Tag: fracking

Gov. Josh Shapiro Says Pennsylvania Fracking Flip Flop ‘On the Vice President to Explain’ During Appearance as Harris Surrogate

Tom Pappert
Josh Shapiro

Governor Josh Shapiro on Sunday that Vice President Kamala Harris must be the one to explain why she no longer seeks a ban on fracking in Pennsylvania, but claimed he believes she is genuine in her policy reversal.

While Harris promised to ban fracking during her abortive presidential campaign in 2019, her campaign has insisted the Democrat will not attack fracking during her 2024 candidacy as she seeks to repeat President Joe Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania, and Shapiro told “Firing Line” host Margaret Hoover he is convinced by the vice president’s change of heart.

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Former Trump Campaign Spokesman Steve Cortes: Kamala Harris Has a Major Authenticity Problem Among Voters

Kaitlin Housler
Kamala Harris

Steve Cortes, former senior spokesman and strategist for the 2016 and 2020 Trump campaigns and current head of the League of American Workers, said Vice President Kamala Harris has a serious “authenticity” problem among voters in the lead-up to the November 5 general election.

Cortes said in Pennsylvania, for example, voters believe Harris is not genuine about her sudden support for fracking or her alleged support for tougher border security.

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Fetterman Declares Question ‘So Strange’ When Asked About Harris’ Fracking Flip Flop

Tom Pappert
John Fetterman on Meet the Press

U.S. Senator John Fetterman on Sunday repeatedly dodged questions about the past opposition to fracking expressed by he and Vice President Kamala Harris, who campaigned on banning the practice in 2020 but now claims to support it.

Fetterman similarly pushed to ban fracking from 2016 until 2022, when began supporting fracking, and told NBC News host Kristen Welker questions about the flip-flop are “strange.” He deflected by referencing President Donald Trump’s remarks about dogs and cats reportedly being eaten by Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio.

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Pennsylvania Poll Shows Republicans Trump, McCormick Tied with Democrats Harris, Casey amid Bipartisan Support for Fracking

Tom Pappert
PA Races

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are statistically tied in Pennsylvania, according to a poll released on Thursday that also shows Republican U.S. Senate candidate tied with Senator Bob Casey (D-PA), the three-term Democrat he hopes to unseat in November.

Commissioned and conducted by The Washington Post, the pollsters found Harris was supported by 48 percent of respondents, including both likely voters and registered voters. Trump had the support of 47 percent of respondents.

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Radical Anti-Fracking Activists Endorse Kamala Harris’ Campaign

Admin
Kamala Harris

Vice President Kamala Harris has racked up endorsements from several hardline climate groups that oppose fracking, even after her campaign disavowed her previous support of a fracking ban.

The political arms of 350.org, Friends of the Earth, the Center for Biological Diversity, Food and Water Watch, Climate Hawks Vote, Clean Water Action and the Green New Deal Network have all endorsed Harris, even after her campaign told The Hill last Friday that she no longer would ban fracking. The groups — all of which oppose fracking — had not endorsed President Joe Biden before he quit the 2024 presidential race, and they join a growing list of major environmental groups backing Harris as Election Day approaches.

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McCormick Warns Harris ‘Wants to Ban Fracking’ in Pennsylvania After Casey Touts ‘New Energy Sources’ Pushed by White House

Tom Pappert
Dave McCormick and Bob Casey

Republican U.S. Senate nominee Dave McCormick on Wednesday issued a statement warning that Vice President Kamala Harris “wants to ban fracking” in Pennsylvania, and suggested Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) would enable her if reelected.

McCormick’s campaign released his statement after Casey was asked about Harris’ prior pledge to ban fracking, and demurred by stating Harris “contributed greatly to our development of new energy sources.”

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Vance Rallies in Virginia, Focuses on Manufacturing and Energy

The Center Square
JD Vance Virginia

Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance drew on his Appalachian upbringing to connect with supporters at a rally in Virginia on Monday night, focusing on the region’s depleted manufacturing industry, fentanyl and surging immigration crisis.

