tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-69498649493163118832024-03-15T18:10:10.616-07:00Shale Gas ReviewA blog by Tom Wilber, journalist and author covering Marcellus and Utica shale gas developmentTOM WILBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103105549852845055noreply@blogger.comBlogger189125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6949864949316311883.post-32819056587830478432015-06-30T11:06:00.000-07:002015-07-01T05:37:17.328-07:00Under the Surface update tells backstory of NY frack ban Findings statement denouement of environmental epicOn July 23, 2008, New York Governor David Paterson signed a bill authorizing his Department of Environmental Conservation to adjust regulations to accommodate shale gas wells in New York.<br />
<br />
The bill was drafted by the DEC. But it was designed around the needs of industry to speed the processing of permits. Because the subterranean footprint for a shale gas well, which runs horizontally, is much larger than a conventional, vertically-drilled well, larger spacing units were necessary to determine the distribution of royalties along the property boundaries above.<br />
<br />
The “spacing bill,” as it was known, was essentially a mapping function and did not regulate the mechanics of drilling. But without it, each permit would require a variance – a process that would require public hearings for each well, opening the door for a new set of problems for the industry.<br />
<br />
Back in the summer of 2008, conventional wisdom held that shale gas would proceed in New York sooner or later, and the spacing bill was clear evidence that the state was ready to pave the way. But Paterson’s signature came with a catch. Responding to an upwelling of opposition from grass roots environmental and community groups, Paterson directed the DEC to determine whether other aspects of the state’s regulatory framework were suitable to protect the environment and communities in an impending era of unconventional drilling. Until the review was complete, permits would be put on hold.<br />
<br />
We all know these events culminated in the announcement of a ban late last year. But the issue was officially put to rest Monday -- six years, 11 months and 24 days after Paterson ordered the review -- with the release of the DEC’s “findings statement.”<br />
<br />
The <a href="http://www.dec.ny.gov/docs/materials_minerals_pdf/findingstatehvhf62015.pdf" target="_blank">statement</a> found “potential significant adverse environmental and public health impacts associated with high-volume hydraulic fracturing operations.” State oversight could not provide sufficient safeguards against the risks “under any scenario” including “an extensive suite of mitigation measures.” In justifying a ban, the report also cites “limited economic and social benefits” of fracking.<br />
<br />
In short: too much risk, too little gain.<br />
<br />
The findings statement serves as denouement to a long string of events with which most people who feel passionately about the issue are undoubtedly familiar, but are easy to loose sight of over the course of a seven-year environmental epic.<br />
<br />
As it happens, the release of a findings statement coincides with an updated edition of <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Under-Surface-Fracking-Fortunes-Marcellus/dp/0801456541/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=" target="_blank">Under the Surface</a></i>. My book, released today in paperback with a new chapter, provides the backstory to this latest development. After a journey from the printers to <a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/" target="_blank">Cornell University Press</a>’s warehouse, readers can now find it in bookstores and online in digital and print format.<br />
<br />
One of the more difficult aspects of writing a non-fiction narrative is anticipating events that may affect the outcome of the story.<br />
<br />
The fracking story, of course, is full of stories within stories that are compelling and dramatic. I found plenty of them – from all sides of the issue -- to carry the narrative in the original edition, released at the height of fracking frenzy in the summer of 2012. As readers know, the narrative takes readers back and forth across the border of New York and Pennsylvania, following a cast of characters in each state both influencing and caught up in very different story lines. In Pennsylvania, the shale gas boom was allowed to proceed with gusto. In New York, Paterson’s policy review put it on hold, and led to events that made the state’s pending policy decision the centerpiece of one of the biggest environmental movements since Love Canal.<br />
<br />
The first edition of <i>Under the Surface </i>ends in Pennsylvania with residents of Carter Road locked in a lawsuit against Cabot Oil and Gas over polluted water wells. The Environmental Protection Agency is about to intervene with its own investigation of the problem – setting up a conflict involving the federal government, the state, the industry, and local residents.<br />
<br />
In New York, meantime, the anti-fracking movement -- drawing from events unfolding in Pennsylvania -- is reaching a critical mass of grass roots and institutional activism, while a gas company that already paid farmers in Deposit millions of dollars to lease their land seeks legal means to extend the leases and wait out the moratorium.<br />
<br />
I tell both of these stories a in new chapter called Turf Wars, and a new epilogue called The Final Say.<br />
<br />
The Home Rule movement – which eventually established a community’s right to determine land use over New York State’s authority to permit shale gas development -- is central to the outcome in New York and a fascinating story in itself. It unfolded in the small towns of Dryden and Middlefield and other upstate localities, and led to a landmark decision by the state’s high court that gave Governor Andrew Cuomo important legal and political leverage for the eventual fracking ban.<br />
<br />
In Pennsylvania, the story is less about David v. Goliath than Goliath v. the Federal Government. The intervention of the EPA in the case of Dimock water pollution ends with a very different but no less influential outcome.<br />
<br />
Is it possible that residents of small towns appealing to their town-board have more influence in directing the course of the shale gas juggernaut than the federal government? It’s a question that communities sitting over shale reserves throughout the country are asking, or should be asking.<br />
<br />
There is much more to be said about this, and the people and personalities involved in directing the outcomes in <i>Under the Surface</i> are as interesting as the outcomes themselves.<br />
<br />
Happy reading.<br />
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TOM WILBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103105549852845055noreply@blogger.com30tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6949864949316311883.post-8502642331095551092015-03-09T09:04:00.002-07:002015-03-09T09:07:29.044-07:00More to come...<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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I’m working on non-shale gas assignments through May 2015.</div>
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Look for posts here again prior to the release of the
updated version <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Under the Surface</i>,
due out in paperback in June from Cornell University Press. The new release
will include chapters on the Home Rule movement and other factors that shaped
policy in New York, and EPA investigations in Dimock Pennsylvania and elsewhere
that sparked a national fight over industry control.</div>
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-- Tom Wilber</div>
<!--EndFragment-->TOM WILBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103105549852845055noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6949864949316311883.post-45443259357489440022014-12-23T07:58:00.000-08:002014-12-23T08:12:55.905-08:00More on the history of New York’s fracking banI accepted a recent assignment for the Press & Sun-Bulletin – recounting how fracking was stopped in New York – with feelings of both eagerness and uneasiness. <br />
<br />
Eagerness was due to having a chance to recap the history of a story I have been covering for seven years. The uneasiness stemmed from how I would do this in a newspaper-length article on a 48-hour deadline. <br />
<br />
The results ran both in abbreviated and longer versions in the Press & Sun-Bulletin, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Under-Surface-Fracking-Fortunes-Marcellus/dp/0801450160" target="_blank">Pressconnects,</a> and <a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2014/12/how-fracking-got-stopped-in-new-york.html" target="_blank">this blog</a>. The long version was 3,700 words -- about 10 times the length of a standard newspaper article. But it was still short considering the scope of the subject. By comparison, I needed more than 90,000 words to tell the story more comprehensively in my book, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Under-Surface-Fracking-Fortunes-Marcellus/dp/0801450160" target="_blank">Under the Surface. </a></i><br />
<br />
The key players that have shaped New York’ story from the onset number well into the hundreds, and I had space to reference perhaps a dozen in the newspaper piece. Not surprisingly, I have heard feedback from people that my story lacked some perspective. As one source put it, the story of the battle has become the battle for the story.<br />
<br />
Two readers touched on particular events relating to a bill, signed by Gov. Paterson in 2008, that was the catalyst for events to follow. The bill would make spacing units for the large unconventional Marcellus gas wells conformable with existing state policy — a move that would effectively streamline the permitting process. Without it, shale gas development would get hung-up on an administrative process designed for the much smaller conventional wells. <br />
<br />
The bill was the kind of wonkish-policy instrument that few lay people have the appetite for, and one that induces migraines to reporters writing for mainstream audiences. But it was also the sort of under-the-radar document that offers stakeholders who master it a strategic advantage in influencing important decisions. In this case, it was a necessary component for the gas industry to get things moving in New York. While this policy-making was different from the grass roots aspect of the movement that I report on, the bill ended up being a notable reference point and precursor to the anti-fracking movement. <br />
<br />
Although the bill passed overwhelmingly, Assemblywoman Donna Lupardo and a small group of her colleagues voted against, she said, to “send a message to Paterson.” At the same time, she added, “local and statewide activists raised red flags about what this bill would do to speed up the process as well. That helped put the brakes on the whole matter.” <br />
<br />
Paterson ordered a hold on permitting pending an environmental review when he signed the bill. But the bill had, for the record, a certain symbolic relevance. More importantly, it was a magnet for organizational involvement in state affairs that, by some accounts, was a forerunner of the anti-fracking movement. <br />
<br />
Roger Downs, a program director with the Sierra Club, noted that several environmental organizations were among the first to recognize the significance of this spacing bill, and engage and challenge the DEC about what its impact would be.These groups included the Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter, Catskill Mountainkeeper, Riverkeeper, Delaware Riverkeeper Network, Natural Resources Defense Council, Catskill Center for Conservation and Development, The Wilderness Society and Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy, Damacus Citizens for Sustainability. (I’m sure I am leaving some out.)<br />
<br />
Now, moving on to an altogether different thread of the story, Chip Northrup, the drilling-investor-turned-fractivist, offers another critical aspect of the story’s history: economics. <br />
<br />
Northrup writes: <br />
<br />
<blockquote>
We can summarize why fracking was prohibited in New York with a simple construct – the cost/ benefit ratio – what the environmental risks and economic costs would be to the state and it citizens versus the benefits of shale gas industrialization. Initially, this ratio appeared to tilt very much in favor of fracking – at least in the popular press and in the corridors of power – because the gas industry had grossly overstated the benefits of shale gas development while categorically denying the risks and collateral damage associated with it.</blockquote>
<br />
You can read Northrup’s <a href="http://www.nofrackingway.us/2014/12/21/a-brief-history-of-the-new-york-frack-ban-movement/">full post here</a>.<br />
<br />
I am currently finishing an updated version of <i><a href="http://www.nofrackingway.us/2014/12/21/a-brief-history-of-the-new-york-frack-ban-movement/" target="_blank">Under the Surface, Fracking Fortunes and the Fate of the Marcellus Shale,</a></i> to be published in paperback by for Cornell University Press next year. This will probably be close to 110,000 words. I would like to think, as the subtitle suggests, it covers a lot of ground and offers a pretty good idea of events that distinguish New York from Pennsylvania and the rest of the nation with the unfolding of the on-shore drilling boom. But there will always be more to report. In that spirit, I encourage readers to pass along any of their own stories or recollections. TOM WILBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103105549852845055noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6949864949316311883.post-84256576546661292872014-12-20T18:02:00.002-08:002014-12-23T07:45:46.833-08:00How Fracking Got Stopped in New York<h4>The following is an uncut version of an article I wrote the Press & Sun-Bulletin. The newspaper version, which ran on Dec. 21, 2014, was cut due to space constraints The full version is reprinted here with permisson of the paper.</h4><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi41jCeOSLu7bY1TdbPEmXLtvUX45pMDGaYGulwOUEKmYHI1Vrhtr0fEQrzbBjx7IX1Ppb-uw0d2qdMRShVhNKquiVvIGvoa1Te2JgacEEEumTp7GYbQlwZLDKxHy75hUuF0DBGYD6lutY/s1600/fracking+protest-510.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi41jCeOSLu7bY1TdbPEmXLtvUX45pMDGaYGulwOUEKmYHI1Vrhtr0fEQrzbBjx7IX1Ppb-uw0d2qdMRShVhNKquiVvIGvoa1Te2JgacEEEumTp7GYbQlwZLDKxHy75hUuF0DBGYD6lutY/s1600/fracking+protest-510.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of many protests against fracking in Albany<br />
Photo: James Pitarresi</td></tr>
</tbody></table>In certain places in New York, Wednesday’s news of the state’s ban on fracking inspired public celebration.<br />
<br />
When a manager at GreenStar Natural Foods Market in Ithaca announced the news over a loud speaker, people in the store began applauding, cheering, shouting and hugging. “People had worked for this for so long,” said Dawn Lodor, an assistant manager at the store, which helped organize opposition to shale gas development.<br />
<br />
In pro-fracking camps, the news was met with bitterness and disbelief. Dan Fitzsimmons, head of the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York group, listened to the decision from Cuomo’s cabinet meeting in Albany streamed online to his farmhouse in Conklin. His reaction? “It was like a kick on the gut.” His phone started ringing after that with angry members of the coalition who, in Fitzsimmons words, “feel like they’ve been robbed.”<br />
<br />
It was no surprise that the news was emotionally charged. But, for people on both sides of the issue, it was an abrupt endpoint of an epic policy fight that began nearly seven years ago. <br />
<br />
New York’s shale gas story will be cast in history as one of false starts, near misses, empty promises, and a grass roots movement of the ages. From the beginning, some harbored great expectations for a shale gas boom in the Southern Tier. In the end it was a bust that never got off the ground.<br />
<br />
I began learning the full implications of the shale gas story one day in early May, 2008, when several visitors came to the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin newsroom. These sources included Fitzsimmons, long before he was president of the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York, and Tim Whitesell, Town of Binghamton Supervisor. At the time, few people knew what fracking was, and most associated “Marcellus” with a small town in Upstate New York.<br />
<br />
Sitting with a group of editors in “the pit” a wall-less space in the corner of the news room with a sunken floor and a white board where editors jotted story ideas, our sources informed us that agents representing gas exploration companies – “landmen” – were seeking mineral rights to the land in the towns of Conklin and Binghamton. The landmen tended to approach people with the largest tracts first. These were often farmers or descendents of farmers, and many of them were duly skeptical, but excited. What was not to like about the notion of abundant energy that could be safely extracted from beneath the land with deals that could make people rich? That was what the landowners were told, at least, and that’s what they hoped for.<br />
<br />
At that time, land leases for mineral rights were not unusual in parts of New York state, especially in places in western New York where operators, mostly small independent outfits, had drilled wells for generations. In places east of Owego, and the Finger Lakes region, these leases rarely lead to development and the leasing money was incidental – maybe $5 or $10 an acre. Now, we were told by Fitzsimmons, that landmen were offering hundreds of dollars per acre, with some reports of $1,000 or more. The Marcellus Shale – a rock formation long-known to hold an abundance of gas that was technologically inaccessible – was their target. (The Marcellus ran at an angle from Marcellus, New York, where it jutted above ground, all the way to West Virginia and parts of Ohio and Maryland, where it was more than a mile deep.)<br />
<br />
Southern Tier residents were learning that the first successful wells in the Marcellus –featuring a combination of new techniques -- had spurned a burgeoning gas rush just across the border in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania. Unlike the type of conventional drilling western New Yorkers were familiar with – clusters of vertical wells generally contained in a geographically limited area – this shale gas development involved drilling into rock that extended under entire states. Operations would encompass vast regions. It required unconventional technology. Well bores would be oriented horizontally along the vast mantel of Marcellus rock, and then the bores would be injected with pressurized solutions of unknown but effective chemicals to break the rock and free the gas. The scope, scale, and sums of money were seemingly unprecedented. <br />
<br />
For the next six-plus years, the story would be told through several hundred articles in Gannett’s Upstate New York newspapers. It would play out one way in New York, and another way in Pennsylvania, with outcomes that reflect each state’s political attitudes and comfort levels with mineral extraction.<br />
<br />
As the price of natural gas approached record highs in early 2008, the fervor over gas development spurred ever more aggressive efforts of landmen charged with securing acreage for drilling. They also fostered growing expectations among landowners seeking a deal of a lifetime. The bidding rose from hundreds of dollars per acre to thousands of dollars per acre, and in the newsroom, we heard complaints from landowners who had signed away their land rights without understanding the value of the mineral resources.<br />
<br />
With this concern, early stories seized on the efforts of Chris Denton, an Elmira attorney, and members of the New York Farm Bureau, who became important advocates for landowners. They gave presentations to audiences packing school auditoriums and town halls in places where landmen were sent to secure acreage, which at the height of the leasing frenzy in 2008 included a large part of upstate New York.<br />
<br />
Many Southern Tier owners saw the approach of the landmen as a Beverly-Hillbillies–moment. But at his presentations, Denton gave a sobering message: Beware of the industry lease. It’s “a complex-business transaction masquerading as a lottery ticket.” A standard lease was worded in a way that gave operators rights to minerals under their land, of course, but it also gave them rights to do whatever they needed above land to get at riches below.<br />
<br />
The state’s permitting guidelines –designed for conventional drilling -- were outdated and insufficient to handle shale gas development. This made matters worse. Landowners had to take matters into their own hands by crafting land-use agreements to ensure environmental safeguards. Denton was the first of several attorneys who would begin advising landowners groups on leasing strategies.<br />
<br />
<b>MEGA DEAL</b><br />
<br />
The story went from big to bigger on May 11, 2008 with news from Sanford, a town of 2,400 people on the eastern edge of Broome County. Dewey Decker, town Supervisor, headed a group of 300 farmers – controlling some 50,000 acres – who banded together to leverage bargaining power against companies. None of the landowners would sign a lease without a deal that was acceptable to all. With this technique, the Deposit group landed a deal with XTO Energy for $90 million. That figure would soon grow to $110 million with subsequent sign-ons.<br />
<br />
The terms included $2,411 per acre for leasing rights for five years and the same amount for the three-year extension. In addition, if prospectors hit gas, the landowners would get 15 percent of the royalties. Without a single well drilled, many of the farmers, including Decker, made more in a single day than they would their entire lives. Mega deals were also being signed in Pennsylvania, and the media coined a new word for farmers like Decker: Shallionaires.<br />
<br />
While the job prospects for rig workers in Pennsylvania remained mostly filled by itinerate crews from Texas and West Virginia, there was a surge of new business for lawyers and accountants. My reporting of the Deposit deal stated it this way: “Now, people who had problems paying property taxes suddenly will have ... more tax problems. Income taxes could immediately bite into a third or more of leasing revenues. ‘It's quite a change, and I hope people can handle it,’ Decker said. ‘The lawyers and accountants are going to make out quite well.’ ”<br />
<br />
<b>GREAT EXPECATIONS</b><br />
<br />
News of the XTO deal fueled a gold rush mentality in the Southern Tier.<br />
<br />
People began reasoning that, if XTO found resources under the land in the Town of Sanford with that kind of value, then other gas companies prospecting in nearby towns along the Pennsylvania Boarder also harbored riches. Lease offers reported in Broome County towns bordering Pennsylvania soared. In some areas along the Millennium Pipeline, where the market produced a premium for ready access to infrastructure, offers rose to $5,000 an acre or more.<br />
<br />
XTO was a $13 billion company that would later be bought out by Exxon Mobil, and a far cry from the smaller independent operators that had done business in New York. People were rightly filled with a sense that they were heading into unfamiliar territory with the Marcellus prospects, and they began crowding town halls and school auditoriums in their quest for information.<br />
<br />
Many of the meetings were sponsored by town officials seeking answers from officials from the state Department of Environmental Conservation about how the impacts from shale gas development would be managed in New York. One such meeting, on July 16, 2008 in the municipal building of the town of Chenango, was crowded with farmers, suburbanites and officials from town, county and state governments. They were not necessarily against fracking, but they had plenty of questions. What about public safety concerns, roads, and waste disposal?<br />
<br />
Linda Collart, regional supervisor with the Division of Mineral Resources, assured the crowd that there would be little or no impact; the agency had been managing gas development for generations. In her power point presentation, she showed a picture of what shale gas development would look like: A small valve poking from the ground with a lush meadow of wildflowers and grasses in the foreground an a bank of trees in the background. This was a reclaimed natural gas site, she said, and an example of the expected long-term impact from Marcellus development.<br />
<br />
In what would become a defining moment in the local history of the shale play, a person from the back of the room stood up and asked her how local emergency responders could prepare for a spill, fire, or explosion when the industry did not fully disclose the complete chemical content and concentrations of fracking fluids.<br />
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“We don’t anticipate any significant emergencies,” Collart said. “These things are rare.”<br />
<br />
Another person stood up and asked how regulators were preparing for an influx of drilling that would exceed any historical comparison.<br />
<br />
Collart responded, “We have been doing fine so far … No problems!”<br />
<br />
Collart stood by that line at several meetings, and the more she gave it, the more agitated and skeptical towns folks became.<br />
<br />
A meeting in Greene was scheduled the day after I reported Collart’s responses at the Town of Chenango meeting. For this, Governor David Paterson’s office, responding to growing skepticism about the DEC’s ability to manage shale gas, sent Judith Enck, the governor’s top environmental advisor and Stuart Gruskin, executive deputy DEC commissioner. As with earlier meetings, the questions reflected frustration from the crowd of more than 500 people who felt they were not getting straight answers, but Enck’s response was different than Collart’s.<br />
<br />
“The DEC is going back and doing its homework,” she said. “I’m sure you will hold our feet to the fire and make sure it gets done.” <br />
<br />
Later, Gruskin told me that the Greene meeting was a “fork in the road.” He explained: “If there was ever any doubt about the significance of all this, going to that meeting made it clear that it was going to be a really big issue in New York,” he said. “We had to make a decision as to how we were going to approach it.”<br />
<br />
Within days of the Greene meeting, the state legislature approved a bill, pushed by gas companies and submitted by the DEC, that would make spacing units for the large Marcellus gas wells more uniform – a move that would effectively streamline the permitting process. Without it, shale gas development would get hung-up on an administrative process designed for the much smaller conventional wells. Paterson signed the industry-supported bill. But, with input from Enck and Gruskin, he also declared that permitting could not begin until the agency under took a comprehensive review of its impacts. The document, know as the Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (or SGEIS) was born.<br />
<br />
At the time, even gas supporters didn’t seem to mind the time out, which they saw as a necessary step to make things move smoothly. “It’s a process in which we will be learning as we move forward,” said state Senator Tom Libous, sponsor of the spacing bill. “We have to make sure the environment is protected. I am pleased so far.” At the time, people expected the review to take a year or less, and shale gas would begin soon in New York.<br />
<br />
Before the SGEIS could be finalized, it had to go through a public review process. This standard procedure for public policy would make the document a critical instrument for the anti-fracking movement to delay shale gas until people finally got the answers to the questions raised at public meetings. The more they found out, the more questions they had.<br />
<br />
<b>A MOVEMENT BEGINS</b><br />
<br />
The second turning point of the story came with a bang, literally, on New Years Day, 2009 in Dimock, Pennsylvana. An explosion rocked the frozen ground in Norma Fiorentino’s front yard and concrete dust billowed over a gaping hole where her water well was housed. The blast destroyed the well that supplied her trailer on her 7-acre homestead. Though there were no casualties, the incident raised many questions and, eventually, led to state and federal investigations about the safety and viability of shale gas development in Susquehanna County. In months and years that followed, the Pennsylvania state Department of Environmental Protection found that methane was seeping from nearby gas wells drilled by Cabot Oil and Gas into water wells in the area where Norma lived. Cabot responded that methane comes from the ground and factors other than drilling can bring it into contact with water supplies. Cabot denied that its operations caused the problem, and at one point accused the DEP of fabricating the story.<br />
