New York

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    NY Landowner Coalition Hosting Clam Bake on Sunday in Broome Co.

    Clam BakeClam Bake! It’s time to wind down summer with some fun, and some learning, and to help support the ongoing effort to overturn the frack ban in New York State. The Joint Landowners Coalition of New York (JLCNY) and its education arm JLC United is hosting a Clam Bake this Sunday, September 13 in Vestal, NY from 1-6 pm. Come on out and support a great cause. Tickets are just $55 each $50 each for all of the great food you can eat, and beverages you can drink (including adult beverages). Details below…
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    CNG Customers Gather to Celebrate Grand Opening in…

    CNGEarlier this week a $2.85 million compressed natural gas (CNG) filling station was opened with a large crowd of people eager to begin using it. Nexus Natural Gas, a consortium of seven different companies, unveiled their first collaborative CNG fueling station aimed at cars, trucks, tractor-trailers and buses. The state got involved with a $570,000 grant–recognizing the benefits of using natural gas as a transportation fuel (burns cleaner, natural gas is a home-grown fuel). Local utility/pipeline companies are involved too–to deliver cheap, abundant and clean-burning Marcellus Shale gas to the new fueling station. What’s that? Where’s this new CNG fueling station located–where crowds of natgas lovers congregated to celebrate? Would you believe, in New York State!…
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    Lawsuit Prevents NY Power Plant from Converting to NatGas, Closing

    closedAlthough anti-fossil fuel nutters in New York State have worked to oppose converting electric generating plants from burning coal to clean-burning natural gas (see Anti-Drillers Oppose Converting 2 NY Electric Plants to NatGas), it’s not anti-fossil fuel arguments that will shut down those plants. It’s good, old fashioned, American…lawsuits. Lawsuits brought by a competitor. You may recall Gov. Andrew Cuomo slogged through three feet of snow in December 2013 to announce in Dunkirk (near Buffalo) that he would provide state assistance to the NRG plant to convert from coal to natural gas (see Dunkirk, NY Electric Plant Saved – Converting from Coal to NatGas). That was good news for Dunkirk. The Dunkirk electric plant provides something like 40% of all the tax revenue that flows into the coffers at the town. Can you imagine what would happen to local roads, public safety services (police and firefighters), and to the local school district, if the plant closed down? Imagine no more. A lawsuit brought by a competitor against NRG’s plan to convert has NRG saying the plant will close after all. NRG expects the lawsuit will take years to litigate–so by next March they’re shuttering the plant. There goes 40% of Dunkirk’s tax revenue–right down the toilet…
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    NFG’s Marcellus Pipeline from NWPA to NY Hits Resistence

    NIMBYNational 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 for a pipeline project they call Northern Access 2016. The $451 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. We have a full description below for all of the new construction, modifications and add-ons that are part of the Access Northeast 2016 project. The pipeline, when complete, will flow Marcellus Shale natural gas from Pennsylvania northward to New York and on into Canada. Although NFG has bent backwards, forwards and has contorted itself into just about every yoga position there is to accommodate residents around Pendleton, nearby residents are still opposed to NFG building a new compressor station anywhere near them…
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    NY Gov Cuomo Asked About Secession Rally, Lame Response

    I see your lips movingA very old and trite but true saying: Q: How do you know when a politician, like NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo, is lying? A: When he opens his mouth. Our illustrious man-child governor was in Syracuse yesterday to drop off a bag of money with $50 million, and an impertinent reporter had the gall to ask His Lordship about the secession rally held in Chenango County on Sunday (see Southern Tier Pro-Drillers Rally to Secede from New York State). Lord Cuomo responded: (a) things aren’t as bad as they seem, (b) things are getting better in the Southern Tier, (c) there’s still work to do, and (d) I’ve exhausted my own ideas, it’s now up to those poor dumb hicks in the Southern Tier to help themselves. That’s the gist of his comments…
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    Southern Tier Pro-Drillers Rally to Secede from New York State

    Plan to divide New York StateDo #UpstateLivesMatter? Apparently not to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Upstaters are officially fed up with being told what they can and can’t do–through the prism of New York City liberal values. New York City gets its water supply from upstate and therefore believes upstate is nothing more than a serfdom–its residents exist at the pleasure and will (and direction) of their overlords in NYC. We are at the beck and call of downstate–here only to serve at their leisure. One way downstate is controlling upstate is Gov. Cuomo’s attempt to disarm the citizens of the state, denying them their Constitutional right to bear arms (no doubt afraid of that power) via the misnamed SAFE Act. Cuomo also told upstaters they can’t drill for natural gas under their own land–sentencing family farms to a life of poverty–in the name of environmental and “public health” protection. Upstaters have had enough of downstate interference and are pushing to have their counties either secede and join the great state of Pennsylvania, or divide the state into two autonomous districts, each with their own governor. It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. What started as a fringe movement is going mainstream, as evidenced by a rally held this past Sunday in Bainbridge, NY. The secede or divide movement has anti-frackers worried…
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    NY Secession Movement Gains Momentum – Landowners to Rally Sunday

