Study: If You’s Po’ and Lives in Rural PA, You’s Gettin’ Fracked
If you’s po’ and lives in Penns’vania, ‘hio or West Gini, you’s gettin’ polluted by that evil, nasty frackin’. And chances are, you’s too stupid to knows it.” That’s the essential conclusion of a highly discriminatory and inaccurate “study” called “Spatial distribution of unconventional gas wells and human populations in the Marcellus Shale in the United States: Vulnerability analysis,” recently published in the so-called journal Applied Geography by so-called researchers from Clark University. The “researchers” don’t bother with fundamental research, like reviewing health records of people who live near active Marcellus Shale drilling areas. That would take waaaay too much work. Instead, they just assume that if you live near drilling, you’re getting polluted. The focus of the “research” is on the cockamamie theory of environmental justice. The “researchers” found that people living out in the country–where this activity typically takes place–by and large are poorer than those living in towns and cities (and on elite college campi). Wow–such a brilliant insight! “Because they po’, they don’t read all that much…they can’t figure out theys gettin’ polluted.” Yes, its disgustingly prejudiced–but that’s what passes for scholarship these days…
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Something troubling for MDN. The Constitution Pipeline, a 125-mile pipeline that will stretch from the gas fields of Susquehanna County, PA into New York–to Schoharie County, has been approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), a multi-year process. The only thing keeping Williams from starting up the backhoes and beginning to lay pipeline is New York State–specifically the state’s Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC). The DEC must grant what’s called a 401 Water Quality Certificate that allows the Constitution to lay pipe through and under swamps, creeks and other bodies of water. The DEC ran a series of public hearings on it, one of which MDN editor Jim Willis attended in January (see 
GreenHunter Resources continues to aggressively push back against the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) with respect to barging brine from shale wells. Yesterday was the latest flare-up in the war of words between GreenHunter and the USCG. Once again GreenHunter COO Kirk Trosclair said the way they read the rules, they have permission under existing 1987 rules to barge it. And once again the USCG said no you don’t–not until we say you do. The latest twist is that the USCG says that brine might have high levels of radioactivity and so now the Dept. of Homeland Security is reviewing the whole matter. Which is a neat way of corrupting the issue–just claim there’s a national security issue and that shuts it all down. Still, GreenHunter is committed to begin barge shipments this year. However, we also learned yesterday that those shipments will not originate at GreenHunter’s proposed facility near Wheeling, WV…
Very good news for the Ohio Utica Shale industry: RINO Gov. John Kasich’s plan to raise the severance tax is dead–at least for this year. Yesterday Ohio legislators stripped out a proposed tax hike from the state’s budget bill. We’re still not out of the woods yet as far as a tax increase down the road. Legislators decided to set up a “study committee” made up of both House and Senate members to consider a severance tax increase in the future. This is the third year in a row Kasich has tried and failed to raise the severance tax. Perhaps sensing yet another defeat on the tax issue, last month Kasich made a not-so-subtle threat that if the drilling industry doesn’t accept his 6.5% severance tax now, a ballot initiative may just pop up out of thin air to enact a higher severance tax–and that imitative would probably be for 10% or more (see 
Baker Hughes, the company known for its publicly available rig count data (and it’s pink drill bits use in breast cancer awareness) yesterday published its official monthly rig count tally for March. In the public press release BH notes that (our language) rig counts have fallen off a cliff. The U.S. land-based rig count, most of which are used to drill in shale plays, sunk to 1,067, down 238 rigs from February (which is 18% in a single month), and down 683 from March 2014 (which is 39%). Not a pretty picture. MDN wondered if the same trend held for the Marcellus/Utica, so we ran the numbers for PA, OH and WV…
In early February, MDN told you that EV Energy Partners, a company with a huge amount of leased acreage in the Ohio Utica Shale region, was looking to sell its 21% interest in Utica East Ohio (UEO)–a midstream/pipeline company operating in Ohio (see