Progressive columnist and crank Jim Hightower penned a fact-free story the other day in attempt to slander the oil and natural gas industry. Hightower apparently thinks ridicule and sarcasm are compelling arguments but the facts indicate otherwise.

Progressives and professional activists never seem to let a good tragedy go to waste. This time it’s Jim Hightower and his laughable analysis of the Colorado flooding tragedy. Hightower goes straight to the bottom right off the bat when he…

Cabot Oil & Gas just came out with some numbers that offer the definitive pushback to the Frackonomics of Deborah Rogers, the goat farmer and model whose presentations might better be labeled “Foolonomics” given their purpose of fooling the public.



Deborah Rogers was in New York City the other day during her “Frackonomics” song and dance before a group of anti-development legislators and special interests.  State Senator Brad Hoylman, one of the sponsors,…

Wind energy has a place in our national energy portfolio but organizations offering it as an alternative to natural gas miss the entire point and when the DOE over-hypes wind energy with misleading statements, no one is helped.

Last month, the US Department of Energy (DOE) released two studies plugging for wind energy. Renewables are a natural complement to natural gas but, unfortunately, the data presented is very misleading and twists reality to make wind energy look a lot better…

An on-line publication called Gourmet News recently did a story on fracking that caused Jeff Heller to offer some much needed perspective on how real farmers feel about fracking. Here is what he told the editor:

My name is Jeff Heller and I am the president of the Steuben County Landowners Coalition in New York. Neil Vitale is our vice president and I understand he has already talked to you on this. He may have told you that we have 1,700 families in the coalition who own 225,000…

Tony Ingraffea knows how to work an audience and his night in town at Canisius College was a perfect illustration – all show and almost no substance. Cherie Messore reports.

When I heard that Dr. Tony Ingraffea was going to speak at Canisius College on Thursday, Oct 3, I wondered why. Canisius has an outstanding reputation for its business programs and traditional Jesuit values. It’s not a science school per se or the kind place where student unrest is part of the campus culture. I…

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…

Software Magazine Names Oildex to the Software 500 for the Second Year in a Row

DENVER and HOUSTON, September 26, 2013 –Oildex, the cloud-based provider of smart information management solutions for the Oil and Gas industry, is pleased to announce it has been recognized as one of the largest software companies in the World by Software Magazine. This is the second year in a row that Oildex has received this honor,…

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,…

There are many fine comments about royalties/bonus signup payments/pad size/payment deductions etc. but the bottom line always comes down to what's in the pot after all is said and done, for the landowner. There are also many issues about right of ways/contract language/misunderstanding etc., all reflecting the final amount left in the pot.

What I don't see enough of is the concerted effort to address the wrongs, to band together to speak with one voice, to make/take a stand about…

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…