Hydraulic Fracturing

Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues

Interior Sec. Ken Salazar Offers Statement on Fracking
April 4, 2012December 11, 2012

Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar recently said that his agency is working on new regulations that will lower the risk of water supplies becoming tainted from hydraulic fracturing operations. Whatever that means. Sec. Salazar was touring a “man camp” housing settlement in the Bakken Shale area of North Dakota on Monday and during a back and forth with the press had this to say on the topic of hydraulic fracturing:

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Economic Impact | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Jobs | Pennsylvania | Statewide PA | Video

New Video: Women of the Marcellus
April 3, 2012April 3, 2012

MDN is really pleased to share a new video highlighting how Marcellus Shale development is impacting families in Pennsylvania. While many know about the economic impacts and consumer savings made possible by shale gas, this video highlights the personal stories of three families whose lives have been made materially better because of Marcellus Shale drilling in Pennsylvania.

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Energy Services | GASFRAC | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Regulation | Statewide NY | Tioga County (NY)

Anti-Driller Campaign Against LPG Fracking Begins in NY
April 2, 2012April 2, 2012

It certainly didn’t taken long for anti-drillers to start talking down LPG (waterless) fracking. Just last week, a Tioga County, NY landowner group announced they will sign a lease with eCorp to allow drilling on 135,000 acres in New York using a proprietary technology by Canadian company GASFRAC (see this MDN story). The waterless technology uses liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), a gel-like substance that replaces water in fracking. Perhaps most importantly, by using LPG fracking, eCorp can move ahead with permitting and drilling now (in New York!), ahead of the release of new fracking regulations that have been stalled in a four-year review process.

MDN predicted that with almost all stated reasons to oppose water-based fracking now removed, anti-drillers would invent new reasons to oppose LPG fracking. MDN’s prediction has already come true. An article printed in the “news” section of the Albany Times Union, which clearly is an opinion piece, says this:

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Anadarko | Energy Companies | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | New York | Otsego County | Regulation | Statewide NY | Tompkins County

Dryden & Middlefield NY Drilling Bans Officially Appealed
March 30, 2012March 30, 2012

An update on the two New York lawsuits recently decided in lower courts that upheld local municipal bans on hydraulic fracturing and gas drilling:

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Energy Services | GASFRAC | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Tioga County (NY)

GASFRAC’s LPG Fracking Method (and Future) Looking Good
March 30, 2012March 30, 2012

In a follow-up to yesterday’s blockbuster news that fracking may begin in New York sooner rather than later if Tioga County, NY landowners move forward with LPG fracking (see this MDN story), the website Seeking Alpha makes the following interesting comment about the proprietary LPG technology used by GASFRAC, and about GASFRAC’s future prospects:

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Energy Services | GASFRAC | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Landowner Coalition News | New York | Regulation | Tioga County (NY)

Alternative Fracking Method May Soon Debut – in New York!
March 29, 2012March 29, 2012

The anti-drilling crowd is about to be tested as to their true reasons for opposing shale gas drilling, and it will happen in leftist paradise—New York State.

What if you removed 99 percent of the stated objections to fracking? Took away the millions of gallons of water needed to frack a single well? Took away almost all of the chemicals used? Took away fracking wastewater that either needs to be recycled or treated or injected into a deep well? Took away almost all of the heavy truck traffic and noise and other industrialization concerns? In short—what if you took away almost every reason to oppose gas drilling?

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Ohio | Statewide OH

OH Enviro Groups Warn Against Water Withdrawals for Fracking
March 26, 2012March 26, 2012

With the rapid expansion of natural gas drilling in Ohio’s Utica Shale comes a need for water used in the hydraulic fracturing process. Each well drilled can use upward of five million gallons of water. Some it comes from recycled wastewater from other fracking operations, but there’s still an ongoing need for water.

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues

Boone Pickens: Fracking’s Long History Proves it’s Safe
March 26, 2012March 26, 2012

Speaking at last week’s Wall Street Journal ECO:nomics conference, Boone Pickens, chairman of BP Energy Management and a Texas oil billionaire going way back, says if you want to see whether or not hydraulic fracturing is safe, all you have to do is look where it’s been actively used, underneath aquifers, for decades:

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Regulation | Statewide PA

PA DEP Hosting Webinars on Act 13 Zoning Law
March 23, 2012March 23, 2012

Want to know more about the recently passed Act 13 law in Pennsylvania? That’s the new law essentially removing the right of local municipalities to regulate or otherwise ban drilling within their borders. Some townships are up in arms and threatening a lawsuit. The state Department of Environmental Protection wants to educate local officials and the public and is conducting four one-hour webinars to do it.