<br />
The events in Dimock highlighted a battle over whether fracking was a good thing or a bad thing. At the heart of it was the issue of trust, and who could be believed – industry, government, or neither. The industry, at the time, was standing by a claim that fracking had not contaminated a single water well throughout its history. This motivated journalists, critics, and activists who sensed a bending of the facts and possibly a cover up.<br />
<br />
After Norma’s well exploded, Walter Hang, head of an environmental research firm in Ithaca, began searching data bases from the DEC to see if he could find records ot similar incidents in New York State. He uncovered 270 files documenting wastewater spills, well contamination, explosions, methane migration and ecological damage related to gas production in the state since 1979. Those findings were the subject of an article in this paper on Nov. 8, 2009. Continuing his research in 2010, Hang uncovered documents that showed William T. Boria, a water resources specialist at the Chautauqua County Health Department, reported his agency had received more than 140 complaints related to water pollution or gas migration associated with nearby drilling operations. In a 2004 memo summarizing the issue, Boria stated: "Those complaints that were recorded are probably just a fraction of the actual problems that occurred." County health officials tabulated information on 53 of the cases from 1983 to 2008 on a spreadsheet, including one where a home was evacuated after the water well exploded.<br />
<br />
The first draft of the SGEIS had been released on September 30, 2009, and by then the anti-fracking movement was becoming a powerful grass-roots phenomenon. The first public hearing on the state’s policy proposal to permit shale gas was held six weeks later at the Chenango Valley High School. It had more the feel of a pep rally than a public hearing.<br />
<br />
Lines began forming outside an hour before the doors opened at 5:30 p.m. Some people wore costumes—one was a barrel of toxic waste; another, a gas company executive billionaire with money coming out of his hat. They held signs that read “Don’t Frack on Me” and “You Can’t Drink Gas or Money.”<br />
<br />
Drilling supporters were also represented, most visibly by people who wore t-shirts that read “Pass Gas, It’s a Movement.”<br />
<br />
Environmental conservation officers wearing ranger’s hats and bearing sidearms stood attentively at various entrances and milled about the lobby as more than 1,000 people filled the auditorium to capacity.<br />
<br />
For the next three hours, speakers lined up for a turn at the microphone, where they offered impassioned praise or criticism of the drilling industry and its plans to set up shop in Broome County. The meeting in Broome County was one of four throughout the state, and each drew a large and impassioned response.<br />
<br />
In the three-month period allotted for written responses, the agency received more than 14,000 formal comments, and it had to address them all before the plan<br />
could become final. The anti-fracking movement won its first and major victory in stalling a decision on shale gas.<br />
<br />
<b>CLOSE CALLS</b><br />
<br />
In the years that followed, those who favored shale gas pressed on in the face of even more delays. With the economy languishing for years following the stock market crash of 2008, landowners kindled hopes of making money with gas leases. In northern Pennsylvania and the Southern Tier of New York, tens of thousands of landowners began organizing into dozens of groups to lease their land. Many were organized through Denton and the Farm Bureau, and Binghamton lawyer Scott Kurkoski.<br />
<br />
Continued delays and falling natural gas prices did little to deflate expectations. A study commissioned by the Broome County government in late 2009 found full-scale Marcellus production could involve up to 4,000 wells, generate $14 billion in local spending, and support between 810 and 1,600 new jobs for a decade.<br />
<br />
Although the report lacked an assessment of the social and environmental cost, Broome County government budged $5 million in revenues from the gas rush, before it had even signed a lease. Nathaalie Maxwell, budgeted director at the time cited “conservative” expectations for “a multi-billion industry that has set its sights on Broome County.” <br />
<br />
At the time, there was still convincing evidence that major companies were interested in extracting gas from under Broome County. In June, 2009, a coalition headed by Dan Fitzsimmons and represented by Scott Kurkoski, announced a deal with Hess that would generate $66.5 million in lease payments and 20 percent royalties for 19,000 acres of land owned by about 700 people. The deal failed to close, however, due to differences in how the lease would be structured to control land use. Hess eventually signed a deal with residents in Northern Pennsylvania instead.<br />
<br />
<b>FATAL BLOWS</b><br />
<br />
After the Hess deal, political, economic, and social factors continued to erode the chances of shale gas development in New York.<br />
<br />
The anti-fracking movement would become galvanized in the summer of 2010, with the premier of Josh Fox’s movie, Gasland, on HBO. Gasland, which was screened in Binghamton and Ithaca, featured a shot of Mike Markham, a resident living near shale gas development in Weld County Colorado, lighting his tap water on fire. The movie, which also featured Norma Fiorentino’s well and other scenes from Dimock, Pennsylvania, became a rallying point for the anti-fracking movement in New York.<br />
<br />
The SGEIS was sent back to the drawing board, and when the Cuomo administration issued a revision on September 2010, it was again flooded with comments from well-organized and informed critics that led to another backlog.<br />
<br />
In years that followed, New York’s anti-fracking movement blossomed into a celebrity cause, supported by performances, rallies, appearances and speeches by Natalie Merchant, Pete Segeer, Mark Ruffalo, Bobby Kennedy Jr., Yoko Ono, Sean Lennon, Josh Fox and others. A group of professionals added credibility to star power. Sandra Steingraber, a noted author, scholar, and ecologist, became a leading figure and motivational speaker. Tony Ingraffea, an engineering professor with vast industry experience, was also a leading influence in the movement and an organizer of Physicians Scientists & Engineers for Healthy Energy.<br />
<br />
The fracking debate in New York would extend to both local and federal governments. In 2010, the federal Environmental Protection Agency was directed by Congress to use a portion of its allotted funding for a peer-reviewed study of the relationship between hydraulic fracturing and ground water. The effort -- championed by (now retired) Rep. Maurice Hinchey, at the time chair of the Appropriations Committee -- included a hearing at the Broome County Forum on September 13, 2010. That event drew about 1,500 people from throughout the region. Notably, the EPA hearing was headed by Judith Enck, who had left her job with the DEC to accept appointment as regional director of the EPA. The results of the study are yet to be released.<br />
<br />
Yet the biggest defeat for the shale gas industry in New York, prior to Wednesday’s announcement by the Cuomo administration, did not come until late May of this year. That’s when the state’s high court upheld a decision that allowed local governments to control where and if fracking occurred. The concept, know as home rule, was a result of the court’s ruling to uphold fracking bans in the towns of Dryden and Middlefield. Prior to the decision, the state controlled where gas wells went. The Court of Appeals made clear that zoning and land-use restrictions apply, and towns could not proceed without recognizing fracking as an accepted use. <br />
<br />
The decision by the Cuomo administration to ban fracking statewide Wednesday caught everybody by surprise. Hours before it was announced, I was scheduled to cover a town board meeting in Windsor, where officials intended to discuss changes to land use plans to allow fracking. Windsor was one of many towns along the Pennsylvania border going through that process – which was deemed necessary before the state could issue permits. Now, much to the dismay of people like Dan Fitzsimmons, the issue of local control is moot.<br />
<br />
Antifracking activists, who were geared up to fight a decision from the governor’s office that would permit fracking, also have to make some adjustments. Dawn Lodor, the manager at GreenStar said the store had commissioned a bus to take fractivists to a rally in Albany in January to protest fracking. They are still going, but now they plan to make it a public celebration.<br />
<br />
<br />
TOM WILBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103105549852845055noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6949864949316311883.post-56163352586101885522014-12-17T16:21:00.000-08:002014-12-19T17:31:26.553-08:00Cuomo’s choice to ban fracking driven by science, politics<br />
Tonight, I was scheduled to cover a town board meeting in Windsor, New York, where officials were going to review a plan to change their zoning to allow fracking. The process for a zoning change promised to be long and contentious, and was necessary in light of a recent <a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2014/06/breaking-nys-high-court-upholds-home.html" target="_blank">court ruling</a> putting the decision of whether and where to drill in the hands of local governments.<br />
<br />
Things changed dramatically this afternoon, when Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that he would ban shale gas development statewide due to unacceptable health risks. Cuomo’s position, backed by a long-awaited<a href="https://www.health.ny.gov/press/reports/docs/high_volume_hydraulic_fracturing.pdf" target="_blank"> report</a> from the state Department of Health, is a departure from his <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/nyregion/hydrofracking-under-cuomo-plan-would-be-restricted-to-a-few-counties.html" target="_blank">earlier position</a> that he would allow fracking where local governments favored it. Reporters, pundits and the public they serve are still getting their minds around Cuomo’s emphatic decision, which came after more than six years of policy review. While it puts the matter to rest, many questions remain: What are the legal consequences? Do industry lawyers and supporters, who have been beaten at every turn in their efforts to bring shale gas to New York, have another challenge in them? Or is this the end of the line?<br />
<br />
Those answers will come soon, but apparently, from my conversations with sources and a press-release from the Joint Landowners Association of New York, not tonight. The news of the hour is that, after a six and a half-year journey, fracking is dead on arrival in New York. Along that line, I share my response to a request by Andrew Revkin, author of New York Times Dot Earth, for a "what just happened" analysis. (Revkin’s compilation of reaction from many informed sources can be <a href="http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/12/17/with-unresolved-health-risks-and-few-signs-of-an-economic-boon-cuomo-to-ban-gas-fracking/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=gas&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs&region=Body" target="_blank">found here</a>.)<br />
<br />
Cuomo’s decision is consistent with his progressive politics that got him to where he is now. It's a bold move and I optimistically take it as sincere attempt to overcome the inertial forces of fossil fuel dependency. Success here could add considerably to his legacy. But he has much more to do. The fracking ban needs to be accompanied by practical reforms and initiatives in energy development & consumption. How much longer will New York City residents have to rely on Fuel Oil as their primary source of heat? What about coal burning plants? I have written about the answer to these questions by a group of scientists and professionals that have contributed to the credibility of the anti-fracking movement. I offer that post<a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2013/05/can-wind-water-sun-satisfy-nys-energy.html" target="_blank"> again here.)</a><br />
<br />
So why did it take six and a half years? Science takes time. Establishing risks of high volume hydraulic fracturing and the new era of on shore drilling it has enabled is especially difficult because shale gas development is relatively new. The industry controls most of the information and has plenty of legal, scientific and political wherewithal to challenge any conclusions that don’t work in its favor.<br />
<br />
Science is part of the calculus. But despite what Cuomo would like us to believe, scientists don’t make these kinds of decisions. The full equation is Science + politics = policy. Cuomo finally got tired of being hounded on the issue by his political base. The movement in New York against shale gas was relentless and it was focused on him. At one point, he told Susan Arbetter, host of Capitol Press Room, that it was the most effective political action campaign he had seen. (I will link to that interview as soon as I find it, but I wanted to get this post up right away.) Activists, both institutional and grass roots, promised to step up their efforts if Cuomo allowed even a single well.<br />
<br />
The Home Rule decision by the state’s high court in June, and the depressed price of natural gas made a decision politically easier. Cuomo would have a hard time taking the perceived riches of fracking from landowners back when landmen were at their doors with big checks in hand. Nobody is currently seriously looking at shale gas exploration, much less development, in New York with gas prices as low as they are and the encumbrances of Home Rule.<br />
<br />
New York has become a showcase for the anti-fracking movement, and Cuomo's decision today has raised the movement's stature nationally. But it’s also important to remember that Cuomo’s decision is the end-point of a process that started 6-plus years ago - before frack was a bad word. As recounted in my book,<i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Under-Surface-Fracking-Fortunes-Marcellus-ebook/dp/B007SNOQMK" target="_blank"> Under the Surface</a></i>, the moratorium issued by Governor Patterson in July, 2008 had nothing to do with organized fractivists, who did not appear on the scene until after Josh Fox’s movie <i>Gasland</i> two years later. New York’s moratorium was the direct results of landowners posing reasonable questions in public hearings about how the state was prepared to govern shale gas development. Six and half years later, Cuomo’s actions have provided the answer: it wasn't then, and it isn't now.<br />
<br />
<br />TOM WILBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103105549852845055noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6949864949316311883.post-50676152711253604832014-07-22T09:23:00.000-07:002014-07-22T09:54:26.496-07:00Pa. Auditor General finds state’s fracking oversight a fiasco Probe finds lack of inspections, enforcement, transparency Pennsylvania’s regulation of the shale gas boom has been underfunded, inconsistent and ineffective, according to an investigation by the state’s auditor general released today.<br />
<br />
Auditor General Eugene DePasquale likened the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s efforts to oversee the industry to “firefighters trying to put out a five-alarm fire with a 20-foot garden hose.” He added: “There is no question that DEP needs help and soon to protect clean water.”<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.auditorgen.state.pa.us/reports/performance/special/speDEP072114.pdf" target="_blank">The audit,</a> covering a period of 2009 through 2012, was launched by DePasquale immediately after he was sworn in as auditor general in January 2013. It came in the wake of a controversy over whether state investigators obscure or alter the outcome of investigations into drilling’s impact on water supplies by disclosing an incomplete suite of chemical tests. The intention of the probe, according to a letter from DePasquale at the time, is to determine the "adequacy and effectiveness of DEP's monitoring of water quality as potentially impacted by shale gas development activities, including but not limited to systems and procedures for testing, screening, reporting and response to adverse impact such as contamination."<br />
<br />
The report was blunt in its findings: the problems related to shale gas development are much deeper and broader than the DEP can presently handle, and they often go unaddressed or left up to industry without adequate follow-up by the agency. The problem is rooted to a wholesale lack of inspections, enforcement and transparency.<br />
<br />
Often, according to the report, the agency does nothing about confirmed cases of water pollution tied to drilling problems. After reviewing a selection of 15 files of water degradation tied to nearby shale gas operations, auditors found the agency issued only one order for the driller to restore or replace the water supply. Instead, the DEP relied on voluntary action by companies to resolve complaints and violations.<br />
<br />
“When DEP does not take a formal, documented action against a well operator who has contaminated a water supply, the agency loses credibility as a regulator and is not fully accountable to the public,” DePasquale said. “When DEP has enforcement authority under the law it must exercise that authority routinely, consistently, and transparently. Those gas well operators whose actions cause harm to water supplies should not get an enforcement ‘pass’ just because they have convinced DEP that they will come into compliance with the law or that they negotiated a settlement with the property owner.”<br />
<br />
Among other findings:<br />
<br />
• The DEP does not post required inspection information on its website. Auditors found errors of more than 25 percent in key data fields, and 76 percent of inspectors’ comments were omitted from the online inspection reporting. “It is unfathomable to us that for a basic responsibility of DEP -- inspecting oil and gas facilities – little criteria exists for when those inspections should occur,” DePasquale said. “Until DEP updates its out-of-date inspection policies, to include mandated inspections at specific critical drilling stages and during the life of the well, it will be nearly impossible to measure DEP’s performance in conducting this very basic responsibility to protect the environment.”<br />
<br />
• The DEP does not use an official and independent system to track shale gas well waste from the well site to disposal. Instead, the agency relies upon a “disjointed process that includes self-reporting by well operators with no assurances that waste is disposed of properly.”<br />
<br />
• With respect to transparency, auditors discovered that accessing DEP data is “a myriad of confusing web links and jargon” that was often incomplete. “We could not determine whether all complaints received by DEP actually were entered into the system. What’s more … it is difficult to figure out exactly how many complaints were received, investigated, and resolved by DEP,” DePasquale said.<br />
<br />
Although reports critical of the gas industry and regulators are nothing new, the inspector general’s report is noteworthy because it comes from within an independent arm of state government.<br />
<br />
The DEP disagreed with all of eight findings of the audit critical of the agency, but agreed with a majority of the 29 recommendations for improvement.<br />
<br />
Auditors encouraged DEP to:<br />
<br />
• Issue orders to a well operators who pollute water supplies —even if DEP used the cooperative approach in bringing the operator into compliance or if the operator and the complainant have reached a private agreement;<br />
<br />
•· Develop better controls for how complaints are received, tracked, investigated, and resolved;<br />
<br />
• Hire additional inspectors to meet the demands placed upon the agency;<br />
<br />
• Create and follow policy requirements for timely and frequent inspections;<br />
<br />
• Create a functional system to track shale gas waste and be more aggressive in ensuring that the waste data it collects is verified and reliable;<br />
<br />
·• Reconfigure the agency website and provide complete and pertinent information in a clear and easily understandable manner.<br />
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TOM WILBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103105549852845055noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6949864949316311883.post-31360589616653866682014-07-11T09:07:00.001-07:002014-07-16T07:52:56.711-07:00Global fracking debate: Coming soon to town hall near you Upstate NY localities face fallout from Home Rule decision Late last month, New York’s high court issued a ruling that put the debate over the merits and risks of shale gas development in the hands of local governments. The much-anticipated ruling – a monumental victory for grassroots political action -- settled a long-standing question regarding the state’s jurisdictional control over the matter. Yet it raised many other questions about how local governments will respond.<br />
<br />
There are towns for drilling and towns against drilling. But much of the fight over where and to what extent shale gas development – including high volume hydraulic fracturing -- will be a part of the New York landscape will play out in towns with no stated policy. Do communities that don’t want fracking need to actively pass a ban? Can communities that want fracking amend zoning laws to encourage it? What happens if they do neither?<br />
<br />
These questions are predicated on a pending decision by Governor Andrew Cuomo on whether to allow fracking anywhere in the state. While the outcome of that remains anybody’s guess, we know from Cuomo’s <a href="http://www.binghamtonhomepage.com/story/d/story/verse-demands-fracking-moratorium/47071/yw_3rznHzU29TWr6zNAC1Q" target="_blank">past remarks</a> that he favors a plan to begin issuing shale gas permits in towns with no local bans. These happen to be along the border with Pennsylvania, which also sit over the most viable parts of the Marcellus Shale. This dynamic becomes especially relevant to towns in this area – and there are many of them -- with no comprehensive plan and nothing on the books specific to fracking.<br />
<br />
One of these places is Vestal, where dozens of residents against fracking attended a town board meeting this week to urge elected officials to pass a local ban.<br />
<br />
The reaction by Town Supervisor John Schaffer, as reported by <a href="http://BinghamtonHomepage.com/">BinghamtonHomepage.com</a>, was not especially concrete. "Our town code says you can't do it here to begin with, and I've told these people [anti-fracking activists] that over and over and over," Schaffer said. He then added: "We’re aware of the recent Court of Appeals decision regarding home rule. While the decision permits the town to enact legislation that would ban fracking, it does not require us to ban it. According to the town board, we will carefully monitor this issue and will act when and if there’s an incident for us to do so."<br />
<br />
(In her blog <a href="http://marcelluseffect.blogspot.com/2014/07/how-to-insert-drilling-into-slumbering.html" target="_blank">The Marcellus Effect,</a> Sue Heavenrich covers a similar controversty unfolding in Candor, NY.) <br />
<br />
Some legal experts say that towns could – depending on wording and interpretation of local law -- grant variances to gas companies to site wells in areas otherwise zoned against industrial use, which is just what supporters of gas development are hoping for and what opponents dread. Attorney Helen Slottje represented Dryden and Middlefield in their <a href="http://www.binghamtonhomepage.com/story/d/story/verse-demands-fracking-moratorium/47071/yw_3rznHzU29TWr6zNAC1Q" target="_blank">Home Rule victory</a>. In a recent appearance on <a href="http://www.wcny.org/cpr070214/" target="_blank">Capitol Press Room</a>, Slottje pointed out that while the Court of Appeals ruling would make it more difficult for operators to drill in zoned areas, it would still be possible, depending on how a given town reacted to the ruling.<br />
<br />
“There are in most zoning codes various exceptions for different uses that could be construed by a court to be like gas drilling sufficient to allow gas drilling to proceed,” she said. “The safest thing for a town to do is to pass a zoning amendment or stand alone law that makes it clear that gas drilling is not permitted in their town.”<br />
<br />
Industry lawyer Tom West also raised that possibility. He told host <a href="https://twitter.com/sarbetter" target="_blank">Susan Arbetter</a> his clients would be “implementing a strategy to protect our investments,” but because the nature of the fight had been so tactical – like a chess game where each side was anticipating the other’s moves -- he was “not at liberty to discuss that strategy.”<br />
<br />
All this sounds suggestive and inconclusive because it is, at least until the matter is fully deliberated and acted upon at a town board level.<br />
<br />
Some activists are already beginning to push the matter. Sue Rapp, a member of Vestal Residents for Safe Energy (VeRSE), characterized Vestal Supervisor Schaffer’s comment that the town would take a wait-and-see approach as “garbled messages not on point ... When examined, his remarks convey nothing of substance on the issue of zoning regs/variances and gas drilling.”<br />
<br />
The ambiguity can be maddening or inviting, depending on your stake in the debate, and it has provoked some thoughtful comments from readers on my <a href="http://www.binghamtonhomepage.com/story/d/story/verse-demands-fracking-moratorium/47071/yw_3rznHzU29TWr6zNAC1Q" target="_blank">recent post</a> about fallout from the Court of Appeals decision. <br />
<br />
In response to a comment by Mary Sweeney, who pondered whether existing zoning laws would preclude drilling with no stated bans, fracking critic and policy analyst Stan Scobie elaborated on the undisclosed plan that West mentioned on Arbetter’s show. According to Scobie, West is organizing a campaign with certain towns over Marcellus shale zones to create policy – zoning overlays – that would maximize development of the play by creating the legal architecture to override zoning laws. Scobie writes:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Governor Cuomo and the DEC some time ago raised a difficult issue, namely, fracking would perhaps be OK in those towns who "wish" to be fracked, but how would we know which ones they are? To address this the pro-drillers have crafted a "zoning overlay" strategy.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
This plan would have each town modify their Comprehensive Plan, if they have one, to be somewhat fracking friendly, and then develop and legislate zoning overlays. These would, if passed, clearly identify the towns and areas in towns where fracking was OK. There would be no "frack me" resolutions passed quietly and quickly at Town Board meetings with zero attendance as seemed to be the case a couple of years ago. </blockquote>
<br />
Scobie’s full response can be viewed here in the comments section.<br />
<br />
This week, I asked West in an email whether zoning laws already on the books – those that prohibit industrial operations in residential or other areas -- effectively serve as “bans” to oil and gas. And of if so, can drilling supporters work around them? West responded:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Whether oil and gas activities are considered an industrial use, will be a municipality by municipality determination... Much of the clarification will come over time.</blockquote>
<br />
In other words, much of where drilling is allowed will come down to interpretation of local zoning laws, and that interpretation will be made on a town by town basis by local leaders and their lawyers.<br />
<br />
In short, the fight over drilling in New York is far from over. It continues on the state level, where activists like Walter Hang are leading a campaign to pressure Cuomo to withdraw the controversial policy review that is essential for it to go forward. And, pending that outcome, it continues on a local level, where towns will have to either craft policy clarifying how and if their zoning laws apply to gas drilling, or face the prospect of court challenges and the consequences when push comes to shove with money, leases, and passions on the line. <br />
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TOM WILBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103105549852845055noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6949864949316311883.post-75402734844453583472014-06-30T10:48:00.000-07:002014-07-01T07:54:49.671-07:00New York’s high court upholds Home Rule bans ... Decision complicates natural gas prospects It’s settled. There will be no fracking in New York communities such as Dryden and Middlefield – serene and scenic places that have passed rules that find shale gas development incompatible with local land use ordinances.<br />
