I realize this idea will never fly. But it would be much fairer than the current confiscatory state of affairs regarding shale gas in New York, where the winners don't even bother seeking to meet the losers half-way.
Rather than put in a temporary moratorium or permanent ban on drilling, New York townships could simply rent the underlying mineral rights — and then decline to use them. It's not a solution that relies on blunt regulation, or fiat, but on compromise and horse-trading.
It's very similar to a public agency, or an environmentally minded group, buying development rights, sometimes also known as conservation easements. These involve willing sellers, willing buyers, and prices they meet at someplace in the middle.
In New York, towns wouldn't have to lease everything. Just a tad above 40%, on average, crazy-quilted across the landscape, would prevent any serious operator from qualifying for a state permit for anything other than an old-school vertical well.
Town leaders could just sit down with the grassroots landowner coalitions and negotiate the price on a 5- or 10-year model lease: Joe and Josephine Landowner, Lessor, to Town of Freakout, Lessee. And then the town would have to pay up, of course. And, yes, you'd have to do it all over again in five or ten years, if the townspeople haven't come around to any kind of New Religion in the meanwhile.
To motivate the marketplace, a town could run it as a first-come, first-serve, limited-time-offer kind of thing — at least until its quota is reached, at which point they could close up the lease-buying shop, and the latecomers lose their chances.
Put the word out what the standing offer is, buy some lunch for a few otherwise idle notaries public, and schedule a couple signings en masse. Possibly sync these events up with a chicken barbecue or something, and put on some heartfelt presentations in the school auditorium themed "Peace in Our Time."
People with a lot of land effectively get a discount, or possibly even a rebate, on their land taxes. Villagers and small lot holders make up the difference. It's an end to the bully's free lunch of getting away with just pushing people around.
Ever-mistrustful anti's would be free to boycott the proceedings by either relying instead upon their tallies of acreage that's already pledged to never (again) be put under lease. Or by leasing all their land, for a nominal price, and for the same no-drill purpose, to an organization they feel confident will never do anything with those rights.
Vote with your square feet.
Either way, you add it all up, and you could put a rough pricetag on the preliminary costs of a community's decision to decline the opportunity shale gas poses — at least within the current climate of nagging skepticism that New York will ever be able to get its act together on this score.
The point is these bans cost something. For those landowners willing to turn down such an opportunity, and to eat those costs on principle, I see it as a matter of private rights and choice, and I cannot object.
But for those who demand to be compensated for something owned — something that's essentially being confiscated from them by popular will — show them the money. To me, it's just another side to the coin of "environmental justice."
Then put it the whole lease plan to a referendum, including the final costs. If the townsfolk start back-peddling when the final bill comes due, well, then, that should tell you something about the depth of their current mania.
All this is the same kind of tough choice anybody faces in any kind of legitimate marketplace: If there's no cost to the proponent, demand is unlimited, but, if there's skin in the game — well, then, not so much.
"No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session" — Gideon J. Tucker, 1866
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Friday, May 10, 2013
Millennium Pipeline Floats Upstate North-South Natural Gas Connector
Yet another chance for New York's anti-development forces to say "not in my backyard," even while thousands of Upstate residents, businesses, and institutions — including Whitney Point, NY, my hometown — continue to have no competitive consumer-level energy options other than electricity, trucked-in fuel oil/propane, or the joys of firewood.
The developer — a consortium known as Millennium, which includes National Grid as a member, and which already controls the main west-east pipeline through New York's Southern Tier — floated trial balloons on this 60-mile south-north natural gas pipeline plan on May 9-10, 2013. Unsurprisingly, no mainstream or web-based outlets have so far gone to the trouble of posting the map, which to me is the most interesting thing. So I dug it out myself.
Right now, and for the rest of the month of May, Millennium is just shopping for enough transmission customers to justify building at least a 24-inch diameter line. If there's more than enough interest, the pipe could go bigger. On the other hand, if there's not enough need — measured exclusively by the private sector, according to future flow commitments — then this thing could easily die an early death, and we in New York can go back to our regularly scheduled programming.
The project is going to go by either the dull name Phase 1, or the somewhat more descriptive North-South Upstate Pipeline Connector. The concept — the same as several other already built, building, or proposed plans — is to get around the Northeast U.S. west-east bottleneck by sliding burgeoning WV-OH-PA shale gas production to open west-east pipeline capacity to the north. Big city markets in New York and New England would be very quietly using up most of it, although I suppose the politically testy natural gas exports angle could be a factor in the long run (no such proposals have been put forth yet in the Northeast).
From a very provincial perspective, but one that happens to be very important to me, this pipeline could put an end to that sorry lack of energy choices in small towns in the Tioughnioga River valley. But I'm already certain that this pipeline plan is going to turn into another branch of the larger political fight over shale gas, regardless of what New York State ever winds up deciding (or failing to decide) on this issue, so far as its own citizens' undeveloped resources are concerned.
I know there are always winners and losers in politics, but this kind of reflexive conflict in New York State is getting ridiculous.
At this point, I think I would welcome an activism-imbued township, somewhere along this route, seeking to naively try enforcing a ban on not only all localized drilling, but also through-transport of fossil fuels by pipeline. Such a "Home Rule"-inspired ban should eventually be crushed under the principles of federally protected interstate commerce.
(But, then again, maybe not. Maybe the balkanization of New York continues and prevails, no matter what the long-term up-shot of all this might be.)
We've already seen in New York, at least for the time-being, that "Home Rule" is capable of both politically and legally trumping long-standing private property rights, much to the dismay of local landowners who mistakenly thought they still held onto something constitutionally protected against popularly inflamed confiscation. My hope would be that pushing "Home Rule" to the next level should expose the fact that it's really just "States Rights" for green reactionaries, where provincial interests go too far by getting in the hair of the larger public interest.
Reading further between the lines of Millennium's announcement (which you can peruse for yourself here):
"Millennium has executed a Memorandum of Understanding with the owner of an existing pipeline and the related right of way associated with that pipeline. Millennium has completed a preliminary constructability assessment of the right of way and has conducted a review of the property records underlying that right of way and has determined that the right of way for the proposed extension is usable from both a constructability and land rights perspective."
