Martian Update: Principal Doesn’t want Rex Drilling Near his Home
Between Christmas and New Year, Middlesex Township (Butler County), PA held the second of what may be up to five hearings on the already-granted permits for Rex Energy to drill five wells on a single well pad in the township. You may recall that two agitating “environmental” groups–headquartered on the other side of the state, in the Philadelphia area–along with four parents from the Mars School District, filed an appeal of the legal and legitimate permits granted by the state Dept. of Environmental Protection to Rex in September (see Rex Drilling Operation Near Mars School Put on Hold). The first hearing was held in November and the antis (as they always do) droned on for more than four hours (see Martians & Enviro Groups Continue to Block Rex Drilling in W PA). They continued their whine-fest on Dec. 29th with another five hours of mind-numbing sameness–drilling will kill us, drilling will pollute Mother Earth, yada yada yada. The main excuse is that drilling 3/4 of a mile from a local school will harm the kiddies. No mention that at least two school districts in the state, one close to Mars, has allowed drilling ON SCHOOL PROPERTY with no harm to the kiddies in those districts. At the hearing on the 29th, we get the REAL story behind the (ab)using of children as an excuse. One of the Mars School District principals lives near the drill pad and he opposes drilling near his expensive new home…
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Earth to Mars (PA): To the anti-drilling parents in the Mars School District in Butler County, cast your eyes to the south in neighboring Allegheny County. The school district in East Allegheny, PA has just signed a lease with EQT to drill shale wells on district-owned property–in one case 500 feet away from the middle school! Now what was that about a well pad 3/4 of a mile from a Mars school–on non-school property–that has you so enraged? (see 
In a seemingly strange twist, Shell has just picked up more Marcellus and Utica Shale acreage. Say what? Yesterday MDN told you that Rex Energy just bought 208,000 Marcellus acres from Shell in southwest Pennsylvania’s wet gas area (see 
What is it about the oil majors that they can’t seem to turn a profit in America’s shale plays? Somehow the smaller, leaner independents keep beating the majors, time and again. Latest example: Shell. In 2010, Shell paid a whopping $4.7 billion to buy East Resources (see