Our concern is the all lands, for example lot 7 here!

From Randi Pokladnik, Tappan Lake, OHIO, 44683, February 14, 2024

Have you ever noticed that every oil and gas drilling rig has an American flag anchored to the top? For most Americans, that flag represents a symbol of freedom. So, it’s ironic that Ohio’s pro fossil fuel Republicans cater to the oil and gas industry and usurp many of its rights and freedoms from Ohio’s citizens.

Have you ever noticed that every oil and gas drilling rig has an American flag anchored to the top? For most Americans, that flag represents a symbol of freedom. So, it’s ironic that Ohio’s pro fossil fuel Republicans cater to the oil and gas industry and usurp many of its rights and freedoms from Ohio’s citizens.

This industry, however, enjoys several freedoms and rights that many other industries do not. Because of the Haliburton laws, the oil and gas industry is exempt from most federal regulations, including the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and the Toxic Release Inventory under the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act.

In 1980, the Federal EPA acknowledged that the billions and billions of barrels of produced water from fracking wells is hazardous, but it would be an economic burden for this industry to try to adhere to the laws. Therefore, “The Federal EPA exempted wastes from the federal laws written to protect the public from toxic waste.” In Ohio, these wastes are trucked up and down the roads of our rural communities to be injected into Class II injection wells.

Ohio’s Republican lawmakers have opened the state to fracking; allowing the industry to exploit every drop of oil and every molecule of gas that lies beneath southeast Ohio counties.

Countless laws have been passed to pave the way for fracking while thwarting renewable energy development (HB 52 HB6 and HB483). Additionally, pro fossil fuel laws have attacked our freedoms, limiting free speech and public protests. Ohio citizens, trying to protect their homes and rural communities from the horrendous externalities visited on them, have been essentially gaged by laws like SB 33, passed in 2021.

A prime example of the power that fossil fuels weld over Ohio’s citizens was obvious in 2023, when HB 507 opened up the state’s parks to fracking. The bill was passed during the 2022 General Assembly “lame duck” session, and was quickly signed into law by Governor Mike DeWine. The bill set in motion the ability of out-of-state oil and gas companies to propose leases under state parks.

A “puppet-like” public participation process was carried on throughout the year with public meetings in Columbus. Citizens were prohibited from asking questions or commenting. The public meeting on November 15, 2023 was a sad day for Ohio’s public lands. Democracy was fracked, and leasing was approved for several tracts of land, including all 20,000 acres of Salt Fork State Park.

The five-member Oil and Gas Land Management Commission ignored the nine criteria contained in the statue. They also ignored the vocal disagreement of over 100 informed, angry Ohio citizens and the peer-reviewed health and environmental studies in the over 5000 written comments submitted to them by Ohio citizens.

After that decision, many citizens were devastated and realized that ordinary freedoms we took for granted have been eroded away by an industry that controls the state legislature in Ohio. Southeast Ohio is just a mineral colony open for business, regardless of how that “business” ruins our communities.

Sadly, my family has learned that our precious forested property has been targeted by the industry for a forced pooling or mandatory unitization action. “Ohio Revised Code § 1509.27 provides a mechanism to force Ohio landowners to participate in oil and gas development without their consent.” Once again, this process favors industry profits over private property rights.

Forced pooling is defined as when a “person who has obtained the consent of the owners of at least sixty-five per cent of the land area overlying a pool or a part of a pool submits an application for the operation as a unit of the entire pool or part of the pool to the chief of the division of oil and gas resources management”. If approved, the application will force the remaining thirty-five percent of landowners to become part of the unit.

The best way to describe this is by using a puzzle. Pieces of the puzzle represent various parcels of lands owned by different people. A drilling unit is a long, horizontal tract of land (rectangle drawn on that puzzle). If sixty-five percent of the puzzle pieces in that tract are agreeable to lease their land, then the other thirty-five percent who do not want to lease their land are forced into the process.

There are only three criteria to satisfy in order for the Chief of the Division of Oil and Gas at ODNR to approve a mandatory pooling application (see OHIO REV. CODE ANN. § 1509.27). They are: protecting correlative rights (those who have leased); providing for effective development and use; and promoting conservation of oil and gas. Any concerns over environmental harms or health effects are not considered.

Since 2014, we have been repeatedly contacted by oil and gas landmen trying to get us to sign a lease. We have refused for many reasons including health, environmental damage, and climate change. Now we are being forced to do something that goes against everything we believe.

We are learning about this process as we dig deeper into legal documentation. If we do not sign a lease agreement for our land, we are considered a non-consenting owner. There have been many amendments to the original laws written in 1965. In 2010, amendments were added to prevent liability from attaching to nonparticipant owners. “However, these amendments do not address one of the most critical aspects of the laws, the risk-penalty provision. Landowners subject to the order only have the choice between the following: (1) relent and become a participant in the drilling unit or (2) become a nonparticipating owner and pay a penalty of up to 200% of the reasonable costs and expenses of production.” This penalty is a way to encourage non-consenting owners to ultimately lease, and helps the well operators from undergoing additional application fees and paperwork.

In a conversation I had with another landowner who was also “force-pooled”, we discovered that by refusing to sign a lease, we may relinquish the ability to write legal protections for our land. If we sign a lease, we can at least list the various stipulations that limit the drilling company from surface access to our land. This would prohibit pipeline construction, the use of hydrocarbon storage tanks on our land, and the drilling of injection wells to inject waste fluids.
Basically, if we want to protect our property, we have no real options; we are forced to sign a lease. It is a horrible position. We built our eco-log home from salvaged forest-fire-killed trees; we have an 8.4kW solar system on our garage; and we have a new geothermal heating system. We have tried to reduce our carbon footprint as much as possible and now our land will be fracked.

In 2018, I was honored by being selected as the “Fractivist of the Year” by the West Virginia Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition. In 2020, that same group gave me another award, the “Passion for Justice award”. Those plaques hang on my wall as a constant reminder of why I keep fighting fossil fuel expansion. Unfortunately, the fight to save our property will not be won. The Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District leased 7300 acres around Tappan Lake to Encino Energy in June of 2022, which led to the mandatory pooling of our land. We recently received the notification that our land is no longer truly ours, but instead is now part of Encino’s Akers HN FRA East Unit.

Make no mistake, I am enraged by the fact that we, as property-owning citizens, have no rights to stop this heinous process. Encino’s monster horizontal laterals will snake under our land and steal our resources. But they cannot steal my resolve to continue speaking out against the harms of fossil fuels and the lack of democracy in Ohio’s government, which is not “of the people, by the people, or for the people.”

