Diane Pitcock Connects Landowners to Fracking Researchers

By Molly Moore When Diane Pitcock and her family retired to rural Doddridge County, W.Va., in 2005, she planned on canning garden vegetables, watching the stars and listening to the owls. Today, however, four Marcellus Shale gas rigs surround her land, and the ridge behind her home hosts an access road instead of a forest.…

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Plundering Private Property Rights

By Paige Campbell Half a dozen generations ago, when a coal-mining boom first enticed southwest Virginians to sell the rights to minerals beneath their land, the deal they were making concerned the coal itself. At least, that’s how Virginia’s courts have defined mineral ownership through most of the state’s mining history. But on April 9,…

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It’s Sad to Say, Fracking’s Here to Stay

A new series of proposed natural gas pipelines will give many states better access to natural gas reserves of the Marcellus Shale, a formation of sedimentary rock that covers much of the Appalachian Basin. The pipelines will connect to larger interstate lines to reach more customers in the northeastern United States and possibly Canada. The…

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