Translation: To minimize the impact, the pipeline planners want to "co-locate" this natural gas pipeline alongside an already built, refined and liquid fossil fuels pipeline (which should be familiar to locals on the ground with its orange or yellow markers). To my knowledge, this should be the Sunoco Corporation's 8-inch line, which moves refined product from Philadelphia, PA, to an end point in Brewerton, NY. This is historically known as the "Sun Pipe Line," and probably dates from, like, the 1930's.
Question: Does the developer actually propose it won't have to pay host landowners to expand the use of these old easements — because it's going in as a sub-tenant under open-ended boilerplate language in these old documents? That's not a good start, and I sure hope not. They're going to have a big enough fight on their hands, as it is.
The developer — a consortium known as Millennium, which includes National Grid as a member, and which already controls the main west-east pipeline through New York's Southern Tier — floated trial balloons on this 60-mile south-north natural gas pipeline plan on May 9-10, 2013. Unsurprisingly, no mainstream or web-based outlets have so far gone to the trouble of posting the map, which to me is the most interesting thing. So I dug it out myself.
Right now, and for the rest of the month of May, Millennium is just shopping for enough transmission customers to justify building at least a 24-inch diameter line. If there's more than enough interest, the pipe could go bigger. On the other hand, if there's not enough need — measured exclusively by the private sector, according to future flow commitments — then this thing could easily die an early death, and we in New York can go back to our regularly scheduled programming.
The project is going to go by either the dull name Phase 1, or the somewhat more descriptive North-South Upstate Pipeline Connector. The concept — the same as several other already built, building, or proposed plans — is to get around the Northeast U.S. west-east bottleneck by sliding burgeoning WV-OH-PA shale gas production to open west-east pipeline capacity to the north. Big city markets in New York and New England would be very quietly using up most of it, although I suppose the politically testy natural gas exports angle could be a factor in the long run (no such proposals have been put forth yet in the Northeast).
From a very provincial perspective, but one that happens to be very important to me, this pipeline could put an end to that sorry lack of energy choices in small towns in the Tioughnioga River valley. But I'm already certain that this pipeline plan is going to turn into another branch of the larger political fight over shale gas, regardless of what New York State ever winds up deciding (or failing to decide) on this issue, so far as its own citizens' undeveloped resources are concerned.
I know there are always winners and losers in politics, but this kind of reflexive conflict in New York State is getting ridiculous.
At this point, I think I would welcome an activism-imbued township, somewhere along this route, seeking to naively try enforcing a ban on not only all localized drilling, but also through-transport of fossil fuels by pipeline. Such a "Home Rule"-inspired ban should eventually be crushed under the principles of federally protected interstate commerce.
(But, then again, maybe not. Maybe the balkanization of New York continues and prevails, no matter what the long-term up-shot of all this might be.)
We've already seen in New York, at least for the time-being, that "Home Rule" is capable of both politically and legally trumping long-standing private property rights, much to the dismay of local landowners who mistakenly thought they still held onto something constitutionally protected against popularly inflamed confiscation. My hope would be that pushing "Home Rule" to the next level should expose the fact that it's really just "States Rights" for green reactionaries, where provincial interests go too far by getting in the hair of the larger public interest.
Reading further between the lines of Millennium's announcement (which you can peruse for yourself here):
"Millennium has executed a Memorandum of Understanding with the owner of an existing pipeline and the related right of way associated with that pipeline. Millennium has completed a preliminary constructability assessment of the right of way and has conducted a review of the property records underlying that right of way and has determined that the right of way for the proposed extension is usable from both a constructability and land rights perspective."
Translation: To minimize the impact, the pipeline planners want to "co-locate" this natural gas pipeline alongside an already built, refined and liquid fossil fuels pipeline (which should be familiar to locals on the ground with its orange or yellow markers). To my knowledge, this should be the Sunoco Corporation's 8-inch line, which moves refined product from Philadelphia, PA, to an end point in Brewerton, NY. This is historically known as the "Sun Pipe Line," and probably dates from, like, the 1930's.
Question: Does the developer actually propose it won't have to pay host landowners to expand the use of these old easements — because it's going in as a sub-tenant under open-ended boilerplate language in these old documents? That's not a good start, and I sure hope not. They're going to have a big enough fight on their hands, as it is.
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
ExxonMobil's XTO Now Camped Out With 5 Wells In NY's Stalled Shale Gas Queue
[Original post Feb. 27, 2013. Updated May 1, 2013 upon receipt from DEC Albany of the two Delaware County unit maps proposed by XTO.]
Three more full-on Marcellus shale drilling applications from ExxonMobil subsidiary XTO Energy popped within New York State's electronic records during Feb. 2013.
Adding these three to two previous XTO filings — previously reported here and here alone in Oct. 2012, but now re-cast with this fresh update — I've mapped all five projects with pins marking top and bottom holes below, and summarized all five at the end of this post (together with links to detailed maps of the proposed units, when I get my hands on the new ones).
View XTO Energy (ExxonMobil subsidiary) — Five Marcellus shale gas applications in NYS in a larger map
Significant?
These are the first of any sort of application statewide for XTO, never before an active driller in New York State by that name.
But they're also the first horizontal shale gas requests from a well-known, well-funded developer — at least since New York State started informally refusing such applications sometime during the early months of its now fully 5-year-old bureaucratic blockade against this new enterprise. A number of pre- and early-moratorium applications still technically sit idle within the DEC's electronic records, but so many of the underlying leases have lapsed in the meantime — or fallen under the legal cloudiness of the force majeure issue — all of these old applications are likely to be scrapped, or to be total do-overs.
XTO's projects are all within Broome County's easternmost Sanford or the adjoining Township of Deposit in Delaware County. Both townships sit just north of the politically significant NY-PA state line (though the shale has been sitting for many years under both jurisdictions without knowing the difference). While Deposit looks as though it sits wholly within the Delaware River drainage, Sanford straddles the watershed divide between the incapacitated Delaware Basin, and the much more accommodating Susquehanna River drainage area. (Yes, they're both free-flowing rivers; but, again, it's just that the bureaucracies are different.)