This industry, however, enjoys several freedoms and rights that many other industries do not.

Because of the Haliburton laws, the oil and gas industry is exempt from most federal regulations, including the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and the Toxic Release Inventory under the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act.

In 1980, the Federal EPA acknowledged that the billions and billions of barrels of produced water from fracking wells is hazardous, but it would be an economic burden for this industry to try to adhere to the laws. Therefore, “The Federal EPA exempted wastes from the federal laws written to protect the public from toxic waste.” In Ohio, these wastes are trucked up and down the roads of our rural communities to be injected into Class II injection wells.

Ohio’s Republican lawmakers have opened the state to fracking; allowing the industry to exploit every drop of oil and every molecule of gas that lies beneath southeast Ohio counties.

Countless laws have been passed to pave the way for fracking while thwarting renewable energy development (HB 52 HB6 and HB483). Additionally, pro fossil fuel laws have attacked our freedoms, limiting free speech and public protests. Ohio citizens, trying to protect their homes and rural communities from the horrendous externalities visited on them, have been essentially gaged by laws like SB 33, passed in 2021.

A prime example of the power that fossil fuels weld over Ohio’s citizens was obvious in 2023, when HB 507 opened up the state’s parks to fracking. The bill was passed during the 2022 General Assembly “lame duck” session, and was quickly signed into law by Governor Mike DeWine. The bill set in motion the ability of out-of-state oil and gas companies to propose leases under state parks.

A “puppet-like” public participation process was carried on throughout the year with public meetings in Columbus. Citizens were prohibited from asking questions or commenting. The public meeting on November 15, 2023 was a sad day for Ohio’s public lands. Democracy was fracked, and leasing was approved for several tracts of land, including all 20,000 acres of Salt Fork State Park.

The five-member Oil and Gas Land Management Commission ignored the nine criteria contained in the statue. They also ignored the vocal disagreement of over 100 informed, angry Ohio citizens and the peer-reviewed health and environmental studies in the over 5000 written comments submitted to them by Ohio citizens.

After that decision, many citizens were devastated and realized that ordinary freedoms we took for granted have been eroded away by an industry that controls the state legislature in Ohio. Southeast Ohio is just a mineral colony open for business, regardless of how that “business” ruins our communities.

Sadly, my family has learned that our precious forested property has been targeted by the industry for a forced pooling or mandatory unitization action. “Ohio Revised Code § 1509.27 provides a mechanism to force Ohio landowners to participate in oil and gas development without their consent.” Once again, this process favors industry profits over private property rights.

Forced pooling is defined as when a “person who has obtained the consent of the owners of at least sixty-five per cent of the land area overlying a pool or a part of a pool submits an application for the operation as a unit of the entire pool or part of the pool to the chief of the division of oil and gas resources management”. If approved, the application will force the remaining thirty-five percent of landowners to become part of the unit.

The best way to describe this is by using a puzzle. Pieces of the puzzle represent various parcels of lands owned by different people. A drilling unit is a long, horizontal tract of land (rectangle drawn on that puzzle). If sixty-five percent of the puzzle pieces in that tract are agreeable to lease their land, then the other thirty-five percent who do not want to lease their land are forced into the process.

There are only three criteria to satisfy in order for the Chief of the Division of Oil and Gas at ODNR to approve a mandatory pooling application (see OHIO REV. CODE ANN. § 1509.27). They are: protecting correlative rights (those who have leased); providing for effective development and use; and promoting conservation of oil and gas. Any concerns over environmental harms or health effects are not considered.

Since 2014, we have been repeatedly contacted by oil and gas landmen trying to get us to sign a lease. We have refused for many reasons including health, environmental damage, and climate change. Now we are being forced to do something that goes against everything we believe.

We are learning about this process as we dig deeper into legal documentation. If we do not sign a lease agreement for our land, we are considered a non-consenting owner. There have been many amendments to the original laws written in 1965. In 2010, amendments were added to prevent liability from attaching to nonparticipant owners. “However, these amendments do not address one of the most critical aspects of the laws, the risk-penalty provision. Landowners subject to the order only have the choice between the following: (1) relent and become a participant in the drilling unit or (2) become a nonparticipating owner and pay a penalty of up to 200% of the reasonable costs and expenses of production.” This penalty is a way to encourage non-consenting owners to ultimately lease, and helps the well operators from undergoing additional application fees and paperwork.

In a conversation I had with another landowner who was also “force-pooled”, we discovered that by refusing to sign a lease, we may relinquish the ability to write legal protections for our land. If we sign a lease, we can at least list the various stipulations that limit the drilling company from surface access to our land. This would prohibit pipeline construction, the use of hydrocarbon storage tanks on our land, and the drilling of injection wells to inject waste fluids.
Basically, if we want to protect our property, we have no real options; we are forced to sign a lease. It is a horrible position. We built our eco-log home from salvaged forest-fire-killed trees; we have an 8.4kW solar system on our garage; and we have a new geothermal heating system. We have tried to reduce our carbon footprint as much as possible and now our land will be fracked.

NOW Join the Grace and Frankie Galentine’s Day Virtual Cast Reunion!

Join us on February 13 at 6PM PT for our Grace and Frankie Virtual Cast Reunion (Galentine’s Edition!) featuring a live table read from some of your favorite Grace and Frankie cast members: Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Martin Sheen, Sam Waterston, and more!

Get ready for an evening sprinkled with laughter, cherished memories, and activism as we raise funds to support the fight against the climate crisis with the Jane Fonda Climate PAC.

To join us, use this form to make a contribution of $24 per person or a donation of any amount on this page. Then check for the link to join the event in your email receipt!

Please note: contributions processed through this portal are political contributions and are subject to the regulations outlined in our disclaimer section. If you are not eligible to donate, please email graceandfrankie@janepac.com for more information on how to participate.

“Jane Fonda Climate PAC — Donate via ActBlue https://secure.actblue.com/donate/galentines-ddc”>JOIN HERE ASAP NOW! ~ We must need this to recover a rational approach to the future!

Now it’s time to squeeze off these LNG shipments! dgn

From the Appeal of Catharine Collentine, The Sierra Club, January 24, 2024

Yesterday, the New York Times reported that the Biden administration is poised to announce a pause on what would be the largest gas export terminal in the nation, CP2, to evaluate its impacts on our climate.1 This would be a huge victory for our health and future. CP2 alone would cause 20 TIMES as much carbon pollution as the Willow Project in Alaska.

