Archive for the ‘Pennsylvania Natural Gas Drilling’ Category

Canonsburg, Pa. – Today, the Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC) launched a cutting-edge, interactive website dedicated to connecting job seekers with its member companiesoperating throughout the Marcellus region. The site –MarcellusCoalition.org/site/jobportal.html, which is featured below – offers in-depth descriptions of the broad range of jobs available in the industry, as well as current openings and employment opportunities.

Kathryn Klaber, president and executive director of the MSC, issued the following statement about the industry’s commitment to training and hiring local workers for the thousands of jobs that the shale gas industry is creating throughout the region:

“The responsible development of the Marcellus Shale’s abundant, clean-burning natural gas resources continues to expand throughout the region, helping to fuel a robust and growing supply chain network – the ‘Marcellus Multiplier’ – across the Commonwealth.

“And as this production expands, and the demand for labor and services continues to grow, so too are the tremendous amounts of job opportunities for the region’s workforce. In fact, a recent study conducted by professors from Penn State projects that over the next decade, Marcellus production will create nearly 212,000 new jobs in Pennsylvania alone.

“Our industry is committed to putting Pennsylvanians to work, strengthening our workforce and our economy, and putting our nation on a path toward a cleaner and more secure energy future.”

READ MORE:

• Gas boom economic engine for company: “When a Texas gas company hired Michael Pascuzzi’s earth-moving business to build two water impoundments, he sat down at his desk and cried. The family-owned company had been headed for bankruptcy. ‘We were real close to throwing in the towel,’ said Nicholas Pascuzzi Jr., Michael’s father and president of their McDonald-based company, New Dominion Construction. Marcellus shale saved the company, fresh evidence of how the commercial discovery of gas in the deep shale formation boosted the economy of Western Pennsylvania during a national recession.” (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 9/8/10)
• “Lukewarm adjectives like “modest,” “conservative” and “slight” were the keywords of the Federal Reserve beige book economic forecast released Wednesday. … The prospect of natural gas reserves — and lucrative contracts — in the Marcellus Shale region garnered a shout-out in the report.” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/9/10)
• “Atlas Energy Inc. is among those doing some hiring. The natural-gas producer, based in Moon Township, Pa., has added 160 workers this year, bringing its head count to 680. The company recently played host to a jobs fair at a Pittsburgh-area hotel, where a line to register spilled out of a ballroom and into the lobby.” (Wall Street Journal, 9/4/10)

Copyright http://marcelluscoalition.org/

September 10, 2010

While many regions across the nation, and the Commonwealth, continue to face sluggish economic times and continued job loss, the responsible development of the Marcellus Shale’s clean-burning natural gas resources are driving commerce, and genuine and lasting economic activity, opportunity and job growth.

The benefits of the Marcellus are impacting our local workforce, helping to create tens of thousands of good-paying jobs, and delivering more affordable and stable supplies of homegrown energy to Pennsylvania consumers.

By now, you’ve surely seen, or experienced, this work and its benefits firsthand. On travels to work, church, or to the Weis Market on West Bald Eagle Street, it’s hard not to recognize the increase in truck traffic, and construction on the roads, in and around Clinton County.

In many cases, Marcellus development is responsible for both the traffic and road construction – the two go hand-in-hand.

We understand and recognize the concerns regarding the uptick in truck traffic and its impact on our roads. And we also understand, as good neighbors, that we must do everything to ensure that roads are left in better condition than when our operations began.

So what actions are our industry taking to ensure that this commitment is kept?

This year alone, the Marcellus Shale industry will invest more than $100 million to repair and repave roads in the communities we operate in – and in virtually every case, we’re rebuilding these roads to higher standards, ensuring their ability to handle the increased traffic and weight. These upgrades and repairs are done overwhelmingly by local contractors, another example of our industry’s robust and growing supply chain – the “Marcellus Multiplier'” – helping to give a much-needed shot in the arm to local businesses and to our workforce.

But not only are these commonsense infrastructure investments the responsible thing to do, and are in most cases required by PennDOT, but it’s also in our companies’ interests to ensure that roads remain intact, passable and safe so that our trucks can access sites.

In fact, each Marcellus operator must submit, and subsequently have approved, an exhaustive road management plan to PennDOT, making certain that road management and reconstruction plans are in place.