    secedeIt is an issue that simply won’t go away. Frankly, we’ve thought (until now) that it was more or less a publicity stunt. Pro-drillers and pro-gun rights residents of New York State have, since Gov. Andrew Cuomo banned fracking last December, called for upstate counties to secede from New York and either form a new state, or join with Pennsylvania. On the surface it may sound silly, but did you know secession has happened in our country three times before? And one of those times was for land that used to be part of New York State? No, we didn’t know that bit of history either. This Sunday, August 30th, a rally will be held in the tiny village of Bainbridge (Chenango County), NY from 1-3 pm for Marcellus/Utica landowners, gun owners and other overtaxed and over-regulated NY residents to demonstrate their support for secession. This is a movement that is gaining momentum. It’s a serious movement. None other than the liberal USA Today files this very serious report…
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    Star Trek Actor with Upstate NY Home Speaks Against Power Plant

    James Cromwell as Zefram Cochrane
    James Cromwell as Zefram Cochrane

    Oh darnit…Don’t tell us Zefram Cochrane is against a new clean-burning natural gas electric plant too! Who’s Zefram Cochrane? He’s the fictional creator of the warp drive that powers star ships like the Enterprise in the Star Trek pantheon of television and movie series. Actor James Cromwell played Cochrane in the 1996 movie Star Trek: First Contact. (Yes, we’re big-time Trekkies!) Cromwell, also known for his role as Farmer Arthur Hoggett in the 1995 movie Babe (he was nominated for an Academy Award), was born and raised in Manhattan and maintains a summer home in upstate New York in Orange County, near Middletown. Cromwell is a big-time liberal–someone who thinks upstate should be the personal playground for rich, New York City libs, kept pristine from any kind of development. In other words–keep the poor folk poor in upstate so the rich folk from the city can enjoy their weekends unmolested by the noise of trucks and bulldozers. And therein lies our distress. We like Cromwell’s acting, but not his acting when he attended a court hearing in Orange County last week to lend his voice and his fame to an effort to stop a proposed Marcellus gas-fired electric plant planned for the Town of Wawayanda, near Cromwell’s summer home…
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    US Circuit Court: NY Landowners Released from Marcellus Leases

    court gavelThe U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, located in New York State, released a decision yesterday in a case known as Beardslee v. Inflection Energy, LLC (copy of the decision is embedded below) that may create problems for future shale drilling in New York State–should the existing statewide ban ever be lifted. Yesterday’s decision is good news for landowners in one sense–it officially upholds the right of Tioga County, NY landowners party to the lawsuit to be released from old leases made in pre-Marcellus days when landowners signed leases for $3 per acre. Those leases were signed before the words “Marcellus” or “Utica” meant anything other than municipalities in New York State. (Interesting factoid: both shale plays are named after the NY towns where they were first identified. Further interesting factoid: both Marcellus, NY and Utica, NY banned fracking before the statewide ban was official.) The Second Circuit upheld a previous decision which we first wrote about in 2012 (see Judge Rules Against Chesapeake, Inflection in NY Lease Case), a decision appealed to NY’s highest court that upheld it (see NY High Court Decision Creates Toxic Environment for O&G Companies). The energy companies then appealed the decision to U.S. District Court, where they have now lost. The ultimate issue at the core of this case is whether or not New York’s government action in disallowing fracking of shale wells should be considered a “force majeure” event that extends a lease beyond the initial term. It is the one issue the none of the courts ever directly answered, including the Second Circuit…
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    NY Heroes: More Details on NY Propane Fracking Proposal

    real heroesSome more details about the brilliant move by some average farmers in Tioga County, NY who plan to use propane to frack a Utica Shale well, bypassing the existing ban on fracking in New York because the existing ban only disallows high volume water-based fracking…
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    NY Antis Set to Protest Constitution Pipeline in Albany, NY Tomorrow

    New York’s anti-drillers are preparing yet another protest in Albany, NY–this time to oppose the already-permitted Constitution Pipeline. The Constitution, you may recall, is a 125-mile pipeline that will stretch from the gas fields of Susquehanna County, PA into New York, to Schoharie County. It is a critically needed pipeline to get Cabot’s natural gas in Susquehanna County to markets throughout the northeast and New England. Recently Cabot CEO Dan Dinges said he expects construction will begin this fall (see Cabot Says Constitution Pipeline Construction to Begin this Fall). That comment sent the nutters into orbit–because they are on the cusp of losing their first major battle. The only one thing that remains before Constitution’s bulldozers and backhoes start their work is for the NY Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to issue 401 Water Quality Certificates to allow the Constitution to lay pipe through and under swamps, creeks and other bodies of water. Everything else is permitted and ready. So anti-drillers will hold a rally as a show of force against the Constitution–tomorrow, in Albany. We sincerely hope pro-drillers will turn out in a counter-rally…
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    Shrill Opposition to Constitution Pipeline after Cabot Comment

