The Incoherence of WV’s Anti-Pipeline “Movement”
There are perhaps a dozen or less people in West Virginia who show up at meetings to protest against several much-needed pipeline projects in the state. One of them, Lauren Ragland, is a little known protester who started a group called West Virginia Wilderness Lovers, which seems to have changed names recently to WV MATTERS. Ragland sometimes appears at meetings toting around a hula hoop (see Hula Hoops & Tall Tales from WV Anti-Drillers Opposed to Pipeline). The membership of her group has magically grown to “95,000 members” according to the latest communication. Yeah, right. Anywho, Lauren, for whatever reason, includes MDN on her press release distribution list. The latest release is included below with no changes. If someone can please tell us what it’s about, we’d appreciate a heads up. From what we can tell, it’s absolutely incoherent, as is much of the anti-drilling movement…
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Here’s one weird and twisted bedtime story: Once upon a time there was a filthy Big Tobacco company. Big Tobacco hooked up with a wealthy (and equally filthy) Big Oil company and they had a baby. And the baby was…….solar panels?? Yep. Philip Morris, one of the largest cigarette manufacturers in the world has contracted with Dominion, one of the biggest utility/midstream companies in the Marcellus/Utica region, to install 8,000 solar panels at the Philip Morris facility in Chesterfield County, VA so they can make more cigs. It will be the largest solar installation to date in the state of Virginia. The only problem here is that the “bad guys” (Big Tobacco and Big Oil) are the heroes by installing solar instead of using natural gas. This is a real dilemma for the anti-drilling/anti-pipeline gang in the Old Dominion State. It may cause a brain hemorrhage…
Yesterday some 120 new rules that govern oil and gas drilling in North Carolina–including a rule that lifts the moratorium on fracking shale deposits–went into effect. In just a couple of years NC was able to do what so far New York hasn’t been able to do in nearly seven years–it became the 34th state to allow shale drilling. While all shale layers are now open for business, the initial flurry of interest seems to be centered in the center of the state in Lee, Moore and Chatham counties. Popularly its called the Triassic Basin, although technically it’s part of a broader area called the Deep River Basin. Within the Triassic is a sub-basin called the Sanford, and it’s there that two companies are already “aggressively” leasing in the area…
We’ve commented before on the lawless tendencies of anti-drillers, particularly in Ohio where, when they lose a court case, they declare the government is illegitimate (see 
Yesterday MDN reported a story that (so far) few others have bothered to report: West Virginia’s House Bill (HB) 2688 failed to gain passage at literally the eleventh hour–one hour before the annual 60-day session ended (see 
This is not an easy story to write. It’s about employment in the Marcellus Shale industry–and about age discrimination. Until late last year, by all accounts the Marcellus Shale industry was, from a jobs perspective, going great guns. Yes, sometimes it was/is necessary to import workers from other states to handle specialized jobs. But increasingly the jobs have been going to local workers and not out-of-staters. Yesterday we received a heartfelt letter (below) from an MDN subscriber. This gentleman is a mechanical engineer with degrees from Penn State and Lafayette College. He has loads of experience in a variety of areas–engineering, contracting, even running a small business. He wants to get involved with the greatest industry on the planet–the Marcellus Shale energy industry. He can paper every room in his house with the number of resumes and job applications he’s filled out. He’s applied for everything from technician to field hand to roustabout (he’s physically fit). In the last five years that he’s been trying, he hasn’t been called for a single interview. Not one. He’s now 52 years old. We don’t like calling attention to stories like this one, but MDN doesn’t shy away from sharing the “bad news” about our beloved industry along with the overwhelming good news…