Our advocacy is working, but we need to turn up the heat right now to stop the expansion of gas exports once and for all! We have a real opportunity to protect our future – let’s seize it.

Act Now!

White House Said to Delay Decision on Enormous Natural Gas Export Terminal

Source: The New York Times. For months, the fossil fuel industry has been trying to push through more than 20 liquified “natural” gas (LNG) export projects across the country. If built, they could have the equivalent emissions of more than 550 coal-fired power plants. Further, these facilities will poison the air of communities in the Gulf South and Appalachia with dangerous, cancer-causing chemicals.

Any day now, the Biden admin is expected to act to stop the expansion of gas exports. This is happening because of public pressure — that’s all of us speaking up by sending petitions, posting on social media, talking with friends and family, lobbying elected officials, and more.

Last year, we sent the Biden administration over 400,000 petitions from Sierra Club supporters and our partners protesting CP2, the largest of these gas export projects. If built, this export terminal would emit the greenhouse gas emission equivalent of 50 coal-fired power plants every year.

President Biden and Department of Energy Secretary Granholm are feeling the pressure. Act now to demand they reject expanded gas exports.

The time has come to take this warning seriously!

From an Article by Jessica Corbett for Common Dreams on January 23, 2024

“Ominous trends continue to point the world toward global catastrophe,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists warned Tuesday, explaining why the Doomsday Clock remains at 90 seconds to midnight.

Since its 1947 debut, the Doomsday Clock has represented how close humanity is to destroying the world. While it was initially created in response to nuclear arms risks, in 2024, the climate emergency, biological threats, and disruptive technologies including artificial intelligence (AI) also factor into the clock’s position.

The Bulletin’s new statement says that “the members of the Science and Security Board have been deeply worried about the deteriorating state of the world. That is why we set the Doomsday Clock at two minutes to midnight in 2019 and at 100 seconds to midnight in 2022.”

“Last year, we expressed our heightened concern by moving the clock to 90 seconds to midnight—the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been—in large part because of Russian threats to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine,” the publication continues. “Today, we once again set the Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds to midnight because humanity continues to face an unprecedented level of danger.”

“Our decision should not be taken as a sign that the international security situation has eased,” the statement stresses. “Instead, leaders and citizens around the world should take this statement as a stark warning and respond urgently, as if today were the most dangerous moment in modern history. Because it may well be.”

Nearly two years since the invasion, “a durable end to Russia’s war in Ukraine seems distant, and the use of nuclear weapons by Russia in that conflict remains a serious possibility,” the document states. However, Russia is just one of the world’s nine nuclear-armed nations.

“Spending programs in the three largest nuclear powers — China, Russia, and the United States—threaten to trigger a three-way nuclear arms race as the world’s arms control architecture collapses,” the statement notes. “And the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas has the potential to escalate into a wider Middle Eastern conflict that could pose unpredictable threats, regionally and globally.”

On the climate front, “the world in 2023 entered uncharted territory as it suffered its hottest year on record and global greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise,” the publication highlights. “Current efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are grossly insufficient to avoid dangerous human and economic impacts from climate change, which disproportionately affect the poorest people in the world.”

The statement also points out that “the revolution in life sciences and associated technologies continued to expand in scope last year,” and “the convergence of emerging artificial intelligence tools and biological technologies may radically empower individuals to misuse biology.”

Other AI-related concerns include the “great potential to magnify disinformation” as well as military uses. The statement says that “decisions to put AI in control of important physical systems—in particular, nuclear weapons—could indeed pose a direct existential threat to humanity.”

While sounding the alarm about the world’s top threats on Tuesday, the Bulletin also emphasized that it’s possible to turn back the clock.

“For decades, scientists have been warning us of the dangers facing humankind,” said science communicator Bill Nye, who participated in the 2024 Doomsday Clock announcement. “We could be facing catastrophe unless we better manage the technologies we’ve created. It’s time to act.”

The Bulletin’s executive chair, former Democratic California Gov. Jerry Brown, asserted that “only the big powers like China, America, and Russia can pull us back. Despite deep antagonisms, they must cooperate—or we are doomed.”

Outside organizations, including the U.K.-based Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), also issued calls to action.

“The Doomsday Clock remaining at 90 seconds to midnight must be a wake-up call for the entire world,” said the group’s general secretary, Kate Hudson. “We’re fast approaching the point of no return. CND calls on all those who want peace to prevail to join us in doing everything we can to turn back the clock.”

Oil Companies & Coal Companies were part of the Deception!

DOERING: It’s Living on Earth, I’m Jenni Doering

BELTRAN: And I’m Paloma Beltran. The burning of fossil fuels is the primary source of climate-warming greenhouse gases worldwide. And the science tells us that if we don’t drastically reduce those emissions as soon as possible, we’re headed for even more catastrophic climate disruption. But by 2030 the UN reports that global fossil fuel production is set to be more than double the level consistent with meeting the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. The dominance of the fossil fuel industry even as we face the climate emergency isn’t all that surprising, says Naomi Oreskes. She’s a professor of the history of science at Harvard and says the fossil fuel industry has stalled climate progress around the globe for decades. Professor Oreskes recently joined Living on Earth’s Steve Curwood to describe the industry’s campaign of disinformation.

CURWOOD: So how far back did big oil companies know about the potentially catastrophic effects their products could have on the climate and the planet?

ORESKES: We know from our research and the research of others that as early as the 1960s, the oil industry was quite well aware that burning fossil fuels put greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. And those gases were almost certain to warm the planet. And they also knew that the effects would likely be very serious. We begin to see really serious sustained work on the issue in the 1970s. And by the mid to late 70s, some companies like ExxonMobil actually had their own in-house scientists doing this research. And so we’ve shown, in our work, we’ve gone back and we’ve looked at those reports, we’ve looked at the scientific papers that were published, either by industry scientists or co-authored by them with academics. And they show very clearly that by the late 70s, early 80s, the oil industry had a very clear picture of what this problem was, understood that it was serious, that it would have large social, economic and political consequences, that it could include very substantive sea level rise, and that it might make their product unsellable.

CURWOOD: Go back to the very beginning. What was the first sort of shot across the bow, so to speak, inside industry? Who spoke up and said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we really could have a problem here.