<br />
The three-year battle over jurisdictional control over the industry ended today when the New York Court of Appeals upheld lower court decisions that cedes control over where and if shale gas development can happen from state to local governments. That’s a landmark victory for Home Rule advocates, including residents of more than 170 upstate communities that have passed moratoriums or bans on the controversial process.<br />
<br />
But the future of fracking in the Empire state remains more unsettled than ever. All of the communities with fracking bans happen to be outside areas with the strongest prospects for shale gas development. In Southern Tier counties bordering the booming gas fields in northern Pennsylvania, many local governments either support fracking, or have no enforceable policy to prevent it. For every place like Dryden, there is a place like Sanford, a rural community near the Pennsylvania border that sits over 50,0000 acres of the Marcellus Shale, for which XTO Energy – a subsidiary of Exxon Mobile – has paid farmers $110 million just for the chance to test.<br />
<br />
Sanford has no land use restriction, and is governed by a town council eager to see rigs and roughnecks role across the Pennsylvania border and clear pads in the meadows, fields and woodlots of Southern Tier farms. And according to some who have been engaged in the fight since it began with the leasing rush of 2008, the prospect of drilling in these places is more imminent following today’s court ruling.<br />
<br />
The court decision in effect provides legal sanction to <a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2012/06/breaking-news-ny-officials-consider.html" target="_blank">a plan</a> proposed by Governor Andrew Cuomo in the summer of 2012 to begin issuing permits on a trial basis in areas where communities and industry favor development. As reported by Danny Hakim of the New York Times in June, 2012: “Cuomo’s administration is now trying to acknowledge the economic needs of the rural upstate area, while also honoring the opposition expressed in some communities, and limiting the ire of environmentalists, who worry that hydrofracking could contaminate groundwater and lead to other hazards.”<br />
<br />
Walter Hang, a policy analyst who runs Toxic Targeting, an environmental data firm in Ithaca, said Cuomo’s plan from 2012, combined with today’s court ruling, moves New York state a step closer to fracking in these places. “Today’s decision serves up the Southern Tier on a silver platter to allow shale gas development to begin,” he said. “Sure, it prevents fracking in some areas. But it allows it in the five counties along the Southern Tier where it’s most likely to begin. It’s the classic double-edged sword.”<br />
<br />
Cuomo’s plan in 2012 to begin fracking in certain localities but not others drew support for those pinning the promise of economic development on the drilling industry, and drew rallies and protests by anti-frackers, who characterized the fracking trials as “sacrifice zones.” Cuomo has been mostly silent on the issue since then.<br />
<br />
Not everybody shares Hang’s outlook. Some anti-fracking activists expect that New York’s ruling will not only discourage shale gas development in New York but will also encourage other municipalities throughout the country to establish land use restrictions. (<a href="http:/" target="_blank">See comments</a> of Mary Ann Sumner, the Dryden Supervisor who helped organize the ban.) And Brad Gill, executive director of the Independent Oil and Gas Association of New York, <a href="http:/" target="_blank">called the court decision</a> “one more nail in the coffin” for fracking in the state. Gill’s view, often echoed by other industry supporters, is that drill operators will be less likely to commit capital to area that lacks regulatory uniformity and predictability. There is truth to both of those views, but they overlook the fact that the industry, first and foremost, will follow the geology. Wildcaters, in particular, are likely to seek out niches in unexplored territories, like the Southern Tier of New York.<br />
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As with most policy calculations, science and law are fundamental factors, but politics will be the decider. The Legislature could pass a bill clarifying ambiguous language over the state’s role in extraction operations on which the Home Rule case was built. It’s also possible that the Legislature could ban fracking altogether, although anti-fracking bills passed repeatedly in the Assembly over the years are yet to fly in the Senate.<br />
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For now the decision remains firmly in the hands of the governor, who can at anytime enact or withdraw the policy review of fracking, called the Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement. The 1,000-plus page document is as complicated and bureaucratic as its name suggests, and it's been on hold for years. Don’t expect that to happen before election. Rocking the boat on this hypersensitive issue would certainly alienate the governor’s progressive base. But after election-day, he has plenty of politic wiggle room and, with today’s Court of Appeals ruling, a clearer view of the legal landscape.<br />
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TOM WILBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103105549852845055noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6949864949316311883.post-60671690229042653302014-05-22T07:28:00.000-07:002014-05-22T12:04:01.246-07:00NY shale prospects dim six years after leasing frenzy Industry faces mounting legal, economic hurdles <br />
New York’s Marcellus Shale gas reserves, once thought to be world class, continue to lose their luster along with the gumption to develop them.<br />
<br />
Shale gas proponents, once giddy with anticipation during the leasing boom of 2008, know now what they didn’t know then: legal hurdles to overcome state and local roadblocks look more formidable if not insurmountable with each passing court case and hearing, and the resource looks less and less worth the effort under today’s economics.<br />
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Given the inherent uncertainty in mineral exploration, much of the impetus behind it boils down to a mindset. While even some of the most ambitious extraction endeavors go bust, it’s a given that resources buried 5,000 feet deep will not be found where nobody chooses to look. And nobody is going to look if they are not allowed to, or if the effort of looking is deemed greater than the rewards anticipated under any scenario.<br />
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Two recent indicators of future prospects in New York have, for the most part, slipped under the radar of the mainstream press, but it’s a reasonable bet they have not escaped notice of prospectors and the people who finance them. The first indicator is the status of a lawsuit by industry and a group of landowners to legally force open the Marcellus frontier in New York. I’ll get to that in a minute. The other indicator is the latest assessment of economically recoverable reserves under current market conditions, if the moratorium were lifted or bypassed.<br />
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First the economics. Although it may be a fading memory for many, stakeholders will remember a time when New York was expected to join Pennsylvania as a global energy producer with gas from the Marcellus Shale. Many will recall the summer of 2008, when the leasing frenzy – whipped up by a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Under-Surface-Fracking-Fortunes-Marcellus/dp/0801450160" target="_blank">$110 million deal</a> between XTO Energy and landowners in Deposit, New York – sent lease prices soaring along the relatively unexplored fringes of the Marcellus in the Southern Tier of New York.<br />
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Since then, the price of natural gas has fallen by more than two thirds. Moreover, New York state’s moratorium on shale gas development, pending a review originally expected to last a year, is about to begin year seven, with no end in sight. In the meantime prospectors have moved on to other ventures, leaving many to wonder when and if they will return to the Empire State. The answer is simple: They will return when and if a) it’s allowed and b) it’s profitable.<br />
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The League of Women voters became interested in the profitability issue when the state released its <a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2014/02/moratorium-or-not-ny-begins-to-feel.html" target="_blank">2014 Energy Plan</a>, which includes vague references to shale gas development within New York’s borders. To help bring things into focus, the league commissioned petroleum geologist Arthur Berman and petroleum engineer Lyndon Pittinger to assess the potential of the shale gas under New York state in the context of market viability.<br />
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The result, <a href="http://www.psehealthyenergy.org/data/Marcellus_Resource_Assessment_for_New_York_April_10_2014.pdf" target="_blank">a report </a>titled Resource Assessment of Potentially Producible Natural Gas Volumes from the Marcellus Shale, State of New York, was released last month. It begins with varying projections of the Marcellus Shale potential from credible sources that show, if anything, just how uncertain the starting point of that calculation is and always has been. Estimates of the recoverable reserve range from those posed by Penn State geologist Terry Engelder in 2008 -- 489 trillion cubic feet (tcf), with about 71 tcf under New York stat – to those offered by The United States Geological Society in 2011: 84.2 tcf for the entire Marcellus play extending through Pennsylvania and four other states.<br />
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To clear up a point of common confusion, these numbers represent “technically recoverable” gas. As Berman and Pittinger point out, the “economically recoverable” figure, which is more relevant, is bound to be lower. Both figures are moving targets. That which is technically recoverable changes with technological advances; economically recoverable resources change with economy, and specifically with the value of the resource. The value, in turn, is influenced by supply, demand, and infrastructure to get it to market. All of these things are influenced by regulation, which in New York remains unknown.<br />
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In a nut, the League of Women Voters report found that the business of fracking in New York, moratorium aside, would not be viable at today’s price -- between $4 and $4.50 per MMBtu, or Million British Thermal Units. The price would have to rise to $6 per MMBtu to encourage exploration and even then production would be modest -- between the 0.8 and 2.5 Tfc. A price of $8 MMBtu would encourage production between 2 to 9.1 tcf -- more than marginal but hardly the bonanza that people were expecting in 2008. For gas to reach $6 MMBtu, Berman notes, “Substantial unforeseen changes in the natural gas supply/demand balance would need to occur.”<br />
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(You can hear Berman discuss his report with Capitol Press Room Host Susan Arbetter <a href="http://www.wcny.org/cpr042214/" target="_blank">here.)</a><br />
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It’s fair to note that Berman has long been a critic of shale gas development, and his projections tend to reflect a broader notion that its economic sustainability falls well short of expectations promoted within the field. But he is respected, and even shale gas proponents such as Engelder, given the chance, show no eagerness to flatly dismiss his assessment of New York. “Art may not be that far off the mark although he is usually low relative to other analyses,” Engelder said in a recent email, asking his take on Berman’s work. “Maybe some of Broome County works at $4 gas,” Engelder added.<br />
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It’s also worth noting that Berman’s analysis draws on and expands the same <a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2013/11/what-are-prospects-for-new-yorks-shale.html" target="_blank">school of thought </a>developed last year by a team comprised of a cross-section of professionals, led by investor <a href="ttp://ecowatch.com/2013/01/07/northrup-opponent-fracking/" target="_blank">Chip Northrup</a>, who happen to be upstate New York residents and who have been conspicuous in the battle to keep fracking out of their state. The team also includes Lou Allstadt, a retired Mobil vice president, Brian Brock, a geologist, and Jerry Acton, a retired systems engineer for Lockheed Martin. (Here's link to Northrup's blog, <a href="http://www.nofrackingway.us/" target="_blank">No Fracking Way.</a>)<br />
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Within days of the release of the report by the League of Women Voters, shale gas proponents suffered another discouragement on the legal front. First, some background: Undaunted by a <a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2013/09/home-rule-adversaries-welcome-date-with.html" target="_blank">string of defeats</a> in state court that have consistently ruled in favor of municipalities’ rights to ban drilling, a legal team representing landowners and industry <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/pro-fracking-group-sues-ny-state-delays-article-1.1616846" target="_blank">filed a suit </a>against New York that claims the indefinite moratorium on shale gas development violates the state’s own policy under the State Environmental Quality Review Act. The state filed a motion for dismissal on the grounds that the plaintiffs had suffered no damages and the moratorium fell well within the state’s right in establishing policy on shale gas, regardless of how long it took to review all the factors.<br />
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The complaint was filed by the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York, represented by Scott Kurkowski and funded by the Mountain States Legal Foundation, a group founded by the Koch brothers to fund conservative legal causes. A companion suit was filed by industry lawyer Tom West on behalf of Mark Wallach, a trustee of Norse Energy, a bankrupt drilling company with interests in upstate New York. Morgan Costello of the attorney general’s office provided council for the state.<br />
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On April 24, both sides appeared in a hearing before state Supreme Court Judge Roger McDonough. It’s often tough to tell the outcome of a case based on a hearing and prior to a ruling, but by all counts, the judge seemed to lack sympathy for the landowners, and pressed them on the merits of their complaint against the state. Here’s an excerpt from <a href="http://www.jlcny.org/site/index.php/1999-latest-on-jlcny-lawsuit-against-nys-and-governor-cuomo" target="_blank">an account</a> posted April 26 on the Joint Landowners website:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Judge McDonough asked if the executive branch can delay forever. Ms. Costello’s answer was that it can take extended time. Judge McDonough seemed to agree with Ms. Costello on the executives role, calling it “separation of powers 101.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Attorney Tom West for Norse spoke next. The Judge focused on time limits in SEQRA. There are none. He suggested that this should be remedied in the legislature or in the executive branch. As Attorney West kept hammering at the history of delay and the ongoing wrong, the Judge said that he can only take the executive on its word at this stage of the process. (Editor’s note: Motive will emerge in discovery, but we have to get past the motion to dismiss in order to get to discovery.) The Judge sympathized with the frustration but kept returning to time limits in the law.</blockquote>
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The blog concluded optimistically that the “judge reserved decision” and though he did not recognize the fracking moratorium as an “illegal delay” under the state’s SEQR policy, there may be an opening for an argument of “unreasonable delay.”<br />
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That optimism was not shared by West. In a recent email in response to my query about the status of the case, West was blunt: “We are not expecting a positive decision based upon the way that oral argument went.” The West Law firm took down the links to the complaints once posted on its <a href="http://westfirmlaw.com/" target="_blank">website</a>.<br />
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While the jury is still out, so to speak, there is little good news based on these recent events for those counting on a near-term future in shale exploration and development in New York, and plenty of good news for those hoping to see New York lay the groundwork to establish itself as an alternative energy trend-setter.<br />
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But the story is not that simple, of course, with plot lines extending well beyond New York, and woven deeply into the national and global circumstances that will determine the future of fracking. Those plots are quickly evolving. <br />
<br />
One example: The U.S. Energy Information Administration has just cut its estimates of recoverable reserves in the Monterey Shale in California by 96 percent. California, like New York, is politically influential, and it’s hard to ignore other similarities regarding their roles in the fracking saga. In California, the notion that the geology cannot support the hype has enlivened the argument that the fracking bonanza was a bust from start, and has encouraged legislation for a moratorium similar to New York’s.<br />
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But while shale gas prospects are dimming in New York and California, they are getting a big push from places inbetween as well as other parts of the world. Global forces are encouraging development of gas reserves in dozens of other U.S. states to capitalize on growing international demand for cheap and readily available fuel sources, with the economic and political equation favoring expediency over externalized costs. Those demands, already substantial and growing in Asia, have spiked in Europe. The age-old call for energy independence is again taking on a new urgency in the Free World, with the Ukraine crises vividly illustrating the danger of energy dependence on unpredictable and unfriendly governments – in this case, Russia.<br />
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Many think more gas from the U.S. and a global spread of the fracking gospel is the answer. Michael Lindenberger of the Dallas Morning News, recently reporting on the significance of a deal for Russia to strengthen it’s economic status with a $400 billion deal to export gas to China, cited Texas Senator John Cornyn as characterizing the broad political push for policy to encourage more U.S. exports. More exports, according to Cornyn, make economic sense but, moreover, are justified “because of the competition it would provide for Putin and the Russian monopoly.”<br />
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Of course, we are talking about shale gas and fracking, so it comes as no surprise that there is little consensus and much division on the topic. Seamus McGraw, author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Country-Dispatches-Frack/dp/0812980646" target="_blank">End of County,</a> Dispatches from the Frack Zone, has been following the fracking issue since he began writing his book as the shale gas boom first developed in Pennsylvania. He points out that the global economics of shale gas cannot be isolated from the economics of other energy sources, including coal. The political urgency provoked by international threats in areas involving key American interests must account for the practicalities of various solutions. And a primary practicality of shale gas exports involves infrastructure in place to get energy where it needs to go today, not years from now. And here I will give McGraw the last word. In a recent discussion on my <a href="http://www.facebook.com/frackingandfortunes" target="_blank">Facebook page,</a> he posted:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
You're not going to break Russia's stranglehold (on natural gas exports) because a) they've got pipelines which beat LNG (liquid natural gas) every time, and b) because they can set the price as low as they want to drive us out of market and then jack it back up at will. All this is going to do is drive up prices here to the point that gas may no longer be reliably competitive with coal, choke off any ancillary economic benefits to manufacturing, and concentrate what advantages there are entirely in the industry itself. And even that, as the Russia/China deal demonstrates, isn't going to be nearly as lucrative as the industry imagines. It's a bad deal all around.</blockquote>
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Ultimately, global markets along with political considerations will shape the deal, good or bad, and determine whether the value of gas in places like New York ever justifies the costs of extracting it.<br />
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TOM WILBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103105549852845055noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6949864949316311883.post-76450155039544194992014-04-26T08:12:00.001-07:002014-05-01T05:39:48.807-07:00Paper trail for Pa. shale waste leads to ex-IBM site in NY Official dismisses DEP record of cuttings shipped upstate <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzd84giKFqhIjztCFe0nGNutejmkcebqZXo4rrT6W8dn_fQmPM-iVwjbIZLCHAl9WUojAsCBZIH_v33xl2h-Wsn_iC6CvktLCHaL-JZ-8jtgFoyYArvkrOc6mkIUCrnq0JcDaVy0HPAZc/s1600/1379928_658890087464945_674002942_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzd84giKFqhIjztCFe0nGNutejmkcebqZXo4rrT6W8dn_fQmPM-iVwjbIZLCHAl9WUojAsCBZIH_v33xl2h-Wsn_iC6CvktLCHaL-JZ-8jtgFoyYArvkrOc6mkIUCrnq0JcDaVy0HPAZc/s1600/1379928_658890087464945_674002942_n.jpg" height="223" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A delivery arrives in the village of Endicott, NY last summer<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>Photo: NY Friends of Clean Air and Water</b></span></td></tr>
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<b>ENDICOTT, NY --</b> An issue over what – exactly -- is arriving in tanker trucks for disposal at a manufacturing plant in Endicott, New York is a recent and vivid example of the fear and uncertainty over the endpoint of waste produced by the shale gas industry, and the lack of regulatory wherewithal to track it.<br />
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It’s a matter of record with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation that the tanker trucks in question are importing more than 80,000 gallons of waste a day to the plant in the heart of the village. That sum includes 30,000 gallons of leachate from the Seneca Meadow’s landfill, and 50,000 gallons from the Broome County landfill. But there is much that is not on the record, and I will get to that in a moment. First, some background. <br />
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Leachate is the soluable and suspended matter that percolates through landfills with (in this area) 30 inches of rain each year, plus whatever moisture is in the landfill itself. This drainage includes essentially anything that goes into the landfill that can be flushed out with water. Put another way, Leachate consists of landfill dregs.<br />
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Municipal sewage treatment plants are generally not equipped to handle landfill leachate, so it’s shipped to commercial plants designed to treat industrial waste. The sprawling manufacturing campus in Endicott, in the middle of a heavily populated retail and residential area of the village, was once home to IBM Corp’s micro electronic division .The industrial park, now owned by Huron Real Estate, includes a plant that has been treating waste produced from onsite operations for decades. <br />
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The most recent imports are a new source of income for the current operators, i3 Electronics. They began arriving conspicuously last year from Seneca Meadows landfill in 18-wheel tanker trucks rolling through the village. At that time, the business was owned by EIT, which eventually fell to bankruptcy. Along with the tanker trucks came suspicion and fear that former and current operators of the business are trying to offset steady manufacturing losses and <a href="http://www.wbng.com/news/video/i3-lays-off-28-employees-239958521.html" target="_blank">job declines</a> over the years with revenue from waste imports. <br />
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The suspicion is not without justification. As far as state regulators are concerned, the plant is processing this new source of landfill waste, without a permit, as part of a pilot study. But no time frame has been allocated, and no public comment period or public notification has been declared. According to Mary Jane Peachey, a regulator with the state Department of Environmental Conservation, the DEC has not monitored the input or output of the plant in at least five years.<br />
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And here is another critical piece of background: The i3 Electronics site and the surrounding residential and retail district is a Class 2 state Super Fund site, meaning existing pollution there poses a “significant threat to public health or the environment.” Since 1979, IBM Corp. has been pumping toxic solvents from the ground that have seeped from the micro-electronics plant into the community, affecting more than 470 homes. There <a href="http://www.wbng.com/closings/2597941.html" target="_blank">have </a>been <a href="http://www.endicottalliance.org/EIT/glycolspill2.htm" target="_blank">multiple spills</a> since. <br />
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It is no surprise that Endicott residents are generally concerned about becoming a waste destination, and specifically concerned about waste from shale gas development, which have been banned in New York pending a <a href="http://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/story/24579/20140411/ny-health-chief-resignation-leaves-fracking-review-in-limbo" target="_blank">health review. </a><br />
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Much of the controversy over fracking waste involves the chemical solution that goes into shale gas wells to stimulate production, and the liquid mix of brine, chemicals and metals that comes out. But liquid waste – called flowback – is just one part of a broader metric. Shale gas development also involves a viscous solution called drilling mud, and solid waste, including drill cuttings tinged with varying degrees of metals, solvents, and naturally occurring <a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2013/10/duke-study-finds-radioactive-hot-spots.html" target="_blank">radio active material</a> (NORM) from deep in the ground. It’s a matter for record that drilling cuttings from the Marcellus Shale tend to be radioactive, and the New York State Department of Health <a href="http://www.ithacajournal.com/article/20091206/NEWS01/912060349/Tests-show-high-concentration-radioactive-waste-Marcellus" target="_blank">has advised</a> officials from the DEC to devise a testing protocol to ensure hot drilling waste is handled and disposed of properly .<br />
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Drill cuttings, like flowback, are also <a href="http://www.epa.gov/osw/nonhaz/industrial/special/oil/oil-gas.pdf" target="_blank">exempt </a>from federal hazardous waste handling laws, and they often <a href="http://www.dcbureau.org/201308148881/natural-resources-news-service/new-york-imports-pennsylvanias-radioactive-fracking-waste-despite-falsified-water-tests.html#sthash.ohQGF1BV.dpuf" target="_blank">end up in landfills</a>, like Seneca Meadows. <br />
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And that’s how shale gas dregs can end up Endicott, or countless other places where landfill leachate is treated. The shipping of leachate to private plants is not, in itself, sinister, or even especially newsworthy. It’s the exemptions, loopholes, and lack of disclosure about its contents that makes it a problem and rightly invites the attention of activists and media watchdogs. <br />
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According to <a href="http://www.paoilandgasreporting.state.pa.us/publicreports/Modules/Waste/WasteByWasteFacility.aspx" target="_blank">records filed</a> with the state Department of Environmental Protection, the Seneca Lake Meadows landfill was the final destination for Marcellus Shale drill cuttings from 196 wells drilled in Pennsylvania during 2010 and 2011. After tracking this bit of information down on their own, some Endicott residents and area activists wanted to know if this potentially radio active drilling waste stream ended in Endicott via the importation of Seneca Meadows leachaete. If so, were state regulators aware of it?<br />