Vance, senator from Ohio, stopped earlier in the day in his Ohio hometown. He was announced on the ticket with former President Donald Trump one week to the day earlier.

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China’s Funding of U.S. Climate Initiatives Mirrors the Russian Funding of Anti-Fracking Groups

Just the News
Windmills

A nonprofit with operations in Beijing reportedly funded a number of nonprofits in the United States fighting climate change and pushing for sustainable or “green” energy.

Tax filings obtained by Fox News showed funding from the Energy Foundation China, which is headquartered in San Francisco and has a majority of its operations in China. The group, which refers to itself in tax filings as “Energy Foundation China” contributed $3.8 million to initiatives to phase out coal use and expand the use of electric vehicles, according to Fox News.

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Pennsylvania Utility Commission: 2023 Natural Gas Impact Fees Top $278 Million

Bradley Vasoli

Pennsylvania’s Public Utility Commission announced this week that the commonwealth and its localities will collect nearly $279 million from natural gas extraction impact fees this year. 

The revenues, applying to drilling activity throughout 2022, bring the total fees collected for gas extraction from the Marcellus Shale sedimentary rock formation to $2.5 billion since 2012, the year lawmakers imposed the tax on fossil-fuel producers. This year’s allocations will be the largest yearly amount the government amassed through the levy, representing a 19 percent increase over the prior year’s take. 

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Commentary: Carbon County Could Hold the Key to PA-07

Admin

This election is not only an important one but a costly one. It has been crisis after crisis under the Biden administration and Pennsylvanians are paying the price. As the crises continue to grow, Biden has become a drag on Democrats. Democrats like Susan Wild and John Fetterman are detached from Pennsylvanians and the issues that matter to families and business have fallen to the wayside under their leadership.

Gas prices and energy costs are crippling Pennsylvania families. This year as a country, we surpassed the highest recorded average gas price ever and those that heat their homes with oil are facing serious cost increases that are a direct result of the Biden-Democrat agenda.

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Commentary: A Fetterman Victory in November Would Be Bad News for Pennsylvanians

Admin

From banning fracking to destroying small businesses, Pennsylvania U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman’s economic policies would be a disaster for the Keystone State.

Fetterman previously pledged to ban Pennsylvania fracking and nationally ban new fossil fuel leasing. Now that he won his primary, Fetterman is trying to backpedal and said he now opposes such a ban if there were enough taxes in place. But the truth is, Fetterman said he and socialist Senator Bernie Sanders “agree on virtually every issue,” and Sanders introduced a bill with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) to ban fracking.

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Fetterman’s Anti-Fracking History a Vulnerability in Pennsylvania Senate Race

Bradley Vasoli

John Fetterman handily won campaigns for mayor of heavily Democratic Braddock, PA in the 2000s and 2010s and won two statewide Pennsylvania primaries, one for lieutenant governor in 2018 and another for U.S. senator this year. His history of opposing hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking” to extract natural gas didn’t burden him in those races. 

But now the Democratic lieutenant governor faces a general election for U.S. Senate against Republican celebrity surgeon Mehmet Oz. And although Fetterman now says he does not support prohibiting fracking, his past support for a fracking ban promises to complicate his appeal to working Keystone Staters on whose livelihoods fossil-fuel development depends. 

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Bill Would Lift Gov. Wolf’s Moratorium on New Leases for Drilling in Pennsylvania

Bradley Vasoli

Republicans in Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives this week introduced several measures to boost fossil-fuel production in the Keystone State, including a resumption of new state-land drilling leases.

Gov. Tom Wolf (D) imposed a moratorium on new leases for oil and gas development on state-owned areas in January 2015. A bill authored by State Rep. Clint Owlett (R-Wellsboro) would rescind that order and stipulate that all energy exploration performed under any resulting leases be subsurface. That means that the well site must be built off of commonwealth property and that underground channels would reach horizontally into the public lands, allowing for better environmental preservation than older drilling methods.

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Pennsylvania Lawmaker Urges New Jersey and New York to End Pipeline-Construction Bans

Bradley Vasoli

Pennsylvania State Representative Stan Saylor (R-Red Lion) announced Monday he’ll introduce a resolution exhorting New Jersey and New York’s respective governors to allow construction of natural-gas conduits.