ORESKES: Well, there’s a few different shots across the bow. One of my favorite early examples is the physicist Gilbert Plass, who worked for Ford Motor Company. So we have reports from the 50s and 60s where the car industry is beginning to recognize that this could have significance for their long term business model. But also, Plass worked for Ford Aerospace. And they were interested in heat seeking missiles, and the impact of CO2 heat absorption on heat seeking missiles. So Plass did some of the most important early work that proved that climate change would result from increased CO2 in the atmosphere. So that was in the mid 1950s. We also know that in the early 60s, there were a number of studies and reports done, including one by Edward Teller, the famous physicist who spoke to the American Petroleum Institute about this issue. We have a number of reports that my students actually tracked down of air pollution conferences in the early to mid 1960s, where scientists were talking about CO2 as a form of air pollution. And we know that auto industry executives, oil industry executives, chemical industry executives, were present at these meetings and heard these conversations and in some cases participated in them.

CURWOOD: So what did big oil companies do with that information?

ORESKES: Well, at first, they didn’t actually do much of anything. And one of the things that’s been interesting to us and the research we’ve done on the 1960s, is that in the 1960s, there’s this conversation going on, that the oil industry doesn’t seem to be particularly worried about. And my interpretation of that is that so long as climate change seemed far off in the future, they didn’t really think it was something that they had to worry about terribly much. Now, a couple of companies did, and ExxonMobil is the most famous because they actually created a research group to better understand the problem. And they did that in the 1970s. So we know that they were taking it seriously. And we know that their own scientists wrote a number of reports that said, yes, this actually is significant. It is something that companies should be paying attention to. But even then, most scientists in the 1970s still thought that change was pretty far away. And a lot of the reports don’t actually specify when they think discernable effects would occur. But when they do use a number, they sometimes use the year 2000. And sometimes when scientists talked about the issue, they talked to the year 2100. So you can imagine if you were a corporate executive in 1975, and someone comes along talking about climate change as something that would happen in the year 2100, you might reasonably think, hmm, that’s not something I really need to worry about. But what we’ve seen in our work is that it begins to change very dramatically. And in a very specific year: 1989. 1989 is when we first begin to see climate change denial begin to be a thing. So we begin to see reports, advertisements, OpEds, to say, well, hold on, slow down, we don’t really know, we’re not really sure. And so one obvious question is why then? And I think we know the answer, because 1988 is the year that Jim Hansen testifies for the first time in the US Congress, that manmade climate change is underway. And he testifies to the effect that he and his team at NASA are 99% sure that this is the case. And you know, as well as I do, scientists hardly ever say they’re 99% sure about anything. So it’s this very strong, very clear, quite unequivocated statement. And 1988 is also the year that the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is created. So you have these two big things happening to say, okay, we’ve been talking about this as something that’s far off in the future but actually, this is happening faster than we thought and if Hansen is right, it’s actually already happening now. And I think that scares the pants off the oil industry. And I think that helps to explain why we then see this big pivot.

CURWOOD: Yeah, I mean, what did they do with that information, that climate change is here and now, as of 1988?

Prof. Naomi Oreskes is expert on History of Science

CURWOOD: Specifically, talk to me about the strategies that these companies used to mislead consumers and the public about the dangers of fossil fuel. What was the message that was put out there about this, to support this approach?

ORESKES: There was a wide diversity of messaging that was used. But my Research Associate, Geoffrey Supran, and I have identified four big themes that we see repeated over and over again, and we summarize them as follows. It’s not real, it’s not us, it will wreck the economy, it’s too expensive to fix. So the first one, it’s not real, was a strategy to deny that climate change was even happening, to say the science was too unsettled, there were too many uncertainties, to blame it on natural variability, to say the climate has always changed, to blame it on volcanoes. So basically, to deny the scientific evidence. Second one, it’s not us, which is a variation on the theme of the first. Well, maybe there is warming, but it’s not caused by our activities. So it’s actually just natural variability, it’s actually caused by CO2 from volcanoes. Two B is, it’s not us, it’s China. So deflect attention from what we, here in the United States, or what we, ExxonMobil, have done to try to deflect the blame and put it on someone else. Then the second two, the third and fourth, were about the economy. So to claim that if we were to stop using fossil fuels, it would completely wreck the economy, the economy cannot survive without fossil fuels. This is an argument that we’re seeing revived again, even as we speak today. And then the fourth is that it would be too expensive to fix. So yeah, we could do solar, we could do wind, but they’re too expensive. And also, they’re too intermittent, right? I call this the, “renewables are for sissies” argument, that renewables aren’t tough enough, they’re not reliable enough, that only oil, gas and coal are reliable. So there’s this sort of gender laden element about, you know, real men drill for coal. And so we’ve seen all four of these arguments being used at different times in different ways. I always like to say, some people think that the industry doesn’t believe in recycling, but they do, they recycle their refuted arguments.

CURWOOD: From your perspective, what were some of their most effective techniques of disinformation?

ORESKES: I think they were very smart about something that, you know, social media has exploited in recent years, but they already knew this 40 or 50 years ago, which was targeted messaging. And so in a place like Kentucky, they would push a message about losing jobs. If coal is wiped out, you’ll lose your jobs. In a place like, I don’t know, California, they would have a message about government overreach or increases to your taxes. They also had different arguments or different messages for male and female audiences. So the incredibly effective thing they did was to recognize that there wasn’t one thing, and to do a whole lot of different things, also different media: radio, television, print media, and then now we’re seeing tremendous amounts of growth of disinformation on social media.

CURWOOD: Naomi, I understand that there was some really ridiculous, maybe even outlandish advertisements back in the 1960s in magazines. Could you describe one of those spreads for me, please?

ORESKES: There’s a very famous advertisement that was put out by Humble Oil, which was part of this Standard Oil, The John D. Rockefeller network, where they showed a giant glacier and they talked about how much energy it would take to melt the glaciers if that were a good thing. And I think that’s a very nice telling example for us of how our mentalities have changed. Right around the time that scientists were starting to understand how climate change could melt glaciers, and that would be a bad thing, we have people advertising that being able to melt a glacier was a good thing. So part of this story is that it has required us to rethink how we think about nature, the environment, living on earth. And so the difficulty of this story is, it’s not just about disinformation from the fossil fuel industry, but the way in which that disinformation has worked in conjunction with our own fears, anxieties, beliefs, attitudes, to get us to this place where we are today.

CURWOOD: So, this may seem obvious, but what convinces you that this whole process of misinformation was deliberate? That these weren’t sort of people who mistakenly didn’t quite get what was going on?

