Jim Willis notes the Park Foundation has financed Duke University’s Nicholas School and, for good measure, thrown some additional money at the institution to put out another of those headline grabbing studies with no substance.

Those anti-drilling adolescents at Duke University are at it again. They released a very flawed “study” in a “peer-reviewed” journal yesterday (a study funded in part by the anti-drilling Park Foundation) that took samples from a creek downstream from a…

Enviers of European ways and fractivists are fond of crowing about France banning hydraulic fracturing but, as Nick Grealy demonstrates, the tide is quickly turning of necessity. Watch what they do, not what they say.

We can expect interesting developments from France this month. I’ve been noting for some time that the combination of France’s oil riches in the Paris Basin and the inherent rationality of France will overcome the various narratives that led to the French ban of…

A blatant effort by a gentry class of second home owners to take over rural towns and stop natural gas development must be resisted by local residents.

An article appeared in the River Reporter last week with the title “Targeting second-home owner voters; Acting couple to host voter registration drive.” It referred to an effort by Debra Winger (net worth of $22 million) and her husband Arliss Howard to get New York City residents to register to vote in Sullivan County, New York, and…

Pennsylvania’s oil and gas regulatory program is much stronger than suggested by fractivists and some New Yorkers who’d like to think their state is superior in every way.

Spending a lot of time in New York, one gets used to hearing, over and over again, from fractivists and others, how Pennsylvania’s oil and gas regulatory program is somehow flawed. Truth is, though, the Commonwealth has a superb program, one that should be the envy of other states and that’s not my evaluation but…

Upstate New York has been changing, but not for the better, as state leaders have turned away from the best thing happening in a bid for “energy correctness.”

Come senators, congressmen

Please heed the call

Don’t stand in the doorway

Don’t block up the hall

For he that gets hurt

Will be he who has stalled

Bob Dylan, …

One of the most disingenuous arguments of the natural gas opposition is that development constitutes industrialization. It preserves open space by giving farmers and landowners a means of sustaining it.

Nothing will do more to save the farm and preserve open space than natural gas drilling. It is the single most effective tool available for protecting the rural character valued by all who live here, because it rewards landowners for holding onto property and gives them the means to do…

American Rivers is another one of those elitist groups more interested in stopping development of any kind and self-perpetuating their organization than protecting rivers. Their “most endangered river” program is pure demagoguery.

There was much ado back in 2010 about American Rivers designating the Delaware River as “America’s Most Endangered River,” based on the mere prospect of natural gas drilling in that river basin. Rebecca Wodder, its then Executive Director, came to…

Jim Willis addresses the activities of one of the most irresponsible of all fractivist groups, PennEnvironment. Their barrel of dirty tricks is one huge hogshead of hyperbole.

In a pathetic attempt to give political cover to their anti-drilling collaborators in the Pennsylvania legislature, anti-drilling group PennEnvironment issued a so-called report yesterday that demands Pennsylvania turn the lights out on fracking for shale gas–at least for now and the foreseeable future–until…we…

Vic Furman says failure to develop our natural gas and other energy sources at home means putting our sons and daughters in harm’s way abroad. It’s time to drill gas wells upstate and bring home our soldiers.

This was the news story today in upstate New York:

[b]Breaking News Out of New York[/b]

[i]National Guard soldiers and helicopters were deployed to Kuwait on Wednesday morning to help fight abroad, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced today.

The New York Army National…

The Farm Aid Concert in Saratoga was another example of celebrities with no knowledge of what they speak latching onto a cause and using crude empty slogans such “frack yourself” as a substitute for intellectual argument.

Just since my two recent posts on celebrity exploitation of the fracking issue, several more celebrities have piled on to demonstrate their ignorance. It’s a fascinating thing, the way they all move in unison, like synchronous fireflies who all light up at once,…

Dryden is one of the two New York towns who enacted natural gas development bans now under appeal before that state’s highest court. The irony is that they also ban most wind energy and promote wood burning.

The Town of Dryden is located near Planet Ithaca, that part of Tompkins County where the normal rules of physics don’t apply, everything orbits around Cornell University and political correctness governs all. It is home to just under 14,500 people and is governed by an anti-gas…

The global order is changing as a result of shale gas and the export of liquified natural gas (LNG) is about to accelerate the change, placing the US in an enviable position of leadership in a new worldwide energy economy.

Some stories are so full of groundbreaking ideas that I can only recommend everyone read all the article in Foreign Affairs this week by Amy Myers Jaffe and Ed Morse. Morse is Chief Commodity Strategist for Citibank and makes a rare London conference visit to the FT…

There’s no end to the hypocrisy and ignorance on the part of celebrities opposed to fracking. Alec Baldwin illustrates, yet again, the seeming inability of celebrities to grasp reality when it comes to this subject.

I promised in my last post to provide more examples of celebrity fractivists who ought to know more about where they live before they mouth off about fracking. This one is almost too easy though. Alec Baldwin is one easy to hit target.

Baldwin has to be the world’s…

Certain celebrities, some talented and some not so talented, seem attracted to fracking as a cause célèbre but they ought to be looking at their energy use rather than criticizing others. Can’t they just shut up and entertain us?

Why are celebrities so shallow? A friend recently sent me an article from the Washington Times illustrating the idiocy of some of my favorite performers when they attempt to use their fame for what they suppose is good, but is merely politically correct. It’s…

Ferlo's foolishness - a fracking moratorium for a state where it's paying 71% above average.

A proposed moratorium on the issue of drilling and hydraulic fracturing permits in Pennsylvania is as foolish as it gets but that’s not important to the sponsor, Senator Jim Ferlo, who is throwing a bone to his special interest friends on the left.

Senator James Ferlo, a Pittsburgh politician previously best known for advocating the Commonwealth create a single-payer health care system,…

A peer-reviewed study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science puts the final nail in the coffin of those Park Foundation funded junk scientists on the Cornell University payroll.

Cornell professors Robert Howarth and Anthony (Tony) Ingraffea published a study in 2011 that claimed drilling for natural gas is actually worse than burning coal because extracting natural gas leads to high levels of “fugitive methane” escaping into the atmosphere and…

Natural gas is lifting Pennsylvania’s rural areas, and especially its Northern Tier, out of poverty and Governor Cuomo, who wants to be President, would do well to look across the border for clues on how to improve his poll numbers outside the city.

New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo has forsaken the Southern Tier of his great state in what appears to be an act of groveling before the NRDC and its friends, studiously avoiding a decision on whether or not to allow high-volume hydraulic…

Is is too much to ask for reporters covering health issues to exercise caution, ask questions of their own and act responsibly before regurgitating the shallow unverified claims of some shale gas opponents?



A story came across the wire yesterday “Fracking Health Project Puts Numbers to the Debate.”  The story raises more questions than answers and feeds into the fear already gripping a portion of the population.



Out of the population of…

The fracking debate often obscures the good news from a broader energy revolution of which the process is a big part. Our national security and our economy are both being enhanced in major ways by this revolution.

As our nation debates military strikes in Syria, officials there have predicted that, “any attack against Syria will definitely result in chaos in the entire region if not beyond.” If that comes to pass, critical oil transportation choke points – responsible for moving a…

There is no end to doomsday prophesying when it comes to shale gas and the Clean Air Council is right there at the front of the pack crying wolf, but a recent Pennsylvania DEP report shows the CAC was off by a factor of 17 to 1.

Earlier this year the Heinz Endowments funded Clean Air Council (CAC) issued anews release claiming…