Posted on 09/12/2014 1:37:43 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Another chapter in the never-ending love/hate relationship between New York and fracking. The former has banned the latter, as we’re sure you know.
First, let’s go back to 2010. East Resources, which is a privately held independent oil and gas company operating in the Marcellus, among other areas, sells a vast amount of acreage in the Marcellus and other areas to Royal Dutch Shell for $4.7 billion.
Then go back to earlier this year. Ralph Wilson, the only man who ever owned the Buffalo Bills, dies in March. So his heirs put the Bills–who haven’t made the NFL playoffs since 1999, easily the longest streak in football–up for sale.
A frenzy ensues, because there’s talk that a new owner might move the team to the shores of a different Great Lake than Lake Erie, where Buffalo is located: to Toronto, on Lake Ontario. There are a lot more high-powered corporations based in Toronto to buy expensive luxury boxes than there are in Buffalo.
Rocker Jon Bon Jovi became part of a Toronto-based group that was a bidder for the Bills, and some fans in Western New York feared they’d lose their team to the Great White North. Suddenly, bars in Buffalo started declaring that if you come inside, the beer’s cold, the wings are hot, and you won’t hear Bon Jovi–suddenly public enemy #1–singing about Living on a Prayer in this establishment.
But the bidding for the Bills finished this week, and the new owner is a man named Terry Pegula. Forbes has him as #512 the list of the world’s billionaires. He also owns hockey’s Buffalo Sabres. And he’s keeping the Bills right where they are.
New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, who is waiting for yet another study on the effects of fracking before deciding whether New York will go ahead with the practice, was full of praise. “God bless Terry Pegula,” he was quoted as saying. “Start making the statue of Terry Pegula right now, and make it big.”
And you might wonder: where did Pegula get his money to buy the Bills, keep them in New York, and lead Andrew Cuomo to declare that he should be cast in bronze?
Why, he got it in part by being the CEO of East Resources, which sold those holdings to Royal Dutch Shell, back in 2010. Not only that, just a few months ago he made another sale of fracking-related resources for about $1.75 billion.
And now some of those fracking-related monies have partly flowed into fracking-free New York through the purchase of the Bills. (And others flowed back a few years ago when Pegula bought the Sabres.)
If the governor decides to keep the fracking ban on, will he also suggest that Pegula reverse his purchase of the Bills?
Maybe not, but perhaps the statue suggestion should be withdrawn, just to be consistent.
This is why you see so many New York license plates down here in gas country.
Imagine if you will, sitting on a gold mine worth untold billions. Money that would provide for years worth of funding for all your liberal dreams.
Yet in order to access this wealth, you would have to piss off the very people who want to fund those expensive projects.
In tonight's episode we explore the "fish or cut bait" quandary in........The TWILIGHT ZONE
You ain’t kidding!
And of course, a lot of people were saying “fracking” (or something that sounds a lot like that, my hearing is going) when they saw this in the Oakland game:
http://cdn3.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/696070/failraiders.0.gif
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