ORESKES: Well, that’s an easy question to answer, because they said so. I mean, as a historian, I work with documentary evidence. We’ve spent a lot of time in the archives, we’ve visited archives in I don’t know, at least 20 states, I think, as well as looked at lots of documentary material that is available online. And we see how this was planned. We see how it was organized, we see the documents that say, you know, we’re going to say there’s no consensus on climate change, we’re going to design this advertising campaign, and we’re going to run it in these places. And we came across documents that even had focus group studies. They did market research to try to figure out what kinds of messaging would be most effective in persuading the American people not to support meaningful climate action. So we don’t have to interpret, we don’t have to read between the lines. This is all things that they said, they wrote down. And of course, the other big piece of this puzzle, and this is the work that Eric Conway and I did in our book, “Merchants of Doubt,” some of the key players in climate change disinformation came out of the tobacco story. So we showed in our book how two of the original four Merchants of Doubt had worked directly with the tobacco industry, had worked on these strategies for tobacco, and then carried those strategies and tactics into the climate space.

CURWOOD: So talk to me about how these disinformation strategies have changed over time. You mentioned that climate disinformation has moved to social media. So what does the fossil fuel climate denial marketing campaign look like today?

ORESKES: Well, it’s a little hard to answer that question, because one of the things about social media is that it’s so segmented, but one message we are definitely seeing today is a revival of the anti government message, to say that this is all a liberal conspiracy to take away your rights, to take away your hamburgers to take away your right to drive a big car. And this particularly came up in the recent debates about gas indoors. So in New York State, when the state proposed a regulation that would not allow gas in new homes, the fossil fuel industry saturated the state with a set of advertisements saying that this was government overreach, this was government control. If you allow the government to regulate gas stoves, it’s only a matter of time before they regulate everything. And this is an argument we have seen repeatedly used throughout this whole history. And so now we’re seeing it, again, being used to defend gas stoves.

CURWOOD: Naomi, how can environmental advocates, scientists, citizens, push back against these very expensive and sophisticated climate denial marketing campaigns?

ORESKES: It’s not easy, because as you just said, they are sophisticated, and they’re extremely well funded. But the good news is, there are more of us than there are of them. So I think this is why it’s so important for everyone to be mobilized on this issue. If we just rely on a few scientists, we will not win. But if we all become organized, if we speak in our communities, in our churches, in our synagogues, in our mosques, in our schools, at our places of work, if we have the conversation about what’s happening, and particularly the conversation about disinformation, which is an awkward conversation to have, but an essential one, because one of the things that I found is that you can’t really counter disinformation with information because now people just don’t know who to believe. But if you expose it as disinformation, well, nobody wants to be at the losing end of a con. So having that conversation, talking about the disinformation, as we have been doing here today, is extremely important. And then, as much as possible, mobilizing everyone to be engaged in this conversation to the extent that they are able to be.

DOERING: That’s Harvard Professor of the History of Science, Naomi Oreskes, speaking with Living on Earth Host and Executive Producer Steve Curwood. They’ll talk next time about the political history of climate disinformation.

TO BE CONTINUED… the deception continues …. Life on earth depends on us getting this stopped.

Our political officials are ignoring our environment at all levels!

From the Article by Michael M. Barrick, The Appalachian Chronicle, December 31, 2023

BIG ISSAC, W.Va. – Our top story from 2023 is the brutal abuse of eminent domain to complete the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP).

This power grab of private property along a 300-mile stretch through West Virginia and Virginia for the benefit of one for-profit company is the most audacious land grab since the landmark Supreme Court decision, Kelo v. New London. That is when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of the city of New London, Conn. to take the land of Susette Kelo and then sell it to private developers.

“Kelo broadened the scope of what could be defined as public use under eminent domain. In simpler terms, the supreme court decision created a legal precedent by which land seized can be deemed as public use even if it is not directly beneficial to the public.”

As Chloe Kauffman wrote for the James Madison Institute, “Kelo broadened the scope of what could be defined as public use under eminent domain. In simpler terms, the supreme court decision created a legal precedent by which land seized can be deemed as public use even if it is not directly beneficial to the public.”

Kauffman predicted, “In a post-Kelo world, the phrase ‘public use’ in the fifth amendment can be applied to anything deemed as economic development.’” The MVP is the poster child of her chilling warning.

It is quite a story. It includes a back-room deal at the highest levels of government. U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va) and President Joe Biden colluded to slip in fast track construction of the MVP in the so-called Inflation Reduction Act. It short-circuited the often effective efforts by MVP opponents in state and federal courts.

It is also a story about Authorities Having Jurisdiction turning a blind eye to MVP violations and damages, despite independent evidence pointing to the MVP as the primary cause of a destructive flood here in September. Families have lost their homes or had them rendered uninhabitable because of the dangers associated with being 500 feet downslope from the MVP Right-of-Way (ROW), within just hundreds of yards from 42” pipelines and with cancer-causing benzene hanging in the air of low-lying valleys.

PHOTO IN ARTICLE ~ Flooding in Big Isaac earlier this year; water is coming from direction of the MVP! This means the destruction of home places. This brutal abuse of eminent domain is beyond concerning; it is a warning that no inalienable, natural right is safe in the United States. If the liberty of keeping your home from being seized by the government is no longer applicable, what other authoritarian practices shall we be forced to tolerate? As you consider that question, take a few minutes to watch “Who Will Watch the Home Place” by Laurie Lewis.

Kelo, as proven by the MVP, has removed one of our most fundamental Constitutional protections; we know voting rights are under assault. What else is next?

It is betrayal at every level of government in multiple jurisdictions. It has impacted thousands, cost billions, violated our rights and impacted vulnerable people and watersheds such as the Karst Topography of Monroe County, W.Va. The MVP is hardly a good neighbor, as it claims.

It is an ecological disaster waiting to happen. That is as predictable as Kauffman’s warning about Kelo – anything goes – with the blessings of the Powers-that-Be.

(NOTE: Sarah and I spent much of the year traveling West Virginia to share stories from my book, “Fractured Sanctuary: A Chronicle of Grassroots Activists Fighting Pipelines of Destruction in Appalachia.” Michael & Sarah Barrick, of West Virginia & North Carolina.)

The hydrogen genie will not stay in the bottle …

From an Article by Robert Zullo, Pennsylvania Capital Star, October 14, 2023

[Harrisburg, PA] The Friday announcement that seven projects had been selected to receive $7 billion in seed money to kickstart the production of clean hydrogen across the country was billed by President Joe Biden’s administration as a major step toward slashing carbon emissions, creating thousands of domestic jobs and positioning the U.S. as a clean energy leader.