In 2014, Democratic New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s predecessor Andrew Cuomo (D) banned hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”) for natural-gas extraction and thenceforth barred the creation of new natural-gas pipelines. Last month, Hochul endorsed a statewide prohibition of gas power for new buildings, the first such state-level interdiction in the U.S. 

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‘No Interest in Fossil Gas’: Green Group Takes over Global Fracking Company

Admin

A prominent U.K. green energy group took over a firm dedicated to fracking for natural gas, vowing to halt all fossil fuel production and cancel further development, The Guardian reported.

The North Yorkshire-based firm Third Energy, which has been a major producer of natural gas in the U.K for decades, was acquired by Wolfland Group, a company that develops renewable energy solutions across the nation, The Guardian reported. Third Energy will now be led by Wolfland director Steve Mason, a prominent anti-fracking activist.

“The current energy crisis has shown that we must be energy independent as a nation and that fossil fuels need to be urgently replaced by clean renewable energy supplies, which will lead to cheaper energy and help us tackle climate change,” Mason said, according to The Guardian.

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Commentary: America’s Energy Future Depends on Pennsylvania

RealClearWire
Pittsburgh by night, Duquesne Incline in front.

For decades, many of us in northeastern Pennsylvania have talked about knocking the rust off our regional economy and creating not only new jobs but also new industries.

Diversifying the economic portfolio of northeastern Pennsylvania means creating an ecosystem for entrepreneurs that helps small businesses prosper in our downtowns through partnerships with the region’s great institutions of higher education – partnerships like the Invent Penn State launchbox at Penn State Hazleton and the Idea Hub at the Wilkes-Barre Innovation Center.

Creating a strong regional economy also means investing in the economic assets – like Pennsylvania natural gas – that enable us to compete for good manufacturing jobs. Affordable, Pennsylvania-produced natural gas is a foundational component of our national economy, fueling America’s manufacturing plants, farms, hospitals, schools, and homes. The Keystone State’s natural gas powers our energy economy and produces thousands of family-sustaining jobs, ranging from the scientist in the laboratory to the union laborer on the pipeline. 

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Labor Shortage Slows Oil Production in Major Fracking State

Admin

A shortage of workers has contributed to a significant crude oil production slowdown in North Dakota, the second-largest U.S. oil hub behind only Texas.

The labor shortage has caused oil output to become “flat as a pancake,” North Dakota State Mineral Resources Director Lynn Helms told The Bismarck Tribune. Energy companies have struggled to find workers needed to do the laborious work — injecting water, sand and chemicals into wells to extract oil — associated with fracking.

“Most of these folks went to Texas where activity was still significantly higher than it was here, where they didn’t have winter and where there were jobs in their industry,” Helms said, according to the Tribune. “It’s going to take higher pay and housing incentives and that sort of thing to get them here.”

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Truckers Plan ‘Stop the Wheels’ Shutdown in Protest of Joe Biden’s Plans for Fracking Ban, Green New Deal

Jason M. Reynolds

If you notice store shelves that are empty of toilet paper and canned food again, it may be because of a truckers’ shutdown and not the Chinese coronavirus.

Truckers have been taking to social media to try to organize a “Stop The Wheels 2020” shutdown in protest of Joe Biden’s plans for the Green New Deal and a fracking ban in the event he assumes the presidency.

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Commentary: A Ban on Fracking Would Kill 6 Million Jobs Across Seven States by 2025

Admin

Joe Biden upended the historic formula of a Democratic presidential nominee. Usually, the hopeful plays his liberal greatest hits to the primary crowd, before tacking to the center as the election dawns and ordinary Americans start listening.

Since his assisted capture of the nomination, Biden has veered leftward, crafting, with the help of the party’s progressive wing, the most progressive platform since the ill-fated George McGovern in 1972.