And as part of this comprehensive plan, operators are required to “bond” each section of a given road where their trucks may travel. Trucks are only permitted to travel on roads that are bonded, and are part of an approved PennDOT road management plan. This brings forth increased, and needed, oversight and transparency.

It’s also important to understand that, according to PennDOT, “no additional tax dollars are needed for necessary road repairs due to increased” Marcellus development.

A good example of this system at work is the recently completed Route 664/Coudersport Pike project. Late last month, the road cones disappeared and the construction signs came down along that five-mile stretch. With a price tag of $1.2 million, this upgrade project was funded by two natural gas companies. Our industry will continue to make similar multi-million dollar infrastructure investments across the Commonwealth, as Marcellus development expands.

And as we work to repair, repave and rebuild our roads, we are also taking commonsense steps – driven by advancements in technology – to reduce the volume of overall truck traffic.

Approximately 1,500 truck-trips are required to develop a single Marcellus well. Of those 1,500 trips, nearly 1,000 are water tankers. The development of alternative water transportation systems to our sites is just one of several technologies that would reduce truck traffic.

At the same time, our industry is now recycling more than 60 percent of the water used throughout this process – some companies are recycling 100 percent of their water. These proven technologies, which continue to advance by the day, are dramatically reducing our overall water usage, and therefore allowing our industry to markedly reduce our overall truck traffic and road use.

But there’s much more to do, and we recognize this.

Mitigating and restoring the wear and tear on roads associated with Marcellus development is a responsibility we take very seriously; we’re committed to addressing this issue, and others, directly and straightforwardly. And in addition to our ongoing road restoration efforts, the Marcellus Shale Coalition is working with local officials and state regulators to craft solutions aimed at ensuring Pennsylvania’s roads are properly maintained and safe for everyone.

That’s one reason why the MSC is partnering with the PennDOT, the state police, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, and other key transportation officials, for a Marcellus Transportation symposium on Oct. 12 in State College. The event, open to drivers, company safety coordinators or anyone with direct involvement with the transportation component of drilling operations, is focused on better educating “carriers and truck drivers supporting the natural gas industry of Pennsylvania’s regulations to improve their safe operating practices.”

Our commitment to each and every Pennsylvanian from the outset has been simple, and it’s something that our industry reinforced in a recent Express column, as part of our ongoing dialogue: “We are committed to working tirelessly each day to be good stewards of our land and waterways. We are also taking steps to ensure our operations minimize disruptions and risks in and near energy-producing communities. After all, our families live in these areas too.”

—

Kathryn Klaber is the president and executive director of the Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC), an industry group that represents shale gas producers and can be found on the web atwww.marcelluscoalition.org.

Copyright: The Express , Lock Haven, PA

By Steve McConnell (Staff Writer)
Published: September 10, 2010

Economic development organizations and landowner groups in Wayne County issued a stinging criticism Thursday against the Delaware River Basin Commission for enacting a moratorium on natural gas drilling and causing a deep negative economic impact by effectively halting development.

The pro-drilling groups, including landowners’ alliances that have secured more than 100,000 acres in Wayne County for gas development and the Wayne County Chamber of Commerce, also warned the commission not to develop stringent regulations that would exceed current state environmental regulations because it could deter companies from operating there.

“We want to get the debate started and put our position out,” said Peter Wynne, spokesman, Northern Wayne Property Owners Alliance. “We expect there is going to be a degree of severity that exceeds” the state Department of Environmental Protection.

The commission, which has regulated water resources in the four-state area that drains into the Delaware River since 1961, including a large swath of eastern Pennsylvania, has been developing its own environmental regulations over the industry in light of an increased interest in drilling for natural gas in the watershed.

While Marcellus Shale drilling is accelerating throughout the state and regionally in Susquehanna and Bradford counties, there are no producing wells in out the 13,539-square-mile Delaware River Basin, though Wayne County has lured multimillion-dollar land-leasing investments from several natural gas companies since 2007. The Northern Wayne Property Owners Alliance, encompassing 100,000 acres mostly north of Honesdale, finalized a land-lease agreement valued at a more than $100 million with New York City-based Hess Corp. and Houston-based Newfield Exploration Co. in late 2009.