“I’m here to announce one of the largest advanced manufacturing investments in the history of this nation,” Biden said during an appearance in Philadelphia. “Seven billion dollars in federal investments that’s going to attract $40 billion in private investments in clean hydrogen.”

However, there’s also criticism over a lack of transparency by the Department of Energy around the application and selection process and those who are dubious about the ways some of the newly minted “hydrogen hubs” intend to produce the gas, which the administration called “crucial to achieving President Biden’s goal of American industry powered by American clean energy.”

Hydrogen, which releases no carbon emissions when burned, is seen broadly as a key part of cutting emissions from hard-to-decarbonize sectors of the economy, such as steelmaking and cement manufacturing, aviation, shipping and other areas. There’s more controversy around uses like blending it with natural gas to burn in power plants or for heating. How climate-friendly hydrogen is depends on how it’s produced. Currently most hydrogen in the U.S. is produced using natural gas, so-called “gray” hydrogen. “Green” hydrogen is produced by an electrolysis process with clean energy. “Blue” hydrogen is fossil-fuel derived but coupled with carbon capture, in which CO2 is filtered out of emissions and stored.

Four of the projects (the Appalachian, Gulf Coast, Heartland and Midwest hydrogen hubs) that the DOE announced as winners will use fossil fuels to produce hydrogen. (In the bipartisan infrastructure law, Congress required that at least one hub “demonstrate the production of clean hydrogen from fossil fuels.”)

“There are so many ways hydrogen can go wrong. … We’re really concerned with the number of projects that rely in part or in whole on fossil fuel-based hydrogen production,” said Julie McNamara, a deputy policy director at Union of Concerned Scientists’ climate and energy program. “For hydrogen to be a clean energy solution, it has to be cleanly produced and it has to be strategically used.”

In some scenarios, environmental groups worry the hydrogen could actually increase U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

A report last month by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, an Ohio nonprofit, found that the U.S. government “significantly understates the likely impact of producing hydrogen from fossil fuels on global warming.” The assumption that 1% of the methane being used to produce hydrogen will be emitted into the atmosphere is “far less than recent peer-reviewed scientific analyses have found and that has been identified by airplane and satellite emission surveys,” the report says. It also notes that using fossil fuels to make hydrogen cleanly depends on the “overly optimistic and unproven assumption that hydrogen production projects will be able to capture almost all of the carbon dioxide they create.”

In short, said David Schlissel, one of the report’s authors, blue hydrogen is not a great idea when you consider emissions from the entire process, from producing natural gas to shipping and storing the hydrogen and the unknowns of trying to use carbon capture and storage at scale.

“We fear, and it’s based on our analysis, that the money the government is going to spend on blue hydrogen production is going to result in the continued emission of greenhouse gases for decades,” he said. “We worry about the waste of money. But we really worry about the waste of time and giving fossil fuel companies the opportunity to build infrastructure that depends on their continued operation. That’s the real concern, to keep the world addicted to fossil fuels.”

“There is real concern with all of this hydrogen hype.”

Schlissel and other critics also questioned the lack of details released by the Department of Energy about the projects, noting that much of the application materials have been treated as trade secrets by the states and the DOE. It’s unclear how the DOE scored the projects for funding, he added.

“How much hydrogen is going to be produced? What are going to be the CO2 emissions? How much CO2 is going to be captured? Then, where is it going to be used?” he said. “DOE and the applicants have taken the position that everything is confidential.”

The department’s press office did not respond Friday to a list of questions, including one about how projects were evaluated.

“We would encourage the DOE to be as transparent as they possibly can, especially for the communities where they’ll be proposed,” said Patrick Drupp, director of climate policy for the Sierra Club, one of the nation’s largest environmental groups.

‘This is not trivial’ ~ Perhaps even more important than the hub applications that were selected, Drupp and McNamara say, are the debates ongoing at the Internal Revenue Service around the final rules for the hydrogen tax production credit created by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

“While these hubs are large and there is a significant amount of money on the table, the hydrogen production tax credit could potentially dwarf that amount of money,” McNamara said. “That makes it all the more critical that how the administration determines what is truly clean energy is rigorously done.”

The final shape of those rules, which are linked to the intensity of greenhouse gas emissions of the hydrogen source, could be the difference between a boon and a boondoggle on the scale of the biofuels industry, a pair of climate economists wrote in a recent Washington Post op-ed.

“Using fossil-generated electricity or siphoning off renewables subsequently back-filled by fossil power to operate electrolyzers — which would occur under loose guidance — generates at least twice the carbon emissions that status-quo gas-derived hydrogen emits,” a coalition of environmental groups, developers and other organizations wrote to the Treasury Department in February. “Weak guidance could therefore force Treasury to spend more than $100 billion dollars in subsidies for hydrogen projects that result in increased net emissions, in direct conflict with statutory requirements and tarnishing the reputation of the nascent ‘clean’ hydrogen industry.”

Groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Rocky Mountain Institute say the final rules should incorporate a “three pillars” approach. 1. The first is “additionality,” meaning a new hydrogen electrolyzer that is connected to the electric grid is responsible for ensuring the added electric demand they are creating is being met by new low-carbon generation. 2. The second is “time-matching,” requiring electrolyzers’ electric consumption to match its hydrogen production. 3. The third pillar, deliverability, would require hydrogen producers to get clean electricity from within their region.

McNamara said the guidance is expected to be finished by the end of the year. “This is not trivial,” she said. “Hydrogen can be a valuable tool for the clear energy transition but it is not a given … and getting it wrong comes with enormous consequences for climate and public health.

Photo from Facebook with Letter of John Doyle (See Comments)

Press Conference @ US Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, October 10th @ 1

WHO: Maury Johnson of Greenville, WV, whose well water and organic farm are being damaged under eminent domain for construction of the controversial 303-mile fracked gas Mountain Valley Pipeline. MVP was fast tracked by the US Congress last June through debt ceiling legislation as a concession to Senators Joe Manchin (WV) and Chuck Schumer (NY), who received significant contributions from MVP developer NextEra Energy, as well as President Biden.

WHAT: Press conference with Maury Johnson, most recently featured by MSN.com. Maury, a retired history teacher, works with Preserve Monroe, the Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights (POWHR) Coalition, and numerous other environmental and community service organizations.

WHEN: Tuesday October 10, 2023, 1pm Eastern Time

WHY: Current MVP Safety Violations on Maury’s Farm and other area properties

Notorious for hundreds of violations over multi-year start-and-stop construction, MVP is currently installing pipe with expired safety coating, running equipment across Maury Johnson’s farm, and parking equipment on top of the buried pipeline, possibly violating construction permits and adding to the likelihood of stress fractures, leaks and explosions should MVP become activated.

