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Letters-to-the editor tips
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 The Neighborhood Environmental Committee wants local company closed. JEFFERSON TWP — “A foul odor has residents calling on the government to shut down a local company, and they are fed up with the smell.
Neighbors said they have been dealing with the smell for more than a decade, and now it is time for the government to shut down Clean Water Limited, formerly PermaFix.
Residents who live around the plant said they are tired of the smell and concerned about the environment and their health. They are especially furious about what they learned on Thursday morning.
…Residents learned that Clean Water Limited has installed new equipment and started using without getting permits and approval beforehand.”
— WHIO
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 “The law keeps our health care providers in the dark at the oil and gas companies’ request. These companies need to be responsible for any problems their process may cause.”
 PITTSBURGH, PA — “The softening in prices is sorry news for drillers that have relied on natural gas liquids to compensate for record-low natural gas prices. Natural gas liquids, or NGLs, are extracted alongside the natural gas and stripped out for sale at prices that tend to follow higher crude oil figures. Their use in manufacturing, particularly in plastics, have made them desirable to a petrochemical industry growing to accommodate the rise in production.
But despite the attention of some of the world’s biggest companies, the age-old rules of supply and demand are catching up to the hydrocarbon market.
Ethane and propane production is at the highest level in decades, especially since firms have diverted attention away from “dry” gas portions of shale rock that don’t contain the liquids.”
— Erich Schwartzel, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
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 Kent Carson of American Municipal Power and Galion City Manager Gene Toy. GALION — “Toy says it is true to megawatt per hour rate Galion will pay Prairie State Energy increased from the time the agreement was approved in 2007 to the time construction was completed and it started generating electricity.
But he says the increase has been expected, and he does not believe it’s an added expense the city cannot handle, and doubts residential electric rates will increase.
Toy says Galion residents pay less per kilowatt hour than do customers of American Electric Power and First Energy, and the rates with Prairie State are locked in for thirty years.”
— Greg Heindel, WMFD
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NEW YORK, NY — “Donna Thornton made sure to include a no-cost provision in her contract with Chesapeake Energy Corp. that let the driller harvest natural gas beneath 2.5 acres of her property in Louisiana.
Thinking she had excluded production and marketing expenses and would therefore secure higher royalty payments, the Texas accountant said she was shocked when she confirmed in July that the second-biggest U.S. gas producer was passing costs on to her. For Thornton and thousands more owners of mineral rights in the U.S., ‘no-costs’ in drilling leases has taken on new meaning.
As gas prices were heading toward a 10-year low in April, Chesapeake began reinterpreting in its favor thousands of contracts with landowners from Pennsylvania to Texas that own the 1 trillion cubic feet of gas the company produced last year, according to interviews and documents reviewed by Bloomberg. Chesapeake, arguing that other contract language allows for cost deductions, is fighting more than a dozen lawsuits.”
— Bradley Olson and Margaret Cronin Fisk, Bloomberg News
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BROOKFIELD — “The Ohio EPA said Wednesday that runoff from a construction site is to blame for dead fish in a Brookfield pond.
On Tuesday evening, residents at Brookfield Acres Trailer Park off Warner Road noticed numerous dead fish in their pond. Officials with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources contacted Consol Energy, which is building a drilling site up the road from Brookfield Acres on Warren-Sharon Road.
‘The company was preparing to pave an area so they could drive vehicles on it and they put down some slag,’ said EPA spokeswoman Heather Lauer.
But last week’s heavy rains caused some problems with the paving material, which was in compliance with ODNR regulations. So, contracted crews with Consol as well as officials with ODNR and Ohio EPA arrived on scene to test the water.”
— Fox Youngstown
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 NEW YORK, NY — “Energy investors have taken bets for years on what they thought was an important indicator of future energy production: the weekly rig count data provided by oil service firms.
They may want to be careful about how much money they put on the table.
A Reuters analysis of the data, and interviews with officials at companies involved in collecting and compiling it, shows that it may sometimes be an arbitrary and misleading gauge subject to revisions.
The culprit appears to be the fracking boom and the complex geology that has made it much more difficult to decide whether a rig is likely to discover oil or gas in large quantities, often leading companies to rely on guesswork when drilling begins.”
