Posts Tagged ‘federal law’

By Steve Mocarskysmocarsky@timesleader.com
Staff Writer

WILKES-BARRE – A representative of a trade association for the oil and natural gas industry defended her members’ record on environmental issues Tuesday during a meeting with The Times Leader editorial board.

Sara Banaszak, senior economist with the American Petroleum Institute in Washington, D.C., also shared her perspectives on federal regulation and state taxation of the industry.

Banaszak indicated she understands concerns that residents of the region might have, given the legacy of coal barons profiting from the region’s anthracite, disappearing with their profits, and leaving future generations to deal with stripping pits, mine subsidence, acidic streams and lung disease.

“From the industry perspective, no accident and no amount of pollution is acceptable. It’s not sustainable for the industry. If I’m polluting your water, I know I’m going to be tossed out of town in two minutes, so it’s not in my interest,” Banaszak said.

Banaszak said any industrial process can be dangerous, “and anything we do has impacts on the earth. So what we’re trying to do is continuously and on an ongoing basis employ best knowledge, best practices and the technological development and the regulation needed to make sure that we’re getting the best that we can. And the best that we can has to be clean water. We have to have clean water,” she said.

Banaszak said many people don’t realize there is already regulation in place to protect Pennsylvania from water pollution.

“Even if I get a lease, I’m not going to drill a well or even move equipment onto that site until I’ve presented to the state of Pennsylvania a well drilling plan, and a well drilling plan has a water management plan attached to it,” she said.

Much concern has been raised about “fracking” – the hydraulic fracturing of rock to release natural gas.

Banaszak said fracking has been used in the industry since the 1940s. And when the Safe Drinking Water Act was passed in 1974, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found it unnecessary to regulate because it wasn’t threatening drinking water. The manner in which it was being managed at the state level was sufficient to protect drinking water, she said.

Banaszak said problems with the completion of drilling and cementing of wells or poor management of fracking fluid on the surface led to pollution of groundwater, not the fracking process itself. She said more oversight is needed for those practices.

Banaszak said gas companies don’t want to reveal formulas for fracking fluids because they are proprietary. But the industry doesn’t oppose disclosing the proprietary information to state regulators, local authorities and hospitals if the information is kept confidential, she said.

Banaszak said making the EPA responsible for oversight of fracking would require the agency to develop a new oversight program or dramatically overhaul its program regulating underground use of fluids.

A complete overhaul would be a slow process, taking six months to two years to develop a proposal, plus more time for advertising, public comment and developing draft and final plans.

“That’s why there’s so much concern. It’s not a simple matter just to say, oh, we’re just asking under federal law for the disclosure of chemicals,” she said.

Regarding concerns about fracking depleting water supplies, Banaszak said that even at double the peak drilling level in the Barnett Shale in Texas, which is 10 times greater than Marcellus drilling was in 2009, water use would represent only half of what is used for recreational purposes in Pennsylvania, such as golf course and ski slope maintenance.

As for economics, Banaszak said imposing a severance tax on natural gas production could actually hamper economic development.

Although the Marcellus Shale is the second-largest natural gas field in the world, she said other sources are available to investors. She said it seems natural to assume that the state could gain more revenue through taxing natural gas production, but the issue can be counter-intuitive.

“If you impose a tax, you get less investment and the government could see less net revenues. … If you let the situation go, the amount of government revenue you collect could actually be more,” she said.

The pipeline infrastructure in the Northeast is old and difficult to tap, requiring much investment. In West Virginia, where taxes there are 10 percent higher, “you see dramatically low investment,” Banaszak said.

Copyright: Times Leader