Meanwhile, the commission enacted a drilling moratorium in May, in particular on production wells, but is allowing 10 exploratory wells to go forward in Wayne County while the regulations are developed.

The moratorium caused Newfield Exploration Co. and Hess Corp. to halt land-lease payments until the drilling ban is lifted. This could amount to the loss of $220 million in payments to leaseholders – not including royalties on producing natural gas wells – if Newfield and Hess Corp. decided to pull out of Wayne County, Mr. Wynne has said.

The pro-drilling groups’ 10-page letter, which was widely distributed to federal, state and local government officials Thursday and to the five-member commission board, urges the commission to consider the “unparalleled economic opportunities” gas drilling could yield while urging them to avoid the “infinite costs” associated with stiff environmental regulations. It also cites the poor state of the economy in Wayne County, a largely rural area with little to no economic growth in recent years, and how gas drilling could solve these “severe” challenges.

The letter also includes a series of recommendations the commission should take in its effort to regulate the industry. Efforts to reach Wayne County economic development officials were unsuccessful.

Nevertheless, the river basin commission believes it must protect the integrity of the Delaware River watershed – home to the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area and part of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System – while allowing natural gas drilling to occur.

Commission spokesman Clarke Rupert said the agency is trying to ensure that water used by an estimated 15 million people in four states is not negatively impacted by the industry, and criticism of their efforts to ensure that is unfair.

“Do you want to do it quickly … or to get it right? Our approach is to get it right,” Mr. Rupert said. Mr. Rupert said that he does not know what the makeup of the regulations will be, in part because once draft regulations are published it will undergo a series of public comment and public hearing periods that may tweak its final form.

The commission hopes to adopt final regulations by the end of this year, although that is subject to change.

Contact the writer: smcconnell@timesshamrock.com

View article here.

Copyright:  The Scranton Times

By Laura Legere (Staff Writer)
Published: September 9, 2010

Marcellus Shale gas wells in Northeast and Northcentral Pennsylvania led the state in natural gas production last year, exceeding even industry predictions about the promise of the gas-rich shale, according to well production data released for the first time by the state.

In the 12 months between July 1, 2009. and June 30, 2010, the state’s 632 producing Marcellus wells released 180 billion cubic feet of gas – an amount that more than doubles Pennsylvania’s annual natural gas production from the years before the shale exploration began.

The well-by-well data were released for the first time since the governor signed a law in March that required Marcellus operators to report their production totals every six months and eliminated a provision that would have kept the data confidential for five years.

The production data posted on the Department of Environmental Protection’s website appeared much earlier than the Nov. 1 date the department set for making the information available online. It provides the first public look at how much gas the booming industry is pulling from the shale that underlies three-fifths of the state.

Eight of the 10 wells that produced the largest volume of gas last year are in Susquehanna County, including the top well – Chesapeake Appalachia LLC’s Clapper 2H well in Auburn Twp. – which produced 2.8 billion cubic feet of gas over 270 days. Of the top 20 producing wells, all but one are in Susquehanna, Bradford or Tioga counties.

Raymond Deacon, an analyst with Pritchard Capital Partners LLC, sorted the wells’ production depending on how long they were on line in order to measure their performance.

“It seemed like in every case, all the counties in the Northeast really stood out as being among the strongest in terms of production,” he said.

“It shows the Northeast looks much more prolific in terms of how much you’re getting out of the wells.”

Terry Engelder, a geosciences professor at Penn State University who studies the Marcellus Shale, said the production reports show that the expected ultimate recovery for the wells – the cumulative amount of gas each well will produce – is going to exceed predictions made by the industry in the earliest days of the shale exploration.

Dr. Engelder compared the average cumulative production for Marcellus wells drilled horizontally in the shale in a five-county core area in the Northcentral and Northeast part of the state last year to predictions about the average cumulative production of Marcellus wells released by Chesapeake Energy to investors in 2008.

The actual numbers last year surpassed the company’s expectations, even though “expectations were quite high,” Dr. Engelder said.

“Everybody is going to be happy with these numbers,” he said. “These numbers are huge.”

John Harper, chief of the mineral resources division of the Pennsylvania Geological Survey, noted that the Marcellus wells that produced gas in the last fiscal year averaged almost 2 million cubic feet per day – “a lot better” than the earliest dozen or so Marcellus wells in the state that produced an average of only 89,000 cubic feet per day.

