Regulation

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

PennEnvironment Says Ban PA Drilling Based on Violations Data
February 9, 2012February 9, 2012

PennEnvironment released a study yesterday of what they call “environmental violations” by Marcellus Shale drillers in Pennsylvania for the past four years (a copy of the study is embedded below). It is a skewed analysis of citations issued by the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) from 2008 to 2011. By PennEnvironment’s own admission, about one-third of the 3,355 DEP violations over the past four years are paperwork-related.

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Chenango County | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Regulation | Statewide NY

Libous, Martens Shoot Down Proposal for Fracking Test
February 8, 2012February 8, 2012

A group of Chenango County, NY officials have come up with a great idea: Use the abandoned Camp Pharsalia prison facility in a very rural part of the county (sits on 52 acres, owned by the state) to drill several test Marcellus and Utica Shale wells, and use it as a living laboratory with everyone involved—the state, the drilling industry, environmental groups and academe. In other words, let’s just test this out to see if there are any problems. The experiment would be a public-private partnership between the state and the drilling industry. Brilliant!

This forward-thinking group submitted their proposal to the state Hydraulic Fracturing Advisory Panel in January:

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

NY DEC Com. Joe Martens Now Says “If” Drilling is Allowed
February 8, 2012February 8, 2012

On Tuesday, New York Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Joe Martens gave testimony at a legislative budget hearing in Albany about the department’s staffing needs for 2012. The conversation turned to the DEC’s lack of a request for additional staffing that would be needed to oversee permits and drilling for shale gas should hydraulic fracturing finally, after four years, be allowed in the state. Once again, Martens’ language is very telling. His responses have moved away from “when” to “if” fracking will be allowed:

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

Green Groups Split on Support for New PA Drilling Law
February 8, 2012February 8, 2012

New drilling legislation, including an impact fee, has passed the Pennsylvania Senate and debate began last night in the PA House. Debate will continue today. Passage is expected this week, perhaps as early as today. As MDN pointed out yesterday, the mostly anti-drilling organization Pennsylvania Environmental Council (PEC) gave the new legislation a lukewarm, half-hearted endorsement as “the best thing we can get right now” (see this MDN story).

However, the mostly anti-drilling Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF), which works closely with the PEC, gave the legislation a more positive endorsement, calling it “a tremendous step forward.” From the CBF press release:

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Broome County | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Regulation | Statewide NY

Is NYS State Senator Tom Libous Reversing Course on Drilling?
February 7, 2012February 7, 2012

Are the political winds shifting in New York State among the politicians that have been staunch supporters of gas drilling? There’s perhaps no stronger supporter among elected politicians in Albany than Tom Libous, a powerful state senator from Binghamton. Sen. Libous is the deputy majority leader of the NYS Senate and a member of the DEC’s Hydraulic Fracturing Advisory Panel (see this MDN story).

So when MDN spotted this quote by Sen. Libous in the New York Times in a story about how the review and approval process for fracking in the state is slowing down, it gives us great pause:

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

PEC’s Lukewarm Statement of Support for New PA Drilling Law
February 7, 2012February 7, 2012

The mostly anti-drilling organization Pennsylvania Environmental Council (PEC) issued an interesting statement yesterday, commenting on new Marcellus drilling legislation that will likely be passed and signed into law this week in PA. Here is the entire press release:

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

NY Fracking Advisory Panel Work Grinds to Halt
February 6, 2012February 6, 2012

As part of the process to enact new drilling regulations in New York State, Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Commissioner Joe Martens appointed a Hydraulic Fracturing Advisory Panel last July to make recommendations to the DEC on how to oversee, monitor and enforce new shale drilling regulations in the state (see this MDN story for background). An important part of the panel’s duty is to craft a new fee structure to generate state revenue from a potential gas-drilling boom. But the work of the panel has now ground to halt.

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Industrywide Issues | Maryland | Regulation | Statewide MD | Wastewater

New Maryland Bill Would Ban Imports of Fracking Wastewater
February 1, 2012February 1, 2012

With the support of anti-drilling group Food & Water Watch, Maryland House of Delegates member Shane Robinson (representing the DC suburb of Montgomery County) has introduced a bill into the Maryland legislature that would ban importing fracking wastewater for treatment in the state.