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And that brings us to the part of the story where the record gets muddy. <br />
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A citizens group called the Western Broome Environmental Stakeholders Coalition met with the DEC’s Peachey in February to get to the heart of the matter. (A video of the meeting, filmed by activist Bill Huston, is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScoBNTlVM0c&list=PLo_WbqYTF8XyKPwrudSf1oFx06qUqOgJC" target="_blank">available here.</a>) Early in the meeting, the question came up as to whether the Seneca Meadows leachate arriving in Endicott was tested for radioactivity – a simple question that apparently invited a very confusing answer. <br />
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Peachey said that step is unnecessary, unless agency personal “are aware” that the waste comes from a suspected radioactive source. “When we are aware that someone is taking a waste stream that would have those elements we would require them to do appropriate sampling and monitoring for that,” she explained.<br />
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When a resident pointed out that Seneca Meadows takes Marcellus drill cuttings, Peachey challenged the source of that information. “If they were taking fracking waste now I think we would know it,” she said. When told that the information came directly from the Pennsylvania DEP database, Peachy replied: “I would question that ... I would like to substantiate that more with what’s currently going on there.”<br />
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DEP records show that Peachey is technically correct. Seneca Meadows is not currently taking waste from shale gas wells. But she failed to tell the group – in a meeting that was purportedly intended to inform the public and set the record straight – that the <a href="http://www.paoilandgasreporting.state.pa.us/publicreports/Modules/Waste/WasteByWasteFacility.aspx" target="_blank">Pennsylvania record </a>also shows the landfill did accept cuttings from nearly 200 wells over a two-year period. In bureaucratic form, Peachey fixated on timing and semantics while ignoring the essence of the matter. <br />
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While Peachey’s response could be explained as an attempt to disarm a source of PR headaches for the agency, it did nothing to address the issue at hand: drill cuttings in the Seneca Meadows landfill and their influence on the leachate. And it circumvented the original question – is the leachate from that landfill being checked for radioactivity as it rolls into Endicott? <br />
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The answer (as eventually revealed – sort of) is no, and perhaps there is a good reason that it is not. (Addressing a later question from the audience, Peachey explained that it is up to landfill operators to check for radio-activity.) But Peachey’s failure to acknowledge, much less explain, the record of shipments of cuttings from Pennsylvania gas wells to Seneca Meadows does not inspire trust. The error of omission could be a misguided attempt for damage control. Or it might be evidence that the department is out of the loop in what she pointed out was a “transaction between one private company to another private company.”<br />
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Another possibility, no more reassuring, is that the Pennsylvania records are untrustworthy. Before gaining access to the DEP website, visitors must agree to this disclaimer that notes that the data is self-reported, unchecked, unverified, and possibly incomplete:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
DEP makes no claims, promises or guarantees regarding the accuracy, completeness or timeliness of the operators’ data that DEP is required to post. DEP expressly disclaims any liability for errors or omissions related to the production data contained within these reports. No warranty of any kind is given by DEP with respect to the production data contained within these reports posted on its website.</blockquote>
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All of this uncertainty points to an overarching problem: the industry’s exemption from federal laws that mandate a clear tracking and specific kind of handling of hazardous waste. States are left with that job, and more often than not, state officials – citing a lack of resources -- defer to the industry to get the job done. <br />
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The issue of where the waste goes, which I have <a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2013/10/western-ny-brine-plant-becomes-emblem.html" target="_blank">written abou</a>t in <a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2013/04/unknowns-about-eaton-township-injection.html" target="_blank">several posts</a>, is especially pressing these days, as tens of thousands of shale gas wells come on line in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and tens of thousands more elsewhere in the country.In the absence of federal hazardous waste laws and lack of regional planning, placing the waste becomes a process of default as various states consider legislation to ban it. (New Jersey legislators are crafting a second attempt at a ban after the first was vetoed by Gov. Chris Christie, and the issue is also being considered in New York and Connecticut.) Hence, rather than guided by a master plan, the waste is following the path of least social and political resistance. Much of what comes from the Marcellus, as far as we can tell from industry’s self policing records, goes to <a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2013/10/western-ny-brine-plant-becomes-emblem.html" target="_blank">injection wells </a>in Ohio, and various landfills and private treatment plants in Pennsylvania and New York.<br />
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In addition to Seneca Meadows, DEP records show that New York destinations for waste from the Marcellus Shale include Hyland in Angelica, the Hakes Landfill in Painted Post, the Chemung Landfill near Elmira, Seneca Meadows Landfill in Waterloo and the Allied/BFI Waste Systems landfill in Niagara Falls. <br />
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Communities like Niagara Falls (and notably Love Canal) tied to a history of toxic waste disposal are especially sensitive to the possibility of a future tied to more of the same. Even though the Buffalo area does not sit over a viable shale reserve, I have found during<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Under-Surface-Fracking-Fortunes-Marcellus/dp/0801450160" target="_blank"> book signings</a> there that community members are keenly attuned to the issues of shale gas development and, specifically, the lack of assurances about its waste stream.<br />
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Endicott is also one of those places. People in the village are angry that they were not notified about waste imports to the i3 Electronics plant. Matters were made worse last year when a corroded tank holding the contents of a Seneca Meadows shipment failed and at least 6,000 gallons of leachate spilled out, much if it soaking into the ground. Residents were not informed of the shipments or the spill. They were left piecing together information until a year later, when John Okesson, Peachey’s colleague at the DEC, explained details at the February meeting after sustained community pressure for the agency to account for it.<br />
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Rick White, a community member and labor advocate, summed up feelings at the end of the meeting. He referred to decades of spills, a pattern of secrecy, and a resulting legacy of environmental problems that, in his words, “stack up.” He continued:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
This whole community is very sensitive to the idea that if there is additional toxic fluid, whether it is fracking waste or landfill waste or whatever it might be, and it’s coming into the village of Endicott for whatever the reason, whether it’s to make money or to enrich somebody’s pockets or it its simply to do a good service to the community, the negatives outweigh the positives. And this is why we are asking these questions.</blockquote>
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His comments were met with applause from the 50 or so people in attendance. TOM WILBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103105549852845055noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6949864949316311883.post-77693421011486279352014-03-29T07:54:00.000-07:002014-04-30T17:29:14.240-07:00Ruling allows Scroggins back on Cabot-leased land Fracking activist will fight buffer zone in May trial <i><b>Update, April 30 2104:</b> Scroggins V. Cabot trial, set for May 1 in Montrose, Pa., postpomed until July 2.</i><br />
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<i>***</i></div>
<br />
A ruling Friday by a Pennsylvania judge to allow activist Vera Scroggins back on land leased by Cabot Oil & Gas is a “big win” according to her legal team, but the fight will continue in a trial scheduled for May 1.<br />
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An order, drafted by Cabot attorneys and handed down by Judge Kenneth Seamans in October, barred Scroggins from setting foot on land owned or leased by Cabot, “including but not limited to” well sites, well pads, and access roads. That language kept Scroggins from approximately 200,000 acres -- nearly 40 percent -- of Susquehanna County where Scroggins lives, including property of friends, neighbors, stores, parks, schools and health care providers.<br />
<br />
After a<a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2014/03/cabot-v-scroggins-heat-over-land-rights.html" target="_blank"> hearing Monday</a>, Judge Seamans modified the injunction to restrict Scroggins only from work areas designated by no-trespassing signs and a 100-foot buffer zone. The new order, issued on Friday, allows Vera to enter other land leased by Cabot, including markets, public spaces, physicians offices, and hospitals. It also allows her to use public roads that go by work sites, but the ruling stipulates that she cannot stop or linger at the entrances to access roads.<br />
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In <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/judge-eases-restrictions-pa-fracking-activist-23104535" target="_blank">an interview</a> Friday with Associated Press reporter Michael Rubinkam, Scroggins’ attorney Scott Michelman characterized the revised order as “a big win,” but he added that the 100-foot buffer could pose unjustified restrictions. Scroggins said the revised order was “a step in the right direction. ” She told me today that she and her legal team will fight the buffer zone at a trial scheduled for May 1.<br />
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Scroggins’ vantage point was mostly from public roads by drilling sites, although Cabot claims that she also trespassed onto private land under lease by the Texas drilling company, posing a safety risk to herself and others. In a statement Friday, Cabot officials said they were "satisfied” with the ruling to maintain an injunction against Scroggins that “protects Cabot and its employees, contractors and others” and “keeps landowners from being exposed to liability that could arise from Scroggins' actions."<br />
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One of the main questions to be resolved: Is a buffer zone, which does not apply to other citizens, necessary to protect the health and safety of Scroggins and others, as Cabot claims, or is it being used by Cabot to discourage anti-fracking activists from filming or viewing Cabot operations from legitimate vantage points, as Scroggins claims.<br />
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Scroggins has taped and posted hundreds of video files on You Tube showing drilling operations in Susquehanna County since 2009, including spills, clean-ups, and discharges. The videos cast operations in a way that runs counter to the industry’s portrayal as clean and safe. Scroggins has also lead tours for political action groups, academics, journalists, and other interested parties visiting the area to learn more about drilling and the controversial practice of high volume hydraulic fracturing to stimulate the gas wells.<br />
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<div style="-x-system-font: none; display: block; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 12px auto 6px auto;">
<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/215127936/Cabot-Oil-and-Gas-v-Vera-Scroggins" style="text-decoration: underline;" title="View Cabot Oil and Gas v. Vera Scroggins on Scribd">Cabot Oil and Gas v. Vera Scroggins</a> </div>
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<iframe class="scribd_iframe_embed" data-aspect-ratio="0.774248927038627" data-auto-height="false" frameborder="0" height="600" id="doc_51891" scrolling="no" src="//www.scribd.com/embeds/215127936/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-18bhttaxwg3t7gn8q9by&show_recommendations=true" width="100%"></iframe><br />TOM WILBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103105549852845055noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6949864949316311883.post-11760063876336334192014-03-24T15:33:00.000-07:002014-03-25T13:13:15.597-07:00Cabot v Scroggins = heat over land rights, speech, fracking Pa. court considers injunction to limit activist’s actions <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWcsEnrma_eOkl_u1hqUAH9MlQuWRVmm24hY9E-yTQHz8-mxR21ItAapDpvj3fYQmYWsHlSMq25xtzIfr1ZSxjjKxGo465NQ4ndfWUhkE-2oOPVkyPxXoq6P5ZGnRpYv6H5MsSirbqjQQ/s1600/IMG_4775.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWcsEnrma_eOkl_u1hqUAH9MlQuWRVmm24hY9E-yTQHz8-mxR21ItAapDpvj3fYQmYWsHlSMq25xtzIfr1ZSxjjKxGo465NQ4ndfWUhkE-2oOPVkyPxXoq6P5ZGnRpYv6H5MsSirbqjQQ/s1600/IMG_4775.jpg" height="303" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Vera Scroggins and her lawyers (left) at the Montrose courthouse Monday</td></tr>
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A confrontation over free speech and land rights that began inside a courthouse in Montrose, Pennsylvania this morning grew more contentious outside, as lawyers and demonstrators took their arguments to the courthouse steps and parking lot.<br />
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The hearing, in the Court of Common Pleas before Judge Kenneth Seamans, involved what degree Cabot Oil & Gas can limit activist Vera Scroggins in her attempts to videotape drilling operations and related activity. The company has faced public relations and environmental problems in Dimock township after the state Department of Environmental Protection held Cabot's operations responsible for polluting an aquifer that supplies dozens of homes in Dimock Township.<br />
<br />
Scroggins has taped and posted hundreds of video files on You Tube showing drilling operations in Susquehanna County since 2009, including spills, clean-ups, and discharges. The videos cast operations in a way that runs counter to the industry’s portrayal as clean and safe. Scroggins has also lead tours for political action groups, academics, journalists, and other interested parties visiting the area to learn more about drilling and the controversial practice of high volume hydraulic fracturing to stimulate the gas wells.<br />
<br />
Scroggins’ vantage point was mostly from public roads by drilling sites, although Cabot claims that she also trespassed onto private land under lease by the Texas drilling company, posing a safety risk to herself and others.<br />
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One basic question before the court was whether Scroggins willfully and habitually trespassed. Her lawyers said that drilling zones were not always clearly marked with no trespassing signs, that Scroggins' ventures into drilling territory in each case were in good faith to openly ask questions and seek information, and that she always complied if asked to leave.<br />
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Two other questions, however, make the case a potential landmark test of a company’s control over property it leases but does not own. The first question is whether Cabot can legally keep Vera away from leased land, including access roads, with a buffer zone that extends into adjoining public roads and right-of-ways. The second question is whether a party that owns sub-surface rights but not surface rights can legally act as “gatekeepers” for who can and cannot come onto the land. Can a mineral rights lessee forbid a person who has been invited onto the land by the property owner to view operations?<br />
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Seamans granted <a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2014/01/trespassing-case-tests-drillers-control.html" target="_blank">the injunction in</a> October, after Vera appeared in court without an attorney to answer the trespass charge. Since then, the case has generated interest and outrage among activists who say Cabot is restricting limits on Scroggins’s constitutional right to report what is happening in her community, and its actions have a chilling effect on others. Attorneys Scott Michelman, of the Public Citizen Litigation Group in Washington, D.C. and Gerald Kinchey, in private practice in Sayre, Pa., have taken up Scroggins’ case pro bono.<br />
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Ostensibly, the injunction was designed to keep Scroggins away from work areas for safety reasons. But technically, the language forbids Scroggins from setting foot on land owned or leased by Cabot, “including but not limited to” well sites, well pads, and access roads. That phrasing is what makes the case a possible watershed. The Texas drilling company has leases on more than 200,000 acres -- nearly 40 percent -- of Susquehanna County where Scroggins lives, including rights to property of friends, neighbors, stores, parks, schools and health care providers. Obeying the injunction has required both active research to find out what land is leased, and also avoidance of places that she would normally go without thought.<br />
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At today’s hearing, Cabot proposed an alternative plan that would ban Scroggins from 150-foot setbacks from access roads and 500-foot buffer zones from work sites. Cabot attorney Amy Barrette, of Norton Rose Fulbright, argued the setbacks were necessary because “given Ms. Scroggins’ past conduct, if you give her an inch, she will take many, many miles, and she will be up on the well pads.”<br />
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Michelman argued that the order went well beyond addressing safety concerns and posed “a chilling effect” on the speech and actions of activists who wanted to call attention to fracking operations. An injunction that prevented Vera from entering designated work sites would be reasonable, he said, but not a buffer zone. He pointed out that such a zone could keep Scroggins from certain parts of public roads as well as areas that property owners are allowed on, even if they invited her to go with them.<br />
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The broad scope of the injunction is not about safety, but a ploy to intimidate activists, Michelman said in an interview after the hearing. “It tells them you will pay for exposing what is going on at these sites. You will pay for speaking out against the big oil and gas companies.”<br />
<br />
During the hearing, Kinchy argued that, unless it is specifically written in a lease, the lessor of sub-surface rights does not have the right to dictate who can and cannot come onto leased property. That principal will be relevant if the case goes to trial. Jeremy Mercer, a lawyer for Cabott, rebutted that Pennsylvania case law does in fact give mineral rights holders such rights.<br />
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Seamans adjourned the hearing after attorneys from each side agreed to send the court versions of the order that they could live with. Judging by the arguments, that would be in Scroggins’ case an injunction that keeps her from well pads, work areas, and access roads, and in Cabot’s case an injunction that keeps Scroggins from both these areas and specified setbacks from these areas. The case is scheduled to be tried May 1 unless the parties can come to terms.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiHJTde5c0AP8eqObefjTwrBT0pentqpt9iY_82sgviVT8jO2U6A2Spp4MvUcryPOd-RjrZS0oZ8FKRO6yGwdn6jpOzDFzujlV_F_mZiqnuOonLIgafyfWfoCrxM2hMvlOJC8C1DbisnQ/s1600/IMG_4798.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiHJTde5c0AP8eqObefjTwrBT0pentqpt9iY_82sgviVT8jO2U6A2Spp4MvUcryPOd-RjrZS0oZ8FKRO6yGwdn6jpOzDFzujlV_F_mZiqnuOonLIgafyfWfoCrxM2hMvlOJC8C1DbisnQ/s1600/IMG_4798.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A small group demonstrated support for Cabot </td></tr>
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More than 120 people attended the hearing, many of them activists from outside the area who were there to support Scroggins. A contingent of a half dozen or so drilling proponents, including some local landowners, demonstrated support for Cabot’s position.<br />
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After the adjournment, the crowd swarmed outside the courthouse where both pro-drilling and anti-fracking groups held press conferences. In a rally on the courthouse steps, drilling supporters held signs that said “Drill Baby Drill” and “Vera Get Off Our Land.” At the same time, a mix of Scroggins supporters and adversaries gathered in the corridor that lead to the back parking lot. Vera had sat quietly during the hearing and let council do the talking. Now, flanked by her lawyers, she used the platform to criticize the industry’s safety record and to call for more scrutiny. <br />
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“It sends a message that if you speak out, you will pay. This is an outrage,” she said, citing violations that the state has issued the company. “Why are they allowed to operate?”<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKav6K2PO9wzs-eHXplYbecmTU9412dYV2fNE8QPTCK8oZvMwPpOEFX_94Vet-csTdk3zUaE6w0wZq7_ur1f250PwAkzzv1kUeIXLMkDcUnCBXPPpzt9Z7lEGZDLrlCCtqs1N2JVyvEQY/s1600/IMG_4788.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKav6K2PO9wzs-eHXplYbecmTU9412dYV2fNE8QPTCK8oZvMwPpOEFX_94Vet-csTdk3zUaE6w0wZq7_ur1f250PwAkzzv1kUeIXLMkDcUnCBXPPpzt9Z7lEGZDLrlCCtqs1N2JVyvEQY/s1600/IMG_4788.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Barrette (right) argues with Michelman over intention of Scroggins injuncttion</td></tr>
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After about 10 minutes, a sheriff’s deputy told the crowd to go outside because the congestion in the hallway was posing a hazard. About this time, Barrette, Cabot’s attorney, shouldered her way through the crowd to Michelman, who was standing next to Scroggins. After an exchange, they exited to the parking lot. Some of the conversation was lost in the noise, but it had to do with the merits of the injunction and the way it was written.<br />
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“Did you draft that order?” Michelman said as the two faced each other in the parking lot.<br />
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“Yes, and the order was not sought to keep her from the hospital or any of those other places,” Barrette replied.<br />
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“Its language was categorical,” Michelman said. “If you wanted something different, you should have drafted it more carefully, and if you didn't like what the court entered you should have moved to modify it. You could have done that in the last five months.”<br />
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“We gave you a very narrow proposal that you rejected many times,” Barrette said, as a cluster of reporters and spectators caught up with them. “We'll let the court decide.” Barrette referred questions from reporters to George Stark (a company spokesman who has not returned my calls) and she walked away to rejoin the pro-drilling group in the front of the courthouse.<br />
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Shale Shock Media captured some of the events following adjournment, including the confrontation in the parking lot, in the video below:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/0ve-oTXB6qQ" width="560"></iframe><br />
<!--EndFragment-->TOM WILBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103105549852845055noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6949864949316311883.post-61759838065374894772014-03-06T16:08:00.000-08:002014-03-06T16:35:57.252-08:00Coming soon: Audit to grade DEP’s oversight of drillers Water testing protocol remains center of transparency flap Is the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection a lion or a lamb when it comes to regulating and policing shale gas operations?<br />
<br />
One qualified and independent source will soon provide an answer. Im May, the office of Auditor General Eugene DePasquale is due to release a detailed investigation into the practice and protocol of the state's regulation of the drilling industry, a source from his office told me this week.<br />
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DePasquale announced the review in January, 2013, in the wake of a controversy over whether state investigators obscure or alter the outcome of investigations into drilling’s impact on water supplies by disclosing an incomplete suite of chemical tests. The intention of the probe, according to <a href="http://www.auditorgen.state.pa.us/department/press/WaterAuditEngagementLetter_011513.pdf" target="_blank">a letter </a>from DePasquale, is to determine the "adequacy and effectiveness of DEP's monitoring of water quality as potentially impacted by shale gas development activities, including but not limited to systems and procedures for testing, screening, reporting and response to adverse impact such as contamination."<br />
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In other words, the probe will get to a question at the crux of the fracking debate: whether and to what degree the DEP is safeguarding water supplies from drilling.<br />
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The DEP’s testing protocol for wells potentially affected by drilling operations entered the public spotlight with a <a href="http://www.post-gazette.com/local/washington/2012/05/25/Resident-allowed-to-appeal-DEP-ruling-on-well-water/stories/201205250241" target="_blank">case by Loren Kiskadden</a> seeking damages for pollution against the agency and Range Resources. The case, now pending in the Court of Common Pleas, claims that the department withheld full results of tests of Kiskadden’s water in June 2011 and January 2012. The ensuing “suite code” controversy came to light in September 2012 with the deposition of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/03/us/pennsylvania-omitted-poison-data-in-water-report.html" target="_blank">Taru Upadhyay,</a> the DEP Bureau of Laboratories technical director, at a Environmental Board Hearing. Upadhyay testified that results for some metals, including copper, nickel, zinc and titanium, were not included in Kiskadden’s final report. This was not unusual, she said, because the lab only verifies concentrations of compounds ordered by the investigator from the oil and gas division, even if the samples were tested for a broader range. <br />
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<a href="https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2012/11/06/krancer-responds-to-claims-state-withheld-water-contamination-data/" target="_blank">DEP officials </a>have since confirmed that the testing protocol for markers of contamination from Marcellus Shale production – including what and how many chemicals are included in the final analysis -- falls to the discretion of individual investigators because they are best able to judge what chemicals are relevant to the investigation. <br />
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Watchdog agencies have characterized the DEP’s approach as random, incomplete, and a violation of public trust. Steve Hvozdovich, Marcellus Shale Policy Associate for Clean Water Action, said residents and watchdog agencies took it on faith that the department was following accepted protocol outlined by the federal Environmental Protection Agency in Method 200.7 – which requires testing for at least 24 different chemicals.<br />
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“This comes down to a lack of trust and a lack of transparency,” he said. “Nobody outside of the DEP offices knew this – that they were not quality controlling and quality assuring for the full 24 chemicals. It took a law-suit to bring that out … We need to have comprehensive testing, especially in a case where it originates from a residential complaint.”<br />
