Oct 27 Deadline: Will NY Oil & Gas Industry Challenge Frack Ban?
A deadline is fast approaching in New York State. Next Tuesday, Oct. 27, the natural gas industry must file an “Article 78” lawsuit or lose its opportunity to do so. Last December NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo made a non-science, political decision to ban fracking in the state (see After 6+ Years, Andrew Cuomo Bans Fracking in New York). It took six months, but Cuomo’s useful idiot, then-Dept. of Environmental Conservation Commissioner (DEC) Joe Martens released a so-called “findings statement” on June 29 that outlines the DEC’s reasoning for the frack ban (for a copy of the findings statement, see It’s Official: Cuomo Bans Economic Opportunity & Prosperity in NY). Next Tuesday is the last chance for the industry to challenge the findings statement in court. Will they?…
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The radical leftist PA-based group Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) does its best to trick townships into passing illegal bans. In 2013 the CELDF fooled Highland Township in Elk County, PA into passing a ban on wastewater injection wells. They also tricked Grant Township in Indiana County, PA to do the same thing. Both towns are in court defending their illegal actions. One of the idiotic legal tactics used by the CELDF in both cases is to claim that an ecosystem is a “person” under the law–a person who can file to join the town’s lawsuit in an effort to protect itself (see 
Last year International Paper’s Ticonderoga mill in northern New York, near the Vermont border, received $1.75 million in grant money from Andrew Cuomo and New York State (that is to say, from we the taxpayers) to help with an $11 million project to convert the plant from using oil to using natural gas (see the Albany Times Union story: 
Floridian Jeb Bush is running for President as a Republican–necessary to state the obvious because many are likely not aware of Jeb’s candidacy since his poll numbers are in the single digits. Jeb was a guest at Rice Energy near Pittsburgh in September to unveil his energy policy plan (see 
What many rank and file members of the New York anti-fracking movement may not realize, or perhaps chooses to ignore, is that the people at their rallies and meetings standing behind the microphones are being paid to do so. The organizers of groups like New Yorkers Against Fracking and Frack Action are funded by the odious Park Foundation to pedal their smears and lies against fossil energy. The Park Foundation gave New Yorkers Against Fracking $125,000 earlier this year, in part to pay for organizers to travel across the country spreading the word (i.e. lie) that a little rag-tag bunch of protesters convinced the mighty Andrew Cuomo of the righteousness of their cause–and you can do it in your state too. In other words, the anti-fracking movement has become a cottage industry where people get paid to mouth off at rallies, before reporters–before anyone who will listen. They are paid by the Park Foundation and other Big Green groups to do so…
The Obama war on coal continues. So far Obama has put around a half million people working for coal companies in the unemployment line. His solution? If you live and/or have worked in coal mines in Ohio and are now out of work, Obama is giving the state a $2 million Band-Aid grant (of taxpayer’s money) for “retraining” so the out-of-work coal miners can go to work in the Marcellus/Utica shale gas fields. One small problem: the gas companies are laying people off too. In record numbers. Government at its finest: retrain someone out of work in one industry for jobs that don’t exist in another industry. Here’s the details on the retraining program coming to the Buckeye State for out-of-work coal miners…
With President Obama’s war on coal in full swing, so-called renewable energy sources like wind and solar can’t possibly pick up the slack from coal-powered electric generating plants shutting down. Coal-fired electric plants are shutting down at an alarming rate–we’ve lost 11 million megawatts of coal-fired electric capacity in the past year alone. That situation spells opportunity for natural gas. One reason that natgas is making inroads in the electric generating space is because it’s a whole lot cheaper today than it was just a few short years ago to use clean-burning natural gas to power electric plants. In 2008 the price of natural gas sold for an average of $13 per thousand cubic feet (Mcf). Today? The price of gas has been bumping along at around $2.75/Mcf. In places like southwest Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio Marcellus and Utica gas sells for around $1.50-$1.75/Mcf. So it’s no wonder electric plants powered by natural gas are springing up all over the place. Below is a quick look at six such plants in eastern Ohio and West Virginia…
Two weeks ago MDN told you about a positive trend for Magnum Hunter Resources’ (MHR) stock–traders were doing less “short selling” of the stock (see 
We wonder, do the liberal editors of the Democrat propaganda machine known as the Scranton Times-Tribune consider it “fair” to close down legitimate businesses that provide jobs and tax revenue to the state by targeting them with even higher taxes, forcing them out of business because they no longer turn a profit? Is “profit” a bad word around the news room of the Times-Tribune? Is the word “capitalism” banned from so-called reporters’ lips at the Times-Tribune? Those are the kinds of thoughts that roll around our brain box when we read yet another sycophantic “we need to tax the Marcellus industry more than we do already” editorial from the brainiacs at the Times-Tribune…
Below are upcoming events for the next three months (90 days). To see the full list of future events, visit this page:
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: northeast natgas changes the whole picture; Transco loop in PA gets FERC green light; PA severance tax “for” education actually takes money away from education; WV natgas customers see bills go down 24%; MA nuke plant closing makes NED pipeline more likely; Schlumberger CEO says o&g industry in the toilet until 2017; fractivism is modern-day Marxism; and more!
MDN has been highlighting stories and writing about potential water well contamination by Range Resources at their Yeager well and wastewater impoundment site in Amwell Township (Washington County), PA since 2012 (see MDN’s list of 
If landowners along the route of the PennEast Pipeline don’t sign a lease with the company, PennEast says they will be forced to (and will) use eminent domain to gain lease rights. The PennEast, as a reminder, is a proposed pipeline costing $1 billion that will run from Luzerne County, PA (near Wilkes-Barre) all the way to Mercer County, NJ (just outside of Trenton), flowing 1 billion cubic feet of clean-burning Marcellus Shale gas each and every day. Landowners along the pipeline’s route will still own the land, but there will be restrictions–you can’t erect a building over top of a pipeline, for example. PennEast looks at eminent domain as an absolute last resort. However, according to the radicals at the PA Sierra Club who are opposing the pipeline, around two-thirds of the landowners along the pipeline’s route have not yet signed a lease to allow the pipeline across their land. PennEast recently filed their official application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (see 
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) seems to have a grudge against EQT. Last October the DEP levied a $4.5 million fine against EQT over a leaky wastewater impoundment in Tioga County, PA (see 
For the past few months MDN has noted several large sales of Carrizo Oil & Gas stock by company CEO Chip Johnson, totaling nearly $2 million of stock sold since June (see 
In 2012, Barnesville (Belmont County), OH signed a contract with Gulfport Energy to sell Gulfport water from the Slope Creek Reservoir for 1 penny per gallon. Earlier this year Gulfport wanted to begin drilling in the area, following a joint venture agreement with Antero Resources. But Barnesville said the water level in the reservoir is too low and wouldn’t sell any to Gulfport, so Gulfport sued and in March the whole matter ended up in federal court (see