Natural gas development isn’t easy. Politicians want to tax it and regulate it. The pols are now in a bind, though, and offering to trade one for the other.

Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives continues to struggle with the funding plan needed to balance the $32,000,000,000 state budget allowed last month by Governor Wolf to come into law. To pay for it, the Senate agreed for the first time to impose a mineral extraction tax. In return the Senate gave…

TransCanada is seeking to build a 3-mile pipeline under the Potomac River to supply needed gas to West Virginia, but are facing the usual opposition. 

Last April, Maryland was the first state with natural gas reserves to pass a law that outright bans fracking. Governor Hogan, a once ally of natural gas development, made a complete 180-degree and signed the law into place based on political pressure claiming, “environmental risks of fracking outweigh any…

The progress and impending conclusions of two pipeline projects in New York and Pennsylvania have been monitored by Marcellus Drilling News with big reveals.

New York’s corrupted Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) is running scared. For 19 months the DEC has intentionally delayed granting a tiny, 9-mile spur Millennium Pipeline wants to build in Orange…

The Delaware Riverkeeper/Povertykeeper and other Delaware River fractivists are apparently very afraid the DRBC moratorium will be lifted and rightly so.

Our friends over at Energy In Depth have nailed it with their…

Another Dimock ATSDR study is underway; how easy it is for fractivists to manipulate government.

How many times will they get away with it? There’s now yet another Dimock ATSDR study of water wells taking place at the request of fractivists. Readers of this blog will recall this follows another Dimock ATSDR study conducted in 2012, when the EPA came to town to test wells and had the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) analyze the results.

That study was…

Panda is developing a new natural gas-fired power plant in Maryland, and environmentalist groups are saying it’s black and white. It’s anything but.

Last year, the fight against the Panda Mattawoman Power Plant came to a head. Groups like the Riverkeeper, Sierra Club, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, and Earthjustice decided that to fight the new natural gas-fired power plant, they needed to make it civil rights instead of environmental…

The Delaware Riverkeeper Network, a political action group masquerading as a charity, failed again as two FERC members were appointed by unanimous consent.

Earlier in the week a regular reader sent me an action alert from the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, known not so affectionately here as the Delaware Povertykeeper or right arm of the Philadelphia gentry class. He sarcastically made the subject line “No lobbying here.” It was all about the continuing and…

The crazed SolarCity deal included a Cuomo bet, with everyone else’s money, on Silveo solar technology and it’s breaking bad for SolarCity and taxpayers.

This story complements our June 21st piece on the “Get of Jail Free Card” Governor Corruptocrat gave SolarCity (now Tesla). The latter made subsidiary Silveo Inc. and its solar technology the foundation of its fantastical scheme and a recent sweetheart deal ensures SolarCity can freely escape taxpayer…

River basin commissions created by compacts to coordinate water resource planning have become greedy bureaucratic empires thirsty for ever more control.

There is battle for sovereignty going on this country between states and river basin commissions they created long ago to jointly develop water resources. It’s like a scene out of that old movie 2001, where a computer named Hal suddenly assumes control over its makers. River basin commissions such as the ones…

The double standards guiding New York’s Governor Cuomo in his political machinations with respect to fracking and his professed concern over health are revealed in his latest actions to legalize some pot.

According to the Cancer Research UK site:

Cannabis smoke contains many of the same cancer causing substances (carcinogens) as tobacco – at least 50 of them..Many people who smoke cannabis smoke tobacco cigarettes and drink alcohol too. Research…

Two big states, California and Illinois, made news recently by issuing proposed regulations on hydraulic fracturing. Here's some perspective on what these states are doing (and one similar state is not).

On Friday, November 15, the California Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources issued proposed regulations governing the process in California. The regulations, which also will cover “acidizing”, were promulgated following the passage earlier in the year of SB4, the State bill…

Another one of those silly stunts recently undertaken by fractivists has been taking a “Pledge to Resist” and it has inspired Vic Furman to come up with his own “Pledge to Defend” his property rights.

I have nothing against activists. I am one, in fact; a pro gas activist living in Upstate New York. Fractivists, though, are another matter. My state has, for political reasons, denied my rights and those of other landowners wishing to tap into their mineral rights using high volume…

Sanity is emerging in New York with a positive statement from its League of Conservation Voters, a Rockefeller group, supporting LNG and stating the obvious environmental benefits. Fracking may not be far behind.

Our good friend and guest blogger, Jim Willis, the publisher of Marcellus Drilling News, picked up on something the other day that, together with some other news from the New York League of Conservation Voters, suggests sanity may slowly be emerging from the depths of the…

Marcellus Shale opponents have shifted tactics yet again by now claiming there isn’t any gas worth having in New York but the real numbers contradict this sorry attempt to cast doom and gloom on the Southern Tier.

You can always tell when the fractivists change strategies.  All of a sudden there is a burst of activity from various Park Foundation funded groups and supporters, with one entity creating the “news,” another showcasing it and still another…

No one needs to save us from solar energy, but it is, nonetheless, easy to construct such a case, demonstrating exactly why serious folks need to see natural gas development and hydraulic fracturing in the clear light of day, rather than through the dark colored glasses of its opponents.

Recently I received a little parody with an introduction from one of our loyal readers who shall, for purposes of this post, be known as George Lyttelton, although that’s not the reader’s real name,…

Greenpeace has lost its way and is now just another entity seeking to fill its coffers with green money by filing its supporters’ minds with nonsense on the subject of shale gas development, about which it knows nothing.

Since this is a children’s story, let’s start with “Once Upon A Time.” Once upon a time, Greenpeace was a respected serious organization that successfully achieved many positive things. Sadly, those days have long gone and today Greenpeace (in the UK at least)…

Teresa Heinz Kerry strikes back for the gentry class by reasserting control over the Heinz Endowments and defending the firing of anyone remotely pro shale gas.

The autocratic tendencies of the gentry class are amusing (and scary) to watch. Case in point: Teresa Heinz Kerry, chairwoman of the Heinz Endowments. Heinz Kerry (she actually dropped the “Kerry” after adding it for the 2004 election but the press keeps using it so we will as well) finally addressed the issue of the Heinz…

Dick Downey says anti-gas and anti-development types just love using the word sustainable but sustainability for them consists mainly in saying no and that’s not sustainable.

In a flurry of letters to the editor last week, an anti-development group operating from my upstate New York backyard called Sustainable Otsego unfurled its banner in support of its candidates. It read, “Fracking Is Bad“ … in spite of the fact that 90% of all new wells in the USA are fracked (yes, your car is…

Vic Furman says challenging the fractivist agenda demands one not be intimidated and be willing to speak up when no one wants to listen, and allow no one to silence them.



This is Part II of my report on Binghamton’s 2nd annual Global Frackdown, which was held last Saturday, October 19, at the Martian Luther King Promenade.  The event was microcosm of our battle with the fractivists, who are invariably noisy, rude, self-centered and ever focused on accusing others…

Chris Denton says New York Southern Tier residents are gambling with their future if they support the gambling question on the ballot in November, which, if passed, will give Gov. Cuomo the excuse he needs to halt natural gas development rather than just sit on it.

Governor Cuomo has announced more than once that he strongly supports casino gambling in upstate New York. He has gone so far as to alter the language on the ballot to make the Constitutional Amendment appear as a jobs bill…