Billionaire Fracker Terry Pegula #160 on Forbes 400 Richest List
Terry Pegula is a billionaire who owns both the Buffalo Sabres (NHL hockey team) and the Buffalo Bills (NFL football team). Pegula is the owner of East Resources, once a big driller (and holder of acreage) in the Marcellus Shale. Pegula sold off East’s Marcellus assets and used the money, in part, to buy the Buffalo Bills in 2014, which gave rise to MDN calling the team “the Marcellus Bills”–since it was Marcellus money that kept the team in Buffalo, instead of moving to another market (see Buffalo Bills Stay in Buffalo, Thanks to $1.4B of Marcellus Money and Buffalo “Marcellus” Bills – Team Sold to Fracker for $1.4B). Yes, “dirty” fracking money saved the Bills! After selling all of East’s Marcellus assets, Pegula still had an itch to frack, so he started up a new company, JKLM, in order to keep his finger in the Marcellus/Utica pie. JKLM is, as we reported in July, fracking 12 Utica wells in Potter County, PA this year (see JKLM Drilling 12 Utica Wells in Potter County, PA This Year). Fracking is what made Pegula rich. We found it interesting that he made the Forbes 400–a list of the 400 richest people in the United States. Pegula was one of only four people who call Upstate New York home to appear on the list. Here is Pegula’s entry for the list…
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The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: Dominion says Cove Point LNG export open for business by end of year; open records petition seeks more sunlight on corrupt NY Attorney General emails re #ExxonKnew; Rex Energy stock hits 12-month low; Total CEO says US shale will see wave of new investment; Obama would have loved Perry’s “resiliency” plan; Japan bets $10B on US natgas; Gazprom & Mitsui talk LNG cooperation; and more!
Last week MDN brought you news about a relatively new company called American Energy Partners, Inc., based in Allentown, PA, and their subsidiary company Gilbert Oil & Gas (see 
Energy Solutions Consortium, aka the father and son team of Andrew and Matthew Dorn–have been trying to build a 750 megawatt natural gas-fired electric plant in Follansbee (Brooke County), WV for years. In fact, the Dorns have a number of gas-fired electric plant projects on the board for WV, and have since 2015 (see 
Yesterday the Pennsylvania House of Representatives passed House Bill (HB) 542 to try and finalize the three month plus late PA budget. This latest bill (see the summary below) uses mostly borrowing, against tobacco settlement money and small tax increases on online businesses and fireworks distributors to balance this year’s budget. The bill does NOT include a severance tax. Sounding like Johnny One-Note, PA Gov. Wolf immediately said any final deal must include a Marcellus-killing severance tax, or he won’t sign it. Some of the traitorous Republicans in the Senate still want to see a severance tax too (see 
Rover Pipeline has been served a violation from the Michigan Dept. of Environmental Quality claiming the company discharged polluted water from its drilling operations into a wetland. Which may sound familiar, because Rover was cited for fouling a wetland in Ohio with 2 million gallons of drilling mud back in April (see 
A group of anti-fossil/anti-pipeline radicals held a rally yesterday to spread lies and innuendo about the safety of pipelines in general, with a focus on stopping construction of the Mariner East 2 pipeline project in particular. Supposedly 150 people turned up (including Democrat lawmakers) to bash pipeline projects in the Keystone State. What mainstream media reports don’t tell you is that it was a staged event, organized by the loathsome Food & Water Watch–a Big Green group that lobbies against all fossil fuel projects. Media reports tell you a bunch of moms and dads and kids “negatively impacted” by pipelines showed up to plead their case. Bunkum. It was a publicity stunt, and the calls by these radicals to suspend pipeline construction are a pipe dream (pun intended). Here’s how it was reported, followed by the real story…
Huntley & Huntley has plans to drill shale wells in Upper Burrell Township (Westmoreland County), PA. As MDN reported in June, a landowner in Upper Burrell filed an appeal against Upper Burrell’s zoning ordinance that allows drilling in rural, agricultural districts (see 