Nonetheless, the surface pads for all of these XTO wells — including the Dew Dec A 1H, which I'm told is named for landowner Dewey Decker, Sanford Town Supervisor, and an early advocate for upstate's budding lease opportunities — are proposed for hilltop wooded terrain draining ultimately to the Delaware, not the Susquehanna.
What this all means is that XTO — for reasons that probably only an optimist could explain — is now ready and eager to get into a line that's been long blocked, not by one, but by two, shale gas moratoriums.
For the first moratorium, New York environmental officials have been flat-footed since Feb. 15, 2008 (the date of the first such stalled application anywhere statewide from industry). Then — since July 23, 2008, the birth date for the tortured and still-unresolved SGEIS process — these officials were busy coping with studious delay, and unprecedented public commentary, on this question.
For the second moratorium, the federal-state compact Delaware River Basin Commission has been stymied from reaching a consensus (or even just taking a vote) on its own version of over-lapping regulations governing such activity. Unlike the similar, adjoining federal-state compact Susquehanna River Basin Commission, the DRBC decided early on it had to do much more than simply regulate water withdrawals in its zone of influence. But then the DRBC's proposed, over-the-top regulatory scheme got bogged down in politics, same as in New York — a pool of quicksand from which the path of least (short-term) resistance always seems to mean... don't sink; don't swim; don't even struggle; just delay, delay, delay.
These XTO applications also represent a challenge to anti-leaning observers (most mainstream reporters, and a handful of pseudo-journalistic bloggers), as well as to basically-burned-out well-wishers for progress (such as myself, at least on certain days) — all of whom have become increasingly hopeful/fearful that indigenous shale gas will never be produced from under gridlocked New York. (At least not within the foreseeable future.)
It's true that financially troubled Norwegian penny stock Norse Energy has made similar filings — camping out in the DEC's stalled shale gas queue since July 2011 with 29 new, mostly horizontal, Marcellus and Utica shale applications. But it's been easy for many to ignore Norse's efforts as a persuasive stunt, or as a prop to the hopefulness of its investors, or as a sweetening to its underlying assets for an eventual sale.
But now well-heeled XTO joins bedraggled Norse to "occupy" New York's line.
Hmmm...
API Well Number: 31007300060000 (proposed unit map obtained and uploaded off-site here)
Three more full-on Marcellus shale drilling applications from ExxonMobil subsidiary XTO Energy popped within New York State's electronic records during Feb. 2013.
Adding these three to two previous XTO filings — previously reported here and here alone in Oct. 2012, but now re-cast with this fresh update — I've mapped all five projects with pins marking top and bottom holes below, and summarized all five at the end of this post (together with links to detailed maps of the proposed units, when I get my hands on the new ones).
View XTO Energy (ExxonMobil subsidiary) — Five Marcellus shale gas applications in NYS in a larger map
Significant?
These are the first of any sort of application statewide for XTO, never before an active driller in New York State by that name.
But they're also the first horizontal shale gas requests from a well-known, well-funded developer — at least since New York State started informally refusing such applications sometime during the early months of its now fully 5-year-old bureaucratic blockade against this new enterprise. A number of pre- and early-moratorium applications still technically sit idle within the DEC's electronic records, but so many of the underlying leases have lapsed in the meantime — or fallen under the legal cloudiness of the force majeure issue — all of these old applications are likely to be scrapped, or to be total do-overs.
XTO's projects are all within Broome County's easternmost Sanford or the adjoining Township of Deposit in Delaware County. Both townships sit just north of the politically significant NY-PA state line (though the shale has been sitting for many years under both jurisdictions without knowing the difference). While Deposit looks as though it sits wholly within the Delaware River drainage, Sanford straddles the watershed divide between the incapacitated Delaware Basin, and the much more accommodating Susquehanna River drainage area. (Yes, they're both free-flowing rivers; but, again, it's just that the bureaucracies are different.)
Nonetheless, the surface pads for all of these XTO wells — including the Dew Dec A 1H, which I'm told is named for landowner Dewey Decker, Sanford Town Supervisor, and an early advocate for upstate's budding lease opportunities — are proposed for hilltop wooded terrain draining ultimately to the Delaware, not the Susquehanna.
What this all means is that XTO — for reasons that probably only an optimist could explain — is now ready and eager to get into a line that's been long blocked, not by one, but by two, shale gas moratoriums.
For the first moratorium, New York environmental officials have been flat-footed since Feb. 15, 2008 (the date of the first such stalled application anywhere statewide from industry). Then — since July 23, 2008, the birth date for the tortured and still-unresolved SGEIS process — these officials were busy coping with studious delay, and unprecedented public commentary, on this question.
For the second moratorium, the federal-state compact Delaware River Basin Commission has been stymied from reaching a consensus (or even just taking a vote) on its own version of over-lapping regulations governing such activity. Unlike the similar, adjoining federal-state compact Susquehanna River Basin Commission, the DRBC decided early on it had to do much more than simply regulate water withdrawals in its zone of influence. But then the DRBC's proposed, over-the-top regulatory scheme got bogged down in politics, same as in New York — a pool of quicksand from which the path of least (short-term) resistance always seems to mean... don't sink; don't swim; don't even struggle; just delay, delay, delay.
These XTO applications also represent a challenge to anti-leaning observers (most mainstream reporters, and a handful of pseudo-journalistic bloggers), as well as to basically-burned-out well-wishers for progress (such as myself, at least on certain days) — all of whom have become increasingly hopeful/fearful that indigenous shale gas will never be produced from under gridlocked New York. (At least not within the foreseeable future.)
It's true that financially troubled Norwegian penny stock Norse Energy has made similar filings — camping out in the DEC's stalled shale gas queue since July 2011 with 29 new, mostly horizontal, Marcellus and Utica shale applications. But it's been easy for many to ignore Norse's efforts as a persuasive stunt, or as a prop to the hopefulness of its investors, or as a sweetening to its underlying assets for an eventual sale.
