The permitting process for some (many?) Marcellus Shale gas wells in Pennsylvania will take longer than it previously did because of a lawsuit brought by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation against the PA Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). The DEP has just settled the lawsuit agreeing to more stringent guidelines for granting drilling permits near “pristine” mountain streams.
New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner, Joe Martens, visited Binghamton, NY yesterday. He met with local politicians and with the editorial board of the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin (PSB) to answer questions about the new drilling regulations that will allow hydraulic fracturing to begin in New York State. During his meeting with the PSB, Martens said that local government ordinances that ban gas drilling will likely have to be decided in court.
In an astonishing reversal, the operator of a natural gas pipeline that spans the United States is proposing to change the direction the gas flows through the pipeline in order to sell shale gas from the Eastern U.S., particularly the Marcellus, to the Midwest and Western U.S.
Read More “Marcellus Shale Gas May Soon be Exported – To California”
More evidence that the recent stories by Ian Urbina in The New York Times were fiction and not fact came from two shale gas experts yesterday:
Read More “NYT Articles on Shale Gas Reserves Challenged by Marcellus Experts”
As part of the new Marcellus drilling regulations in New York, DEC Commissioner Joe Martens created a Hydraulic Fracturing Advisory Panel. The new panel is initially composed of 13 people from environmentalist organizations, with a few industry and elected officials thrown in (see the list here). Panel members are charged with making suggestions to Martens on fracking in New York—oversight of how the DEC implements it, and potential changes to make it better.
An excellent analysis piece from Tom Shepstone at the Energy in Depth Northeast Marcellus Initiative website exposes the stacked deck Martens has created and poses the very real possibility that Martens is intentionally trying to undermine Gov. Andrew Cuomo on the issue of drilling in New York.
Read More “NY DEC Commissioner Joe Martens Stacks New Fracking Panel with Anti-Drillers”
You can now download a preliminary copy of New York’s new Marcellus drilling regulations at the Energy in Depth Northeast Marcellus Initiative website. This is an incomplete draft released on released July 1, 2011 to some members of the media at the NY Department of Environmental Conservation’s press conference last Friday. This incomplete draft has 736 pages of the final draft report which will be 900+ pages, due to be released in two days (on July 8).
Michigan-based DTE Energy yesterday announced they will spend $250 million to build a new 37 mile long shale gas pipeline in Northeast PA and the Southern Tier of NY. Construction is expected to be complete by the middle of 2012.
MDN reported yesterday that Gregory Sovas recently addressed local government leaders in Upstate NY to brief them on the fact that local governments cannot enact laws—zoning or otherwise—that would prohibit hydraulic fracturing or drilling in the Marcellus and Utica Shale. The legal principle is that local government laws cannot supersede the state law when it comes to regulating oil and gas drilling. Mr. Sovas should know—he’s the author of the language that became the law.
MDN received a number comments on that article (see here) stating the legality of local zoning ordinances regulating oil and gas drilling is far from over. The commenters claim that New York’s law in this regard is not yet settled.
Read More “NY Local Governments and Zoning Bans for Hydraulic Fracturing – Part 2”
New Jersey Democrats in the state legislature are turning up the heat on Republican Gov. Chris Christie to sign a bill recently passed by both houses that would institute an outright ban on hydraulic fracturing. The NJ Senate passed the bill by a vote of 33-1, and the NJ Assembly vote was 58-11. So far, Christie has not commented on the legislation and has not indicated which way he leans.
If signed into law, NJ would have the dubious honor of being the first state to ban hydraulic fracturing, a mostly moot point as there is very little shale beneath the state worth fracking for natural gas—just a tiny portion in the northwest corner.
Will he or won’t he sign it? We may have an indication of a compromise in the works.
Read More “Compromise Coming in NJ Ban on Hydraulic Fracturing?”
In West Virginia, mineral rights are more complex than in other states because those rights in many (perhaps most) cases were separated from the land above it long ago due to coal mining. It is a situation that sometimes pits the rights of the surface owners of the land against the rights of those who own the mineral rights below the land. Mineral rights owners have a right to access the surface in order to extract the coal, oil or gas beneath.
But in the case of horizontal hydraulic fracturing, do mineral rights owners have the right to to set up a multi-acre well pad on the surface to extract natural gas from neighboring properties? An interesting legal question that is being played out in Marion County, WV now.
Read More “WV Marcellus Legal Battle over Well Pads: Surface Rights Owners v. Mineral Rights Owners”
One of the favorite arguments used as a smokescreen by those opposed to Marcellus drilling is the classic class warfare argument. But it takes a lot of mental gymnastics to make it work in this case as the people who are supposedly the “fat cats” and the “lucky few winners of life’s lottery” are typically family farmers who have been scraping by for generations, just trying to hold on to the land they love. The fact that some of them “get rich” from gas drilling just doesn’t sit right with the elite city-dwellers. Kind of invokes images of the Beverly Hillbillies.
MDN has heard this “haves and have nots” class warfare argument in presentations from people like Cornell Professor Tony Ingraffea. It’s a disgusting, offensive and frankly bigoted argument, but there you go. It’s one of the favorites from anti-drillers.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette takes a new run at dressing up this pig of an argument with yet more lipstick:
Read More “Everyone Wins – Not Just Landowners – When Marcellus Drilling Happens in a Community”
As MDN has pointed out before, much of the opposition to drilling in the Marcellus (and now Utica) Shale is motivated by a philosophical worldview by the environmental left—a worldview that opposes natural gas simply because it’s a carbon-based fuel. The latest example is an “environmental bill of rights” being pushed in State College, PA:
Local governments in New York State that pass zoning ordinances to restrict or prohibit hydraulic fracturing and drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus and Utica Shales may find their actions overturned in short order.
Read More “NY Local Governments Not Allowed to Ban Marcellus Drilling by State Law”
Just how long does it take for West Virginia’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to approve a new Marcellus shale gas drilling permit?
Read More “How Long Does it Take to Approve a Marcellus Shale Drilling Permit in WV?”
The New York Department of Environmental Conservation did not release the full 900+ page draft drilling regulations document yesterday (July 1) as planned. They supposedly did release it to Gov. Andrew Cuomo for his review with the announcement that the full report would be made available to the public in one week, on July 8. However, the DEC did release a 27-page executive summary (embedded below). The executive summary is just that—a high level description of what is contained in the 900+ page document.
On page 5 of the Executive Summary we get this interesting statement:
Read More “NY DEC Releases Executive Summary Portion of New Drilling Regs”
Yesterday, New York State Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), Joe Martens, held a press conference to announce the release of new gas drilling regulations for New York, and what will be (eventually) the end of the moratorium for shale gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, as well as other shale gas reserves including the Utica Shale.
Below is a link to the 41-minute press conference so you can watch it for yourself, along with an embedded copy of the slides used by Martens as he spoke.
Read More “Watch NY DEC Press Conference Announcing Release of Draft SGEIS Drilling Regs”