Betty Sutliff, retired school teacher and landowner contrasts Gasland Part II with FrackNation, finding the former brought out the usual suspects, while the latter brought a more serious mix of individuals simply interested in the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

A journalistic duel played out on the streets of Callicoon on June 8th. Academy award nominee and HBO backed Manhattanite, Josh Fox, vs. people funded Kickstarter backed Irishman, Phelim McAleer – a regular…

Freelance journalist Josh Wengler investigates the “largest ever public outcry” against fracking in the Commonwealth and finds it looks more like a cheap stunt than anything else, with all too little credibility.

In a press release circulated by the activist group PennEnvironment recently and echoed by Food and Water Watch, a consortium of anti-fracking groups proclaimed a powerful achievement: Delivery of a petition bearing more than 100,000 signatures to the Pennsylvania legislature…

Windsor, New York is the home of Marcellus Drilling News and Jim Willis, MDN’s owner, reports on what is some very good news, indeed, as shale gas and pipelines are delivering huge savings for taxpayers in that area – something that just doesn’t happen in upstate New York that often.

Last October, MDN told you about the Town of Windsor (where we write from!) in Broome County, NY, along the border of Pennsylvania. Windsor saw a new 9-mile section of natural gas pipeline and a…

Otsego County, New York, wrestles with the economic difficulty of operating a long-term care facility, the operation of which could have been more easily supported had the Town of Middlefield not scuttled natural gas development plans that might have supplied the facility.

The continuing discussion about the outcome for the Otsego Manor, our county long-term care facility near Cooperstown, New York, reveals what is a losing situation for all involved. The Manor should never have been…

Michelle Bamberger and friends are at it again, telling people the natural gas industry is responsible for sick animals — offering not even a shred of evidence of causation.

Some of NaturalGasNOW’s readers may recall a post my daughter Rachael did a while back on the EID Marcellus blog regarding Michelle Bamberger, the woman who did a study on sick animals in natural gas development areas and admitted finding no scientific link between the two, yet in the same breath condemned the…

New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo practices the fine art of political obfuscation and delay with two of his latest pronouncements on the subject of natural gas development in a state that desperately needs it – now.

Two stories from last week are harbingers of bad news for landowners and businesses who want to see fracking begin in New York: (1) Gov. Andy “Ditherer” Cuomo told the Syracuse Post-Standard editorial board he’s pushing off a decision on fracking until next year’s 2014…

Natural gas in upstate New York communities is common and long-standing, yet the state wrings its hands over allowing its citizens to produce it, even when the safety is well-documented and the economic need is apparent to all. New Yorkers need to THINK, please!

Broome County lies next door to me and has used natural gas as a main source of heat for over 100 years, as have cities such as Ithaca, one of the hotbeds of natural gas opposition today. Here's how it happened:

"NYSEG…

The Lynett family, owner of Scranton Times-Tribune newspaper and the affiliated Northeast Driller, has been simultaneously trashing the natural gas industry and profiting from it. Now it has allied itself with an anti-gas group in what may be an attempt to steer business toward another business venture – an environmental services company.

The Scranton Times-Tribune launched another attack on the natural gas industry in last Sunday’s edition with the outrageous top of the fold front…

As women living in the Marcellus Shale region of the United States, it is important to understand what natural gas means to our families. Having seen the film Women of the Marcellus, I decided to look into what it is like to try to raise a family in an economically deprived area with an abundant natural resource under our feet.

Raising a family isn’t easy. Between picking the perfect school systems, to making sure kids have what they need as far as food and clothing, being a parent is…

Bergmann Associates, an engineering and consulting firm, demonstrates the tremendous business opportunities in the shale gas industry. Businesses like Bergmann Associates prove time and again that the natural gas industry has the ability to provide good paying jobs and opportunities for anyone.