But now well-heeled XTO joins bedraggled Norse to "occupy" New York's line.
Hmmm...
API Well Number: 31007300060000 (proposed unit map obtained and uploaded off-site here)
Well Name: Dew Dec A 1H
Company Name: XTO Energy
Well Type: Not Listed
Well Status: App to Drill/Plug/Convert
Objective Formation: Marcellus
County: Broome
Town: Sanford
Status Date: 10/11/2012
Permit Application Date: 10/3/2012
Well Orientation: Horizontal
Surface Longitude: -75.519335
Surface Latitude: 42.064837
Bottom Hole Longitude: -75.506605
Bottom Hole Latitude: 42.054007
True Vertical Depth: 6050
Bottom Hole Total Measured Depth: 11000
Drilled Depth: 11000
Proposed Well Type: Gas Wildcat
Spacing:
Spacing Acres: 619.1
Integration:
Last Modified Date: 10/11/2012
API Well Number: 31007300070000 (proposed unit map obtained and uploaded off-site here)
Well Name: Cempa Unit A 1H
Company Name: XTO Energy
Well Type: Not Listed
Well Status: App to Drill/Plug/Convert
Objective Formation: Marcellus
County: Broome
Town: Sanford
Status Date: 10/11/2012
Permit Application Date: 10/3/2012
Well Orientation: Horizontal
Surface Longitude: -75.503886
Surface Latitude: 42.079922
Bottom Hole Longitude: -75.514772
Bottom Hole Latitude: 42.091136
True Vertical Depth: 6077
Bottom Hole Total Measured Depth: 10795
Drilled Depth: 10795
Proposed Well Type: Gas Wildcat
Spacing:
Spacing Acres: 635.2
Integration:
Last Modified Date: 10/11/2012
API Well Number: 31025300000000 (proposed unit map obtained and uploaded off-site here — after waiting out a nearly 2-month Freedom of Information Law delay engineered within DEC Albany)
Well Name: Begeal 1H
Company Name: XTO Energy
Well Type: Not Listed
Well Status: App to Drill/Plug/Convert
Objective Formation: Marcellus
County: Delaware
Town: Deposit
Status Date: 2/20/2013
Permit Application Date: 1/18/2013
Well Orientation: Horizontal
Surface Longitude: -75.35141
Surface Latitude: 42.017858
Bottom Hole Longitude: -75.355152
Bottom Hole Latitude: 42.033241
True Vertical Depth: 5870
Bottom Hole Total Measured Depth: 11170
Drilled Depth: 11170
Proposed Well Type: Gas Development
Spacing: Conforms to statewide spacing under Title 5
Spacing Acres: 633.23
Integration: Integration order pending
Last Modified Date: 2/20/2013
API Well Number: 31025300010000 (proposed unit map obtained and uploaded off-site here — after waiting out a nearly 2-month Freedom of Information Law delay engineered within DEC Albany)
Well Name: Shaefer Unit 1H
Company Name: XTO Energy
Well Type: Not Listed
Well Status: App to Drill/Plug/Convert
Objective Formation: Marcellus
County: Delaware
Town: Deposit
Status Date: 2/21/2013
Permit Application Date: 1/18/2013
Well Orientation: Horizontal
Surface Longitude: -75.365989
Surface Latitude: 42.121412
Bottom Hole Longitude: -75.372014
Bottom Hole Latitude: 42.128093
True Vertical Depth: 5995
Bottom Hole Total Measured Depth: 10732
Drilled Depth: 10732
Proposed Well Type: Gas Development
Spacing: Non-statutory unit under Title 5; conforms to policy objectives
Spacing Acres: 579.95
Integration: Integration order pending
Last Modified Date: 2/21/2013
API Well Number: 31007300080000 (proposed unit map uploaded off-site here)
Well Name: Kelly Unit 1H
Company Name: XTO Energy
Well Type: Not Listed
Well Status: App to Drill/Plug/Convert
Objective Formation: Marcellus
County: Broome
Town: Sanford
Status Date: 2/21/2013
Permit Application Date: 1/29/2013
Well Orientation: Horizontal
Surface Longitude: -75.4611045
Surface Latitude: 42.098447
Bottom Hole Longitude: -75.468786
Bottom Hole Latitude: 42.108737
True Vertical Depth: 5873
Bottom Hole Total Measured Depth: 10088
Drilled Depth: 10088
Proposed Well Type: Gas Wildcat
Spacing: Non-statutory unit under Title 5; review in progress
Spacing Acres: 555.49
Integration:
Last Modified Date: 2/21/2013
API Well Number: 31025300000000 (proposed unit map obtained and uploaded off-site here — after waiting out a nearly 2-month Freedom of Information Law delay engineered within DEC Albany)
Well Name: Begeal 1H
Company Name: XTO Energy
Well Type: Not Listed
Well Status: App to Drill/Plug/Convert
Objective Formation: Marcellus
County: Delaware
Town: Deposit
Status Date: 2/20/2013
Permit Application Date: 1/18/2013
Well Orientation: Horizontal
Surface Longitude: -75.35141
Surface Latitude: 42.017858
Bottom Hole Longitude: -75.355152
Bottom Hole Latitude: 42.033241
True Vertical Depth: 5870
Bottom Hole Total Measured Depth: 11170
Drilled Depth: 11170
Proposed Well Type: Gas Development
Spacing: Conforms to statewide spacing under Title 5
Spacing Acres: 633.23
Integration: Integration order pending
Last Modified Date: 2/20/2013
API Well Number: 31025300010000 (proposed unit map obtained and uploaded off-site here — after waiting out a nearly 2-month Freedom of Information Law delay engineered within DEC Albany)
Well Name: Shaefer Unit 1H
Company Name: XTO Energy
Well Type: Not Listed
Well Status: App to Drill/Plug/Convert
Objective Formation: Marcellus
County: Delaware
Town: Deposit
Status Date: 2/21/2013
Permit Application Date: 1/18/2013
Well Orientation: Horizontal
Surface Longitude: -75.365989
Surface Latitude: 42.121412
Bottom Hole Longitude: -75.372014
Bottom Hole Latitude: 42.128093
True Vertical Depth: 5995
Bottom Hole Total Measured Depth: 10732
Drilled Depth: 10732
Proposed Well Type: Gas Development
Spacing: Non-statutory unit under Title 5; conforms to policy objectives
Spacing Acres: 579.95
Integration: Integration order pending
Last Modified Date: 2/21/2013
API Well Number: 31007300080000 (proposed unit map uploaded off-site here)
Well Name: Kelly Unit 1H
Company Name: XTO Energy
Well Type: Not Listed
Well Status: App to Drill/Plug/Convert
Objective Formation: Marcellus
County: Broome
Town: Sanford
Status Date: 2/21/2013
Permit Application Date: 1/29/2013
Well Orientation: Horizontal
Surface Longitude: -75.4611045
Surface Latitude: 42.098447
Bottom Hole Longitude: -75.468786