“The amount of Marcellus natural gas reported is very encouraging,” he said.

The production numbers also help create a fuller picture of the economic potential of the shale.

The Marcellus gas produced in the state last year was worth about $720 million, Dr. Engelder said – a large number but much less than the cost of drilling and developing the wells.

Matt Pitzarella, a spokesman for Range Resources, which reported a total production of about 35 billion cubic feet of natural gas and 402,000 barrels of natural gas liquids last year, said the report indicates what the industry believed, “which is that it is a very large natural gas discovery and could be one of the largest anywhere when it’s all said and done. It’s just going to take time.”

Mr. Pitzarella added that the “very promising” production numbers in the report represent the earliest stages of the shale development, and it will still take several years for each well to break even.

“It’s very much a long-term investment,” he said.

Mr. Harper pointed out the production data’s implications for a state severance tax on the shale gas, which the legislature plans to adopt by Oct. 1.

If a 5 percent tax had been levied on the value of all Marcellus gas produced last fiscal year, it would have earned the state around $40.5 million, he said.

Contact the writer: llegere@timesshamrock.com

View article here.

Copyright:  The Scranton Times

Tribune-Review
When a Texas gas company hired Michael Pascuzzi’s earth-moving business to build two water impoundments, he sat down at his desk and cried. The family-owned company had been headed for bankruptcy.

Tribune-Review
When a Texas gas company hired Michael Pascuzzi’s earth-moving business to build two water impoundments, he sat down at his desk and cried. The family-owned company had been headed for bankruptcy.

By Elizabeth Skrapits (Staff Writer)
Published: September 7, 2010

TUNKHANNOCK – Four natural gas companies have leased mineral rights to substantial portions of land throughout Wyoming County, and all four have exploratory gas wells under way.

Depending on what those wells produce, the county could be on the brink of a potential natural gas boom.

“It’s beginning. It’s starting,” said Phillip Corey of Carrizo Marcellus LLC.

Carrizo is one of the four Cs: the gas companies most active in Wyoming County. The others are Chesapeake Appalachia LLC; Chief Oil & Gas LLC and Citrus Energy Corp.

The State Department of Environmental Protection’s active well inventory as of Aug. 30 shows wells are in various stages of progress for Carrizo in Washington Township; Chesapeake in Braintrim, Mehoopany, Meshoppen, Northmoreland, Washington and Windham townships; Chief in Forkston, Mehoopany, Monroe and Nicholson townships; and Citrus in Mehoopany and Washington townships.

However, only a few wells have been completed, and in some cases, natural gas production could be months away.

Carrizo: Seeking permits

Corey said Carrizo’s first natural gas well in Wyoming County, in Washington Township, is under way. The drilling rig arrived at the site Aug. 30, he said.

Carrizo also has two drilling sites picked out further south: one on a parcel owned by Barbara Shields in Monroe Township and one on the Sordoni family’s Sterling Farms in Noxen, not far from the Luzerne County border.

Corey didn’t know exactly when operations will commence at those sites, but does anticipate making preparations for drilling before inclement weather sets in, and to be “out drilling some time this winter.”

“We did file for our permits,” he said. “Now we’re waiting on the state to grant the various permits we’re going to need before we can drill.”

Besides permission from DEP, Carrizo will need a highway occupancy permit from Pennsylvania Department of Transportation to construct an access road off Route 29 for the Shields site, according to Corey. Carrizo also has to get Wyoming County planning and zoning approval.

Chief: Ready but reviewing

Drilling started on July 7 for Chief Oil & Gas’s first well in Wyoming County, on land owned by the Polovitch family in Nicholson Township. However, it has not yet been hydraulically fractured, Chief Spokeswoman Kristi Gittins said.

Hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” involves blasting millions of gallons of water deep underground to crack the shale and release the natural gas. Wells must be fracked in order to produce.

Gittins said it could take weeks or even months before the well is fracked. In new areas, Chief typically takes more time after drilling before scheduling the fracking, in order to gather and review information.

“There is no readily available pipeline for Marcellus wells in Wyoming (County) yet either, so even when a well is drilled and fracked and has shown that gas can be produced, it will still be months before any gas gets on a pipeline and off to market and any royalties paid,” she said.