<br />
Clean Water Action was one of a dozen agencies that signed <a href="http://www.delawareriverkeeper.org/resources/Letters/DEPWaterTestMeetingLetter%20FINAL%201-25-13.pdf" target="_blank">a letter to</a> the DEP on January 25, 2013 with concerns that the agency's testing methods “lack transparency; result in the withholding of vital data from affected households and the public; force residents to potentially undergo prolonged exposure to contaminants that impact health; and delay action necessary to correct pollution of drinking water supplies.”<br />
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But concerns of environmental activists are not shared by all. The DEP’s approach to regulation and enforcement under drilling supporter Governor Tom Corbett has a lot to do with the boss’s political values of how much government should be overseeing private business. The oil and gas industry – provider of cheap abundant energy that we all demand – has been the long-time beneficiary of regulatory passes. For starters, the entire problem of determining what, how, and if chemicals affect water is prodigiously complicated by the fact that the industry is exempt from federal laws that require disclosure and regulations of chemicals injected into the ground, and also laws governing hazardous waste coming out. Corbett, who won election in 2010 partially on a platform to limit state regulations on the industry, has been praised by industry supporters who defend the DEP oversight as sufficient and responsible.<br />
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No matter what it says, DePasquale’s report, coming in May, will likely be controversial due to the political volatility of the subject matter. In addition to the water-testing issue, the probe will “determine the adequacy and effectiveness of DEP’s monitoring of the handling, treatment and disposal of waste connected with shale gas development activity, including but not limited to systems and procedures for testing, tracking, treating, disposal, data collection and analysis, reuse and recycling, reporting, and response to adverse impact such as contamination.”<br />
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It’s sure to add a new wrinkle to the shale gas debate as the election year heats up, beginning with primaries among gubernatorial candidates who will likely have something to say about it. Those include John Hanger, a Democrat, who served as DEP Secretary under the Ed Rendell administration. Hanger is a gas supporter, but he is also in the pro-regulatory camp. As DEP chief he has been critical of – and sometimes at odds with -- certain companies he characterized as rogues. He has called on the DEP to reform its protocol to ensure a comprehensive data set of water test results gets to people who are potentially affected by drilling. The degree Hanger's message resonates with primary voters will be one of many tests of how much weight regulatory reform carries in the larger political equation.<br />
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TOM WILBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103105549852845055noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6949864949316311883.post-86802001243738283732014-02-15T08:06:00.000-08:002014-02-15T08:30:26.709-08:00NY nat' gas projection exemplifies doublespeak on fracking Cuomo plan bases outlook on conflicting scenarios Will Fracking be part of New York’s energy picture for the next 20 years, or not? The state’s draft <a href="http://energyplan.ny.gov/Plans/2014.aspx" target="_blank">2014 Energy Plan</a> is supposed to answer this kind of question, and the fact that it appears to but doesn’t represents the politically unwieldy position Governor Andrew Cuomo finds himself in with the fracking debate.<br />
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In a <a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2014/02/moratorium-or-not-ny-begins-to-feel.html">recent post</a>, I wrote that the plan “makes no mention of developing New York’s shale reserves through fracking, a discussion that remains the elephant in the room. But the plan gives a nod to the role of natural gas and more infrastructure as part and parcel to some very ambitious, of very broad, goals.”<br />
<br />
An astute reader, Keith Schue, flagged this. He pointed out Cuomo's plan does in fact mention fracking, albeit in a convoluted and (in my view) meaningless way. Schue directed me to “Volume 2 – Sources,” and a subsection on p. 88 titled "New York Production Forecast." (Embedded below)<br />
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My own review of this section found several things worth noting. First, the forecast, accompanied by a chart, extends through 2035. During that time, the state’s natural gas production is “expected to decrease significantly,” according to the text, due to a “decline in existing formations” and “lack of new wells being drilled.”<br />
<br />
Yet, oddly, the line plotted in the accompanying “figure 32” gas production climbs impressively through that period.<br />
<br />
The text attempts to explain this, ignoring the inconsistency in the original analysis that gas production was expected to decline. The graph illustrates “a conservative Marcellus Shale natural gas production level.” This “conservative” level accounts for “potential (my emphasis) permitting and production difficulties related to horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing.” It offers this elaboration. “If these difficulties are minimized, Marcellus production levels could potentially be higher.”<br />
<br />
Finally, it explains that the graph “would show a forecasted overall decline in production continuing through 2035 if the current prohibition on shale development continues.” It concludes that “Regardless of actions within New York boundaries,” ample supplies of gas exist elsewhere “as long as the interstate pipeline capacity exists.”<br />
<br />
In a nut, the plan says that Marcellus gas will make production go up, contingent on unknowable factors if it happens, and go down if it doesn’t; and New York can get gas elsewhere anyway, if their are enough pipelines.<br />
<br />
To my eye, the analysis appears at first blush to be vague to the point of meaninglessness. But I will grant that it provides a baseline for discussion and many will find that the very dance around the Marcellus question along with the excruciating qualifications and parsing of language are emblematic of the ambiguous state of our energy future.<br />
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Shue, who is working with various environmental and anti-frcking groups, explained in an email that he and others were in the process of “writing an exhaustive critique of the energy plan and will be shining a spotlight on this sly mention of fracking at the hearings too.” I am happy that others are looking carefully at this, and I welcome their assessments.<br />
<div><p style=" margin: 12px auto 6px auto; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -x-system-font: none; display: block;"><a title="View 2014 Draft Nysep Vol2 Sources (Page88) 1 on Scribd" href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/207275292/2014-Draft-Nysep-Vol2-Sources-Page88-1" style="text-decoration: underline;" >2014 Draft Nysep Vol2 Sources (Page88) 1</a></p><iframe class="scribd_iframe_embed" src="//www.scribd.com/embeds/207275292/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&show_recommendations=true" data-auto-height="false" data-aspect-ratio="undefined" scrolling="no" id="doc_93285" width="100%" height="600" frameborder="0"></iframe><br />
</div>TOM WILBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103105549852845055noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6949864949316311883.post-77085325100453363192014-02-12T16:29:00.000-08:002015-11-14T08:49:47.075-08:00Moratorium or not, NY begins to feel fracking’s impact Outcome rests with future of consumption, production While New York’s governor Andrew Cuomo has officially <a href="http://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/story/23912/20140130/martens-fracking-delay-will-continue" target="_blank">tabled a decision</a> over the politically explosive issue of fracking until sometime after elections, his state’s energy dilemma continues to simmer.<br />
<br />
For worse or better, the Empire State will continue to feel impacts of the fracking boom for the next decade or more. The question is how big those impacts will be. The answer, to a large degree, rests with the governor, who can direct policy encouraging or discouraging both production and consumption of natural gas, and/or alternatives. <br />
<br />
Even with no decision to allow shale gas wells to be permitted within the state, fracked natural gas and oil are flowing into or passing through New York at an accelerated rate as the on-shore drilling boom continues to ramp up nationwide. Crude oil from the Bakken shale in North Dakota has begun passing through New York at an annual rate of 2 billion gallons, traveling by rail to Albany and then down the <a href="http://www.riverkeeper.org/blog/patrol/bakkene-oil-tankers-1311/" target="_blank">Hudson River </a>on tankers and on to <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-26/irving-refinery-said-to-get-90-000-barrels-a-day-by-rail.html" target="_blank">refineries in New Brunswick</a> Canada. (The oil carries <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-02/bakken-crude-more-dangerous-to-ship-than-other-oil-u-s-.html" target="_blank">unusual risks</a>. With relatively high concentrations of gas, it has caused <a href="http://protectingourwaters.wordpress.com/2013/11/12/oil-train-derails-explosion-in-alabama/" target="_blank">explosions</a> after four separate rail mishaps in North America, including one that <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/lac-m%C3%A9gantic-disaster-forces-irving-oil-to-alter-routes-1.1404423" target="_blank">killed 47 people</a> in Lac Megantic, Canada.)<br />
<br />
Numerous infrastructure plans to store and transport natural gas within New York are also well underway. Liberty Natural Gas has <a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2013/07/lng-port-slated-for-ny-coast-will-gas.html" target="_blank">proposed a terminal</a> to import gas to communities in New York and New Jersey. The Port Ambrose facility, proposed 19 miles off Long Island, would take in liquefied natural gas (LNG) from ships, convert it back into gas, and pipe it to markets in New York and New Jersey now dependent on heating oil. Anti-fracking activists fear the port will be converted to an export facility. In addition to various<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/21/spectra-pipeline-nyc-natural-gas-approved_n_4135428.html" target="_blank"> pipelines</a> on the drawing board and underway throughout upstate and downstate, there are plans to increase storage capacity. In the Finger Lakes community of Seneca Lake, Inergy Midstream is seeking final approval from the Department of Environmental Conservation to store propane in depleted salt mines, which would serve as a distribution hub through the region. The project faces <a href="http://www.observer-review.com/12-arrested-at-inergy-protesters-rally-cms-3668" target="_blank">intense opposition</a> from grass roots and institutional environmental causes.<br />
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Over the long haul, the impact of regional and national shale gas development on New York rests with two primary factors: How much gas the state consumes, and how much it produces.<br />
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On the consumption side, natural gas is a primary fuel for heating and electricity generation. Based on a draft of the New York State 2014 Energy Plan, recently released by the governor’s office, that trend is destine to continue, like it or not. The plan calls for expansion of natural gas infrastructure to replace heating oil – which is both dirty and expensive -- in urban areas downstate and elsewhere. Initiative 9 on p. 44 states it this way: <br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Reduce reliance on petroleum products for heating buildings by supporting the use of clean alternatives to heating oil and expanding access to natural gas in the near term while pursuing strategies to reduce natural gas leakage.</blockquote>
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Simply put, natural gas consumption will continue to be a staple in the state’s energy diet with intended improvements to its leaky delivery system.<br />
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The plan talks much about consumption and infrastructure of natural gas, but little about production. It makes no mention of developing New York’s shale reserves through fracking, a discussion that remains the elephant in the room. But the plan gives a nod to the role of natural gas and more infrastructure as part and parcel to some very ambitious, if very broad, goals. An overriding goal (<a href="http://www.dec.ny.gov/energy/80930.html" target="_blank">rooted in policy</a> from Gov. David Paterson's administration) is to reduce the amount of greenhouse gasses emitted in the state by 80 percent by 2050. It’s important to note that the gauge for measuring this goal is predicated on carbon; and that fuel oil – like coal -- emits much more carbon than gas. Critics like Bob Howarth feel the plan falls well short of fully accounting for the impact of methane. Howarth, a Cornell University ecology professor, is one of several co-authors of a paper challenging the notion that methane is an environmentally sound alternative to coal or other fossil fuels for that matter. “Natural gas is a disastrous fuel,” he said.<br />
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There are other aspects to the 2014 Energy Plan, including a $1 billion “New York Green Bank” to invest in “clean energy projects”; an initiative that lists “increased transportation alternatives”; and independent “microgrids” that can offer alternative and backup sources to communities apart from primary grids.<br />
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The plan is easy to look at, with an abundance of glossy and marginally relevant pictures of happy people in scenic landscapes, but difficult to read with bureaucratic jargon that is simultaneously dense and vague. Some critics called out the report for a lack of specifics and the preponderance of gloss. Andy Leahy, a drilling proponent and blogger who has been following developments in New York, wrote in <a href="http://nyshalegasnow.blogspot.com/2014/01/draft-nys-energy-policy-released-its.html" target="_blank">Shale Gas Now</a> that the Energy Plan was “governance of wishful perception” and he suggested it was “catering to the uninformed, wishful desires of everybody in New York who wants to feel vaguely good about the future, but to stay lit and warm throughout, burning what's extracted out of Pennsylvania.” <br />
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Others were enthusiastic about the plan. Pierre Bull, a policy analyst for the National Resources Defense Council, wrote on the <a href="http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/pbull/great_news_governor_cuomo_pled.html" target="_blank">agency’s blog,</a> Switchboard:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The already-impressive NY-Sun Initiative is about to become one of the most ambitious solar programs in the nation, with the governor committing, through a filing with the state’s Public Service Commission, $1 billion to the program—that’s right, $1 billion—over the next 10 years. (Governor Cuomo’s text also announces a major new program to help K-12 schools throughout New York go solar. You can read more about that here.) The governor’s goal is to install 3,000 megawatts of solar across New York. That’s enough solar to power 465,000 New York homes, cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2.3 million tons annually—the equivalent of taking almost 435,000 cars off the road—and create more than 13,000 new solar jobs. </blockquote>
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If New York expects to become a national showcase for how to dramatically reduce greenhouse gasses, it has plenty to work with. But assessing how that measure is made – and the degree that it includes natural gas -- is critically important.<br />
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By design more a PR gloss and political showcase than a technical document, the daft energy plan still serves a critical role as a catalyst for public discourse and involvement on the politics and technicalities of energy delivery. To that end, public hearings will be held around the state in February and March. (Full <a href="http://energyplan.ny.gov/Process/2014-Draft-Hearing-Schedule.aspx" target="_blank">schedule here.</a>)<br />
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The primary question not mentioned in the energy plan is whether New York will allow exploration to begin for shale gas production. With a recent <a href="http://polhudson.lohudblogs.com/2014/01/29/dec-chief-absolutely-plans-issue-fracking-permits-fiscal-year/" target="_blank">announcement </a>from Department of Environmental Commissioner Joseph Martens that the state will not issue permits until at least 2015, the governor’s staff has put speculation to rest that we will see fracking in New York anytime soon.<br />
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But both landowners and industry interests are mounting legal challenges in an attempt to force the governor’s hand. Tom West, an industry lawyer, is a primary figure behind the challenges, which I <a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2014/01/will-law-suits-bring-transparency-to-ny.html" target="_blank">wrote about here</a>. (Note that a hearing for West’s case, Wallach v New York state, has been postponed until March 7. This is so the complaint can be filed with a parallel case by the Joint Landowners Coalition, represented by attorney Scott Kurkoski of Levene, Gouldin & Thompson and funded by the Rocky Mountain Legal Defense Fund, an NGO that supports conservative causes. <br />
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Regardless of how the challenges to Cuomo’s indefinite delay on fracking turn out, another group has brought up a nagging question about the extent of New York’s shale reserves, and whether development is even viable at current prices. Chip Northrup, a former industry investor, accompanied by a group of critics with backgrounds in geology and industry, have been <a href="http://www.legislativegazette.com/Articles-Top-Stories-c-2014-02-10-86722.113122-Scientists-NY-fracking-benefits-are-overstated.html" target="_blank">making presentations</a>, most recently to a state Senate committee. The thrust of their argument is that geological data suggest New York’s shale gas reserves are not worth the bother, but speculators who gamble on them may still cause significant environmental headaches for the greater public.<br />
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All the speculation, either supporting or undermining the size of the state’s fossil fuel assets, won’t change this underlying reality: Upstate and New York City need lots of energy now, and tend to consume it in its cheapest and most available form.<br />
<br />TOM WILBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103105549852845055noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6949864949316311883.post-75010548242689766532014-01-31T12:52:00.000-08:002014-02-01T12:55:06.612-08:00Veil may be pulled from NY’s review of fracking in 2014 State has 45 days to begin releasing files on health review Developments on the status of New York and shale gas unfolded on two fronts this week.<br />
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The first was <a href="http://www.pressconnects.com/article/20140129/NEWS10/301290037" target="_blank">widely reported</a>: Joseph Martens, Governor Andrew Cuomo’s, environmental chief, told a legislative panel that the state’s moratorium on high volume fracking, now in its sixth year, would last at least another 14 months – through the next fiscal year. As he has done before, at Wednesday’s hearing Martens repeated what was already known – that the state Department of Health was studying the issue. And as before, he offered no specifics.<br />
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The second development, which went mostly unreported, may soon pry loose an explanation. Under the threat of a lawsuit by a citizens action group called Seneca Lake Pure Waters Association, Cuomo’s administration settled a case to release administrative documents, letters, and other records detailing the DOH study that will determine the outcome of the governor’s decision to allow or ban fracking – whenever that decision might come. (Details of the settlement, arbitrated in the state Supreme Court, are posted below.) The state has 45 days from January 10 to release some files, and 75 days to release others to comply with <a href="http://www.dos.ny.gov/coog/foil2.html" target="_blank">open government laws</a>. The SLPWA, represented by attorney <a href="http://nywaterlaw.com/" target="_blank">Rachel Treichler</a>, will continue to pursue a legal claim if they find the records that the state releases do not comply with the Freedom of Information request outlined in the settlement, according to Mary Anne Kowalski, SLPWA President<br />
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Cuomo’s record on the question of whether the state will allow exploration and development of the Marcellus Shale is characterized by a sense of <a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2012/08/record-clearly-shows-cuomos-ambivalence.html" target="_blank">ambivalence,</a> which is justifiable, and opaqueness, which is not.<br />
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Shortly after Cuomo began his first term in 2010, he identified the shale gas question as a priority, and insisted that the policy review that began under the previous administration would be expedited under his leadership. In June of 2012, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/nyregion/hydrofracking-under-cuomo-plan-would-be-restricted-to-a-few-counties.html?_r=0" target="_blank">Cuomo proposed</a> allowing drillers to begin work in communities where town boards favored it, but not in places opposed. But this and any other indication of industry support that Cuomo has uttered has triggered substantial grass roots protests and critical backlash from influential <a href="http://newyork2.sierraclub.org/content/47-groups-call-fracking-ban" target="_blank">institutions</a> and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/02/new-york-fracking_n_2797039.html" target="_blank">individuals</a> within the governor’s political base. In short, fracking<a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2012/06/new-york-state-watersheds-central-to.html" target="_blank"> opponents characterized</a> places where the state would begin permitting high volume hyraulic fracturing as “sacrifice zones” and they questioned why shale gas development would be allowed in some areas if it was unsafe in others.<br />
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Since <a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2012/09/ny-fracking-policy-hinges-on-health.html" target="_blank">announcing plans</a> in September, 2012 for the Department of Health to become involved in the review, Cuomo and his staff have refused to talk about the fracking issue except in the most vague terms. Even outside experts hired to make key assessments are bound by contracts that include a clause prohibiting them from disclosing or discussing the proceedings or records involved.<br />
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A pause in the race to frack may be well justified pending a more thorough review of policy, which is antiquated and ill equipped to handle the pressures from wide scale unconventional shale gas extraction. But withholding information – notably the scope, timing, and protocol for the health review -- from the public has invited only suspicion and attacks from parties both <a href="http://www.pressconnects.com/article/20131217/NEWS10/312170086/Norse-Energy-trustee-sues-Cuomo-over-fracking-report" target="_blank">for</a> and <a href="http://nyagainstfracking.org/following-dec-testimony-at-hearing-hundreds-of-new-yorkers-to-tell-governor-cuomo-not-one-fracking-well/" target="_blank">against</a> drilling. (In addition to the Freedom of Information challenge by the SLPWA, I <a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2014/01/will-law-suits-bring-transparency-to-ny.html" target="_blank">recently wrote</a> about a legal challenge to the governor’s approach by landowners, represented by industry attorney Tom West.) <br />
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At the 2013-14 budget hearings a year ago, Martens <a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2013/02/ny-fracking-policy-review-expected-in.html" target="_blank">told legislators</a> that the policy review, called the Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS), would be finished in “a matter of weeks.” Mysteriously, that proved to be entirely wrong. The administration’s only explanation has come from the <a href="http://polhudson.lohudblogs.com/2013/12/16/shah-fracking-transparency-will-come-works-done/" target="_blank">vague declaration </a>from Health Commissioner Nirav Shah, summed up in a quote reported by Gannett’s Jon Campbell last month: “Until I’m comfortable with the state of the science, I’m withholding my recommendation.”<br />
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It’s a matter of record that there is no money allocated in next year’s state budget for the necessary administrative oversight for shale gas development, or revenues that might come from it, so Martens was obliged to connect the dots for legislators: No budget allocation means no drilling. <br />
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Shah, who holds the keys to the decision based on the outcome of his review,<a href="http://www.nysenate.gov/calendar/live/2014-02" target="_blank"> is scheduled </a>to testify on budget issues in front of legislators on Monday. Perhaps he will be willing to pre-empt any outfall from the soon-to-be public records leveraged through the tenacity of the Seneca Lake Pure Waters Association with a clearer report of the scope, timing, protocol, and preliminary findings of the health investigation. <br />
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<br />TOM WILBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103105549852845055noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6949864949316311883.post-63807550021780194162014-01-25T12:28:00.000-08:002014-01-25T18:54:10.326-08:00Solutions to H20 pollution elude officials in Cabot gas field Five years after blast, Pa officials continue tests in Dimock Five years after the explosion of Norma Fiorentino’s water well signaled all was not well in Cabot’s Marcellus shale gas operation in northeast Pennsylvania, state environmental officials are still trying to gauge the impacts of drilling on the water supplies of local residents.<br />
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The agency is scheduling another round of tests to see whether methane levels in Dimock water wells are safe, Colleen Connolly, a spokeswoman for the Department of Environmental Protection, confirmed this week. It's the latest step in an investigation that literally began with a bang on New Year's Day, 2009. The explosion of the Fiorentino well prompted an investigation by the DEP that concluded water wells serving at least 19 homes contained explosive levels of natural gas that had migrated underground from Cabot’s nearby drilling operations. Since then, dozens of water wells in Susquehanna County have been taken off line due to methane contamination.<br />
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Some of the Dimock residents agreed to a settlement with Cabot, negotiated by the DEP, that compensated the parties with payments worth twice the assessed value of their properties, and systems to filter their water. Others have held out. They believe the systems, which require maintenance, are not an effective answer to the problem and do not filter other harmful chemicals associated with drilling. <a href="http://archive.org/stream/CabotPADEPagreement/FinalCoa121510_djvu.txt" target="_blank">The settlement</a> was finalized in 2010 under DEP Secretary John Hanger (now a gubernatorial <a href="http://www.hangerforgovernor.com/" target="_blank">candidate</a>). Hanger, who headed Governor Ed Rendell’s DEP, had originally pushed for an $11 million infrastructure project, to be paid for by Cabot, to restore fresh water to the residents. Cabot opposed the plan for a water line, and the administration withdrew it soon after Tom Corbett, an industry supporter, was elected governor.<br />