The Marcellus and Utica Shales are massive economic engines! Study after study confirms this, showing economic growth stimulated from royalties to jobs to taxes. There are many success stories…

A recent incident in Franklin Forks, Pennsylvania, demonstrates just how easily the record can be distorted on natural gas development by special interests determined to exploit accusations, assertions and speculation as if they were facts.

Some folks reading the title ”Guilty until Proven Innocent” might not catch the error in this statement.

Public opinion has become the new justice system as a mob mentality seems to have taken over. Too often, though, the opinion,…

Credible means “offering reasonable grounds to be believed.” Consider whether the word “credible” applies to any of the dire predictions made on the first Earth Day in 1970. Ecologist Ken Watt said, “By the year 2000…there won’t be any more crude oil.” Biologist Barry Commoner said, “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation and the world as a suitable place of human habitation.” Harvard biologist George Wald said, “Civilization will end within 15 or 30…

A recent story in State Impact focused on the results of one poorly phrased and misleading question out of several in a poll that ended up showing broad public support for natural gas development. That one question suggested citizens of both Michigan and Pennsylvania desired moratoriums on hydraulic fracturing but other survey results contrasted sharply with this conclusion.

When polling results don’t fit the template, some media sources try bending the polling curve to suit their…

Recent court decisions, which one hopes will soon be further appealed, strike another blow against both property rights and rational thinking in New York State, both of which have already been in very short supply.

Well, the New York State’s Third Judicial Department has upheld the Dryden and Middlefield decisions, and our friends on the other side are doing some early crowing. It’s a disappointing but hardly unexpected decision, as readers of this blog know from observers who…

Local activists have created a new group called Energy In Denial, playing on the Energy In Depth name in a naive attempt to take their grassroots efforts to a national level. Ironically, “Energy In Denial” couldn’t be a more fitting name for its founders, although we suggest it be shortened to simply read “Denial.”

When an organization spoofs your name, you’re going to look into it. Even if that group has differing opinions from you, the fact creators feel the need to piggyback off of…

The Ithaca Commons, one of those struggling pedestrian mall projects from a couple of generations back, is undergoing an upgrade and part of the project is an expansion of natural gas service, right there in Planet Ithaca. Our readers will recall a series of posts we did called “There Ought To Be A Law.” We did a playful return to the era of that famous cartoon strip by the same name and noted how many natural gas opponents lived or worked in places that relied upon natural gas for heat. We…

A continuing education program on natural gas development took place in Heritage Hills, N.Y., last night, and it was an opportunity lost for the promotion of renewable energy. The opposition to natural gas looks at a clean-burning fuel and sees only a threat to renewables, when in fact it should see tremendous potential.

Last night I took a drive over to Heritage Hills in Westchester County, N.Y., to make a presentation to a community association as part of a continuing education…

Accurate unbiased news reporting, in the case of natural gas development, is too often harder to find than flaming water.  A recent story from Pittsburgh, which had nothing to do with natural gas development, somehow turned into an indictment of the industry, illustrating the power of imagery over facts in the hands of reporters with preconceived ideas that are just plain wrong.



I’ve always held Pittsburgh to a higher standard. Like my hometown of Buffalo, it was a rust belt city…

The debate over natural gas development nationwide is all about New York State and the debate in New York State is all about the Natural Resources Defense Council and its goals.  Those goals are contrary to the interests of landowners and ordinary New Yorkers.



We got a fair amount of reaction to our post on Cuomo’s Choice: Blue Collars or Blue Bloods and the consolidated version in the New York Post.  Kate Sinding, one of the three senior NRDC attorneys mentioned in the post, even…

Opponents of the development of natural gas in New York have been protesting everything related to the topic, including Inergy, L.P., one of the largest taxpayers in Schuyler and Tioga Counties. Cherie Messore takes a moment to look at two neighboring New York Counties and two very different reactions to the company and the services it offers.

While a small group of people protested at a proposed natural gas storage facility site in Schuyler County this week, the 20,000 residents of…