One of the wells permitted and ready to be drilled is on Robert Longmore’s Noxen farm, but it’s too early to determine when work will start, according to Gittins.

“None of them are on the drilling schedule at this time so the earliest would likely be end of this year,” she said.

“But my canned statement is ‘drilling schedules change frequently.’ Bottom line, the wells are permitted and we could move a rig in any time. Moving in a rig to drill is not a process that goes unnoticed, and we are open with our plans and talking to the public about them.”

Chief holds public meetings to introduce the company to the community; it also holds informational meetings with local emergency responders and municipal officials, gives tours of its operations, and has participated with counties in starting gas drilling task force groups, Gittins said.

“Once we know more about our plans in Wyoming (County), we will schedule a community meeting,” she said.

Chesapeake: Preparing

Throughout the summer, Chesapeake has been filing hundreds of leases in the Wyoming County recorder of deeds office.

However, company spokesmen would not comment on future plans for expansion, although they did note that two wells have already been drilled and four more sites are in the works.

DEP records show that drilling started Aug. 27, 2009 on Chesapeake’s Skoronski well in Northmoreland Township, and on March 9 for the company’s Cappucci well in Mehoopany.

“In the coming year, operations in the county are expected to continue,” Brian Grove, Chesapeake’s senior director for corporate development, stated in an e-mail.

Citrus: Squeezing further

Steve Myers, director of Land and Legal Affairs for Citrus, said the company is drilling five wells in the Mehoopany and Washington Township area in partnership with Procter & Gamble, and now is looking to move into Meshoppen. He said Citrus is “just kind of moving out a step away from existing production.”

“We’ll go across the (Susquehanna) river to the west, drill on that side,” Myers said. “We’ll be all over that tri-township area.”

He stressed that expansion will depend upon success.

Looking to Luzerne

Myers confirmed that other natural gas companies, particularly those drilling in the southern municipalities in Wyoming County, are keeping an eye on what happens with Encana Oil & Gas USA Inc.

Encana has started drilling the first of two planned exploratory wells in Luzerne County at a site owned by Edward Buda off Route 118 in Fairmount Township. Site preparation is nearing completion for the second well, on Paul and Amy Salansky’s Zosh Road property in Lake Township.

Geologists, including Penn State professor and Marcellus Shale expert Terry Engelder, say there tends to be less natural gas around anthracite coal-producing areas. Route 118 is generally considered to be the dividing line, below which the natural gas has mostly been “cooked” out of the shale, but above which it is plentiful.

If Encana is successful in drilling so far south, it will encourage other natural gas companies, Myers believes.

But there’s an eastern boundary to watch out for, too: Wayne and Lackawanna counties may not be fruitful, according to Myers.

“There’s a line in there somewhere. As things progress and people drill closer to it, it will have more definition,” he said.

eskrapits@citizensvoice.com, 570-821-2072

View article here.

Copyright:  The Citizens Voice

By Laura Legere (Staff Writer)
Published: September 3, 2010

The growing Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling industry is taking hold in Northeast Pennsylvania, but the state’s newest economic player is not yet big enough in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre/Hazleton metro area to save the region from recording disappointing unemployment numbers in July.

Joblessness for the metro area has increased to a seasonally adjusted 10.4 percent – far higher than the seasonally adjusted 7.6 percent unemployment rate in Bradford County, a hotbed of Marcellus Shale drilling where unemployment dropped nearly 1 percentage point since last July.

Teri Ooms, executive director of the Institute for Public Policy and Economic Development, said the industry did not improve the region’s unemployment numbers because much of the drilling activity is not happening in Lackawanna and Luzerne counties.

She expects that active drilling in Wyoming County – the third county in the metropolitan statistical area – will spur some improvement in future unemployment numbers.

“I consider Lackawanna to be adjacent to the core drilling counties at this point,” she said. “There will be some residual employment improvement” because of that proximity, she said, but “we’re not going to see an immediate impact.”

She added that as the closest urban centers to drilling in more rural counties, Scranton and Wilkes-Barre will benefit from the influx of drilling nearby.

“People don’t do all of their living and working and procuring of goods and services within a single jurisdiction,” she said.

