gas pipelines) in our beloved home state. We won’t plow up old ground again except to say that one of the battles fought, and lost, was over whether or not local municipalities can ban fracking for everyone. Two backwater towns in New York–Dryden (Tompkins County) and Middlefield (Otsego County) passed town bans that were challenged in court. The case eventually went to NY’s highest court, the Court of Appeals. We (pro-drillers) lost. Local towns now have the right to outright ban fracking–if and when it ever becomes legal to frack in New York. Some call it the “home rule” law. This was all done at the prompting and urging of a very corrupt governor–Andrew Cuomo. The judges on NY’s high court are appointed by the governor. It’s the worst kind of incest and miscarriage of justice. So along comes a wind power project that a corporation wants to build in Western NY. Some of the locals don’t want it. If they convince their towns to pass a ban on wind projects for the town, guess what? In that case NY state law will overrule the town and allow the wind project to get built anyway. How, on God’s green earth, is that in any sense fair? Here’s what we hope: We hope at least one of the towns involved passes a ban and it goes to court and they throw the high court’s decision on frack bans right back in their face. It’s time to expose the energy double standard in NY…
It’s so enormously frustrating to live in The Empire State–New York. Which is where MDN is produced. Our illustrious governor, Andrew Cuomo, has drunken deeply from the man-made global warming Kool Aid fountain. Cuomo, a radically left Democrat, may or may not actually believe in man-made global warming. Makes no difference. He, like other lib Dems, find it a useful tool to control the population. If you can control what people use for energy (and what how they pay for health care), you control their lives, period. Cuomo has made a decision to align himself with global warming nutters who oppose all fossil fuels because supposedly said fossil fuels, when burned, release carbon dioxide into the air. CO2 becomes “trapped” in the atmosphere and takes a long time to dissipate, creating (as the disproved theory goes) a “greenhouse effect,” trapping heat and (eventually) catastrophically warming Mom Earth. The problem, that we’ve pointed out countless times, is that empirical data–where people use instruments to monitor “average” temperatures–proves the earth has been cooling for the past 20 years. That little fact never makes it into mainstream media because it destroys the mythology that’s developed around this POLITICAL issue. Global warming is not, as the left pushes, about science. It is about politics. But we digress. Yesterday Gov. Cuomo released burdensome new methane emissions regulations that will further hamstring New York’s wilting conventional (not shale) oil and natural gas drillers. It seems Andy simply wants to extinguish the rest of the industry in our beloved home state…
Yesterday MDN brought you the news that Williams is talking with White House officials about federal intervention into the illegal refusal by the New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to issue water crossing permits for their Constitution Pipeline project (see 
Does Williams have an “ace in the hole” with respect to the Constitution Pipeline? The Constitution, a ~$900 million, 124-mile pipeline planned to run from Susquehanna County, PA into Upstate New York, was approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in December 2014 (see 
Every now and again a gift lands in our lap, unexpectedly. Such is the case today. A third year law student at the University of Buffalo School of Law, Kelsey Hanson, has researched and written a masterful paper on the potential for LPG (liquefied propane) fracking in, yes, New York State. The paper, titled “Hey New York, You Can Frack: An Examination of How Liquefied Petroleum Gas Sidesteps New York’s Fracking Ban to Provide a Legal and Practical Approach for Horizontal Drilling in New York’s Marcellus Shale” (full copy below) has just been published in the Buffalo Law Review (how did that happen?!). In the paper, Hanson first gives a background of traditional fracking, then zeros in and explores LPG fracking–its benefits and its pitfalls. She concludes that the NY Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has left the door open, legally, for shale LPG fracking in the Empire State. She also gives us a much-needed update on the question MDN gets asked frequently: Whatever happened to LPG fracking in Tioga County, NY? The article is eminently readable, full of great information, and worth your time…
Very good news for Spectra Energy’s Atlantic Bridge project in (of all places) New York State. In January the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) gave its final stamp of approval for Atlantic Bridge (see 
In February, MDN told you that Titan Energy, which used to be known as Atlas Energy/Resource Partners, was listing what appeared to be the rest of the acreage they still own on the Appalachian basin–some 494,229 acres–including rights for drilling in the Marcellus (see 
National Fuel Gas Company (NFG), headquartered in Western New York State, is making noises (threats) that Gov. Andrew Cuomo should be very concerned about. NFG covers the full span of the oil and gas business–from upstream (with its wholly-owned drilling subsidiary Seneca Resources), to the midstream (with wholly-owned subsidiary Empire Pipeline) to downstream (NFG’s natural gas utility service to 740,000 customers in NY and PA). It’s a big company that generates a lot of jobs and revenue for New York State. Yet NY is metaphorically crapping all over NFG–and the company is signaling its willingness to retaliate by leaving. No, not move the company HQ, or sell off its gigantic utility business. Nothing of that sort (yet, anyway). But NFG CEO Ronald Tanski said on an earnings call last Friday that NFG is “getting lousy regulatory treatment in New York State” and that “Given this type of regulatory treatment in the state, we have to take a serious look at our ability to achieve any reasonable growth in New York.” Translation: We’ll stop launching new projects that invest billions in the Empire State, and instead invest that money and the jobs it creates in PA and other states. The “lousy treatment” NFG is getting is related to NY’s corrupt Dept. of Environmental Conservation decision to deny it permits to build the Northern Access Pipeline (see 
In June 2014, MDN told you about the Dominion New Market Project–a project that will build two new compressor plants and upgrade one other compressor station in upstate New York–to help flow more abundant, cheap and clean-burning Marcellus Shale gas from Pennsylvania (and beyond) into the northeast (see 
Something has to be done about New York’s out-of-control governor (Andy Cuomo) and his opposition to natural gas pipelines. MDN’s beloved home state uses more and more natural gas each year–yet Cuomo refuses to allow new pipelines to be built allowing more gas supplies into the state. He is strangling the state economically–particularly Upstate. Two important pipeline projects have been rejected by Cuomo’s corrupt Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC)–Williams’ Constitution and NFG’s Northern Access Pipeline. Both companies have sued in federal court to force the state to back down (a years-long process). In the meantime, business, economic and o&g industry leaders have decided they need to do something. So a number of major organizations and businesses, including chambers of commerce, large midstream companies, labor unions and more have joined together to form a new coalition called 
The Joint Landowners Coalition of New York (JLCNY), a group representing over 70,000 landowners with a collective 1 million acres of land that could be leased for oil and gas drilling, only if, has just sent off a letter to President Trump asking for his help. The JLCNY, via the letter, alerts Trump to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s shenanigans in blocking natural gas pipelines. The letter also asks Trump to support legislation we’ve previously highlighted by Congressman Tom Reed to protect landowners in New York (and other states) from government actions that block oil and gas development (see 
Earlier this month MDN brought you the sad (and angering) news that once again Gov. Andrew Cuomo has caved to political pressure from environmental Nazis and instructed the now-corrupted Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to deny stream crossing permits for National Fuel Gas Company’s (NFG) Northern Access Pipeline project (see 
New York Gov. Cuomo has now blocked the Constitution Pipeline from getting built (see 
We’ve now written two posts addressing the jaw-dropping audacity of the corrupt New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation in their refusal to grant water crossing permits to a second major pipeline project (see