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Commentary: Biden’s Green New Deal Will End Fracking, Make America Beholden to China

Admin

Former Vice President Joe Biden is promising to implement the Green New Deal, setting a national target for 2035 to cut carbon emissions in half in a move that would end the fossil fuel industry for transportation and electricity as we know it. That means no more oil. No more coal. And no more natural gas.

But in the same breath, Biden is attempting to persuade voters in states like Pennsylvania that he is not going to end hydraulic fracturing that makes it possible to extract petroleum and natural gas from geologic shale formations.

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Commentary: The Biden-Harris Ticket’s Radicalism Would Cost Ohio Dearly

Admin

If Joe Biden and his new running mate Kamala Harris get their way, millions of high-paying American energy jobs will be eliminated and entire industries will be cut to the bone.

Ohio, like a number of other states across the country, has enjoyed tremendous benefits from the shale energy revolution. The shale boom was a crucial lifeline following the 2008 financial crisis, which cost Ohio more than 2 million jobs.

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DOI Discovers Largest US Oil and Gas Reserve Ever Found in New Mexico

Admin

by Chris White   New Mexico and West Texas are sitting on a bonanza of potentially recoverable oil and gas reserves in the Delaware Basin that lies between the two Western states, the Department of the Interior announced Thursday. Two underground layers in the Delaware known as the Wolfcamp Shale and Bone Spring Formation contain 46.3 billion barrels of unrecovered oil and 281 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, the DOI announced. That’s the largest oil and gas reserve the U.S. Geological Survey has ever discovered. “Even for someone who understands the resources and potential of the Permian Basin, I can’t help but be surprised by the sheer enormity of what the USGS has reported,” New Mexico Oil and Gas Association Executive Director Ryan Flynn told reporters. He added: “The Permian resources shared by New Mexico and Texas make this area one of the most important places in the world in terms of oil production.” Total reserves in the Delaware Basin could be far larger than reported. The USGS only looked at the Wolfcamp and Bone Spring formations, or just two of the many layers of hydrocarbon-filled shale rock zones in the Permian Basin. Hydraulic fracturing is a hot-button issue…

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Left Wing Activists Target New Mexico Officials In Brutal Fight Over Mundane Fracking Rule

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Jay Block, New Mexico

by Chris White   Environmentalists in a small New Mexico county are ratcheting up the rhetoric against local fracking ordinances as government officials fear the fight is taking on new and terrifying dimensions. Members of the state’s Sandoval County commission claim activists are haranguing them for contemplating rules permitting gas extraction. Documents also show activists are pressuring commissioners to block industry representatives from discussing future ordinances on natural gas production. “We got blasted by the public about being racists and baby killers,” Jay Block (pictured), one of the commission’s two Republicans, told The Daily Caller News Foundation, referring to insults people hurled at him during debates about gas exploration in the county. Block is in an untenable position, stuck in between an animated anti-gas movement and concerns about the county’s economic well-being. “The citizens are driving the narrative,” said Block, a conservative who worked for the Jack Kemp presidential campaign in 1987. “They are delivering misinformation to the public and not one time has the industry been invited,” he added, referring to the Citizens Watch Group (CWG), an activist group created after the commission voted down ordinances in 2017 following significant public outcry. The proposed ordinance would have banned drilling and fracking within…

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President Trump Is About To Repeal Obama-Era ‘Fracking’ Regulations

Tennessee Star Staff
Tennessee Star

President Donald Trump’s administration will give a belated gift to American energy producers and repeal former President Barack Obama-era regulations for hydraulic fracturing operations on federal lands. The Interior Department is expected to publish a repeal of the rule in the Federal Register on Friday, and already the oil and gas industry are celebrating. Producers challenged were locked in court battles over the rule since it was finalized in 2015.

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Oil and Gas Industry Pushes Back: Google Asked to Label Anti-Fracking Websites as ‘Fake News’

Tennessee Star Staff

An oil and gas drilling advocacy group published an open letter to Google asking the search engine giant to consider “purging or demoting” websites spreading misinformation about hydraulic fracturing. Google rewrote its search engine algorithm to bury “fake news” websites in the wake of the 2016 presidential election. The industry-funded Texans for Natural Gas wants Google…

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