One factor that will improve the employment picture for local workers looking for jobs connected to the industry is the expansion of area training centers and programs for Marcellus Shale jobs.

Lackawanna, Johnson and Keystone colleges have all begun offering courses, programs and other training for industry-related jobs, while Pathstone, a human services agency, is coordinating training for more than 200 people in welding and diesel mechanics for jobs in the industry.

At Johnson College, which recently reopened its Welding Training Center after an eight-year hiatus, three students are currently in a four-month certificate program to learn the welding skills necessary for natural gas pipelines, Continuing Education Director Marie Allison said.

The college also is taking applications for its next session, which will begin in September.

But it takes time for welders to be trained in a new skill, and more time for them to master it, which means new gas industry welders will not be able to match the pay grade and ability of workers being brought in from other drilling states immediately, she said.

Once trained, local welders will be able to transfer their skills to other industries in the region even as drilling activity moves to other parts of the state or country.

“They won’t have to take (those skills) to other states,” she said. “They could stay local.”

Contact the writer: llegere@timesshamrock.com

View article here.

Copyright:  The Scranton Times

The rapid expansion of natural gas drilling across the nation endangers human health and the environment.

The oil and gas industry is seeking to expand natural gas production across the nation, as new technology makes it easier to extract gas from previously inaccessible sites. Over the last decade, the industry has drilled thousands of new wells in the Rocky Mountain region and in the South. It is expanding operations in the eastern United States as well, setting its sights most recently on a 600-mile-long rock formation called the Marcellus Shale, which stretches from West Virginia to western New York.

Nearly all natural gas extraction today involves a technique called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in which dangerous chemicals are mixed with large quantities of water and sand and injected into wells at extremely high pressure. Fracking is a suspect in polluted drinking water in Arkansas, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming, where residents have reported changes in water quality or quantity following fracturing operations.

In the Marcellus Shale region, drilling is already well under way in parts of Pennsylvania, as well as in Ohio and West Virginia. Communities in Pennsylvania, where outdated regulations fail to cover high-tech drilling, have seen some of the worst impacts of natural gas extraction, including exploding water wells, contaminated water supplies, foul air, and reported human and animal illnesses. Even when done in compliance with existing regulations, natural gas production brings with it toxic waste, diesel fumes, traffic and wall-rattling noise, and transforms rural communities into industrial zones. Stronger regulations are needed to ensure adequate protections from the risks of gas drilling, and to control the rate and scale of development.

Irresponsible energy development in the Rocky Mountain West is also taking a toll on public wild lands, which provide vital wildlife habitat and are a source of pure air and clean drinking water. These irreplaceable ecological resources are threatened by air pollution, habitat destruction and water contamination caused by the recent expansion of natural gas drilling. More than 25 million acres of wildlife habitat in the West have been leased by the Bureau of Land Management, and could potentially be opened to drilling. In one area of Wyoming, as drilling activity increased, mule deer numbers declined by 30 percent from 2000 to 2007.

Despite the risks to human health and the environment, New York State is rapidly moving forward to allow fracking in its Marcellus Shale region, which stretches from the southern tier of the state into the Catskills, and includes the west-of-Hudson portion of the New York City watershed. This highly sensitive landscape provides pure, unfiltered drinking water for more than 9 million New Yorkers.

Allowing fracking in this region without first taking a good, hard look at the risks endangers private water supplies, air quality and landscapes across the state. Other states, including Pennsylvania, are scrambling to put more protective regulations in place after drilling has begun, but New York is in a unique position to be proactive and protect the health of local communities and valuable natural resources.

NRDC is fighting to protect communities across the country from the pollution caused by natural gas production. By tightening loopholes in our bedrock environmental laws, banning drilling on sensitive lands and requiring the most stringent regulatory requirements wherever production does take place, we can help protect critical water supplies and other precious resources and keep our communities safe and healthy.

Copyright NRDC

• MSC president: “It’s important for listeners to understand more and more about this industry, and really get the facts, because this has been done safely for years and years.”
• MSC president: “The Safe Drinking Water Act never was the venue for which we regulated hydraulic fracturing processes in this country. It’s regulated by the states, and has been for as long as it has been regulated.”
• Radio host: “I was in Bradford County last weekend and must say that the gas companies look like they’re keeping everything looking nice and clean, building new roads.”

