New York

Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Broome County | Industrywide Issues | New York | Statewide NY

NY Politicians Say Drilling will Bring an “Invasion”
November 14, 2012November 14, 2012

Binghamton’s failed mayor, Matt Ryan, was in Albany yesterday to stir up trouble on the fracking issue. (First Dimock, now Albany…seems Mayor Ryan’s pass time is to cause trouble somewhere else while your own city is crumbling around you.)

Mayor Ryan has started his own cultic anti-fracking group called Elected Officials to Protect New York. The group, meeting in Albany yesterday, said that if drilling is allowed in New York, it will create an “invasion” of crime and social unrest. Here’s the scoop:

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Chemung County | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York

Elmira, NY Mayor Comes Out Against Fracking
November 14, 2012November 14, 2012

The mayor of Elmira, NY has outed herself as anti-drilling. Mayor Sue Skidmore attended an anti-fracking event in Albany yesterday and went on record against drilling:

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Statewide NY

Newspaper Says Recent Election is Proof NYers Want Fracking
November 14, 2012November 14, 2012

An editorial in today’s Jamestown, NY Post-Journal endorses shale gas drilling in New York. The editorial writers rightly point to the overwhelming results from last week’s election in which the pro-drilling candidate won in every major, and in most minor, races where drilling was an issue. The P-J conclusion? Cuomo needs to wake up and get off the dime:

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Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | New York | Pennsylvania | Pipelines | Statewide NY | Susquehanna County | Williams

Southern Gas Utility Invests in NE Constitution Pipeline
November 13, 2012November 13, 2012

Piedmont Natural Gas, a natural gas utility with more than one million customers in North and South Carolina and Tennessee, has decided they want a piece of the Marcellus Shale gas action. Piedmont is investing $180 million in the yet-to-be-built Constitution Pipeline that will run from Susquehanna County, PA to Schoharie County, NY. Williams, the company building the new pipeline, and Piedmont collaborate on other projects too. Piedmont is also a customer of Williams’ Transco natural gas pipeline.

Here’s the announcement from Piedmont on why they’ve decided to invest in the Constitution Pipeline project:

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Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Research | Statewide NY | Wastewater

Yet Another Faux Report on Radiation Danger from NY Fracking
November 12, 2012November 12, 2012

Grassroots Environmental Education, a leftist anti-drilling organization in New York State, released a biased report last week that says, in essence, if fracking is allowed in New York, radiation will poison us all for centuries to come. Another week, another faux report issued by a “scientist” with the viewpoint that all fossil fuels are evil. Film at eleven.

(Yes, we grow tired of reporting this claptrap, but you need to know about it because mainstream media is too lazy to evaluate it critically.)

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Broome County | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Statewide NY

JLCNY Declares Victory over Anti-Drillers in NY Elections
November 12, 2012November 12, 2012

According to Dan Fitzsimmons from the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York (JLCNY), the elections last week produced an excellent result—at least locally in the Southern Tier of New York State. The most visible anti-drillers—candidates running on an anti-drilling platform—went down to defeat.

Here’s the letter sent out by the JLCNY late last week:

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Energy Companies | New York | Norse Energy | Statewide NY

Norse Energy 3Q12: Revenue Down 33%, Waiting on NY Moratorium
November 9, 2012November 9, 2012

Norse Energy is the plucky drilling company still holding on in New York State. MDN has written quite a bit about Norse. They rolled the dice and bet on acreage in New York State (brave people). Norse currently holds some 130,000 acres of leased land in New York. Problem is, there’s no shale gas drilling in New York and there hasn’t been for 4 1/2 years. All of which has caused Norse to do everything but sell off the kitchen table in an effort to “hang in there” until the day New York does finally allow drilling.

Yesterday Norse released their third quarter financial and operational update. Oil and gas revenue for Norse was down 33% from one year ago. The company says they produced less gas, and the gas they did produce was sold for less money (due to the low commodity price) than gas from a year ago, which led to the decrease in revenue.

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Industrywide Issues | Landfills | New York | Steuben County | Wastewater

Does Steuben County, NY Landfill Accept Drilling Wastewater?
November 7, 2012November 7, 2012

The Steuben County landfill in Bath, NY was approved and ready to accept shale cuttings (leftover soil and rock from drilling) at the landfill in early August of this year (see this MDN story). They now are accepting some shale cuttings. Earlier this week a local environmental lawyer raised concerns at a meeting of the county Legislature’s Public Works Committee that the landfill may also be receiving flowback water—water that comes back up out of the bore hole after drilling—in the landfill along with shale cuttings. Flowback has high concentrations of minerals making it salty or “briny.”

County Public Works Commissioner Vince Spagnoletti said the landfill does not accept flowback direct from drillers. However, the landfill does accept some treated wastewater from another landfill. Here’s the details:

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Onondaga County | Regulation

Town of Onondaga, NY Votes to Extend Fracking Ban 1 Month
November 6, 2012November 6, 2012

The Town of Onondaga, a bedroom community for Syracuse, NY, voted on Monday night to extend the fracking moratorium they previously enacted. The vote continues the moratorium for another month until board members meet again Dec. 3 and will presumably vote at that meeting to either further extend the moratorium or let it die.