Bottom Hole Latitude: 42.108737
True Vertical Depth: 5873
Bottom Hole Total Measured Depth: 10088
Drilled Depth: 10088
Proposed Well Type: Gas Wildcat
Spacing: Non-statutory unit under Title 5; review in progress
Spacing Acres: 555.49
Integration:
Last Modified Date: 2/21/2013
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Cuomo Drowning in "Hallway Chatter":
Score Another for NY's Unchecked Capture
“I think the landowners’ consultants and the lobbyists for the pro-fracking groups would be better advised to spend their time actually getting out information to allay the fears of the people of this state than worrying about hallway chatter... Their job is to communicate to the people of the state, to say that this is a safe process, to be open and available. And that’s what they should be doing.”This is a testy New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Monday, March 11, 2013, during an exclusive exchange with Gannett's Jon Campbell.
The astounding thing to me is that nobody seems to have tried to interpret the heart of this pique. Most observers readily understand Cuomo's complaints that the pro-drilling side has long ago lost the PR war, at least provincially.
But I want to tell you what I think the rest of it means.
First, here's the background:
Michael Gormley of the Associated Press's Albany branch had dropped a weekend story March 2 or so. In that piece, well-heeled downstate environmental activist, ex-Cuomo brother-in-law, and former natural gas supporter Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. led a committee of named and unnamed sources in painting a word-picture in which the Grappling Governor in a Blue Singlet had finally been turned on fracking.
According to these preposterously unreliable sources, Cuomo had hung up the phone with Junior and decided that New York would now embrace another year or more of continued delay — politically justified by the "sounds reasonable" desire to await the results of three or more expert studies of the Fracking = Negative Health Impacts hypothesis.
(Never mind that such results were years off, that some of the studies were envisioned to run more or less continuously, and that, even before the ink was dry on the research contracts, anybody who had spent any time even just leaning against the Ivory Tower could predict in advance that all of these studies would — in the end, no matter the results — unanimously conclude with impassioned pleas for funds to support further study. Science just goes on and on and on like that, with its hand out, and the world always partly uncertain.)
At the time of Gormley's construction, or shortly thereafter, there were some feeble denials from the Cuomo camp. But nobody seemed to pay them much attention — not even the pro-frackers, whether they be industry, upstate landowners, or simply people who philosophically identify New York's human economy as the state's Biggest Fish to Fry. Instead, Cuomo's last pillar of support for a rational, science-based, even-excessively-cautious regulatory scheme to check the actual, real-world impacts of a somewhere-necessary enterprise — the same as New York handles any other necessary enterprise — all that crumbled over the weekend due to lost faith, lost confidence, and lost patience.
The landowners were finally getting ready to wrap themselves in the American flag, hold up a copy of the Constitution, and sue for the taking of their property rights as an economically oppressed political minority — something I wish they could have found a way to do years ago.
The loss of heart suffered by the regular people of New York was only confirmed by the tale from Kennedy and the green contingent, as told to a complicit AP.
That's what Cuomo, a week or so later, is reported to be upset about. That's what Cuomo's reacting to when he decries the impact of "hallway chatter." Neither Cuomo nor his specialist deputies have actually openly said shit — other than the usual science-and-facts-not-emotion shit. But the pro-fracking side bought into the "hallway chatter," and continued a turn much more aggressively against his administration.
Mister "Open For Business." The Ditherer. Hamlet on the Hudson, Version 2.0. The pro-drilling side had never really approached sarcasm previously — preferring instead to preserve a respectful relationship with both its hoped-for leader and its hopeful demographic. It's the same reason that NPR's "Says You" and other weekend entertainments for the bookish left remarkably never, ever, ever make a joke at President Obama's expense. It's just bad form, when you still have hopes of getting something.
Now, for the pro-drilling side, the hope is gone, and the sarcasm fills the vacuum.
Yesterday, with a remarkable lack of play statewide, the AP got around to contrarily reporting that Cuomo and his Health Department chief Nirav Shah were, in fact, saying New York's shale gas decision would not be unwisely and impractically hinged to a waiting game for further expert study results. Cuomo and Shah said they never said that.
Now we have a chance to look back at Gormley's original piece and see that it was effortlessly planted, by one side in this debate, to run as The Inside Story, and that both sides were very successfully lulled into believing it: The opposition because the story played to what they wanted to hear, and the proposition because it played to their deepest conspiratorial fears. If you're able to establish the fictional narrative that the cat's out of the bag, maybe not even Cuomo will be able to summon the power, the courage, or the skills of leadership to hold onto the actual cat in the bag.
Gormley's original AP piece is truly a testament to the unchecked power of New York's environmental community to shape this state's provincial news, to control the narrative of its political conversation, to sculpt truth, and to get its stuff done.
The word that comes to my mind is "captured."
