PA Court Rules to Allow More Leasing/Drilling of State-Owned Land
In a crushing blow to the litigious anti-drilling group Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Foundation (PEDF), the PA Commonwealth Court ruled yesterday against the PEDF’s lawsuit that attempts to stop all drilling and leasing of state-owned lands for oil and gas drilling. The court said a) such drilling is just fine and b) the decision of whether or not to allow drilling on state-owned lands (and which parcels) rests with the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. The court further said that the General Assembly can decide how the monies received from leasing and production royalties will be spent–even as part of the general budget (former Gov. Ed Rendell leased hundreds of thousands of acres so he could use the money to prop up his failing budgets). It was a clean sweep. The PEDF lost all of their points in the lawsuit. The downer is that incoming Gov. Tom Wolf has said he won’t lease any more state lands for drilling…
Read More “PA Court Rules to Allow More Leasing/Drilling of State-Owned Land”
It’s a wrap. MDN predicts one day we’ll look back on January 5 and the pro-drilling rally hosted by the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York as the date when landowners and those of us who support shale drilling fully committed ourselves to ending Andrew Cuomo’s frack ban in New York State. We will one day look back and say, “It all started there, on that date–our eventual victory.” Landowners now understand they cannot be silent, they cannot depend on lawsuits alone, to change the situation in New York. Landowners, union members and even those without land but who support drilling were at the rally in huge numbers, they were mad and they expressed their willingness to fight to protect our Constitutional property rights. Make no mistake, it will be a fight. MDN previously wrote up our impressions of the meeting (see 
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…