From the DEP press release:

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues

MIT Report Finds Fracking is Safe
March 19, 2012March 19, 2012

Last June, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology issued a 178-page report called “The Future of Natural Gas” (a copy of the full report is embedded below). Somehow this report escaped MDN’s notice at the time. Seeing that it’s conclusions are that hydraulic fracturing is safe, MDN understands why mainstream media outlets don’t endlessly promote it and quote from it as they do from journal articles penned by anti-drilling professors like Robert Howarth and Tony Ingraffea making outrageous claims like natural gas is worse for the environment than coal (see this MDN story).

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Accidents | Coterra Energy (Cabot O&G) | Energy Companies | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | Pennsylvania | Susquehanna County

EPA’s Dimock, PA Water Test Results Show No Contamination
March 16, 2012March 16, 2012

Water test results from the federal Environmental Protection Agency confirm what the Pennsylvania Department of Environment Protection has said all along: Well water in Dimock, PA has not been contaminated by hydraulic fracturing chemicals. The PA DEP investigated claims from some Dimock residents that their water had been contaminated by gas drilling done by Cabot Oil & Gas.

In 2010 the DEP found that Cabot’s drilling had led to methane (natural gas) migration into 19 area water wells—something that Cabot still disputes as the area has been known for decades to contain methane in its water supplies. Methane is harmless to drink, but it is an explosion hazard, so the DEP ordered Cabot to pay the affected homeowners twice the value of their property and install a methane filtration system on each home’s water supply (wells or springs). Eleven of the 19 families affected refused the settlement and decided instead to sue Cabot, holding out for a bigger pay day.

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Air Quality | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Regulation

API Study: New EPA Emissions Rules Will Cut Drilling 52%
March 16, 2012March 16, 2012

If proposed new EPA air emissions regulations go into effect later this year as proposed, the number of wells drilled using hydraulic fracturing will drop by half, according to a study commissioned and just released by the American Petroleum Institute (a copy of the study is embedded below). The Obama administration has given lip service support for shale gas drilling, most notably in Obama’s recent State of the Union speech—but the administration’s actions don’t match their words.

According to the study, the new EPA regulations would result in an 11 percent drop in gas production, and a 37 percent drop in domestic oil production. The federal government will also receive $8.5 billion less in royalty payments from reduced drilling.

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Regulation | Statewide PA

Anti-Drillers Try to Stop SRBC Meeting in Harrisburg
March 16, 2012March 16, 2012

Yet another case of anti-drillers behaving badly. At yesterday’s meeting of commissioners of the Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) in Harrisburg, PA, demonstrators tried to stop the commissioners from doing their work during an open meeting. The commissioners were voting on water withdrawal requests for Marcellus drillers, among other items on the agenda. And protestors once again tried to stop an SRBC open and public meeting.

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Ohio | Statewide OH | Taxation

Ohio Proposal for Revamped Severance Tax, New Impact Fee
March 15, 2012March 15, 2012

As MDN reported last week, Ohio Gov. John Kasich introduced a shale gas and oil severance tax overhaul yesterday. The leaked details from last week were correct—but we now have the full proposal (embedded below). Gov. Kasich is tying a revamped severance tax to lowering income taxes for all Ohioans—by up to $1 billion over five years.

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Statewide NY

NY Democrat Assembly Tries New Tactic to Derail Fracking
March 13, 2012March 13, 2012

In a measure backed by the anti-drilling Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the New York State Assembly has set aside $100,000 to conduct an “independent” health impact study of hydraulic fracturing in its budget for next fiscal year. The measure was proposed by NY State Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton (Democrat from Ithaca, NY). Lifton is part of an anti-drilling cabal of the NRDC, Park Foundation and others who are desperately trying to prevent hydraulic fracturing from happening in New York State. Chief tactic number one? Slow it down by delays and studies until they can eventually kill it.

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Pennsylvania | Regulation | Statewide NY | Statewide PA

Home Rule Didn’t Work in PA, So Why Would it in NY?
March 13, 2012March 13, 2012

The headline of this post is the point of a press release issued earlier this week by the Dryden Safe Energy Coalition (DSEC), a group based near Ithaca, NY that seeks to remove the hype and emotion from the debate over hydraulic fracturing and shale gas drilling and instead provide science and facts. The DSEC issued a press release (below) which makes the point that Pennsylvania has had a lot more experience with shale gas drilling than New York and has found that a “patchwork quilt of local regulations” on the municipal level did not work, so PA replaced home rule with statewide regulations.

The DSEC says: “If local home rule does not work in Pennsylvania, it is clear it will not be workable in New York.” (Listen up, NY Republican State Senator James Seward.)

From the DSEC press release:

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