PA Residents: Gas Drilling? Yes. Gas Exporting? No.

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Many Pennsylvania residents are in favor of shale gas drilling, but exporting the gas makes them mad.

When Virginia-based Dominion Resources Inc. offered her money this year to allow the company to run another pipeline under a corner of her Morgan Township property, [Dorothy] Ganiear, 61, was happy to help. This is what we all have to live with in order to get the natural gas we need to heat our homes, she said.

What she does not want to live with is a pipeline that would help take gas to a port for export overseas.

"I want this gas to stay in America," she said. "I’m all for America first."

In towns across largely rural Greene County and elsewhere in southcentral Pennsylvania that are crucial hubs for transporting the nation’s natural gas, most people express similar sentiment: They consider pipeline companies good neighbors, but that could change if they become mass exporters. There’s a prevalent, often emotional, opposition to taking any gas produced from the Marcellus shale formation and selling it abroad.

"They’ve been a good friend," said Gregory L. Cook, supervisor in Guilford Township, near Chambersburg in Franklin County — home to a key juncture on one of the new interstate pipeline projects. "But if their policy is to export this natural gas they’ve been working with, that’s dead wrong. It’s an absolute shame, and it’s an atrocity.

"They said that this natural gas was to help America. Well, if that’s not true, they deceived."*

Natural gas exports are due to start in 2015 from a Louisiana port:

Last month, the DOE approved the first American-produced gas exports overseas from the lower 48 states, allowing Cheniere Energy Inc. to export 2.2 billion cubic feet daily from a Louisiana port starting in 2015. Two other companies have requests pending. Officials from two more, including Dominion, have publicly said they are considering exporting, too.*

Read the rest of the article by clicking below for more details on this contentious issue.

*Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (Jun 13, 2011) – Export of shale gas angers Western Pennsylvania landowners

One Comment

  1. Ah, while Ms. Ganier may be a great American, she does not (apparently) understand that natural gas is a commodity and trades on a world-wide basis. Increased demand in China raises prices in the US. Transportation IS a major part of the cost of energy, so prices in Pennsylvania should be lower for the same BTU’s as after shipped to China. So there is a natural benefit to adding value to our natural gas here in Pennsylvania. Chemicals for instance and fertilizer. That is economic nationalism, not denying a pipeline access. And wouldn’t we like to take Chinese money from them than borrowing from them? For me it’s an easy choice.