It seems lately that it’s a rare Democrat who goes on the record to support shale gas drilling, so when it happens, MDN is happy to mention it. U.S. Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia, former governor of that state who won a special election to fill the seat of Robert Byrd, said the following at a recent symposium on natural gas:
Read More “US Sen. Joe Manchin (D) Supports Drilling, Criticizes Obama”
Now that New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Commissioner Joe Martens has let the cat out of the bag that Marcellus and Utica Shale drilling permits will likely not be issued in 2012, the mainstream media has come along to prop him up with excuse stories for why New York will continue to delay drilling—to give Martens political cover for the coming firestorm. The simple fact is, the longer drilling is delayed, the more likely it will never happen—and anti-drillers know it. MDN believes these delays are by design, not an “aw shucks, things are jest turnin’ out this way” as Mr. Martens wants us to believe.
And so Gannett comes out with a story that blames other state agencies for the delay, because Martens’ hand-picked Hydraulic Fracturing Advisory Panel, stacked with anti-drillers, wants other agencies to do its work:
Read More “Martens Blames Other State Agencies for Delay in NY Drilling”
Groups opposed to shale gas drilling have organized to purchase radio advertisements promoting an effort to get residents to write one million letters to Gov. Andrew Cuomo asking him to ban hydraulic fracturing. It’s not entirely clear who is funding the effort.
Read More “NY Anti-Drilling Groups Launch Campaign to Write 1M Letters”
It appears the fine, upstanding protesters of the Occupy Wall Street movement—the same people who want to abolish capitalism and redistribute all wealth from producers to those who won’t work—are prime targets to be recruited to oppose fracking. Birds of a feather…
Read More “Occupy Wall Street Protesters Recruited to Oppose Fracking”
In what is surely a blow to landowners in New York, the Commissioner of the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), Joe Martens, signaled yesterday that drilling permits may not be issued in 2012 as previously hoped. The delay this time comes from the Hydraulic Fracturing Advisory Panel appointed by Martens and stacked with anti-drilling members who supposedly are there to advise Martens on implementing new regulations to allow shale gas drilling (see this MDN story for background on the panel).
It looks like Martens’ strategy of stacking the panel with anti-drillers has paid off and will now delay shale gas drilling beyond 2012. Martens clearly does not want shale gas drilling to proceed in New York. Will this be the final tipping point before landowners take the state to court to demand their property rights stop being violated?
Read More “NY DEC Commissioner Signals Drilling May Not Begin in 2012”
In a purely symbolic gesture, the Syracuse (NY) Common Council yesterday voted to ban the use of hydraulic fracturing inside city limits to drill for natural gas. It’s symbolic because new drilling rules, if ever released in New York, specifically prohibit drilling in the Syracuse watershed area. But politicians like Democrat Kathleen Joy, the driving force for getting the ban adopted, don’t let facts get in the way of political grandstanding.
Those opposed to Marcellus Shale gas drilling in Rush Township (Centre County), PA, including a majority of the supervisors in the township, believe they have found a new and novel way to ban drilling that will skirt state law which says only the state has the right to regulate oil and gas drilling. This new way is to introduce an ordinance that prohibits drilling in any location that is a source for public drinking water supplies on the theory that drilling activity near those sources is a threat to the public.
It’s a stretch, but Rush officials are gambling this new ordinance may succeed where an outright ban on drilling would likely be overturned in court. The end result of an outright ban or this new ordinance will be the same: An almost total ban on shale gas drilling in the township, denying landowners their property rights.
Read More “Rush Township PA Attempts Drilling Ban with Novel Ordinance”
Mt. Airy City Council voted on Oct. 13 to sue the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) to prevent the Commission from allowing hydraulic fracturing to move forward in Mt. Airy.