Canonsburg, Pa. – Yesterday, Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC) president Kathryn Klaber appeared on WKOK’s “On The Mark” program to discuss a host of issues regarding the responsible development of clean-burning, job-creating natural gas from the Marcellus Shale formation. Below are key excerpts from the interview, which is available on-line HERE (40:13–1:02:52).

On the MSC’s Community Outreach, Supply Chain Opportunities

• “It’s a really exciting time for the industry. There’s a huge interest around all sorts of businesses who see opportunities here to add new products, to strengthen the supply chain, in working alongside the drillers and the midstream companies. … We’re also working on quite a few public appearances. … It’s important for listeners and viewers and readers to understand more and more about this industry, and really get the facts, because this has been done safely for years and years. And I can let you know that the Marcellus Coalition is working hard to make sure it’s done right for years to come.”

On Modernizing Pa.’s Outdated Legislative, Regulatory Framework

• “Making sure that as we upgrade the different standards to reflect the current technologies that our members are brining that technical expertise to the table to do it in a way that really does it right. … It’s really important that we have a competitive framework and a competitive tax in place. … And for Pennsylvania, being a shining star in the national shale revolution, we want to make sure that there’s not a tax put in place that takes us out of that status, and makes it over punitive to do business here. And that’s really the same as any business person in Pennsylvania would expect, and deserve as well. Paying taxes is part of what businesses do, but you want to do it in a way that does not make you uncompetitive in what is more and more everyday a global and national marketplace.”

On Hydraulic Fracturing and the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA)

• “There is an extreme amount of misinformation about the Safe Drinking Water Act. The SDWA never was the venue for which we regulated the process of how water was used in hydraulic fracturing processes in this country. It’s regulated by the states, and has been for as long as it has been regulated. … We have the distinct daily exposure to the many regulatory professionals who are working in all of these companies, both with well drilling companies, well service companies, and the many environmental consulting firms, who are the members of our coalition. And those folks are implementing the dozens of laws that apply to every step of the process. … We’d be glad to show anyone the level of reports and the level of monitoring, the constant tracking of all the water that’s managed throughout this process.”

On GasLand, Shallow Methane Migration, and Pa.’s Private Water Wells

• “I do believe its entertainment. … [PA DEP] Secretary John Hanger had called it “propaganda.” It’s very easy to show certain images, and not talk about what is the science behind it. For example, the northern tier in Pennsylvania has long had naturally occurring methane in the shallow surface area. It’s a problem when it contaminates private water wells. … That has nothing to do with the shale gas, that’s 8,000 feet below the surface. Is it a problem, absolutely. Does it result in being able to light taps on fire? I understand that’s the case. That is certainly not anything that has to do with shale gas development, and has everything to do with an issue that we really need to address in Pennsylvania, separate and apart from what this new [Marcellus] opportunity means for Pennsylvanians.”

On DEP’s Claims that Half of the Marcellus Operators Failed to Meet Reporting Deadlines

• “The industry supported a law passed by the General Assembly and signed by the governor that created more transparency into what’s called the “production data.” We didn’t have that in Pennsylvania and thought it was a great idea, which gives greater transparency to all involved — and helps move the industry into the next level of modernization. …  August 15^th was the first ever filing date for that kind of data. When I saw that information I immediately reached out to our membership and … with the agency to correct some of the significant pieces of misinformation on that release. There is a majority of names on the list that have not even had production during the reporting period. There was no indication that “zero” should be reported, and we’ve since talked about what the industry needs [to do] when there is “zero” production.”

On Midstream Development, Moving Marcellus Gas to Pa. Consumers

• “We’ve had natural gas wells in Pennsylvania for generations, and that gas travels through what are called gathering lines, and then they go to the transmission lines. Part of the business, called the downstream part, is what sells you or I the gas for our homes or business. … So what’s happening, as larger quantities are being developed from a single well pad than before, is new gathering line infrastructure is being put in place. … Gathering lines are kind of like our neighborhood streets. It’s not the highway; those are the transmission lines. And it’s not our driveway, which just takes the gas from the ground to the wells on site. Those companies are also very integrated in what’s going on in Pennsylvania right now, and work for years, in many cases, with local landowners to make sure that that gas can get to market.”

Copyright MarcellusCoalition.org