Maury repeatedly requested a Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) onsite inspection this week regarding the urgent MVP safety violations. On 10/4/23 PHMSA Inspectors met with Maury and several of his neighbors who are all impacted by the MVP project. They expressed concerns for not only the local area but concerns from across WV and VA.

Maury will be in DC on Tuesday and has respectfully requested a meeting at the US DOT / PHMSA Office of Pipeline Safety – Eastern Region following a phone conversation and his latest filing regarding pipe safety issues.

According to an email sent Tuesday by DOT/PHMSA Office of Pipeline Safety, Eastern Region, Community Liaison Nitander “Nita” Raju, PHMSA inspectors are looking into the concerns and an inspector is coming to Maury’s property on October 4, 2023.

“Safety is our priority,” she wrote, “At your earliest convenience, please provide your questions to me so we can address them as soon as possible. If you have any additional concerns or information regarding the MVP, please provide them to me as well.”

Tuesday’s press conference will be held whether or not PHMSA has met with Maury. His hope is that his concerns will be heard and his questions answered, and that he will be in a position to state that PHMSA takes pipeline safety seriously and are always willing to address landowners’ and citizens’ concerns.

TWO PHOTOS ~ MVP equipment parked in probable violation of permits on the previously installed pipes on Maury’s farm, September 30, 2023.

Ongoing MVP Safety Violations ~ This week, MVP owner Equitrans Midstream Corporation agreed to new safety measures after PHMSA ordered a safety review of the project, arguing segments left buried underground or exposed to the elements during years of delay could pose a safety risk. Several environmental groups have been warning PHMSA these risks could result in a catastrophic failure. Equitrans will be required to submit a remedial work plan for pipeline damage and conduct tests on coatings designed to prevent corrosion. Impacted residents remain concerned.

MVP is also awaiting a Federal Energy and Regulatory Commission (FERC) decision on permission to increase transportation rates. As chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Manchin – MVP’s champion and by far the largest US Congressional recipient of money from fossil gas pipeline companies – wields significant control over FERC.

Ongoing Resistance to MVP ~ In addition to documenting pipeline safety violations and related explosion threats, public opposition has centered on challenging MVP’s permitting through wetlands and national forests, and raising awareness around landslides and earthquakes in the pipeline zone. MVP runs through the Appalachian Mountains, Jefferson National Forest, under the Appalachian Trail and hundreds of stream crossings. The original budget of $3.5 billion is now estimated to be $6.2 billion. FERC recently granted MVP another 4-years to complete.

Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights (POWHR), a coalition of groups from across several Virginia and West Virginia counties, has joined forces with 7 Directions of Service, an Indigenous-led North Carolina based organization, to oppose MVP and the proposed MVP Southgate Extension Project. Numerous groups from across the country have expressed their opposition to these MVP projects across Appalachia.

Appalachians Against Pipelines has engaged in a persistent direct action campaign to stop the Mountain Valley Pipeline since 2018. Volunteers have physically blocked construction for numerous days.

Ongoing Climate Breakdown ~ As the US Energy Information Administration reports that US exports of fossil gas set a record high in the first half of 2023, climate disasters fueled by gas, oil and coal combustion continue to devastate communities around the globe. While expanding gas infrastructure primarily for export, the US continues recruiting countries to the Global Methane Pledge to voluntarily reduce global methane emissions by at least 30% from 2020 levels by 2030 – a target considered essential for keeping a 1.5C future within reach.

xxx

This 42 inch high pressure pipe is coated for corrosion protection, but …

From the Analysis of Bill Kitchen, Common Dreams, September 5, 2023

President Joe Biden has been busy lately in Hawaii and Florida dealing with after-the-fact disasters linked to fossil fuels, but there’s a fossil fuel disaster-in-waiting that he also needs to pay attention to and so far he hasn’t. Two thirds of the way through his term, he still has not bothered to nominate an administrator to lead the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, or PHMSA.

This is a big problem because the builders of the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) are currently burying defective, unsafe, and illegal pipe as fast as they can, which should be of particular interest to the president because when he signed the Dirty Debt Deal, MVP effectively became his pipeline. From a climate perspective MVP is, as Bill McKibben politely called it, dunderheaded. But if it’s going to get built, Biden has a personal responsibility to at least make sure it gets built safely. Right now that is not happening.

In August, PHMSA sent MVP a Notice of Proposed Safety Order (NOPSO) regarding safety problems the agency had identified. The details of the NOPSO are being worked out in consultation with MVP. No doubt pressure is being applied on PHMSA by MVP, the industry in general, and politicians like Joe Manchin to water down any safety measures that might cause a delay in getting MVP built. Whether or not career officials at PHMSA will cave under that pressure we do not yet know. But there is a lot we do know, and our knowledge will make any sort of half-baked safety order unacceptable.

Unless and until MVP can produce some legitimate test results that show otherwise, everyone should assume that MVP’s pipe coating is no different than the KXL pipe coating, meaning that it is “no longer fit for purpose.”

We know that the manufacturer of the corrosion proof epoxy coating on MVP pipes and the National Association of Pipe Coating Applicators say that the coating should not be exposed to the sun for more than six months. Even a senior MVP vice president, testifying in court *68 months ago* during an eminent domain hearing, said that they needed to quickly get the pipe in the ground so that the sun wouldn’t deteriorate the coating.

We know that MVP pipe was coated six to seven years ago and most of it was exposed to the sun for years afterward, including all of the pipe that is currently being buried. No one should take MVP’s word for it that the pipe is safe and they have the situation under control.

We know that a five-decade old federal law says that all pipelines must have an external coating that protects against corrosion. Even MVP lawyer Donald Verrilli said that the debt deal doesn’t negate the requirement to comply with that law. Federal law also says that the external coating must meet certain standards, including being “sufficiently ductile to resist cracking.” Ductile means flexible.

In the January 2020 issue of Corrosion Management (p. 16) there was an article about a study done on the external coating applied to pipe intended for the Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline, which had sat out in the sun for years just as MVP pipe has. The pipe for both pipelines was manufactured and coated by the same company, Welspun.

In describing the condition of the KXL pipe coating after such prolonged exposure to the sun, the study used phrases such as “no longer acceptable,” “total failures,” “completely failed to retain their original properties and attributes,” and “no longer fit for purpose.”

