9 Anti-Drilling Groups Sue EPA Hoping to Damage the O&G Industry
Here we go again. In what has been a tried-and-true formula for success for anti-drillers, a group of nine far-left anti-drilling “environmental” organizations have sued the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claiming the agency doesn’t require the oil and gas industry to spend big bucks to fill out reams of paperwork to prove it’s not polluting Precious Mother Earth with nasty chemicals. The lawsuit was filed by the Environmental Integrity Project, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Center for Effective Government, the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future (PennFuture), the Clean Air Council, THE Delaware Riverkeeper Network (i.e. Maya van Rossum), the Responsible Drilling Alliance, and Texas Campaign for the Environment. The lawsuit by the litigious gang of nine will provide cover and an excuse for the EPA. What happens next is easy to predict. The EPA actually WANTS this lawsuit. They send a junior lawyer to defend themselves in the case, intentionally lose the case, and the court orders the EPA to start doing something they are not otherwise legally empowered by current law to do. That is, a liberal judge just created a new law that the EPA is then only too happy to follow. That’s how this sleaze tactic works…
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The cavalry has just arrived! Very good news: U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe, Republican from the great state of Oklahoma, will be the new chairman of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW). Top on Inhofe’s agenda is to reign in an out-of-control Environmental Protection Agency, and clamp down on the nonsense and abuse of the Endangered Species Act. Both of those things, plus others (like beating back an effort to redefine “waters of the United States” to include everything but mud puddles), will benefit the shale drilling industry in the northeast and beyond. At MDN HQ we’re doing the happy dance that Inhofe is at the helm of the EPW! Here’s the announcement, which sets out Inhofe’s focus and agenda…
Antero Resources said on Monday it will lay off more than 250 contract land brokers operating in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The layoffs will not affect any Antero employees–only contract workers (landmen and others) who work to get leases signed, sealed and delivered for future drilling. Antero blames the low price of oil, which causes the price they get for their Marcellus/Utica natural gas liquids to be low, which means they’ll stick to drilling on the half million plus acres they already have under lease…