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Although Cabot continues to develop the Marcellus Shale throughout Susquehanna County, the DEP has banned the company from drilling within a 9-square mile area around Carter Road until it fixes an unremitting methane problem there.<br />
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Working with <a href="http://archive.org/stream/CabotPADEPagreement/FinalCoa121510_djvu.txt" target="_blank">the settlement</a> as a blueprint, Cabot has restored water to some but not all homes through special filtration systems or bottled water. But problem areas persist. Several polluted homes have been abandoned, including two on Carter Road bought by Cabot. The company bought 1101 Carter Road, once home to outspoken fracking activists Craig and Julie Sautner, and <a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-razing-of-1101-carter-road-rest-of.html" target="_blank">demolished </a>the ranch house last year. It then sold the vacant parcel to a neighbor for a fraction of the purchase price, with a condition written in the deed that no residence could ever be built there. Late last year, Cabot bought the <a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2013/11/cabot-buys-second-polluted-residential.html" target="_blank">home of Mike Ely</a>, on the south end of Carter Road, although the company has not answered questions about its plans for the contaminated property.<br />
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Several other homes in the area remain vacant after having been sold to other parties, reportedly for interest in mineral rights. Three vacant homes happen to be near Cabot’s failed Costello gas well, which officials have indentified as a possible source of methane pollution. This week, Connolly reiterated that the Costello well, near the intersection of the south end of Carter Road and State Route 3023, was “unviable” and “”remedial work is continuing at the gas well, and Cabot and DEP continue to evaluate results at the water wells.” In addition to fluctuating methane levels, previous tests have shown levels of iron and manganese that were elevated but within standards in some water samples. Elevated levels of these elements are “not uncommon during gas migration,” she reported.<br />
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Before Cabot can resume drilling in the banned zone, Connolly said, the company must “demonstrate compliance” with the 2010 Consent order. “We have scheduled another round of testing to determine whether the gas migration event has ceased,” she added. Connolly could not immediately say how many homes will be included in the sampling collection. Sources in the field told me that the DEP plans to test all 19 homes listed in the consent agreement, but that the agency has not been granted access to all the homes.<br />
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As I have found with many stories about shale gas, a central problem is a lack of information. Some of this is because state regulators, dependent on updates from companies that are <a href="http://www.epa.gov/osw/nonhaz/industrial/special/oil/oil-gas.pdf" target="_blank">exempt</a> from many <a href="http://water.epa.gov/type/groundwater/uic/class2/hydraulicfracturing/wells_hydroreg.cfm" target="_blank">disclosure laws</a>, are still trying to figure out exactly what is going on. And some of it is due to the fact that companies are reluctant to share certain information that casts operations in a negative light. This is all complicated by some residents who feel what is happening on their property is their business, others who want to show the world what they want the world to see, and still others working in good faith to expose and understand problems with the intention of making things better. In short the problem is cast in a muddle of projections from stakeholders with widely divergent interests and ideological footing. Chief among these is Cabot, which possesses the facts about what is happening at its restricted sites and underground, test results, along with rights to the land under question.<br />
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In addition to speaking with Connolly and people in the field, I have called and emailed Cabot spokesman George Stark over a period of months for an update. Here is one of my email queries from Dec. 10. 2013:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Hi George,</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I’m following up on Cabot’s recent purchase of Mike Ely’s property on Carter Road and have some questions related to that:</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Why did Cabot buy the property? </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
What plans does the company have for it? </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
What is the status of the nearby Costello well? Is it all fixed?</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Does the company expect to be able to resume development in the 9-square mile “no drill zone”?</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Also, a question related to the former Sautner property now owned by the Mayes: Why did Cabot forever prohibit building a home on the property as part of the land covenant?</blockquote>
Here is Stark’s response, which came a month later, on Jan. 9, after I left several phone messages:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Tom,</blockquote>
<blockquote>
Got your message yesterday about the former Ely property. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
Cabot entered into a private business transaction with the prior owner of the property. The sale was agreed to by both parties and we are now the current owners. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
George</blockquote>
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Trying to apply his answer to the questions at hand in any meaningful way was fruitless, so I emailed Stark again:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Hi George </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Thanks for responding. But your statement does not answer any of my questions. Here they are again: </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Why did Cabot buy the property? </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
What plans does the company have for it? </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
What is the status of the nearby Costello well? Is it all fixed? </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Does the company expect to be able to resume development in the 9-square mile “no drill zone”? </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Also, a question related to the former Sautner property now owned by the Mayes: Why did Cabot forever prohibit building a home on the property as part of the land covenant?</blockquote>
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That was January 9. Since then I have also left voicemails. I am still waiting for a reply. If Stark’s response, or lack of a response, has any journalistic value in the meantime, it illustrates how some companies deal with these kinds of unpleasant questions. They ignore them, or offer a statement of fact that appears to be authoritative but is actually irrelevant.<br />
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There are people on all sides of the debate over the merits and risks of shale gas development who share a sense or frustration over lack of information. A group of drilling proponents called Dimock Proud has been especially critical of the DEP for implementing the no-drilling zone in Dimock without engaging all the people who live there, including those eager to see shale gas development proceed. In their view, the DEP has been operating too much out of the public eye. The group represents people who are in position to make money when Cabot drills on their property. The Dimock Proud web site features <a href="http://dimockproud.com/mission/pa-dep-do-nothing-organization-and-environmental-backers/" target="_blank">letters to the DEP</a> complaining that the agency has ignored their requests for information -- specicially, explanations of the no drill zone around the problem wells and why the ban applies to people in the 9-square mile area who want to see their shale gas developed. The group stresses this compaint:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Dimock landowners have written you countless letters, signed petitions that we sent to you, and absolutely begged you to let us out of that arbitrary 9-square miles. You did nothing! You didn’t even acknowledge receipt of the petitions.</blockquote>
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The controversy over drilling and fracking in Dimock is one of many in countless communities in dozens of developing shale gas basins across the country. Some problems are unique and some universal. But Dimock, just across the border of New York State, was one of the first where the media spotlight focused intensely on the gas boom that is transforming the country. And given the persistence of problems there, it's where it might also shine the longest. <br />
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<br />TOM WILBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103105549852845055noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6949864949316311883.post-61550204227422867462014-01-13T11:05:00.002-08:002014-05-16T14:32:30.223-07:00Will law suits bring transparency to NY Fracking decision? Challenge tests Cuomo’s rights to keep review private New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo has avoided a decision over the polarizing and potentially damaging issue of fracking for his entire first term, so there is little expectation that he will voluntarily change course during an election year. Yet the governor’s handling of the fracking dispute may become a prominent issue as election time nears, pending the outcome of two law suits that could pry lose information.<br />
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How relevant and damaging that information is to either side of the debate remains to be seen, but it will provide potential leverage for both fracking proponents unhappy with the governor’s inaction on the matter, and opponents unhappy with the administration’s secrecy over policy development.<br />
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The state’s last<a href="http://www.dec.ny.gov/energy/75370.html" target="_blank"> public review</a> of draft policy to allow fracking was finished in 2011. Since then, mainstream media outlets have reported on several occasions that a decision was imminent. In June, 2012, Cuomo staffers told New York Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/nyregion/hydrofracking-under-cuomo-plan-would-be-restricted-to-a-few-counties.html?_r=0" target="_blank">reporter Danny Hakim</a> that the administration would allow fracking in areas where local officials wanted it -- news that prompted protests and organized opposition from fractivists. Four months later, DEC Commissioner Joseph <a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2012/09/ny-fracking-policy-hinges-on-health.html" target="_blank">Martens announced</a> that the agency’s decision would depend on a review of fracking’s impact on public health from New York State Health Commissioner Nirav Shah.<br />
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Since then, <a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2013/02/ny-fracking-policy-review-expected-in.html" target="_blank">Martens announced</a> on several occasions that the review would be completed in “a matter of weeks.” Yet that proved to be wrong each time, and lacking any formal timetable, predictions were speculative, based on what appeared to be indecision by the governor himself.<br />
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Cuomo has been reluctant to talk about the matter, much less share his strategy on how, when, and whether New York will allow shale gas development. His refrain is “let the science decide,” and with that, he has deferred to Martens. Martens has deferred to Health Commissioner Shah, who is purportedly heading up the health review, which is yet to be shared in any public form. (In his state of the state address last week, Cuomo made <a href="http://www.cityandstateny.com/amid-protests-cuomo-stays-silent-on-fracking/" target="_blank">no mention</a> of fracking. Moreover, his recently released <a href="http://energyplan.ny.gov/" target="_blank">energy plan</a> calls for increased consumption of natural gas, but doesn’t address the status the state’s policy on whether to allow production.)<br />
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Administration officials <a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2013/09/new-yorks-fracking-future-hinges-on.html" target="_blank">won’t talk</a> about the fracking issue except in most vague terms, nor will their media staff. Outside experts hired to make key assessments are bound by contracts that include a clause prohibiting them from disclosing or discussing the proceedings or records involved.<br />
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Recently pressed by a reporter on when the public would be able to see the work, Shah replied “When I’m done.” Jon Campbell, of Gannett’s Albany Bureau, <a href="http://polhudson.lohudblogs.com/2013/12/16/shah-fracking-transparency-will-come-works-done/" target="_blank">reported </a>that quote in an update last month, along with this:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“For the last few months, I’ve said that as the science evolves, we will reflect the science in my recommendations,” Shah said. “As recently as a month ago, we got new data from Texas and Wyoming ,and until I’m comfortable with the state of the science, I’m withholding my recommendation.”</blockquote>
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Cuomo said that while his administration has moved quickly on other efforts, such as building a new Tappan Zee Bridge in the Hudson Valley, fracking is a complex issue.</blockquote>
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“I want the right decision, not necessarily the fastest decision,” Cuomo said Monday. “When it’s appropriate to move fast, we can move fast. I think we’ve shown that over and over again.”</blockquote>
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Cuomo said Monday that there is no timeline, though he “would expect” a decision before Election Day. He said he wouldn’t pressure Shah into a decision.</blockquote>
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“But my timeline is whatever Commissioner Shah needs to do it right and feel comfortable,” Cuomo said. “It’s a major decision.”</blockquote>
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The reason why the governor is keeping the internal workings of this decision from public view is easily understood but not easily defensible. (More on that here.) From a politician’s view, fracking represents a quagmire of dissention and criticism as much as an economic promise or environmental threat, and Cuomo would be better off without having to make a decision. The next best thing he can do is put if off until after <a href="http://www.ithacajournal.com/article/20140112/NEWS10/301100094/Gov-Cuomo-faces-policy-challenges-election-year" target="_blank">elections</a>.<br />
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But that might not be possible. The public expects its elected officials to be up for making hard decisions while accounting for them publically. Cuomo’s unwillingness to share a timeline, protocol, or update on the review (which is subject to public discourse under the State Environmental Quality Review law) has predictably raised challenges from critics, who are now taking the matter to court<br />
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Late last summer, the Seneca Lake Pure Waters Association, represented by attorney Rachel Treichler, filed a complaint in state Supreme Court seeking records detailing the mechanics of Cuomo’s administrative directive on fracking. The goal is to assess “what factual information was being collected and reviewed by DOH and the instructions given to DOH staff regarding the DOH health impact study,” according to <a href="http://www.fingerlakes1.com/addedstories/20130915190551.php" target="_blank">a statement</a> from the association. The action follows the organization’s unsuccessful attempts to view records related to the study under the Freedom of Information Law. The DOH denied that request on grounds that the information comes under the category of “exempt intra-agency or inter-agency records.” The state is now negotiating the case with the advocacy group, with an outcome expected within months, according to sources.<br />
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More recently, industry attorney Tom West has filed <a href="http://www.westfirmlaw.com/pdf/VerifiedPetitionandComplaint.htm" target="_blank">a complaint</a> on behalf of landowners and Norse, a bankrupt drilling company that operated in upstate New York. The suit, Wallach v. New York State, references <a href="http://www.dec.ny.gov/permits/357.html" target="_blank">State Environmental Quality Review</a> (SEQR) law, which requires environmental reviews to be completed in a timely and public manner. It claims that the delay led to Norse bankruptcy, and is “legally unjustifiable” as well as “arbitrary, capricious and an abuse of discretion.” In an interview last week, West likened the situation to “giving a fan a football during a football game and letting him walk out of the stadium.” He elaborated: “Government is not allowed to simply shut down this process. They have to finish the game. If they want to say fracking is not safe, then they have to say it. If they want to say fracking is safe within standards, then they have to say it.”<br />
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The complaint is scheduled for a hearing Jan. 24. If the case progresses, it will give the plaintiffs leverage of subpoena to produce records and emails that will undoubtedly produce fodder for criticism of the administration’s private handling of the fracking. A likely outcome of both the Wallach v. New York State and the SLPW case is that the fracking story will morph again from a scientific to a legal to a political issue at a time when the governor is vulnerable to outside pressure.<br />
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TOM WILBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103105549852845055noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6949864949316311883.post-64337641258213505022014-01-08T07:21:00.000-08:002014-01-08T12:54:51.200-08:00Trespassing case tests driller’s control over leased land Activist banned from parks, schools, stores w/ Cabot lease <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpCA6UCPy5Q0AXeCKu1Z0_7WbsVtnDa3t5PDMt8aUlWqPcDy25oz_t9QMQjjb3FzYeiYCGomoGA7hX62rN3kT6H6EjehInVk0xKle_TYKlG9pe7MThh7yrrYyiTWWU1MoTW4tmcijaf64/s1600/vera1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpCA6UCPy5Q0AXeCKu1Z0_7WbsVtnDa3t5PDMt8aUlWqPcDy25oz_t9QMQjjb3FzYeiYCGomoGA7hX62rN3kT6H6EjehInVk0xKle_TYKlG9pe7MThh7yrrYyiTWWU1MoTW4tmcijaf64/s1600/vera1.jpg" height="264" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Vera Scroggins in front of a drilling rig in Dimock Township<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>PHOTO JAMES PITARRESI</b></span></td></tr>
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After being charged with trespassing, anti-fracking Vera Scroggins has been banished from land leased by Cabot Oil & Gas. That’s no small deal. The Texas drilling company has leases on more than 200,000 acres -- nearly 40 percent -- of Susquehanna County where Scroggins lives, including rights to property of friends, neighbors, stores, parks and schools.<br />
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The Cabot v. Scroggins trespassing case might have been relegated to a journalistic footnote in a national conflict over shale gas development and high volume hydraulic fracturing. It has long been standing practice (and common sense) for companies to restrict access to operations where crews are using heavy equipment and hazardous chemicals under high pressure to drill wells and fracture bedrock a mile deep in the ground. <br />
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Scroggins admittedly crossed into designated work areas on occasion, but there were no signs denoting trespass zones, she said, and her ventures into drilling territory in each case were in good faith to openly ask questions and seek information. (Some background on this in a moment.) The remarkable and possibly groundbreaking aspect of this case, however, is not the charge or the defense, but the resulting preliminary injunction the Susquehanna Court of Common Pleas issued on October 21, 2013. Pending trial of the case this spring, the order forbids Scroggins from setting foot on land owned or leased by Cabot, “including but not limited to” well sites, well pads, and access roads. That language, interpreted by Scroggins lawyer Gerald Kinchy, in effect forbids Scroggins from going to certain school grounds, her auto mechanic of 23 years, many other businesses, the county jail, and homes of dozens of friends, among other places. Doing so puts her at risk of contempt of court. (See the full order, embedded below.)<br />
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Cabot’s action raises the broader issue of how much control energy companies have over land they lease. While mineral extraction is their stated intention, many standard leases give companies ill-defined and seemingly limitless discretion over land use. “When drilling companies lease rights to land for mineral extraction,” Kinchy said, “does that mean they have rights to exclude other people from that land, even property owners?”<br />
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Apart from the Scroggins case, that question has mostly applied to practical matters of daily extraction operations. A company such as Cabot might own rights to a large tract, but it is generally concerned about gaining or restricting access to active work areas. Conflicts might crop up over where exactly a company might build a pad, access road, or pipeline, and at what inconvenience or loss of land use to the landowner. When that happens, lease language and the respective parties’ appetite and resources for litigation come into play, with the company often in a position of leverage.<br />
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The Scroggins case breaks new ground. Issues of practicality (and enforcement) aside, it probes whether a company can legally keep a person from stepping foot on leased land outside of established work zones, including public spaces where others are allowed.<br />
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Now for some background. Cabot Oil & Gas operations have drawn numerous violations from the state and much national and international media coverage due to recurring water pollution problems in Dimock Township. The company has been a particular target for critics and activists, including Scroggins, who lives in the neighboring township of Brooklyn. (More about that <a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2012/07/does-gasland-controversy-reflect.html" target="_blank">here</a>.)<br />
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In <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Under-Surface-Fracking-Fortunes-Marcellus/dp/0801450160" target="_blank">Under the Surface</a></i>, I describe Scroggins this way:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
… a grandmother, amateur videographer, and advocate for many causes, including home births, home schooling, and no mandated childhood vaccinations. In 2009, she took up the cause as a watchdog against oil and gas operators who began leasing large tracts of northeast Pennsylvania to develop the Marcellus Shale. “We’re extra eyes and ears for the DEP,” she told [a community organizer]. “They don’t have enough workers and we have to pick up the slack.” </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Footage from some of Vera’s vigilante patrols in 2009 shows encounters with roughnecks and pipeline workers, some reacting with amusement or annoyance to the woman with a home video camera showing up at these remote and often inaccessible work sites and peppering them with questions. Some called her “ma’am” and briefly addressed her questions; some directed her to the foreman, who almost always asked her to leave; and some simply ignored her or walked away. These brief encounters typically punctuate long unedited footage of vacuum trucks, excavation equipment, and hay bales. Vera also taped public forums and interviews with residents … recounting their experiences with gas development. These videos she posted online, where they joined a broad and growing collection of depictions of Susquehanna County gas development by other independent media, advocates … and professional news outlets. They generally … presented aspects of drilling that lent themselves to visuals: truck traffic, derricks, flaring, fracking, and heavy machinery cutting swaths through the countryside.</blockquote>
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Until the injunction, Vera had intensified her efforts, serving as a tour guide for parties interested in seeing and learning about drilling and fracking from a perspective other than that offered by company tours and commercials. On occasion, she has helped me locate operations in the region (viewable from public roads.)<br />
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Cabot poses a sound argument that those venturing onto work sites without permission pose an annoyance, distraction, and/or safety threat. But Vera’s presence has become iconic of another kind of threat to the company – bad public relations and control over its image. The scope of the injunction against Scroggins invites wonder whether Cabot attorneys who crafted the language were unintentionally imprecise, or whether they are testing a strategy to eliminate their Scroggins PR headache once and for all, while sending a message to other activists.<br />
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George Stark, a company spokesman, was unavailable to answer this and other questions.<br />
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<div style="-x-system-font: none; display: block; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 12px auto 6px auto;">
<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/197400716/Court-Order-10-22-13-New-Date-1-2-14-Next-Court-Day" style="text-decoration: underline;" title="View Court Order 10-22-13 New Date 1 2 14 Next Court Day on Scribd">Court Order 10-22-13 New Date 1 2 14 Next Court Day</a> by <a href="http://www.scribd.com/thomas_wilber" style="text-decoration: underline;" title="View Thomas Wilber's profile on Scribd">Thomas Wilber</a></div>
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TOM WILBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103105549852845055noreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6949864949316311883.post-50107982159163418092013-12-16T09:39:00.000-08:002013-12-22T08:29:24.784-08:00Pa. regulators seek public comment on shale development Seven years into the play, hearings intended to shape regs We will soon know how passion and reason of stakeholders and the general public might shape regulations of shale gas development in Pennsylvania.<br />
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The state Department of Environmental Protection is holding a series of public meetings on provisions of Act 13, a bill intended to upgrade the state’s Oil & Gas law to accommodate unconventional gas extraction. The DEP is charged with taking into account public sentiment as it draws up specifics to implement the bill, which Governor Tom Corbett signed into law last year. Issues range from impacts on parks and wildlife areas to managing waste disposal and spills. The draft rulemaking also includes standards affecting the construction of pits, gathering lines, and temporary pipelines, provisions for identifying and monitoring abandoned wells (and related hazards of drilling through them) and the industry practice of spreading brine, which can include radio-active material and other well waste, on roads.<br />
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These and other highlights are<a href="http://files.dep.state.pa.us/OilGas/BOGM/BOGMPortalFiles/PublicResources/RegulationSummary-PreCommentPeriod.pdf" target="_blank"> summarized </a>on the DEP website. But <a href="http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/public_resources/20303/surface_regulations/1587188" target="_blank">the overview</a> does not mention key elements of Act 13 that have spawned controversy and law suits, and which are bound to also come up at the hearings. One is a provision regulating physicians who treat patients suffering from exposure to drilling and fracking chemicals. Commonly known as “the gag rule,” the regulation prohibits doctors’ access to information about chemicals in exposure cases. To get this information, physicians must sign a legal contract that prevents them from sharing it with anybody, including other health care providers. In October, a U.S. District Court threw out a doctor's claim that the rule violates First Amendment rights. The ruling was made only because the doctor, Alfonso Rodriguez, brought the case before the court as a hypothetical situation, and therefore did not have standing. It did, however, leave the door open for claims based on actual events. (More on that <a href="http://www.law360.com/articles/483449/fracking-secrets-still-vulnerable-after-gag-order-ruling" target="_blank">here.)</a><br />
