Thomas J Shepstone's Blog (1,194)

Philly Takes Impact Fees While Opposing Natural Gas

The passing of the new impact fee means a lot of communities, even those outside of the producible Marcellus Shale, will see tremendous payouts. But what about those who are in the Marcellus and unable to develop because of the Delaware River Basin Commission? Robert Nolan takes an in-depth look at how the numbers add up across the state. Over 400 years ago, in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Marcellus uttered a similar, famous quote with reference to the state of Denmark (“Something is rotten in…

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Added by Thomas J Shepstone on October 17, 2012 at 2:11pm — No Comments

1,000+ March on Albany for Natural Gas

About one thousand people spent the day in Albany expressing their support of natural gas outside Governor Cuomo’s office through signs and speeches on Monday. The rally was a great success with the message to, “Put New Yorker’s back to work, let’s start permitting natural gas,” at the forefront.

Approximately 1,000 people traveled up to Albany, New York to show their support for natural gas in New York on Monday. The group assembled, displayed signs and spoke out to show Governor…

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Added by Thomas J Shepstone on October 16, 2012 at 2:55pm — No Comments

PennEnvironment Report Bites the Dust

We laid the foundations for analyzing the report “The Costs of Fracking” in Part I of this series. Now we’ll delve further into this 49-page paper from a group caught twice using fabricated imagery to stimulate a negative response against natural gas development.

This report is riddled with misleading information and assumptions. One of the most widely inappropriate parts of this study was the authors took information from across the country and tried to generically apply every…

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Added by Thomas J Shepstone on October 15, 2012 at 3:06pm — No Comments

Artists Against Fracking Have No Credibility

The Damascus Citizens for Sustainability, an organization with the same New York City address as other natural gas opponents in that state, has made a point of repeatedly attacking residents who actually have to make a living in the Upper Delaware valley. Curt Coccodrilli takes on the organization and one of the group’s leaders for their elitist attitude.

Early last month, Senator Pat Toomey visited Wayne County to meet with various landowners and local officials about the subject of…

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Added by Thomas J Shepstone on October 15, 2012 at 3:35am — No Comments

Promised Land Looks To Be Pitiful Propaganda

Matt Damon is coming out with another anti-gas movie called Promised Land. Vic Furman got a chance to see the trailer on the big screen and was not impressed by what turned out to be a piece of pitiful propaganda full of nonsense, disrespectful to rural people and financed by Middle East interests.

This past week I went to the movie theater on Upper Front Street in Binghamton. I bought some popcorn and a Diet Coke in preparation to see a movie.

The previews played, including…

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Added by Thomas J Shepstone on October 14, 2012 at 2:01pm — No Comments

Truth or Politics? Which Will Set Natural Gas Opportunities Free?

Cris Pasto reflects on truth versus politics in the playing out of the natural gas saga in New York State. He notes everything the other side says it wants is readily available from natural gas, yet they refuse to see it, preferring an alternative reality and narrative with nothing to back it up.

I started feeling a bit guilty for not addressing the latest stall tactic in NY with a push for a health impact review sooner. It’s just that I’ve been getting so irritated with the anti-gas…

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Added by Thomas J Shepstone on October 13, 2012 at 1:16am — No Comments

Homer Considers Moratorium in Shadow of Binghamton

The Town of Homer had a public hearing last week to discuss enacting a moratorium for this Cortland County community, incredible as that may seem after the stunning overturn of the Binghamton version by the Broome County Supreme Court.

There was a public hearing late last week in the Town of Homer, Cortland County, New York, where the town board is considering (not necessarily supporting) a natural gas moratorium apparently being pushed by a local group of opponents, despite what…

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Added by Thomas J Shepstone on October 12, 2012 at 12:04am — No Comments

Town of Highland Facing Lawsuit for Ill-Conceived Ban

The Town of Highland enacted a “ban on heavy industrial uses associated with natural gas extraction” as Local Law No. 3 of 2012 in an act of political correctness. They are now being sued by an aggrieved landowner. Jim Willis posted the following story on his popular Marcellus Drilling News (MDN) site this morning:

MDN is not used to breaking the news, but that’s what we’ll do today. The Town of Highland, located in Sullivan County, NY, is about to be sued by the Highland Field &…

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Added by Thomas J Shepstone on October 11, 2012 at 8:24am — No Comments

EPA Chases Dimock Illusion While Ignoring Darby Pollution

EID takes a closer look at e-mails released by the EPA in association with a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Scranton Times Tribune. The correspondence shows a federal agency arriving at one conclusion based on data, but taken down another road due to other factors, ignoring real pollution in Darby, Pennsylvania, the process.

A recent Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Scranton Times-Tribune yielded more than 3,000 emails from the U.S. Environmental…

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Added by Thomas J Shepstone on October 10, 2012 at 11:48pm — No Comments

Eating the Natural Gas Elephant

Cherie Messore says New York has some exciting natural gas events on the horizon, including a screening of Silent No More this Saturday in Windsor and a rally, “Real Jobs for Real People,” in Albany on Monday.

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

It may be an old vaudeville joke, but it’s true. For pro-shale gas development advocates, that pachyderm is one big enchilada, too. There’s a couple tasty new bites to savor this week.…

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Added by Thomas J Shepstone on October 10, 2012 at 10:42am — No Comments

Another hyped up protest goes bust

A natural gas protest in Bessemer, Pennsylvania, on Saturday proved to be a big bust, as a group called the Shadbush Environmental Justice Collective, assembled a handful of protestors in the service of fighting oppression or something used Shell’s operations there as a target of opportunity.