From the Syracuse Post-Standard:

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New York | Statewide NY

NYT: Where Did Power/Heat Remain on in NYC After Sandy?
November 6, 2012November 6, 2012

In an unusual reversal, the New York Times tells the story of how some areas in New York City stayed online—lights burning and warm heat blowing—in the midst of power failures all around the city from Hurricane/Storm Sandy. How did these little islands of energy do it? You guessed it: because they were burning natural gas—using it for both heat and to generate their own electricity.

Of course the “article” was posted in the opinion section of the NYT site (they can’t be seen running a positive story about natgas in the news section, ya know). Still, it’s a startling turnabout for the bash-natgas newspaper of record. The article starts this way:

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Broome County | Chenango County | Delaware County | Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | Leatherstocking Gas | Madison County | New York | Pipelines | Williams

NY Company Plans to Tap Constitution Pipeline, Sell Locally
November 5, 2012November 5, 2012

An important, and apart from MDN friend Andy Leahy, unreported development on the Constitution Pipeline, a new Marcellus Shale gas pipeline proposed by Williams and Cabot Oil & Gas that will run from Susquehanna County, PA to upstate New York (Schoharie County) where it will connect with two large interstate natural gas pipelines.

The important “new news” is that the Constitution will be an “open gas pipeline” and already one company—the Leatherstocking Gas Company of New York—plans to build an interconnect along the Constitution to buy and resell locally produced natural gas locally. Hey, there’s a concept! Leatherstocking plans to set up a low-cost natural gas distribution network in Broome, Chenango, Delaware and Madison counties in New York’s Southern Tier area.

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Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Broome County | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York

NYRAD Endorsements for NY Elections – Solid Democrat
November 5, 2012November 5, 2012

Last week MDN brought you the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York voting guide (see this MDN story). Today, we bring you the New York Residents Against Drilling (NYRAD) voting guide. Why? So you know whom, precisely, to not vote for. Those in the NYRAD list (below) are people against shale gas drilling—people you do not want in public office at any level. No mystery here that every single one of them is a Democrat.

The list is mostly for races in Broome County, NY, with a few races in surrounding counties. Here’s the NYRAD list, received by MDN in an email over the weekend:

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Ohio | Pennsylvania | Pipelines | Statewide NY | Statewide OH | Statewide PA | Statewide WV | Supply Chain | West Virginia

ShaleNavigator Cloud-Based Mapping Service Continues Expansion [Free]
November 5, 2012November 5, 2012

MDN friend and “partner in crime” Ed Camp (from ShaleNavigator) released a press release on Friday to call attention to some of the latest and greatest features he’s added to the ShaleNavigator service—the web’s premier cloud-based shale mapping system. Ed’s ShaleNavigator maps are the basis for the MDN Marcellus and Utica Shale Databook series (see here for more info on the Databook).

We’re happy to bring you Ed’s latest press release, along with his offer of a free 7-day trial:

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Erie County (NY) | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Research

UB CLEAR: Burn the Fracking Witches and Their Castle
November 1, 2012November 1, 2012

What happens when those who commit the academic “crime” of supporting the miracle of hydraulic fracturing won’t apologize or back down from their views, and the academic institution “harboring” them bravely defends their right to have a contrary-to-orthodoxy opinion? Those in the witch hunt sharpen their pitchforks and become even more shrill, banging at the gates, demanding the witches be burned and the department (castle) they work for be obliterated. That’s the situation at University at Buffalo (UB).

Yesterday a group of faculty members, led by an English professor, along with some of their impressionable young students (whom they’ve convinced that fracking is a sin against the renewable energy orthodoxy), sent a letter and “report” (full copy embedded below) to the SUNY Board of Trustees demanding the UB Shale Resources and Society Institute be shut down because they won’t admit to their crime of being pro-fracking. Yeah, real science and academic freedom rule at UB.

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Statewide NY

JLCNY Endorsements for NY Elections – Solid Republican
November 1, 2012November 1, 2012

The Joint Landowners Coalition of New York (JLCNY) has provided New Yorkers with a handy list of endorsements from their organization for the upcoming election in a 14-county region (see the full list below). The offices they cover are either county, state or federal elections—mostly for New York State Senate and Assembly, with a few congressional and other offices on the list. The JLCNY has not endorsed candidates at the local town board level, instead referring voters to their local landowner coalition for guidance.

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | New York | Statewide NY

53 NY Towns Ask to Join Fracking Ban Court Case
October 31, 2012October 31, 2012

While New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo dithers about whether or not to allow fracking in the state, two court cases that will have a profound effect on where fracking can happen (should he finally make up his mind) continue to work their way through the court system. Those cases address of the issue of whether or not local municipalities should have the right to completely ban fracking within their borders—sometimes referred to as “home rule.”

Not long ago MDN updated you on the status of those cases with word that oral arguments are likely to take place in February with a decision by late spring (see this MDN story). A new development in those cases: 53 municipalities have filed a request with the court to join the cases on the side of pro-ban/anti-fracking:

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