— Edward McAllister, Reuters
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 The Prairie State Energy Campus under construction in 2010. NEW YORK, NY — “But at least for the near term, the owners will be paying extra for electricity, according to a report produced at the behest of anti-coal groups. When the construction cost rose from the $4 billion estimate to what the opponents put at $4.9 billion, the price of electricity from the project, which includes the capital cost, went above the cost of electricity bought on the open market in the Midwest, according to the report, produced by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a nonprofit group in Belmont, Mass.
‘The Prairie State coal plant is turning out to be the financial and environmental nightmare that many of us feared when the plant was proposed,’ said Sandy Buchanan, executive director of Ohio Citizen Action. Mostly because of the low price of natural gas, a megawatt-hour of electricity in Ohio now wholesales for about $40, but power from the first unit of the plant, which went into service in June, costs about $60, the groups pointed out, and the customers face some additional charges because of a slight delay in getting the generators into service. The second half is due on line late this year.”
— Matthew L Wald, New York Times
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NEW YORK, NY — “It remains to be seen if the entire shale gas industry is a Ponzi scheme. More likely is the possibility that it is overhyped by Wall Street and Natural Gas firms, who bought up large plots of land and issued optimistic projections to suck other companies and investors into buying that same land from them at higher prices.
It is looking highly likely that once again the public will get the short end of the stick in a few years as the supply of gas from these shale formations runs out much faster than estimates, leaving the public with a large glut of natural gas fueled cars and trucks and natural gas fueling stations, all of which were built on the promise of 100+ years of supply at cheap prices and the dream of energy independence. As this surplus demand infrastructure is built out and as supplies run out quicker than expected, prices will naturally rise dramatically.”
— Jonathan Verenger, Seeking Alpha
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Report: Through 2025, those with a stake in coal-fired plant will pay above-market prices
COLUMBUS — “Environmentalists have been critical of Prairie State because it uses coal at a time when the electric-power industry is moving toward more use of natural gas and renewable energy. The Energy Information Administration reports that Prairie State is the only new coal plant in the country to come online this year.
The plant was started by Peabody Energy, a coal company, which then sold nearly all of its interest to municipal-power companies in several Midwestern states. AMP, which provides power to city-owned utilities, owns the largest share.
In Ohio, the 12 communities with the largest investments in Prairie State will pay a premium of $135 million, the report says.”
— Dan Gearino, Columbus Dispatch
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— Kimberly Gasuras, Mansfield News Journal
 Miners drive down to the Lively Grove coal mine near Marissa, Ill., during a shift change. The mine is operated by Prairie State Generating Co. and provides fuel to an adjacent power plant. COLUMBUS — “A dozen Ohio communities will pay a premium totaling $135 million for electricity because of contracts with an Illinois power plant, according to a new report.
The figure is an estimate of how much money the cities – including Cleveland, Bowling Green and Galion – will pay for power in excess of market prices between now and 2025.
Residents in those places are paying for Prairie State Energy Campus in southwestern Illinois, a coal-fired power plant that began operating this summer. American Municipal Power of Columbus owns 23 percent of the plant and has sold shares to 60 of its member communities in Ohio.”
— Dan Gearino, Columbus Dispatch
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NEW YORK, NY — “The battle over high-volume hydraulic fracturing is being waged town-by-town across upstate New York.
From Buffalo to Albany, Syracuse to the Catskills, about 100 municipalities have enacted temporary moratoriums on the natural-gas extraction process known as fracking, while about 35 have banned the practice altogether. Meanwhile, nearly 60 towns and villages have passed resolutions in support of fracking or against the idea of a ban. Dozens of other communities are debating the issue now.
The race to sway towns comes as Gov. Andrew Cuomo considers allowing fracking in upstate communities that express support for it. A four-year-old state Department of Environmental Conservation review of fracking is continuing, and the Cuomo administration is expected to announce a decision before the end of the year.”
— Joseph De Avila, Wall Street Journal
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 WASHINGTON, D.C. – “Higher utility bills for 2.5 million ratepayers in eight states and billions of dollars in fiscal fallout for elected officials in hundreds of communities are expected now that the cost of electricity from the Prairie Energy Prairie State Energy Campus (PSEC) coal-fired power plant will be 40 to 100 percent higher than promised by Peabody Energy, according to a major new report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).