"Captured" is a word that has been traditionally used by the left to describe the seamless way in which publicly spirited institutions, such as the press, do the bidding of monied, conservative special interests. When it works smoothly, it's not really about favors, payoffs, or arm-twisting; it's really more of a cultural thing, a social rewards things, a group-think thing, a shaming thing, a peer-pressure thing.
It's more about "How could you?" As in, "How could you write that terrible story about how wonderful fracking will be for Upstate New York?" Most working reporters in New York occupy a Bookstores, Coffee Shops, and Nifty Bars social class in which the courage to entertain certain Objective Facts from the Outside World simply brings too much grief — the same grief Cuomo has been dealing with since taking over as governor from David Patterson.
You gotta be a conscientious iconoclast like the New York Post's Fred Dicker to devote yourself to taking the air out of that kind of pressure.
In New York, we've come full circle on "capture": Most in-state media have long been "captured" by monied special interests disguised as environmental activism. Of course, there are elements of ideology to this faction, but at the heart of this conflict it's mostly a war of both lifestyle and class that one side is in the process of winning.
There's no justice for the losers. Their losses are not even defined as an injustice.
In New York, public radio, most of what's left of daily city-based journalism, and even a statewide news collective such as the AP — all function as branch offices of the Ithaca or Lower Hudson mindset. Their preferred sources are protected by a heroic shroud of "good government." Their preferred sources are only concerned about the environment, not about maintaining a particularly blessed, rule-laden lifestyle for their base, at the expense of others without advanced degrees. Their preferred sources are not ideological; they're about doing the right thing.
The other side is only about ugly destruction and unseemly profit. It's not about balanced regulation, property rights, working for a living, opportunity, hope, paying your bills, playing by the rules, or technological evolution, and the freedom to adapt to it.
Oh, what a cage for New York!
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Cuomo's Lost Credibility Triggers Seismic Shift Within Upstate Landowner Leadership
An announcement posted late last night by leaders of the top pro-drilling coalition of Upstate New York landowners represents a seismic shift that's been a surprisingly slow, five years in the making.
Here are the words that make it so:
Now the leaders simply don't believe Cuomo anymore, a loss of trust that's painful to see, if only for its slowness to dawn.
The JLCNY's old tactic was to internally pooh-pooh the chances of a legal "takings" argument by landowners on two grounds: One, that the state hadn't yet finished the process of stripping away their private property rights, and, two, that the U.S. Supreme Court had already turned its back on the partial stripping away of private property rights by governmental police power.
Now the leaders have come to understand that they must use all arenas to make their persuasive case, even arenas where they're likely doomed to fail, or mostly fail, in the end.
You ask me, should have been done long ago.
The bottom line is that Upstate landowners — even as a voting minority — own something of great, previously unforeseen value. Something that has simply been taken away by New York State's inability to govern itself.
It is only private property in its narrowest sense. You can measure the value of that private property in straight dollars, beneficial technological evolution, the proceeds of an invisible hand, economic opportunity, the individual freedom to choose a plan and work toward it, or simply broad hope.
You want to raise cows, chickens, or alpacas? You do it. You want to convert your house to geothermal? You do it. You want to arrange to have some trees cut for lumber? You do it. You want to invent the iPod? You do it.
You want to make a deal with the technologists to produce the natural gas that's consumed without question in Ithaca, or Hamilton, or New York City?
When the freedom to act on one's private interests is completely taken away by the power or the incapacity of government, it's no different than a street riot, mob rule, or a coup by self-dealing factions.
It is an injustice forbidden, from the beginning, by the American system.
What are the ground rules of the American system?
What were the ground rules?
And what do you stupidly and unwittingly give up when you work overtime, as part of that righteous mob, to toss them out?
Upstate New York's private, land-owning interests ask only for tolerance and respect, as they try to do their thing within a regulated system. I don't think it's too much to ask, and I'm glad there's still somebody left in this country asking it.
Post script: For landowners to make their full "takings" case, there really should be a companion lawsuit filed by Wayne County, PA property owners against the Delaware River Basin Commission. There's a parallel, perpetual moratorium going on there in which the incapacity of this particular branch of government to do the job it asserts for itself winds up unlawfully and unjustly taking away private property without any compensation. The main difference in going up against the DRBC would be the possibility that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, a member of the DRBC, might well be pressed into formally taking sides.
Here are the words that make it so:
On February 8, 2013, the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York announced that it has been laying the ground work for a lawsuit against New York State for a taking of our property rights under the United States and New York Constitutions. The JLCNY is now seeking landowner candidates to serve as plaintiffs in the action.The JLCNY's old tactic was to counsel patience and diplomacy among many of its angry members, naively choosing to trust that Gov. Cuomo would be true to his word — that the facts and the science of regulated shale gas development would trump ideology, emotion, and endless, provincial, bad press.
The JLCNY believes that New York has no intention of ever completing the SGEIS or the regulations for high volume hydraulic fracturing. After 4 ½ years, today marks another deadline missed by NY - the date to complete the HVHF regulations.
NY is clearly acting in bad faith. Ohio completed its HVHF regulations in 8 months. This week Illinois introduced House Bill 2615 — the Illinois Hydraulic Fracturing Regulatory Act—after a 14-month bi-partisan effort that involved the Attorney General’s Office, environmental groups (NRDC and the Sierra Club), industry leaders and state legislators. Illinois Governor Pat Quinn praised the bill saying it will help his state’s economy. Ironically, the “New Albany” Shale is Illinois’ target formation but it’s business as usual in Albany, NY where our leaders continue to make a mockery of the regulatory process.
President Obama said in his state of the Union address: “After years of talking about it, we are finally poised to control our own energy future. We produce more oil at home than we have in 15 years. We have doubled the distance our cars will go on a gallon of gas, and the amount of renewable energy we generate from sources like wind and solar – with tens of thousands of good, American jobs to show for it. We produce more natural gas than ever before – and nearly everyone’s energy bill is lower because of it. And over the last four years, our emissions of the dangerous carbon pollution that threatens our planet have actually fallen.