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Another <a href="http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/tag/impact-fee/" target="_blank">touchy provision </a>of Act 13 limits the power of municipalities to influence or ban development within their borders, while allowing drill rigs, waste pits, and pipelines in residential districts. The matter is now before Pennsylvania’s high court after municipalities -- including South Fayette in Allegheny County; and Peters, Cecil, Mt. Pleasant and Robinson in Washington County – <a href="http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/draichel/act_13_update_pa_public_utilit.html" target="_blank">successfully argued</a> before the Commonwealth Court that the law was unconstitutional.<br />
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<b>UPDATE: On Dec. 19th, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that part of Act 13 restricting local jurisdiction over gas wells was unconstitutional.</b><br />
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The Oil and Gas industry is exempt from both local and national regulations that apply to other business, ranging from zoning to the handling and disposal of hazardous waste. The justification for this (as I discuss in previous posts): cheap fossil fuel cannot be pulled from the earth with an overabundance of nit–picking inspectors and onerous regulatory burdens.<br />
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The degree to which shale gas operations should be regulated, and under which jurisdiction, is one thing. Banning them altogether is something different. The Environmental Quality Board, chaired by the Secretary of DEP, is responsible for adopting regulations and considering petitions to change them, and it will be interesting to see how much of a platform the hearings will become for stakeholders who want no regulation, some regulation, or an outright ban. <br />
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A 60-day comment period on the rule-making process began Sunday. The first of seven public hearings across the state is scheduled for Jan. 7 in Wyoming County. Officials have also scheduled informational webinars on Dec. 19, from 2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., and Friday, Jan. 3, from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. For information about schedules and how to submit testimony, <a href="http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/newsroom/14287?id=20296&typeid=1" target="_blank">click here</a>.<br />
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Since the Marcellus drilling boom began in 2006, more than 6,500 shale wells have been drilled in Pennsylvania – making the Marcellus the number one natural gas play in the country. With the encouragement of pro-drilling governors, first Ed Rendell and now Tom Corbett, the DEP approach has been regulate-as-you-go. That’s a striking contrast to New York state, where officials suspended permitting for high volume hydraulic fracturing in 2008 pending an environmental review and policy overhaul, now in its sixth year and still absent resolution to questions about health impacts. As I have written in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Under-Surface-Fracking-Fortunes-Marcellus/dp/0801450160" target="_blank">Under the Surface</a>, contrasting political cultures and histories in New York and Pennsylvania have shaped the states’ respective approaches to shale gas development. The delay in New York has encouraged anti-fracking activists – bolstered by governor Andrew Cuomo’s liberal base advocating renewable energy - to organize campaigns against the industry, and use public meetings to showcase their opposition.<br />
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Will the forthcoming hearings in Pennsylvania also become a showcase for anti-frackers? Perhaps, but it is unlikely they will follow the pattern in New York. The organizational challenge to tip the balance away from the status quo is daunting, especially in this late stage of the game. For anti-frackers to simply show up is part of it, but influencing the process requires comments that are on point and informed. This is a strong suit for industry professionals, who make a living out of mastering policy and related practical, legal, economic, and regulatory intricacies. And there are thousands of these details with far-reaching consequences encompassing a spectrum of issues, ranging from exemptions to burden of proof to liability to enforcement to bonding to well construction standards to <a href="http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/tag/impact-fee/" target="_blank">impact fees</a> and taxes… Etc, etc.<br />
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Doug Shields, an outspoken industry critic who was instrumental in passing a fracking ban when he was a Pittsburgh councilman in 2010, was later featured in Josh Fox’s Gasland II as a person on the front line of the anti-fracking movement in Pennsylvania. He told me that he expects activists to attend the DEP hearings to exert political pressure, but it will take more than that to significantly alter the course of fracking in Pennsylvania. “A big turnout sends a message to the elected,” he said. “But the meat and potatoes on regulations will be on the technical points.” He added that he also expected some of the large environmental NGOs to take the lead in assessing and critiquing chapter and verse of the state’s proposal. ‘We will need to get some technical expertise to look at the proposed regulations and determine where the weaknesses are.”<br />
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In New York, the anti-fracking movement was able to draw on active chapters of groups such as the Sierra Club and the National Resources Defense Council, combined with decisive technical help from figures such as Sandra Steingraber and Walter Hang, who each led sophisticated and ultimately effective<a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2012/12/30-days-of-fracking-regs-deconstructs.html" target="_blank"> critiques </a>of New York’s draft guidelines and regulations. Advancing grass roots opposition early in the process on technical rather than ideological grounds, Hang marshaled letter writing campaigns and list serves to <a href="http://www.toxicstargeting.com/MarcellusShale" target="_blank">educate followers</a> on the nuts and bolts of proposed permitting guidelines – called the Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement -- and to guide responses that favored the movement. Steingraber adopted a similar approach – an online guide called the <a href="http://www.thirtydaysoffrackingregs.com/" target="_blank">30-Days of Fracking Regs</a> – to encourage technically relevant comments first on fracking regulations and later on infrastructure projects. The efforts of both Hang and Steingraber have encouraged a flood comments that stalled the process. <br />
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Hang and Steingraber are among activists intent on blocking, rather than regulating the industry. Compared to Pennsylvania, the political ethos and history of New York has favored land preservation more than mineral extraction. Geology is also undoubtedly a factor. Pennsylvania’s extemporaneous approach to establishing rules for the shale gas industry (more than five years into the play) reflects a political tolerance tied to a storied history of extraction, including coal, oil and natural gas, in the state for better and worse. The forthcoming hearings and public comment period on Act 13 will be a grass roots test of how moved the electorate is to change the status quo of carbon dependency. A small response will reflect a willingness to defer to regulators and the state, while the opposite will provide critics with potentially potent raw material for change.<br />
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TOM WILBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103105549852845055noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6949864949316311883.post-37673961821200866372013-12-07T08:25:00.001-08:002013-12-11T06:05:54.023-08:0010% or 90% - How much fracking waste is recycled? Loose definitions give industry lots of leeway <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV-NqSCeBIVE0Z7iVO203-RSM7v0T_XrKhCo7GDBMZ8-LaHPj6a-5gxOstgNnmC-5tih66ORPp2wNr1zpKNQftpvRMITArpOB7eLvrdM_vEpdR16_nkqERnsG0GDOeNxotqdHrBnZz2XU/s1600/wastewaterpipe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV-NqSCeBIVE0Z7iVO203-RSM7v0T_XrKhCo7GDBMZ8-LaHPj6a-5gxOstgNnmC-5tih66ORPp2wNr1zpKNQftpvRMITArpOB7eLvrdM_vEpdR16_nkqERnsG0GDOeNxotqdHrBnZz2XU/s400/wastewaterpipe.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shale wastewater released from a treatment plant in Josephine, Pa.<br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">PHOTO CREDIT REID FRAZIER</span></b></td></tr>
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Bloomberg reporters David Wethe and Peter Ward recently shed a little light on a critical aspect of the shale gas boom – wastewater disposal. <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-26/fracking-bonanza-eludes-wastewater-recycling-investors.html" target="_blank">Their article</a> last week explains how recycling – once pitched as a market-based panacea for dealing with 21-billion barrels of brine, solvents, metals, and radioactive elements produced annually from domestic oil and gas production – is less of a hit with investors than anticipated. The reason: technological limits. <br />
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The article, Fracking Bonanza Eludes Wastewater Recycling Investors, frames the issue in a quote by Mark Kidder, head of an oilfield unit for Schlumberger: “We’ve spent millions and millions of dollars evaluating virtually every available and reasonable-looking technology out there, always hoping we’d find the silver bullet … At this point, we found nothing.”<br />
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News outlets looking for accessible material are not likely to find much, either, in the way of simplicity in the fracking waste story. It’s an area clouded by confusion, noise, and lack of baseline reporting standards and enforcement. There is no easy measure to gauge the problem’s impact -- a hallmark of good journalism and one of the first calculations reporters tend to make in considering a subject. But there are still ways to get at this story, and the financially oriented Bloomberg uses an approach that carries the most weight with its readers – economic analysis. Wethe and Ward cite these benchmarks:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Of the $31 billion spent each year on managing water resources in U.S. and Canadian oilfields, $2.8 billion, or less than 10 percent, is spent on recycling, according to PacWest Consulting Partners LLC... </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In Pennsylvania last year, operators cleaned and reused 85 percent of fracking and produced water because state rules, as well as geology, makes water disposal more expensive there. In most other regions, where disposal wells are more plentiful, recycling amounts to 10 percent or less, according to PacWest estimates.</blockquote>
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Interesting, to be sure. But the article does not explain the vast discrepancies in other reports attempting to quantify the extent of frack water recycling in the oil patch, or why the PacWest estimates are any truer than other numbers cited by experts, media, and interested parties. Several notable examples come to mind:<br />
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The <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970203937004578077183112409260" target="_blank">Wall Street Journal</a>, citing <a href="http://www.ncac-usaee.org/pdfs/2013_04Richenderfer.pdf" target="_blank">figures</a> from the Susquehanna River Basin Commission, reported that 14 percent of frack water in central Pennsylvania was recycled as of November, 2012.<br />
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<a href="http://www.downstreamstrategies.com/documents/reports_publication/marcellus_wv_pa.pdf" target="_blank">A repor</a>t in October of this year by San Jose State University and Earthworks, an environmental group, found that about one third of Pennsylvania fracking waste is “reused” and about half is discharged into rivers and streams either through brine/industrial waste treatment plants or municipal sewage treatment plants. The report also found that only about 8 percent of injected fracking solution water is reclaimed from wells in Pennsylvania to begin with, which suggests that many production wells become long-term repositories for unrecovered waste.<br />
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Energy In Depth, the industry public relations arm, <a href="http://energyindepth.org/national/oil-and-gas-producers-ramp-up-water-recycling/" target="_blank">claims that the industry</a> “reused” or “recycled” 90 percent of flowback water in the last half of 2013.<br />
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Adding to this confusion is the problem of definition. “Recycled,” much like “all natural,” is one of those marketing idioms that invites abuse by those seeking to paint something green. Colleen Connolly, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, explained to me this week that the agency in fact does not make a distinction between “reuse” and “recycling” and that “recycling” generally applies to fracking waste that undergoes some sort of treatment. The “recycled” label therefore applies to flowback from shale gas production wells that has been treated and discharged into a river, even if it contains unscreened or unrecovered hazards, such as total dissolved solids, solvents, metals, and radionuclides. Lacking a good-faith statutory definition, the “recycled” label suggests a certain environmental stewardship while in fact allowing the industry convenient options for waste disposal – whether actually reusing it, discharging it, or injecting it in the ground.<br />
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As with much of the industry (which is exempt from both federal <a href="http://water.epa.gov/type/groundwater/uic/class2/hydraulicfracturing/wells_hydroreg.cfm" target="_blank">Safe Drinking Water Act </a>and hazardous <a href="http://www.epa.gov/osw/nonhaz/industrial/special/oil/oil-gas.pdf" target="_blank">waste disposal laws</a>) the fracking-waste reporting “system,” varying in form and rigor from state to state, offers the illusion of transparency while obscuring actual practices. Operators in Pennsylvania and other states are required to report their waste production and disposal on <a href="http://www.paoilandgasreporting.state.pa.us/publicreports/Modules/Welcome/Agreement.aspx" target="_blank">a database</a> that is available on the Internet. But there is little or no oversight, let alone enforcement. Perhaps the biggest telltale sign of a problem is a disclaimer on the DEP website that visitors must agree to before viewing the agency’s files. The DEP notes that the data is self-reported, unchecked, unverified, and possibly incomplete.<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
DEP makes no claims, promises or guarantees regarding the accuracy, completeness or timeliness of the operators’ data that DEP is required to post. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
DEP expressly disclaims any liability for errors or omissions related to the production data contained within these reports. No warranty of any kind is given by DEP with respect to the production data contained within these reports posted on its website.</blockquote>
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Are we expected to trust this data, even when the DEP clearly doesn’t?<br />
<br />
The shale gas boom is taking shape in an age where free market interests are strong and the will to regulate is relatively weak. Rather than looking to government reporting data that is inconsistent, unreliable, or non-existent, the Bloomberg report tackles the recycling analysis in a way that hits home with investors – by gauging economic feasibility rather than regulatory compliance. That’s fair and good, yet there are additional ways to get at this story, and many of them are taking shape in the Ivory Tower rather than the newsroom.<br />
<br />
A research team led by Sheila Olmstead of the University of Texas measured water quality changes at thousands of points downstream from waste treatment plants and drilling sites for more than a decade. In <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/03/06/1213871110.full.pdf+html" target="_blank">a paper</a> published in the National Academy of Sciences early this year, the team found a trend of elevated chlorine concentrations – a marker of fracking pollution -- downstream of waste water treatment facilities, but not downstream of drilling sites. As New York Times blogger Andrew Revkin <a href="https://col127.mail.live.com/default.aspx?id=64855#n=854010381&fid=&pdir=NextPage&paid=3f36cfac-a7c8-11e2-8ead-b4b52f566e3e&pad=2013-04-18T01%3A35%3A37.273Z&pidx=4&st=revkin%40gmail.com&mid=6eee5760-8c14-11e2-afed-002481d915ed&fv=1" target="_blank">notes in Dot Earth</a>, the findings suggest that spills and leaks at specific sites are not statistically visible, but impacts of poorly processed wastewater are. In other words, we should be aware of the “cumulative impacts,” or the toll taken in water quality over time as shale gas development becomes more commonplace, even in areas previously untouched by mineral extraction.<br />
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Salts are a telltale marker of waste -- known as “flowback” – that is regurgitated from natural gas wells after they are stimulated with hydraulic fracturing fluids. Studies, including one by the USGS in 2011, show that radioactive levels tend to correspond with total dissolved solids (TDS). TDS is a measure of concentration of salts and other impurities dissolved in water that tends to fluctuate depending on operators' production and disposal schedules. They are not visible to the naked eye, and they are flags for water problems, including radioactivity.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA3RdYjUIECHg3AGKD0K7egoNBYiyuNm4Mpd9e3H7kI8vZbuy5yzHj3oHiDUUu7wJWUYq7ja-TwgYJW45iw4hhMdss4Hs9ZCztDpXm9Wa_HrWMiJ_d9A03aMmL_in3QI86wQ373ifB8z8/s1600/lab.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA3RdYjUIECHg3AGKD0K7egoNBYiyuNm4Mpd9e3H7kI8vZbuy5yzHj3oHiDUUu7wJWUYq7ja-TwgYJW45iw4hhMdss4Hs9ZCztDpXm9Wa_HrWMiJ_d9A03aMmL_in3QI86wQ373ifB8z8/s320/lab.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">SU grad student Sunshyne Hummel works on groundwater study<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>PHOTO JAMES PITARRESI </b></span></td></tr>
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The Olmstead team is one example of a burgeoning field of study focused on fracking and water quality. (There are many others, including one featured in <a href="http://sumagazine.syr.edu/2013spring/features/frackingzone.html" target="_blank">this report</a> I wrote for Syracuse University Magazine.) Yet the subject could use much more reporting than it gets in the mainstream press. The problem is, it requires a level of commitment and investigative wherewithal beyond the reach of many beat reporters working in an age where resources are scarce, staffs are small and growing smaller, and deadlines are more pressing as ever due to Internet immediacy. Instances that do make it to mainstream media outlets often originate with press-releases from NGOs, universities, or government agencies regarding events that are too conspicuous to ignore, including the following examples from Pennsylvania:<br />
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Waste Treatment Corp., a plant on the Allegheny River in Warren County, Pa. has been operating under a state permit that sets no limit on the amount of total dissolved solids and chlorides it can send to the river from oil and gas and other waste streams. Late last month, the DEP <a href="http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2013/11/25/dep-treatment-plant-must-limit-salty-flow-to-allegheny-river/" target="_blank">negotiated an order</a> with the company that allows the plant to send a monthly average of 176,000 pounds per day of total dissolved solids into the river on an interim basis for two more years. The company has until January 2016 to trim the salt discharge to a monthly average of 888 pounds per day of total dissolved solids. As part of the <a href="http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2013/11/25/dep-treatment-plant-must-limit-salty-flow-to-allegheny-river/" target="_blank">proposed agreement</a> with the state, the company agreed to a $25,000 fine. Waste Treatment Corp. still <a href="http://www.post-gazette.com/local/region/2013/10/29/Suit-Plant-discharging-drilling-waste/stories/201310290078" target="_blank">faces a law suit</a> filed by Clean Water Action, an environmental group, in U.S. District Court. The group claims that the plant is illegally discharging fracking wastewater containing high levels of salts, heavy metals and radioactive compounds into the Allegheny River.<br />
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<a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2013/10/duke-study-finds-radioactive-hot-spots.html" target="_blank">Samples collected </a>in Blacklick Creek downstream from discharges from the Josephine Brine Treatment Facility, in Indiana County, found radium levels 200 times greater than samples upstream and background sediments. The levels exceed thresholds for radioactive waste disposal and pose “potential environmental risks of radium bioaccumulation in localized areas of shale gas wastewater disposal,” according to a peer reviewed<a href="http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es402165b?journalCode=esthag" target="_blank"> study by Duke University</a> scholars studying the impact for shale waste. <br />
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Last summer, the DEP <a href="http://www.post-gazette.com/marcellusshale/2013/08/05/Pa-shuts-down-wastewater-facility/stories/201308050133" target="_blank">revoked the permit</a> of Aquatic Synthesis Unlimited after numerous spills and violations at the plant, built on an old rodeo site about 40 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. The plant had problems from the beginning, when it started construction in December 2011 without first getting a permit from the DEP. As the demand for wastewater treatment grew, the DEP issued a conditional permit in April 2012 that allowed the plant to accept flowback, but soon the facility was inundated. It treated some of the wastewater it had on site in July and August last year, but in September it was cited by the DEP for moving wastewater off-site for injection into deep wells, in violation of its permit.<br />
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One of the most mysterious and troubling frack-water-treatment messes involves one of the highest-profile and promising plants. Minuteman, a service company in Milton Pa. that handles fracking waste, was heralded by Governor Tom Corbett as “an American success story.” Corbett made <a href="http://www.dailyitem.com/0100_news/x1391759618/Corbett-Low-taxes-help-generate-jobs" target="_blank">a personal visit</a> to showcase the plant as part of a pitch to promote job-creation incentives in February, 2012. Owner Brian Bolus (who happened to be a $10,000 contributor to Corbett’s campaign) began the company in 1991 and built it into a $5 million operation with 200 trucks and 158 employees. In what remains an unexplained turn of events, the FBI, accompanied by agents from the DEP, the IRS, and various local agencies including the Milton Sewer Authority raided the plant in May. Federal agents bound some Minuteman workers in plastic cuffs, also handcuffed Bolus' wife Karen in front of their son, interviewed incoming waste truckers and left with a huge haul of boxes of documents.<br />
<br />
Minuteman<a href="http://www.dailyitem.com/0100_news/x240786950/Investigators-descend-upon-Minuteman-Environmental-Services" target="_blank"> issued a statement</a> that characterized the probe as "baseless," and a result of unfounded complaints from "disgruntled" employees speaking to the AG's office. There have been no follow-up reports since the event late last spring. Dennis Fisher, a spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office, refused to comment on the status of the investigation or address any of my questions about it.<br />
<br />
Of course, there are hundreds of treatment plants profitably treating or “recycling” frack wastewater throughout the Commonwealth without undue attention or incident. (You can <a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2013/01/why-fracking-waste-problem-defies.html" target="_blank">view a video</a> of one here by Kirsi Jansa, a Finnish journalist, who takes viewers on a tour of Reserved Environmental Services.) Many, undoubtedly, follow “best practices” – a term that refers to standards set and policed by industry rather than government. But in the absence of clearly defined federal standards, enforcement, or even a more precise definition of “recycling,” it’s hard to know where the bar is set and who is actually meeting it. <br />
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TOM WILBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103105549852845055noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6949864949316311883.post-28933818871714357762013-11-22T08:02:00.001-08:002013-11-22T19:20:44.609-08:00Cabot buys second polluted residential property in Dimock 12-acre parcel on Carter Road flanked by faulty gas wells <br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7yyZh1jolY7XnYQWVglg7a6ozuxkkXcM3GTCBPVSlL3LKGAfh6H0U407PxV5xOccyH2YP9OmAdb3YYv1-7LG7YAX16J_ro-omE90HKTIZWPFJSdBylP0zxhDXmQxknWry-mZvGtqIx5M/s1600/IMG_4598.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7yyZh1jolY7XnYQWVglg7a6ozuxkkXcM3GTCBPVSlL3LKGAfh6H0U407PxV5xOccyH2YP9OmAdb3YYv1-7LG7YAX16J_ro-omE90HKTIZWPFJSdBylP0zxhDXmQxknWry-mZvGtqIx5M/s320/IMG_4598.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The former Mike Ely propety, now owned by Cabot</td></tr>
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Cabot Oil & Gas has closed a deal for a second residential property affected by chronic methane pollution in the heart of its prolific gas operations in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania.<br />
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The Texas-based company paid Michael Ely $140,000 for the 12-acre property that includes a doublewide modular home, according to records filed in Susquehanna County Courthouse Wednesday. The property – now vacant -- borders the intersection of the south end of Carter Road with State Route 3023 in Dimock Township.<br />
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The state Department of Environmental Protection has identified at least two malfunctioning gas wells operated by Cabot bordering the property, including the Gesford 3 well, several hundred yards to the north off Carter Road, and the Costello 1 well, just to the south off Route 3023.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5fHdPYm0AHdQ8skIeXsIorSk0NPrBCgZdc5Bnhl9IrnozNXMNh8y9hiSuqCvE9tUpSyJcsCAxmiOBxoKdun-OJe2qhDxTAEJ7Lb5TOG0_Cm7T3sk7vFEV7Z80diRJ0FAENrSImr4poCI/s1600/IMG_4548.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5fHdPYm0AHdQ8skIeXsIorSk0NPrBCgZdc5Bnhl9IrnozNXMNh8y9hiSuqCvE9tUpSyJcsCAxmiOBxoKdun-OJe2qhDxTAEJ7Lb5TOG0_Cm7T3sk7vFEV7Z80diRJ0FAENrSImr4poCI/s320/IMG_4548.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cabot demolished the former Sautner in September </td></tr>
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The agency has forbidden Cabot to drill more wells in a nine-square mile area around the intersection until the company resolves problems with these and other shale gas wells that – according to the DEP inspectors – are causing methane pollution.<br />
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The former Ely property sits less than a mile south from another polluted residential property on Carter Road that Cabot bought for $140,000 from Craig and Julie Sautner last year. <a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-razing-of-1101-carter-road-rest-of.html" target="_blank">Cabot demolished </a>the three-bedroom ranch in September and sold the empty lot to a neighbor for $4,000. The new deed includes a clause – called a land covenant -- that forbids residential dwellings on the property.<br />