    Flat-out, 100% lies is what best describes the claims being made by anti-pipeline groups like Stop the Pipeline in New York State in a letter sent to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, with respect to charges that the already-FERC-approved Constitution Pipeline would, if built, incite an environmental Holocaust in the state. These are the VERY SAME people who successfully pressured Cuomo into banning fracking in the state–so they’re hoping they can bully the pathetically weak Cuomo once again, this time to reject the Constitution Pipeline. The renewed and shrill campaign against the pipeline comes because last week Cabot Oil & Gas CEO Dan Dinges said he expects the NY Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to issue permits allowing the pipeline to cross streams and swamps (i.e. “wetlands”) any day now. The fact that this pipeline WILL get built is eating anti-drillers alive. They can’t stand it. So they whip up an email “letter” to Cuomo, and then get their sympathetic buddies at the Democrat Albany Times Union to run a story on their efforts, trying to manufacture the appearance that there is a groundswell of support against the pipeline–when there isn’t…
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    NY Antis Now Want LPG Fracking Banned Too, Letter to DEC

    At the risk of sounding pedantic and endlessly repeating what we’ve said many times before–the frack ban in New York is not about water quality concerns or any of the other myriad so-called “problems” that come from using water to hydraulically fracture an oil or gas well. This is how we know. If you remove water from the equation, which is the major concern and why the New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has decided to ban fracking (supposedly), anti-drillers still object to fracking. A group of virulent, hardened, and frankly nutty anti-drillers from the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Earthjustice and Frack Action have just sent a letter to the NY DEC asking the DEC to ban ALL fracking, including LPG (propane) fracking that a group of landowners in Tioga County, NY plan to use (see NY Landowners File to Frack Horizontal Well w/Waterless Tech). What has anti-drillers so terrified of LPG fracking? If LPG fracking is used in NY, it will prove that fracking can be done safely in NY–and once that happens, it’s game over for those who object to fracking. Anti-drillers’ call to ban LPG fracking points out what we’ve said for years: these people object to fracking because they irrationally, psychotically, hate fossil fuels–not because fracking pollutes water supplies, because it doesn’t…
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    Special Election for NY Senate in Binghamton Tied to Fracking

    Sadly, pro-drillers in New York State recently lost a big supporter in the NY Senate–Sen. Tom Libous. For those who don’t live in New York, Libous was the long-time Senator from the Binghamton area, in the Senate for 27 years and a powerful member as deputy majority leader of the Senate. Libous was recently found guilty of lying to the FBI about using his influence to get his son a politically connected job. Libous has been removed from office. Essentially Libous got his son a job he didn’t have to work at but got paid for (see this Gannett story). Slimy to say the least, but we can list numerous ethics violations far worse on the Democrat side of the isle. For all of his faults, Libous was a friend to the pro-drilling movement in the state. The race is now on to replace Libous in a special election. The early leader, if you believe local news outlets (which we don’t), is Democrat Barbara Fiala–someone who once supported drilling but now, because she’s in Andrew Cuomo’s back pocket, opposes it…
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    Cabot Says Constitution Pipeline Construction to Begin this Fall

    not if but whenLast Friday during the Cabot Oil & Gas quarterly earnings call update with analysts, Cabot’s CEO Dan Dinges provided an important update on the Constitution Pipeline, a 125-mile pipeline that will stretch from the gas fields of Susquehanna County, PA into New York, to Schoharie County. It is a critically needed pipeline to get Cabot’s natural gas in Susquehanna County to markets throughout the northeast and New England. Although Williams is the lead company building the pipeline, Cabot is the other primary partner in the project. Currently the Constitution is 100% FERC authorized and they have 100% of the rights of way leases signed for the project. The only hold-up is the New York State Dept. of Environmental Conservation in granting 401 Water Quality Certificates that allows the Constitution to lay pipe through and under swamps, creeks and other bodies of water. According to Dinges, they expect NY to issue those permits any day now…
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    Will NY Gov Cuomo Ban LPG Fracking Too?

    A column in the New York Post asks the question of whether or not Gov. Andrew Cuomo will work to block LPG (liquefied petroleum gas, or gelled propane) fracking in the Empire State as he has done with water-based fracking. MDN told you earlier this month about the ingenious plan by Tioga County, NY landowners who have filed for a permit to use LPG fracking in a limited test (see NY Landowners File to Frack Horizontal Well w/Waterless Tech). We also gave you our analysis of how this action paints Cuomo into a corner (see Update on LPG Fracking in New York – What Comes Next?). The NY Post column does a great job exposing the lies of New York’s anti-drillers. They bleat and blat about contaminated water sources–that’s their stated objection to shale drilling. That’s the argument they always lead off with–how shale drilling will contaminate everyone’s water supply within a hundred miles. The argument is 100% false, but for the sake of our discussion, let’s remove water from the process, as LPG fracking does. To drill and frack an LPG well takes zero gallons of water. And yet, NY’s anti-drillers still object. Why? Because they irrationally hate all fossil fuels, including natural gas…
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