Read More “Mt Airy PA City Council Sues DRBC to Prevent Fracking”
An interesting tidbit those of us in the U.S. can only salivate over… There is a shale formation in the U.K. that spreads all the way from North Wales (in the south of England) to near the Scottish border in Cumbria (in the north) and well over into Yorkshire as well. That is, it sits under most of the country. But here’s the unique thing about that shale deposit: A couple of exploratory wells drilled by British Gas found the thickness of the shale layer to be 3,000 feet! That is ginormous. By comparison, the Marcellus Shale layer is an average 300 feet thick. The UK shale layer is 10 times that amount. Meaning it holds perhaps 10 times the amount of shale gas as an equivalent section of the Marcellus.
As mentioned yesterday by MDN, the self-appointed Citizens Marcellus Shale Commission—a group made up of liberal and left-leaning environmental and labor groups including the Sierra Club of PA, Penn Environment, Keystone Progress, Clean Water Action and the League of Women Voters—has released a list of recommendations for regulating shale gas drilling in the state. A copy of the 89-page report is embedded below.
Read More “Citizens Marcellus Shale Commission Issues Recommendations”
MDN has chronicled the attempt by Morgantown, WV to ban drilling up to one mile outside of the city line—a saga that spanned many months. In the end, a judge struck down the ban and two wells were drilled and fracked. The main concern was that fracking might somehow contaminate the city’s water supply, which comes from the nearby Monongahela River (something that did not happen). But another concern was that the fracking process might cause air pollution that would affect a nearby elementary school. It seems that fear was also unfounded:
The Center for Rural Pennsylvania is a bipartisan legislative agency serving as a resource and research arm for rural policy in the Pennsylvania Assembly and Senate. The Center has just released the results of a study conducted in 2010 and 2011 analyzing the impacts of Marcellus Shale gas drilling on rural drinking water supplies. This was an unbiased, large scale study of water quality in 233 private water wells in rural Pennsylvania before and after the drilling of nearby Marcellus Shale gas wells. The study results are embedded below.
The study found that dissolved methane exists in about 20 percent of private water wells—before drilling begins. In the executive summary, the study concludes:
Read More “New PA Study: No Link Between Fracking & Water Contamination”
A columnist in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette asks the question, “Should young people consider putting off college in order to work a job in the Marcellus Shale?” And the surprising answer is, “Maybe.” She recounts her random run-in with a young man in the Pittsburgh airport who was flying home to visit his parents, as he does regularly. His job? Laying pipeline in the Marcellus Shale. Her point was that in a time of economic uncertainty like we are in, putting off college for a while and working in the shale gas industry may be the right choice for some young people.
Read More “Some Young People Bypass College for a Marcellus Shale Job”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is signaling their intent to continue overreaching their authority by regulating oil and gas drilling in the U.S., violating states’ constitutional rights to do so themselves. The EPA’s “back door” way of regulating hydraulic fracturing (buying them time while they try to regulate it by the front door with their multi-year study of the process), is by controlling the disposal of wastewater produced during fracking. From the EPA’s press release yesterday:
Read More “EPA to Regulate Shale Gas Drilling via Wastewater Standards”
New York’s passage of new drilling rules to allow for shale gas drilling has had more twists than a Greek tragedy and has taken longer to finish than a death scene in an opera. MDN has asked the rhetorical question, several times, that even IF new rules are passed and permits are issued, will drilling companies bother to show up? See this MDN article from March of this year. Now, others are starting to raise the same question:
Dimock, PA has been a rallying cry for many who oppose shale gas drilling. For those with only a peripheral knowledge of the struggle, the word Dimock conjures up an image of nasty hydraulic fracturing fluids seeping into ground water supplies and contaminating them so they are now undrinkable by humans or animals. But such an image would be wrong.
What happened in Dimock, according to the PA State Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), is that the drilling company Cabot Oil & Gas did not properly case (enclose the bore hole), which led to methane (natural gas) escaping through cracks into the local water supply for area homes. Methane gas in water does not kill when consumed, but it can become an explosion hazard as happened with one local water well in the area.