Last week New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said: "It is up to the governor, but I personally have said we should be fracking, not in the watershed, but we should be fracking. … About 13,000 people get killed every year by the pollutants from coal-fired plants. … [Also, as] Boone alluded to, getting oil from outside this country is expensive and it transfers our wealth to people who are trying to destroy our lives. … Of all the things we can do, natural gas isn't perfect, but it certainly looks like it can make this country energy-independent and reduce dramatically the pollutants going into the air," Bloomberg said.
On February 12, 2013, DOH Commissioner Shah perpetuated the state’s bad faith conduct by suggesting that he would review two health studies that had not yet been started or funded. News of DOH’s inability to complete its work on the latest health review came even though it was revealed that its advisory panel completed its work months earlier and that last year, DOH conducted a health review and found that there are no health impacts from HVHF.
While our nation’s leaders bring us closer than ever to achieving energy independence, cleaner air and economic prosperity, NY threatens to impede our progress and deny the constitutionally guaranteed rights of NY landowners.
The lawsuit against the state will focus on claims where the failure to grant HVHF permits has deprived landowners of all economically viable uses of their real property or interfered with reasonable investment-backed expectations.
Now the leaders simply don't believe Cuomo anymore, a loss of trust that's painful to see, if only for its slowness to dawn.
The JLCNY's old tactic was to internally pooh-pooh the chances of a legal "takings" argument by landowners on two grounds: One, that the state hadn't yet finished the process of stripping away their private property rights, and, two, that the U.S. Supreme Court had already turned its back on the partial stripping away of private property rights by governmental police power.
Now the leaders have come to understand that they must use all arenas to make their persuasive case, even arenas where they're likely doomed to fail, or mostly fail, in the end.
You ask me, should have been done long ago.
The bottom line is that Upstate landowners — even as a voting minority — own something of great, previously unforeseen value. Something that has simply been taken away by New York State's inability to govern itself.
It is only private property in its narrowest sense. You can measure the value of that private property in straight dollars, beneficial technological evolution, the proceeds of an invisible hand, economic opportunity, the individual freedom to choose a plan and work toward it, or simply broad hope.
You want to raise cows, chickens, or alpacas? You do it. You want to convert your house to geothermal? You do it. You want to arrange to have some trees cut for lumber? You do it. You want to invent the iPod? You do it.
You want to make a deal with the technologists to produce the natural gas that's consumed without question in Ithaca, or Hamilton, or New York City?
When the freedom to act on one's private interests is completely taken away by the power or the incapacity of government, it's no different than a street riot, mob rule, or a coup by self-dealing factions.
It is an injustice forbidden, from the beginning, by the American system.
What are the ground rules of the American system?
What were the ground rules?
And what do you stupidly and unwittingly give up when you work overtime, as part of that righteous mob, to toss them out?
Upstate New York's private, land-owning interests ask only for tolerance and respect, as they try to do their thing within a regulated system. I don't think it's too much to ask, and I'm glad there's still somebody left in this country asking it.
Post script: For landowners to make their full "takings" case, there really should be a companion lawsuit filed by Wayne County, PA property owners against the Delaware River Basin Commission. There's a parallel, perpetual moratorium going on there in which the incapacity of this particular branch of government to do the job it asserts for itself winds up unlawfully and unjustly taking away private property without any compensation. The main difference in going up against the DRBC would be the possibility that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, a member of the DRBC, might well be pressed into formally taking sides.
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
NYS DEC Mineral Resources Division
Issues Annual Report... For 2010
Better late than never, I guess: Three PDF's popped on the New York Department of Environmental Conservation Minerals Division web site here, sometime during February 2013.
The documents — which represent an annual tradition customarily not gotten around to until more than a year has passed — cover drilling and mining activity statewide during 2010, such as it was.
But a check of the internal properties riding with the files shows the last date of revision would have been Feb. 11, 2013.
Why is this significant?
Well, as in all matters of faith and politics, you're free to choose your spin:
• (Anti) The DEC is so underfunded and overwhelmed by its legacy duties it can't even get an annual report out until more than two years have passed. (These civil servants will never be in a position to oversee shale gas development, should it ever come to that.)
• (Pro) Must be all the work on that shale gas SGEIS is finally over, since staffers apparently now have enough free time to catch up. (The science is in; it's up to the governor now; God help us.)
The reports themselves are pretty good reading, if you happen to be of the frame of mind to take an interest in the matter-of-fact, historical context for mineral resource extraction in New York — everything from surprisingly uncontroversial deep geothermal well drilling in Manhattan, to mining for garnet (the state gem) in the Adirondacks.
If, on the other hand, you're looking for more fodder on a steady diet of public indictment of this enterprise, this unemotional bureaucratic presentation will undoubtedly turn your stomach.
The documents — which represent an annual tradition customarily not gotten around to until more than a year has passed — cover drilling and mining activity statewide during 2010, such as it was.
But a check of the internal properties riding with the files shows the last date of revision would have been Feb. 11, 2013.
Why is this significant?
Well, as in all matters of faith and politics, you're free to choose your spin:
• (Anti) The DEC is so underfunded and overwhelmed by its legacy duties it can't even get an annual report out until more than two years have passed. (These civil servants will never be in a position to oversee shale gas development, should it ever come to that.)
• (Pro) Must be all the work on that shale gas SGEIS is finally over, since staffers apparently now have enough free time to catch up. (The science is in; it's up to the governor now; God help us.)
The reports themselves are pretty good reading, if you happen to be of the frame of mind to take an interest in the matter-of-fact, historical context for mineral resource extraction in New York — everything from surprisingly uncontroversial deep geothermal well drilling in Manhattan, to mining for garnet (the state gem) in the Adirondacks.
If, on the other hand, you're looking for more fodder on a steady diet of public indictment of this enterprise, this unemotional bureaucratic presentation will undoubtedly turn your stomach.
Monday, December 17, 2012
Meanwhile... NYS Quietly Plans to...
(Wait for it...) Burn More Natural Gas
[Original post Dec. 15. Quick update Dec. 17.]
I noticed this beneath-the-radar development sometime last week on a link supplied by the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York.