Greg Guidry is the executive vice president of Shell’s unconventionals business. That is, he’s in charge of shale drilling for the company. Talking to a reporter at the Energy Dialogues LLC’s North American Gas Forum earlier this month, Guidry said shale is “a future growth opportunity because of its long-term growth potential.” Guidry is interested in promoting shale as “a lower-carbon energy source.” He believes the way to properly promote shale gas is by partnerships between the oil and gas industry and non-governmental organizations (NGO). Guidry then used the Center for Responsible Shale Development (CRSD), a group headquartered in Pittsburgh, as the model for how such a partnership can and should be done. In March 2013, the Center for Sustainable Shale Development (CSSD) burst onto the scene. It had been a closely guarded secret, the creation of a few hand-picked people from both industry and the environmental movement working together to see if there is any common ground on which both sides can agree that shale development would be safe, sustainable AND affordable. They worked hard for over a year and finally hammered out a set of 15 standards that if a driller (or midstream company or contractor) would meet, it would get a stamp of approval from both the industry and environmental groups as being a good goobie–a safe driller. In January of this year the CSSD changed its name to CRSD–the Center for Responsible Shale Development (see 
Once upon a time the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) held out the veneer of practical environmentalism–people who would at least listen to the fossil fuel industry and in some rare cases, reach their hand across the isle to work on initiatives with the industry (for example, they are a partner in the Pittsburgh-based Center for Responsible Shale Development). But over the past few years that veneer has been stripped off, and now the EDF has been exposed as a hack organization, just like all the rest of the loons on the left. Case in point is their latest propaganda, issued last week. The EDF published a “report” that makes the rather preposterous claim that New England customers have overpaid utility bills by $3.6 billion due to collusion between the natural gas and electricity industries. EDF spins the outlandish theory that Avangrid and Eversource brilliantly conspired to create Enron-style fake gas shortages involving a whopping 3.5% of the capacity of the Algonquin pipeline–all in order to drive up electric clearing prices for a wind farm Avangrid didn’t yet own, a rarely dispatched Avangrid oil peaker run under rate of return, and three crappy, rarely operated oil and coal plants in New Hampshire–plus nine little hydro dams that Eversource was trying to unload for years (finally sold last week). EDF’s tall tale is so bizarre (and hard to follow) it’s laughable. However, mainstream fake news media picks it up and regurgitates it to an unsuspecting public, so we’re here to set the record straight on yet another Big Green hoax…
In 2014, Chevron launched the Appalachia Partnership Initiative (API) with $20 million to fund education (for students) and training (for workers) in STEM–Science, Technology, Engineering and Math across 27 counties in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio (see 
The disgusting corporate raiders at Jana Partners are fighting to the bitter end in their attempt to stop the merger/takeover of Rice Energy by EQT. In June EQT and Rice Energy announced that EQT will buy out and merge in Rice Energy, to create (in EQT) the largest natural gas-producing company in the United States (see 
Although the anti-fossil fuel group Lancaster Against Pipelines claims “over 1,000 people” have pledged to protest the pipeline in the county, only 26 (or 23, depending on the news source) showed up to get themselves arrested for attempting to stop the pipeline. We’ve previously written about the hypocritical Catholic nuns who operate a retirement home that uses fracked natural gas to heat it, yet oppose a pipeline to flow the same fracked gas under their property. The nuns, called Adorers of the Blood of Christ, have tried several strategies to derail the Williams Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline project. One of stunts they pulled, in league with the radicals from Lancaster Against Pipelines, is to stick a few wooden park benches in the middle of a corn field that they own (leased to a local farmer), and call it a “chapel”–which is why MDN dubbed them Sisters of the Corn. The sisters sued to stop the pipeline on religious grounds, claiming it violates a core religious belief in preserving Mom Earth. A judge saw through that sham and threw out the case (see