 By Alvin Engelke
alvinengelke@hotmail.com
Rev. Keith Belt filled his regular appointment at the B urning Springs M. E. Church.
While the forcast of rain kept some riders home, 223 showed up for the Creston ATV poker run Saturday. Other than flat tires, an attempt to mix water with fuel & such, everyone had a great time and many stopped to play in the mud holes (play pens) at certain moist locations. Ted Grimm, with some help from a comely lass who rode with Casper Shuman, came in first followed by Sam Welch & Phillip Custard. Eva M. Gandee won the 50/50. The community would like to thank all who came and rode the route, those who worked the kitchen, fixed the food, laid out the route, helped with signups, shirt sales, all those merchants & others who donated items for the door prizes, did the cleanup, etc.
The Creston area "Adopt A Highway" group will meet at 8 A. M. on Saturday, April 28 at the Jerry Poling residence/antique store for the clearing of trash along W. Va. Route 5. All willing workers are asked to come and help. There will be nourishment for the workers after the job is done.
Gay Belt Park & Bill McFee both remain patients in Parkersburg hospitals. Gay came down with pneumonia fever.
Former Wirt County Commissioner Roy Copen who is active in Creston area activities, recently suffered a heart attack but is said to now be on the mend.
Ottie Brumfield has been having chariot troubles.
The donation auction at the Creston Community Building is scheduled for Saturday, June 2. This is the one where, of one wants to get rid of unused items, pickup can be arranged, etc.
Columbine & larkspur are blooming as are the locusts which make tasty meals. It is said that when there are lots of locust blossoms then it will be a good year for corn.
The weather in addition to turning wet has changed from warm to cool.
The Big Eared One tried to stir some trouble over a fellow putting his dog carrier on top of his car back when but then the recording of him reading from his alleged autobiography that back when his mommy worked for Timmy Geithner's daddy spending US taxpayer dollars in the former Dutch East Indies that he dined on canines, matters changed drastically. Jim Iglehart told about when he talked to his old Shawnee neighbor about the various Indian Tribes/Nations and after discussing the Choctaw, Osage, Cherokee, etc. Jim asked, "What about the Pottawattamie?" The old Shawnee looked down at the ground and said very slowly in a low, deep voice, "Pottawattamie eat dog!"
Famous State Senator Truman Chafin's current wife, Trish, is running to be one of the supremes so that she can fight for the poor & downtrodden and perhaps certain vested interests. To assure a better result she invested $1million of her own money in the campaign. A few years back Chafin and his then wife Gretchen made a lot of news over some alleged illegal wiretapping.
Paris Parsons' daughter who lives up in Canton said she reads the Creston news every week.
There was some discussion down at the Mouth of the Elk as to why the "powers that be" were backing Walt Helmick, a former strip miner, to be Commissioner of Agriculture in addition to giving him a cushy retirement at taxpayer expense.
Charles Russell was dining with brother Euell and Ray Gumm at Miletree. Dorothy Lynch noted that she had also called there not so long back.
Antero has commenced the acquisition of Marcellus acreage in Gilmer County with a farmout from Alliance. Also they made a deal to acquire some acreage from EQT (Equitable) for $6,000/acre and a 9% ORR. Amaranda Hess, the firm that acquired the Utica formation from the former Mother Hope/Dominion/Consolidated/CNX leases was obliged to pay $25,000/acre for some acreage to complete a unit. That is the price paid as bonus for equivalent leases in Texas, Louisiana, etc. At the same time folks with a straight face are offering $10 to $500/acre for equivalent acreage held by private citizens.
Work is scheduled to start soon on Mother Hope's [Dominion] new line from the yet to be built compressor station on the West Fork through Bear Fork to Jones Station at Lockney. The new 16" pipeline is a $14 million job.
The price of gas produced locally last month fell below the $2 threshold with talk that it will fall below $1. Based on the present price of a "penny post card" or 32 cents this price would, in terms of constant dollars be lower than the prices received for natural gas during the 1930s. Dominion reported that while they had been charging $2.50 to store one MCF of gas for a year in the storage field they recently were obligated to negotiate a deal for only 45 cents. Of course Dominion pays the landowners just $1/acre per year for the actual storage but since it is the Rockefeller family it "must be fair" & care must be taken to be sure that none in the family 'do without'.
With the glut of natural gas in the Appalachian area there has been significant interest in turning Cove Point, the LNG (liquified natural gas) import place in Maryland to an export facility and plans are to do such with the first exports in 2017 but presently exportation is banned since those places who want, need and are willing to pay for the gas, Japan, South Korea and Western Europe are not judged to be, by the Big Eared One, suitable trade partners. Natural gas fetches about $14 in Europe and anywhere in the word except the United States the prices of natural gas and crude oil follow one another. The head man in Japan has made three begging trips to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue since their nuclear plants are shut down and the backup oil plants cannot make capacity and there are rolling brownouts and cutbacks so that there is minimal heat and no air conditioning in high rise buildings built without windows that open. It is interesting that coal can be exported to China so they can make weapons to destroy us but it is not permissible to sell natural gas which presently is "in a glut" to help keep folks warm and hold down price gouging by George Soros & his Russian buddies. "Environmental" groups are said to be in opposition as exports "would raise domestic prices and cause more hydraulic fracturing".
With the low price of natural gas some local "legacy" operators have been laying off workmen and curtailing their drilling programs while those who have old oil wells are busy putting them back into production, replacing shackle lines with new tanks, pump jacks, etc.
The mail was late again one day last week and it now seems that the holdup is in Clarksburg where the trucks are told to "wait". One of those responsible for the delivery said it was awful but that there was no one who cared to call to discuss the problems. While the postal systems heads toward bankruptcy they have now got into a new line of business promoting sweepstakes and a Tee Vee show on a network owned by a presidential advisor.
Aubrey McClendon, president of Chesapeake, was in the news when it was learned (most of the Chesapeake stockholders learned for the first time too) that, as a perk, he received 2 1/2 % of each of the new wells Chesapeake drilled and that he had borrowed about $1.1 billion against those assets from the same outfit that had financed a significant share of the company operations. It was also learned that the company gave $26 million to the Sierra Club to shill for the firm and attack coal the competitor for electricity generation.
Local residents and those from afar plan to go out and thin the wily gobblers. With the early spring the season is late but, of course, DNR "knows best". If you don't believe it just ask them and while one is at it be sure to ask why alfalfa can no longer be grown in the Creston area.?
The Wirt ambulance was attending to business in the Creston area Sunday.
One fellow whose name was not in the paper some time back about the "harvesting of metallic objects" said his name better not ever be in the paper again.
While the price of gasoline dropped in the Parkersburg area to $3.80 the price of local Penn grade crude rose to $102.10 with condensate (drip) fetching $88.06, Marcellus & Utica light $92.20 and medium $103.60.
Dow Chemical announced that they would be building a new ethane cracker in Texas and perhaps a propylene plant there too. It is amazing that it is cheaper to ship the gas to the gulf for processing rather than deal with the ruling oligarchy that controls West Virginia and all that happens locally. Surely change is in order.
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