JLCNY is the "coalition of coalitions," and has emerged as the leading, landowner-oriented voice on the pro-drilling, pro-fracking, pro-development side of the New York's Ceaseless Shale Gas Debates (though it has been often rendered invisible by state media's heroic preference for untruthfully seeing this contest solely as Homespun Greens Versus Heartless Industry).
This is an obscure document — several pages out of reams of annual flow — posted by a relatively obscure state agency, the Public Service Commission.NYS Public Service Commission Starts Proceedings to Expand Natural Gas Availability and Use
I haven't yet had a chance to absorb all of it, or all of the associated filings so far, but I think it's fair to say this represents a quiet shift in New York State energy policy — five years into the shale gas technological revolution: The Empire State now proposes to comb through its thick catalog of outdated rules in order to get itself consuming more natural gas!
(Maybe not more natural gas from New York — but natural gas, nonetheless, much of it increasingly fracked from out of state.)
This policy shift is necessarily quiet, of course, because it's so embarrassing, hypocritical, and two-faced: Upstate New York is geologically host to an estimated 20 percent of the now-essentially-proven Marcellus Shale resource, and it overlies who knows what proportion of the still-developing prospects in similar Utica and Upper Devonian shales.
And yet none of that indigenous resource has been tested, explored, or produced using full-scale technology — on account of New York's hotly contested moratorium on any drilling permit requiring a high-volume completion (which, by my stubborn reckoning, is now actually approaching the five-year mark, not the four-and-a-half year mark).
The NYS PSC file is Case Number 12-G-0297, and it can be read in full — as the paperwork piles up, and the decision-making evolves — by searching for those documents here.
As always, without hand-holding by sophisticated persuasive interests, state media reps are oblivious, unknowing, and incapable of independent analysis. But I challenge any journalist, researcher, or citizen who truly cares about the full, honest story of New York's increasingly conflicted relationship with fossil fuels to look into this further, and to report the news.
You'll have your choice of angle and spin:
Real-deal finger-pointing: New York is truly a selfish resource pig — hungry for all the benefits of natural gas, but flinching from the burdens and responsibility of its production.
Shrugging and apologetic: Hey, it's complicated.
It's not as though the PSC, as an arm of the Cuomo Administration, hasn't specifically sought coverage of its ordinarily dull planning efforts, which offer an unassailable net win for the consumption side of the state's economy — even without accounting for the environmental side, which is also a net win. I noticed the second time through the file that one of the first posted items is a press release, which helpfully connects the dots between the PSC's natural gas expansion effort and the governor's broader "Energy Highway" initiative:
Press Release -- Gov. Cuomo's "Energy Highway" Plan Includes More Natural Gas
Even with The Cuomo Imprint, however (which ordinarily would be reported Nine Ways from Sunday), the only coverage I've seen so far on this was in the Albany paper. That piece unaccountably managed to avoid all reference to fracking, hydrofracking, or hydraulic fracturing. It did happen to mention the economic impact of shale gas from out of state, whatever the hell that stuff is.
I noticed this beneath-the-radar development sometime last week on a link supplied by the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York.
JLCNY is the "coalition of coalitions," and has emerged as the leading, landowner-oriented voice on the pro-drilling, pro-fracking, pro-development side of the New York's Ceaseless Shale Gas Debates (though it has been often rendered invisible by state media's heroic preference for untruthfully seeing this contest solely as Homespun Greens Versus Heartless Industry).
This is an obscure document — several pages out of reams of annual flow — posted by a relatively obscure state agency, the Public Service Commission.NYS Public Service Commission Starts Proceedings to Expand Natural Gas Availability and Use
I haven't yet had a chance to absorb all of it, or all of the associated filings so far, but I think it's fair to say this represents a quiet shift in New York State energy policy — five years into the shale gas technological revolution: The Empire State now proposes to comb through its thick catalog of outdated rules in order to get itself consuming more natural gas!
(Maybe not more natural gas from New York — but natural gas, nonetheless, much of it increasingly fracked from out of state.)
This policy shift is necessarily quiet, of course, because it's so embarrassing, hypocritical, and two-faced: Upstate New York is geologically host to an estimated 20 percent of the now-essentially-proven Marcellus Shale resource, and it overlies who knows what proportion of the still-developing prospects in similar Utica and Upper Devonian shales.
And yet none of that indigenous resource has been tested, explored, or produced using full-scale technology — on account of New York's hotly contested moratorium on any drilling permit requiring a high-volume completion (which, by my stubborn reckoning, is now actually approaching the five-year mark, not the four-and-a-half year mark).
The NYS PSC file is Case Number 12-G-0297, and it can be read in full — as the paperwork piles up, and the decision-making evolves — by searching for those documents here.
As always, without hand-holding by sophisticated persuasive interests, state media reps are oblivious, unknowing, and incapable of independent analysis. But I challenge any journalist, researcher, or citizen who truly cares about the full, honest story of New York's increasingly conflicted relationship with fossil fuels to look into this further, and to report the news.
You'll have your choice of angle and spin:
Real-deal finger-pointing: New York is truly a selfish resource pig — hungry for all the benefits of natural gas, but flinching from the burdens and responsibility of its production.
Shrugging and apologetic: Hey, it's complicated.
It's not as though the PSC, as an arm of the Cuomo Administration, hasn't specifically sought coverage of its ordinarily dull planning efforts, which offer an unassailable net win for the consumption side of the state's economy — even without accounting for the environmental side, which is also a net win. I noticed the second time through the file that one of the first posted items is a press release, which helpfully connects the dots between the PSC's natural gas expansion effort and the governor's broader "Energy Highway" initiative:
Press Release -- Gov. Cuomo's "Energy Highway" Plan Includes More Natural Gas
Even with The Cuomo Imprint, however (which ordinarily would be reported Nine Ways from Sunday), the only coverage I've seen so far on this was in the Albany paper. That piece unaccountably managed to avoid all reference to fracking, hydrofracking, or hydraulic fracturing. It did happen to mention the economic impact of shale gas from out of state, whatever the hell that stuff is.
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