On page 19 the article stated that KXL pipe coating demonstrated a “serious deterioration in its flexibility performance.” It said the flexibility tests were “deemed failures,” and that the flexibility had deteriorated “to the point where the coating was no longer acceptable.” All the flexibility tests resulted in “cracking within the coating.” Once cracking within the coating occurs, it creates a pathway to the steel pipe that water will surely find, allowing the corrosion process to begin.

Unless and until MVP can produce some legitimate test results that show otherwise, everyone should assume that MVP’s pipe coating is no different than the KXL pipe coating, meaning that it is “no longer fit for purpose.”

We take the sun for granted and often forget how powerful it is. On the plus side it has the potential to save us from runaway climate change if we quickly turn to it as an alternative to burning fossil fuels. On the other hand it can also be extremely destructive. Remember the news story about the trucker who had been on the road for 28 years? The picture of his face said it all. And now we learn that Jimmy Buffett, whose music was often about fun in the sun, has died way too soon from skin cancer.

We need, and Joe Biden needs, to take this pipe coating issue very seriously. This is a massive 42-inch diameter pipeline that will operate at extremely high pressure. Its blast zone includes schools and people’s homes. No one should take MVP’s word for it that the pipe is safe and they have the situation under control. MVP has been fined millions of dollars for hundreds of violations that have occurred so far during construction. The company building MVP was responsible for last year’s biggest climate disaster, a methane leak that they couldn’t stop for 13 days. It was caused by corrosion, and it alone wiped out the climate gains from half of President Biden’s highly touted electric vehicle sales last year.

MVP may pretend it can remedy the coating problem on site, but we’re aware of how coating is properly applied. It’s a fairly elaborate process that can only be done back at the factory (see the two minute video). Even a KXL pipeline manager said fixing defective coating couldn’t be done in the field and that it required shipping the pipe back to the plant for stripping, cleaning, and recoating.

If Donald Trump was still President, PHMSA’s safety order would probably never have even seen the light of day. But if the safety order that gets finalized on Joe Biden’s watch ends up being toothless, then the end result will amount to a distinction without a difference. The ball is in President Biden’s and PHMSA’s court.

FILE PHOTO ~ LNG tanker requires far more safety measures than ‘no smoking’ signs

From the Article by Jon Hurdle, New Jersey Spotlight News, September 8, 2023

The plan to build New Jersey’s first liquefied natural gas export terminal at Gibbstown on the Delaware River was dealt another blow when a federal agency suspended a rule that would have allowed the fuel to be shipped there by rail. The project has suffered repeated setbacks.

The U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration blocked the Trump-era rule that lifted a long-standing national ban on the transport of LNG by rail. The rule would have allowed the fuel to be shipped by train, as planned by the developer New Fortress Energy, from a town in northeast Pennsylvania to a planned terminal at the Gloucester County town where it would be loaded onto ocean-going tankers and sent overseas.

But the agency last week suspended the rule until it writes a substitute, or until June 30, 2025, whichever comes first.

“PHMSA, in coordination with the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), is amending the Hazardous Materials Regulations to suspend authorization of liquefied natural gas (LNG) transportation in rail tank cars,” said the agency, a unit of the U.S. Department of Transportation, in the Federal Register.

The decision is the latest blow to the plan, which has been fiercely opposed by activists on the grounds that the highly explosive cargo would endanger public safety in cities such as Camden and Philadelphia through which LNG trains would pass. Critics have also argued that the export of LNG — a super-cooled form of natural gas — would stimulate the production of the fuel from Pennsylvania’s gas-rich Marcellus Shale as the world is trying to wean itself off fossil fuels in an effort to curb climate change.

The suspension follows the agency’s withdrawal in April of a “special permit,” also issued by the Trump administration, which would have allowed LNG to be shipped by rail from Wyalusing, Pennsylvania to Gibbstown only.

Series of obstacles ~ Other setbacks to the project include the failure so far to build a liquefaction plant at Wyalusing where the gas would be converted into a liquid for transportation; and the conspicuous absence of a new terminal, known as Dock 2, at Gibbstown where the export terminal would be built.

Although the Delaware River Basin Commission approved construction of the dock in December 2020, the developer has been subject to restrictions from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has prevented any construction from March 15 to Sept. 15 each year, when the endangered Atlantic sturgeon migrates and breeds in the river.

New Fortress Energy did not respond to a request for comment on last week’s decision by the federal agency. The company may now have the option of using trucks to ship LNG to Gibbstown, which would require hundreds of truck trips a day around the clock on the approximately 175-mile route, and would itself likely ignite strong opposition in affected communities.

‘People of Pennsylvania and New Jersey living near key rail lines would have faced damage to their health, families, and homes in the event of a derailment.’ — Kimberley Ong, Natural Resources Defense Council attorney

The New Jersey Business and Industry Association, a supporter of natural gas, called the federal decision an “impediment” to the Gibbstown project, and said natural gas and LNG are essential to the world economy.

NJBIA spokesman Ray Cantor said LNG produced in the U.S. has helped Europe meet its energy needs during Russia’s war in Ukraine, and he said the world continues to need fossil fuels while switching toward renewable energy sources. “We must stop imposing ideological policies that ignore the very real world need for fossil fuels,” he said.

Opponents not satisfied ~ The rule suspension was not a surprise given the termination of the “special permit” by the Biden administration, and the decisions make it harder for the project to go ahead. But they don’t necessarily mean it’s dead, said Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of the environmental group Delaware Riverkeeper Network.

“The suspension of the LNG by Rail rule and the denial of their special permit are both nails in New Fortress’s coffin but it is not the ‘stake in the heart’ that kills the project,” Carluccio said.
New Fortress may be waiting to see whether the federal agency, in its new rule, reimposes a permanent ban on shipping LNG by rail, or whether the replacement rule does not fully ban the practice, Carluccio said.

“New Fortress seems to be playing the long game — waiting until they can act but not giving up their basic permits that allow them to build the components of the project,” she said. “That’s why we are not protected from New Fortress using LNG by rail until the final permanent rule is adopted and only then if they fully ban the transport and don’t adopt a halfway measure.”

The Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit that opposes the Gibbstown project, urged U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to impose a permanent national ban on the shipment of LNG by rail. That decision, it said, would protect some 2 million people along the proposed Wyalusing-Gibbstown route from the risk of a catastrophic explosion.

“People of Pennsylvania and New Jersey living near key rail lines would have faced damage to their health, families and homes in the event of a derailment,” said Kimberley Ong, a senior attorney with NRDC. She said the derailment of a chemical train near East Palestine, Ohio last winter showed the serious consequences of the transportation of hazardous materials.