Sold by Peabody as a cheap source of power to public power entities representing 217 municipalities and 17 electric membership cooperatives in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia, the PSEC project is now behind schedule, well over budget (with construction costs estimated as high as $4.9 billion versus the original $1.8 billion projection), and not yet producing power as promised, according to the new IEFFA report, ‘The Prairie State Coal Plant: The Reality vs. the Promise.’
Based on a detailed review of documents for the communities in Ohio and Missouri, the IEEFA report estimates annual losses per community through 2025 will range from $3 million to $56 million, reflecting the ‘significant fiscal problems and stresses for the participating communities’ in the troubled PSEC project. Since 2007, Peabody Energy has shifted 95 percent of its exposure in the PSEC onto the backs of local communities and coops.”
— press release, Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis
link to report
- statement, Sandy Buchanan, Executive Director, Ohio Citizen Action
- statement, Kerwin Olson, Executive Director, Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana
 Arnaud Montebourg, French Minister for Industrial Recovery PARIS, FRANCE — “France isn’t prepared to tap its shale energy resources until ‘clean technologies’ are invented to replace hydraulic fracturing, Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg said.
The technique known as fracking causes ‘irreversible pollution’ in some cases, the minister was cited as saying in an interview published today in Les Echos newspaper. It will probably be replaced by a different method, he said.
The French parliament passed a law last year outlawing fracking because of concern it can pollute drinking water, effectively halting plans by companies including Total SA (FP) to explore for shale gas in southern France. Fracking is widely used in the U.S., including by Total, to produce gas.
France will maintain the ban on fracking, Environment and Energy Minister Delphine Batho told RMC radio today. ”
— Tara Patel, Bloomberg Businessweek
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NEW YORK – “Chevron Corp. is hoarding the money it makes from oil and gas operations, prompting investors to wonder if the energy giant is bracing for a spike in costs or will use its $21 billion cash pile to buy a smaller rival.
“The company’s cash level rose 60% over the last year. Chevron is now carrying more cash on its balance sheet than any publicly traded energy company—about 18% more than larger rival Exxon Mobil Corp. —and more than the market capitalization of most U.S. exploration companies. Even if Chevron used the money to retire all its debt, it would still have about $11 billion left over. . . .
Cash-strapped Chesapeake Energy Corp., the nation’s second-largest gas producer after Exxon, has been discussed as an acquisition target since its largest shareholders—who now effectively control the board—urged its management in May to consider a sale at a rich enough premium. Chesapeake’s $12.7 billion stock-market value makes its vast oil and gas holdings look cheap. But some experts say its complicated web of financings—and the discount on its stock price, which could hinder agreement on a deal value—make an acquisition less likely.”
— Daniel Gilbert, Wall Street Journal, August 27, 2012
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Letters supporting the Fracking Emergency Medical Right to Know Act 9,241 neighbors have sent handwritten letters and made personal phone calls urging state legislators to support the Fracking Emergency Medical Right to Know Act as of June 10, 2013.
Ohio coal-fired power plants
Resources on proposed Cleveland incinerator
AEP’s Muskingum River Power Plant
Letters to American Electric Power 989 neighbors have sent handwritten letters urging AEP to retire its Muskingum River coal plant as of July 15, 2011.
Letters to Duke Energy 2,307 neighbors have sent handwritten letters and telewires urging Duke Energy to retire Miami Fort Unit 6 and Beckjord coal plants as of July 15, 2011.
Letters to Kokosing Asphalt 8,709 neighbors have sent handwritten letters and petitions urging Kokosing Asphalt to be a good neighbor as of February 25, 2011.
Letters to Rumpke 9,205 neighbors have sent handwritten letters and petitions urging Rumpke to be a good neighbor as of April 15, 2011.
Letters to FirstEnergy 3,914 neighbors have sent handwritten letters and petitions urging FirstEnergy to retire their four Lake Erie coal plants as of July 15, 2011.
Mountaintop removal coal mining
Letters to Senator Sherrod Brown and Senator Rob Portman 6,615 members have sent handwritten letters and petitions to Senator Brown urging him to support US EPA rules that will protect our health from polluting coal plants as of January 24, 2012.
3,751 members have petitioned Senator Portman urging him to support US EPA rules that will protect our health from polluting coal plants as of January 24, 2012.
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