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Economic Impact | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Jobs | Regulation

Obama Takes Credit for Shale Gas Drilling in Election Year
January 27, 2012January 27, 2012

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed earlier this week (We Don’t Need More Foreign Oil and Gas), Obama supporters and long-time Democrat flacks John Podesta and Tom Steyer tried to make the argument that we don’t need Canada’s oil (and natural gas) because we now have enough of our own, thank you very much. Apparently Obama is getting heat for his disastrous decision to pander to environmental extremists and reject the Keystone XL pipeline that would not only have brought cheap Canadian oil to the U.S. (at a time of record-highs for oil), but also would have brought more U.S. oil to the U.S. from North Dakota’s Bakken field.

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

Obama Speech Gives NYers Hope that Fracking Will Soon Begin
January 26, 2012January 26, 2012

President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, in which he openly supports drilling for natural gas and the “safe” use of hydraulic fracturing, has given a glimmer of hope to landowners in New York State that perhaps the President’s support for fracking will finally end the moratorium on drilling in New York.

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Economic Impact | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Jobs | Regulation

Obama State of the Union: Safe Fracking will Create 600K Jobs
January 25, 2012January 25, 2012

Last night, President Barack Obama delivered his State of the Union address to Congress. Energy and natural gas played a big role in the speech. In particular, Obama acknowledges the jobs-generating power of natural gas drilling, saying it can generate 600,000 jobs by the end of this decade. He also mandated a requirement that gas drillers on public lands disclose the chemicals they use. (Disclosing fracking chemicals is already the law in five states and mostly enforced in a sixth—see this MDN story).

Obama said the U.S. has enough natural gas to last us 100 years and that he’s going to “take every possible action” to develop it. He also reaffirmed his belief in global warming.

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Broome County | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | New York | Regulation

Expert Says Binghamton Fracking Ban is “Legally Dubious”
January 24, 2012January 24, 2012

Robert Alt, a Fellow in Legal and International Affairs at The John M. Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs at Ashland University (Ohio) has written an op-ed article in the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin on the topic of “legally dubious” moratoriums like the one recently passed by the City of Binghamton. Given that according to forthcoming new drilling regulations from the state Department of Environmental Conservation there would be no drilling in Binghamton anyway, Alt asks the question, just what “message” did City Council send?

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Meetings | Regulation

Five States Require Drillers to Use FracFocus.org Registry
January 23, 2012January 23, 2012

FracFocus.org, the national hydraulic fracturing chemical registry where the public can look up information about the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing on a well-by-well basis, is co-sponsoring a “Let’s Talk About It” meeting in Williamsport, PA this Wednesday (see this page for more details). The meeting runs from 5-7:30 pm and will provide details on how hydraulic fracturing works. Note: FracFocus.org via Energy in Depth is currently a sponsor advertising on MDN.

Many drilling companies voluntarily use FracFocus.org to disclose the volumes of chemicals and water they use in the process of fracking, and do so for each well they drill. Four states already require drillers within their borders to use FracFocus.org. You can now add Texas as the fifth state to that list.

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

NY Landowner Coalitions Push Back Against Home Rule Bill
January 20, 2012January 20, 2012

The fight to allow safe natural gas drilling to commence in New York State is being fought on multiple fronts. One of the most prominent groups standing up for landowner rights in New York is the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York (JLCNY). The group is in essence a “coalition of coalitions,” representing 38 landowner coalitions with an aggregate 800,000 acres of land in the Marcellus Shale.

The JLCNY issued the email below, outlining their opposition to yet another attack on drilling in the state—new legislation proposed by State Senator James Seward (Republican) that would tie up drilling in the state by allowing local municipalities to ban and regulate drilling within their borders.

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

Bill to Extend Fracking Moratorium until 2013 Hits NY Senate
January 19, 2012January 19, 2012

As predicted yesterday (see this MDN story), NY State Sen. Greg Ball, a RINO from Putnam County, introduced legislation into the Senate yesterday that would extend the moratorium on hydraulic fracturing in New York until June 1, 2013. Fortunately not many of his colleagues in the Republican-controlled Senate agree with him, making passage of the bill unlikely.

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

PA Gov. Responds to PennFuture Criticism of Marcellus Bills
January 19, 2012January 19, 2012

On Tuesday, the anti-drilling Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future (PennFuture) released a report detailing the problems (from their perspective) with PA Senate Bill 1100 and PA House Bill 1950 which are nearing passage (a copy of the PennFuture report is embedded below). PennFuture’s CEO and president, Jan Jarrett, called on the legislature and Gov. Tom Corbett to throw out the existing bills and instead introduce new, stand alone bills to consider drilling issues separately.

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