Last week, Dan Alfaro of EID Ohio, says, "my colleagues here at EID Marcellus contacted me with a tip about a protest that was planned for Saturday at a Shell development site in Bessemer,…

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Added by Thomas J Shepstone on October 10, 2012 at 4:20am — No Comments

Cabot Says Duke Conclusions on Dimock Methane Are Only Hot Air Around

This is a cross-post of a recent piece on the Well Said Cabot blog that takes a closer look at assertions by researchers at Duke University. Cabot posted the below to lay out the facts and encourage a conversation based on science.

Bloomberg published this piece, Cabot’s Methodology Links Tainted Water Wells to Gas Fracking, drawing upon conclusions from professors at Duke University and asserted that natural gas from Marcellus shale is leaking into domestic water wells in Dimock.…

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Added by Thomas J Shepstone on October 9, 2012 at 6:52am — No Comments

Chenango Entertains Moratorium Just Thrown Out by Court

There was a public hearing in Chenango, New York (Broome County, NY) last week regarding a possible moratorium on natural gas development. The crowd was split but land use law cannot be crafted with applause meters and the town should review the Binghamton decision from last week before it jumps off the cliff.

There was a public hearing held last week in Chenango, New York (Broome County). The hearing was for the purpose of discussing the potential enactment of a moratorium. Given the…

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Added by Thomas J Shepstone on October 8, 2012 at 4:25am — No Comments

Bill Huston's Water Train Is Off-Track

Bill Huston’s attempt to characterize the amount of water that will be used to hydraulically fracture natural gas wells in New York State as enormous turns out to be a highly flawed “HO Scale” argument that fails on three tracks.

Our errant friend Bill Huston has been at it again on several fronts and we must confess being amused by one his recent attempts to create hysteria over water use connected with hydraulic fracturing. He does so in this blog post, where he uses trains to make…

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Added by Thomas J Shepstone on October 7, 2012 at 3:09pm — No Comments

Senator Casey Seeks Hollywood Support While Disappointing Constituents on Natural Gas

Betty Sutliff, Pennsylvania landowner is very disappointed in Senator Robert Casey, who met with New Yorkers and movie stars Debra Winger and Mark Ruffalo but won’t meet with her landowners group to discuss the same issue – natural gas. She essentially asks “Whose Senator are you, Mr.Casey?”

I sent a very similar email to the one below to Senator Casey over two years ago and got a form letter in response. During the following year and a half, others in our group sent letters to him…

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Added by Thomas J Shepstone on October 6, 2012 at 1:04pm — No Comments

NY Could Use a Boom!

Cris Pasto says New York’s economy will burst apart without natural gas or some other viable solution natural gas opponents have yet to share. We need jobs.

The “fracktivists” have been grasping at straws to make their case against natural gas development. One of their members keeps claiming that the economic benefits of natural gas development are exaggerated because, as he claims, it’s a “boom and bust industry.” This is crazy. You just can’t make this stuff up. Well, actually,…

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Added by Thomas J Shepstone on October 5, 2012 at 11:21pm — No Comments

Reflections on Binghamton and Natural Gas in NY

Robert Poloncic, Chairman of the Vestal Landowners Coalition, was directly involved with the Binghamton Moratorium being overturned in court. Hear what he had to say about the case and the future of natural gas development in New York State below.

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to speak with Robert Poloncic, Chairman of the Vestal Landowners Coalition about the recent court ruling about the moratorium placed on the city of Binghamton. As you know, the moratorium was recently…

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Added by Thomas J Shepstone on October 5, 2012 at 11:51am — No Comments

Judge Declares Slottje's "No Brainer" Strategy Brain Dead

Attorney David Slottje, from the Park Foundation funded Community Environmental Defense Council, can call it whatever he wants – a duck, a goose, a chicken or even a moratorium – but no matter how he spins it, and he's doing plenty of that, the Broome County Supreme Court wasn't buying what he sold Binghamton. The court threw out the foundation for every moratorium enacted in the last several months on Slottje's advice and left the CEDC strategy in tatters.

We are writing this post…

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Added by Thomas J Shepstone on October 5, 2012 at 6:24am — No Comments

October 15 Rally for Truth and Energy

Landowners are gathering from across New York and the DRBC region of Pennsylvania to rally in Albany on October 15 and tell Governor Cuomo they support natural gas development. Will you be there?

We, along with fellow residents from across New York and across the river in Pennsylvania, waiting for New York and the Delaware River Basin Commission to pass regulations and allow natural gas development will be gathering in Albany on October 15 for a rally. Let me tell you a little about…

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Added by Thomas J Shepstone on October 4, 2012 at 7:57am — No Comments

Anti-Gas Cult of Hypocrisy

Cris Pasto says it’s time for the anti-natural gas crowd to start practicing what they preach. If you’re going to protest natural gas, stop using petroleum based products.

The anti-natural gas cult will stoop to any low as the end justifies the means. The end game for them is to “kill the drill,” period. I believe if they succeed in their foolishness, it will be more than just the end of natural gas development. It will likely be the end of what’s left of our economy eventually. In…

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Added by Thomas J Shepstone on October 4, 2012 at 5:20am — No Comments

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