Bad PA Supreme Court Act 13 Decision Comes Home to Roost
The anti-drilling spin machine is in full cycle from the virulent anti-drilling group PennFuture. They’re hoping you won’t notice what we’re about to point out: the rank hypocrisy of a court decision last Friday. PennFuture is out with a press release that’s all peaches and cream, butterflies and unicorns that a (low) county court in Lycoming County has tossed out a drilling permit reviewed and allowed by Fairfield Township against Inflection Energy and landowners Donald and Eleanor Shaheen. PennFuture is billing it as the first test of the PA Supreme Court’s decision to allow local towns to create their own oil and gas zoning ordinances (see PA Supreme Court Rules Against State/Drillers in Act 13 Case). “But, wait a minute!” (you may say), “The Supreme Court said towns can do as they please, right?” Right. “The town decided the well pad was OK, so what’s the deal?” Good question…
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Here comes the next media smear campaign. This time the meme is “You know that lie we’ve been telling about how shale drilling contaminates water wells? Well it was true all along. Here’s the proof!” Case in point: The Associate Press has a single, breathless story of a new list just released by the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) of 243 water wells “contaminated” by Marcellus Shale drilling. We’ve included the list below. These 243 are wells DEP officials believe have been affected by shale drilling after conducting an investigation. Some of the cases are still under investigation but included on the list because the DEP thinks they were likely contaminated by drilling. Is this the smoking gun? Is Marcellus drilling a threat to water after all? As always, MDN is here to provide some much needed perspective…
In the summer of 2012, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) began a groundwater survey in Pike County, PA. Pike, located in northeastern PA, is one of the counties with the dubious distinction of being under the regulatory purview of the Delaware River Basin Commission which has, so far, refused to allow any Marcellus Shale drilling. The survey’s purpose is to provide baseline numbers prior to any Marcellus drilling activity. So, just to be clear, there has been NO drilling thus far in Pike nor anywhere near Pike. And yet, what did the USGS survey, published in July 2014 (full copy below) show? Some 80% of the water wells tested in Pike have “detectable concentrations of methane” and 10% of the wells (2 of the 20 tested) have high levels of methane. Not only that, 85% (!) of the wells tested have (gasp) really high radon levels–over the proposed safe limit of 300 picocuries per liter. One well was as high as 4,500 picocuries! But it gets worse–there’s also measurable quantities of nasty stuff like barium, strontium, and the dreaded chloride (salt). And yet, not a Marcellus Shale well in sight. Now how can that be?…
Last week Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett waded into the thorny issue of whether or not the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) should approve the Williams Tranco pipeline expansion project. Dubbed the Atlantic Sunrise project, the $3 billion project which reaches far beyond just PA, would carry PA Marcellus Shale gas to the East Coast and to southern states (see 
Oh oh. Corporate raider Carl Icahn won’t be happy about this one. MDN told you a month ago that Spanish energy company Repsol was seriously considering buying some, or all, of Canadian company Talisman Energy (see