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Cabot bought both the Sautner and Ely properties through a subsidiary called Susquehanna Real Estate 1 Corp.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnCXytWoNnfsVfElyU_7m68IecfTAuKHxedbO7Ys_fsvQLmbFHZm07QNWvglLrb_8AyicWvON545DHWNmS218vw5euqpIKuKoeb-aceG10xT8ICobfqMRU27khp8f2XMQtREfyJoNAp0s/s1600/IMG_4608.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnCXytWoNnfsVfElyU_7m68IecfTAuKHxedbO7Ys_fsvQLmbFHZm07QNWvglLrb_8AyicWvON545DHWNmS218vw5euqpIKuKoeb-aceG10xT8ICobfqMRU27khp8f2XMQtREfyJoNAp0s/s320/IMG_4608.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ely ancestral home across from Cabot's newly acquired lot</td></tr>
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The former property of Mike Ely is part of a larger swath owned by generations of the Ely family since 1858. Bill Ely, Mike’s father, lives in the family’s large ancestral colonial home near the banks of Burdick Creek, which runs under a bridge connecting Carter Road with Route 3023. Bill Ely and his wife, Sheila, are among families in the area that depend on bottled water. Bill told me he has no intention of selling his 19th century house to the company, even though his water is not drinkable.<br />
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“I’m not leaving” Ely said Thursday. “My family’s been in this home for generations.”<br />
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Susquehanna County and operations centered in Dimock have been the source of both boon and bane for Cabot, which in 2013 was the second largest natural gas producer in Pennsylvania behind Chesapeake Energy. In the first half of the year, Cabot had 15 of the top producing wells in the state concentrated in its leasehold in Susquehanna County – an area experts call a <a href="http://www.farmanddairy.com/news/pennsylvania-shale-oil-and-gas-production-sweet-spot-in-susquehanna-county/152193.html" target="_blank">“sweet spot”</a> for Marcellus Shale production. But production has been beset by problems. Both Mike and Bill Ely were among more than 30 families in the area that<a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2012/08/cabot-settles-water-law-suit-with.html" target="_blank"> settled a law suit</a> with Cabot for damages related to water pollution for an undisclosed amount in 2012. The controversy continues, as Cabot, under the watch of the DEP, attempts to fix problems that have prevented it from drilling any new wells in a 9-square-mile region around the Carter Road area. Some of the gas wells have been plugged or shut down, so residents living over them have seen royalty payments dwindle.<br />
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Hazards found in some residential water wells include methane, arsenic, bacteria, and various heavy metals that occur naturally. Methane can make water flammable and pose risks of explosion in wellheads and enclosed spaces. Arsenic, heavy metals, and bacteria can cause illness. Drilling can open pathways that allow contaminants to move through the ground, but the extent to which this happens is open to scientific and legal interpretation. Cabot continues to challenge the DEP findings publically with claims the contaminates are a result of naturally-occurring phenomenon.<br />
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The DEP began investigating problems in the region after a residential water well on the north end of Carter Road exploded at the home of Norma Fiorentino on January 1, 2009, shortly after Cabot began ramping up operations to produce gas from the Marcellus Shale with the controversial practice of horizontal drilling and high volume hydraulic fracturing. Since then, the area has been the focus of a national controversy over the impacts of shale gas development on residential communities.<br />
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During my visit to the area this week, I noticed that a service rig at the Costello gas well had been removed. George Stark, a spokesman for Cabot, was not immediately available for comment about recent developments. Stark told me in September that the rig, which has been at the site for months, allowed crews to “monitor” the casing of the gas well, which appeared sound.<br />
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DEP officials explained it differently. They had not pinpointed a source for the problems affecting three homes near the well, including the Ely properties. But they had determined that the suspect Costello gas well was "unviable" and would have to be plugged. In an email response to my query earlier this fall, DEP spokeswoman Colleen Connolly reported that Cabot was ”continuing remedial efforts” at the Costello gas well and “evaluating the effectiveness” of the work. Methane levels were fluctuating, she said. Additionally, tests had shown levels of iron and manganese that were elevated but within standards in some water samples. Elevated levels of these elements are “not uncommon during gas migration,” she reported.<br />
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<b>Update 5:25 p.m. EST</b>. In response to my request for an update this week, Connolly said in an email this afternoon that “remediation work” is continuing on the Costello 1 well. But the department’s characterization of the status of the well remains vague. In Connolly’s words, the well is "essentially unviable," but DEP officials are "not aware of the gas well having been officially plugged.”<br />
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<br />TOM WILBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103105549852845055noreply@blogger.com45tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6949864949316311883.post-74735674917243481632013-11-15T09:52:00.001-08:002013-11-22T05:35:36.585-08:00Fracking critics gain leverage with social media mastery Why PR matters in the war over shale gas <br />
Richard Levick, an influential public relations advisor, wrote a <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/richardlevick/2013/11/07/colorado-rejects-fracking-the-moneys-not-talking-social-media-is/" target="_blank">piece for Forbes</a> last week about how the Oil and Gas industry’s PR machine is losing the battle for hearts and minds of mainstream America “despite industry advertising budgets that dwarf the activist war chest.” Why? In Levick’s view, it’s all about anti-fracking activists’ mastery of social media to galvanize and amplify grass roots movements. Or in his words:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Social media outreach, online content development, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Marketing (SEM) are all dominated by activist voices. As a result, they are not only rallying significant grassroots opposition; they are doing it in ways that neutralize any advantage that industry money once provided.</blockquote>
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Anti-fracking campaigns, both at institutional levels and from the ground up, were quick to catch the crest of the social media wave that has largely displaced community newspapers and town halls as popular incubators and catalysts for free speech, political action, and self-governance. Levick uses an empirical analysis, including a count of tweets about fracking over a given period, to illustrate how “the most influential conversation around this topic is highly negative.” He laments that the industry supporters do little or nothing to engage this on-line discussion, and urges them to get in the program.<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Activists understand that the marketplace of ideas has evolved – and they are evolving – and leading — right along with it. If fracking is to become an accepted practice in the U.S., the energy industry must do so as well.</blockquote>
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I found Levick’s points relevant enough to merit posting on my <a href="http://www.facebook.com/frackingandfortunes" target="_blank">own Facebook Page</a>, with this comment: “PR & the fracking war. Big Oil & Gas $ versus anti-fracking organization. Media expert Richard Levick explains natgas industry’s failure in Forbes.”<br />
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A reader, perhaps interpreting my post as an endorsement of Levick’s industry coaching, responded that the article was misguided, as the anti-fracking battle transcends a PR contest. She left this query. “He thinks it just comes down to a pr battle. What do you think?” Fair question, and one that – given it was posted on facebook and I am now responding on Blogger -- illustrates the influence of the new media that Levick writes about.<br />
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So here’s my answer: As a journalist, I’m always interested in how a message is conveyed, the degree to which it piques public interest, people’s perceptions, and what influences them. I welcome analysis from informed observers, and in this regard I think Levick’s piece rings true… mostly. The industry has done a lousy job from the start explaining itself with a patronizing “Trust-Us-It’s-Safe” message. This assessment is not just from Levkick, but is shared by notable industry supporters as well as skeptics, and it applies to both the industry’s traditional advertising campaigns in print and broadcast, as well as its social media efforts. Tom Ridge, former Pennsylvania-governor-turned-public-relations-figurehead for the industry, told an <a href="http://www.dailyitem.com/0100_news/x1625118751/Tom-Ridge-Natural-gas-industry-must-improve-its-public-image" target="_blank">Associated Press reporter </a>that the industry had to do a better job conveying a positive public image and “they know they have some work to do.” That was in 2010. <br />
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Last week, Sarah Murphy wrote an <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/11/07/fracking-is-losing-the-pr-battle.aspx" target="_blank">article for Motley Fool</a>, the popular investor guide, titled “Fracking is Losing the PR battle.” She cited a recent report called Disclosing the Facts: Transparency and Risk in Hydraulic Fracturing Operations, released last week. The report assesses investors’ needs for risk disclosure and mitigation against company practices and found “a systematic, industry-wide failure to adequately disclose fracking-related information that is material to investors.” Murphy explains what this means in her view:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The thing is, fracking may really not be as awful as the campaigns make it appear, but the industry is going to have to rethink its strategy or risk condemnation in the court of public opinion… </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Seriously, these guys have got to step up their game if they want to survive. At last week's SRI Conference on Sustainable, Responsible, Impact Investing, I talked with countless fund managers, investors, financial advisors, and academics, all of whom agreed that while fracking is controversial from a sustainability perspective, the industry's ham-fisted approach to public engagement has been so feeble as to be pathetic.</blockquote>
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In this day and age, much of that engagement is on line. And, as Levick points out, it’s a place where the industry is out of its element of old-fashioned Madison Avenue advertising strategies aimed at conventional media.<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
While industry money went into advertising and traditional “outreach” campaigns that net diminishing returns in the digital age of public affairs… activists stretched every dollar with online efforts that prove far more effective.</blockquote>
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The trend is also important in politics. Levick links to <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/3003066/decision-2012-it-was-about-technology-stupid" target="_blank">another assessment</a> that recaps the advantage Obama had over Romney by understanding and applying the power of Social Media in an “era where familiarity, credibility, and the ability to forge personal connections trump traditional advertising at every turn.”<br />
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The accounts of Levick, Murphy, and Ridge are but a few assessments of how the industry has failed with the traditional media with patronizing and heavy handed messaging, and failed with the new media with its inability to engage savvy and influential audiences on line. But there is a critical third frontier that they don’t address: Big-money politics.<br />
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Popular opinion is only one gauge of a campaign’s success. The other is special interest – the megaphone through which public opinion is conveyed to Washington. The size of the megaphone is related to lobbying wherewithal of a given interest, and the lobbying wherewithal is largely a function of the money behind it. Here the industry is winning, at least in Washington. The Obama administration has identified shale gas development as a “priority” in meeting the nation’s future energy needs. That may be related to lobbying, or not. But certainly lobbying has everything to do with the policy framework that heavily favors the industry over others. Specifically, Obama’s administration and Congress have preserved drilling and fracking industry exemptions from the Safe Drinking Water Act and hazardous waste disposal laws – passes that allow industry to operate with one foot in the pre-regulatory era. Without these exemptions, the industry would have to reveal what hazardous substances that it puts into the ground, and characterize the waste that comes out – revelations that would open the door to a host of other laws, and cast fracking in an altogether different public light.<br />
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The lobbying battle at regional and local levels is not going as well for the industry, or conversely, is going much better for the activists. New York state remains off limits to the industry pending a moratorium now in its sixth year. And this month local municipalities in California and Colorado have advanced the Home Rule movement -- which settles drilling issues with local town boards and referendums -- that is gaining traction in New York and Pennsylvania. As Levick notes about the recent vote in Colorado: Boulder, Fort Collins and Lafayette overwhelmingly voted for drilling bans. The industry had only one victory in Broomfield, an area that traditionally trends Republican, where voters rejected the environmentalist agenda by the slimmest of margins.<br />
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In the long run, operators and investors continue to push forward with shale gas development that has flooded the market with cheap natural gas. The industry’s success or failure over the longer term hinges on its ability to address issues of sustainability -- not just ecologically, but economically and politically -- in the Market Place of Ideas, where voters and investors judge the good from the bad.<br />
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TOM WILBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103105549852845055noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6949864949316311883.post-60372896754222249182013-11-05T08:44:00.001-08:002013-11-05T17:18:13.567-08:00What are the prospects for New York’s shale reserves? Sociology, ideology weigh heavy in debate over geology The value of a given shale gas reserve depends on the physical characteristics of the rock. How deep? How thick? How much wet gas? How much dry gas? But as with many aspects of the shale gas debate, there’s more to it. Community attitudes, politics, special interests, markets, and ideological conviction all influence the social and monetary push to get things moving.<br />
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Things are not moving in New York, where for years shale gas has been pitched as an economic gift – a windfall for the taking -- by industry public relations campaigns, lobbiest, and landowners seeking lucrative contracts with drillers. Now, fracking critics are drawing on industry’s own data to build a case that the New York’s shale prospects amount to a stillborn promise.<br />
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Chip Northrup, a former oil and gas investor from Texas, led a team of professionals who made this case Wednesday night at Cornell University. Presenters also included Lou Allstadt, a retired Mobil vice president, Brian Brock, a geologist, and Jerry Acton, a retired systems engineer for Lockheed Martin. The team, moderated by Cornell engineering professor Tony Ingraffea, spoke at a 200-seat lecture hall brimming with a supportive anti-fracking crowd that laughed and applauded in response to occasional quips and deadpans by Northrup. (Example: “In Texas, they know better than to spread radio-active flowback on roads…. They use it to induce earthquakes by injecting underground.”) <br />
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In a presentation that lasted close to two and a half hours, Northrup and his colleagues drew on data from a handful of exploratory wells in New York and extrapolations from thousands of production wells in Pennsylvania, along with prevailing social factors. Their conclusion: Viable shale reserves in New York are too limited and social resistance too great to produce major development at current prices. Rather than blossoming into the mega-billion dollar industry, as promised, the play is more likely to attract highly speculative exploration around the fringes by wildcatters, storage facilities and pipelines to get Pennsylvania gas to market, and geology that is uniquely suited for the injection of fracking waste from out-of-state operations – factors that <a href="http://www.nofrackingway.us/2013/10/29/why-ban-drilling-if-no-gas/" target="_blank">Northup likens</a> to “a hangover without the benefit of the night on the town.”<br />
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For years, the anti-frackers have waged their war against shale gas development predominantly on environmental grounds with arguments that it’s unsustainable and acutely and chronically damaging to the ecosystem. Wednesday’s presentation shifted the fight to economic grounds, at a time when the industry is sensitive to talk that can discourage investors. Natural gas prices are expected to remain at historic lows for the foreseeable future, cooling enthusiasm to sink capital into exploration and production efforts in new and unproven areas. (In many ways, the industry is victim to it’s own prolific success in Pennsylvania. Landowners are anticipating the market glut will soon exceed storage capacity, portending even further suppression of prices or a scale back in production. For a recent assessment of the market glut from the view of landowner's forum, <a href="http://gomarcellusshale.com/forum/topics/gas-prices-the-mineral-owner-begins-with-a-glut-part-1" target="_blank">click here</a>.)<br />
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Economic prospects in New York, meanwhile, are further weakened by regulatory uncertainty. After more than five years of an environmental review, state officials are yet to finalize permitting policy pending questions about public health, and Governor Andrew Cuomo’s lack of commitment is grounded in coordinated opposition from both grass roots and institutional campaigns that represent a significant part of his political base. (Significantly, Northup and Allstadt are among leaders of their own political action campaign to ban fracking near their homes in Cooperstown. Their fight to put shale gas development in the hands of local town leaders rather than state officials boils down to the outcome of a <a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2013/09/home-rule-adversaries-welcome-date-with.html" target="_blank">landmark case</a> now before the Court of Appeals.)<br />
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Just as gas proponents were using the promise of wealth to urge state government to begin permitting gas wells when prices were high and interest was booming, critics are now presenting evidence of a flat-out bust as all the more reason to hold back.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Acton's analysis shows colored dots representing viable shale zones </td></tr>
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At Wednesday’s presentation, Brock provided a geological assessment that explained what is widely known about the Marcellus: Production is most viable in the thickest, richest sections at a certain depth, which tapper exponentially from an area just south of New York’s border with Pennsylvania. Acton supported Brock’s characterization with a separate analysis, now <a href="http://www.nofrackingway.us/2013/11/04/new-york-shale-gas-potential-jerry-actons-model/" target="_blank">circulating on the Internet</a>. Acton used production figures from Pennsylvania wells to assess yields corresponding with certain physical parameters of Marcellus geology, including depth, thickness, and thermal maturity, and then extrapolated the Pennsylvania data to model New York’s production. His conclusion: Reserves under the Empire State remain mostly unviable, with the exception of an area extending slightly into the Southern Tier, just north of the most lucrative part of the reserve in Susquehanna County Pennsylvania.<br />
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As with many arguments over shale gas, this one is not so much about the data, but how the data is framed in a broader campaign for or against development. Much of Thursday’s presentation amounted to casting old information in the context of current market conditions. Acton’s map, in fact, was similar to a map created by Terry Engelder, a Penn State geologist and shale authority who has prominently argued in favor of the economic benefits of drilling. Allstadt later used Engelder’s map to support the theme of the Cornell presentation: The New York shale gas cup is far more empty than full.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A map by Engelder used by Allstadt shows conflicting interpretations</td></tr>
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Northrup pointed out that while the shale gas footprint in New York is vast, it’s functionally limited by geology, market restrictions, myriad moving parts of corporate portfolios and lease holds, complications and uncertainties posed by unresolved state policy, no drill zones proposed by the state, and bans by municipalities. I’ve heard both shale gas critics and proponents refer to this set of factors as strangulation by regulation. It’s a point that industry lawyer and lobbiest Tom West frequently makes at public talks: given the social resistance it faces in New York, the shale gas industry will simply move on to less restrictive and more productive territory.<br />
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Allstadt presented evidence that major companies have tested both the Utica and Marcellus shales in New York and found them unworthy. He cited a handful of test wells with underwhelming results drilled by companies such as Chevron, Gulf, Anschutz, Chesapeake and others prior to the shale gas boom. His point is worth noting, but also in need of context. These test wells were small in number and scattered over a large area. They were vertical wells that used low volumes of fracking solutions, prior to refinements and breakthroughs to adapt the process to Devonian shale. And they don’t correspond with leasing trends that took shape with a better geological understanding of the play that came after 2008. (XTO Energy, later bought by Exxon Mobil, paid $110 million dollars for leases on 50,000 acres spanning parts of Broome and Delaware County in the spring of 2008 after wells were proven in northeastern Pennsylvania.)<br />
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By the account presented by Northrup and his group, New York is missing or has already missed the shale gas party. As for what Northrup characterizes as the hangover: New York remains an attractive disposal option for Pennsylvania producers because New York regulations, which haven’t been updated since the late 20th century, allow flow-back to be spread on roads and drill cuttings to be disposed of as conventional waste. Additionally, conventional wells in New York that were drilled and depleted decades ago make, by industry standards, suitable repositories for shale gas waste. From a geographical standpoint, New York is a strategic spot for infrastructure projects to store and transport gas to major northeast markets, and some of these projects are already well underway, including various pipelines and a <a href="http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2013/05/gas-storage_plans_in_nys_finge.html" target="_blank">controversial project </a>to convert old salt mines on the shores of Seneca Lake to natural gas and propane vaults.<br />
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Given all these factors, what does New York’s future look like? Allstadt, who has both ample industry experience and a stake in development as an Upsate resident, said a drilling boom is unlikely, but expect some intensive drilling by maverick companies in communities bordering Pennsylvania. “There’s always somebody who has to take a shot somewhere, and instead of going to a casino they will drill,” he said. “These are the least reliable outfits. They will drill the wells as cheaply as possible.”<br />
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Predictably, the presentation drew admiration from anti-fracking activists and criticism from industry supporters. And while it was an academic exercise that will not alter the geology and arguably has little baring on markets or regulations, it represents a piece to a much larger rhetorical tug-of-war for the hearts and minds of policy makers and politicians. Science can be found on both ends of the rope. Bruce Selleck is a geologist at Colgate University who has identified the prospective area for shale gas development – or “fairway” -- in New York to extend well into upstate New York, west to Chemung County, east to Sullivan County and north to Oneida County. The Marcellus shale alone is capable of producing 5 trillion to 10 trillion cubic feet of gas in New York, by Selleck’s estimate. His take on the presentation at Cornell? “All the blah-blah-blah rhetoric in this 'finding' makes it clear that the folks involved don't want to see gas development in New York - not surprising given the 'experts' involved.” He offered his assessment in a recent email, along with this elaboration:<br />
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That companies are dropping leases simply means they are not planning to drill the properties anytime soon, indicating their estimation of the value of the recoverable gas at current prices makes development in these frontier areas non-economic, in the near term. The dry gas market is flush right now, and will likely remain that way for 3-5 years. The lack of permitting of HVHF in NY is of course an additional factor.<br />
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Even if the Marcellus reserve is in the 5 TCF range in NY, development could prove attractively economic down the road when gas prices are higher. Five TCF of gas would require 2500-4000 wells to ultimately recover that resource. That scale of development would still bring significant royalties to landowners, along with other economic benefits, and all the negative impacts, as well. </blockquote>
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The Utica is even more of an unknown in NY, so any statements made about its potential are based on very little data. I expect a few of the companies in NE PA will try the Utica at some point soon. </blockquote>
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Policy is made at the crossroads of science and politics. The argument that Upstate New York’s celebrated shale reserves have already been passed over by major players challenges proponents painting the industry as economic salvation for upstate New York, and their corresponding push for legislators and the governor to create a policy infrastructure that enables it. But it’s hard to know exactly where it will lead. The assessment by critics that reserves are economically viable only in a small part of the Southern Tier may give Cuomo political cover to proceed with <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/nyregion/hydrofracking-under-cuomo-plan-would-be-restricted-to-a-few-counties.html?_r=0" target="_blank">a plan</a> he has already proposed: Begin issuing permits for wells in areas along the Southern Tier where local officials feel their communities stand to benefit, and see what happens. <br />
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TOM WILBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103105549852845055noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6949864949316311883.post-54215713839083471512013-10-25T11:17:00.001-07:002013-10-25T18:33:50.535-07:00Will Utica, Marcellus remain non-starters in Empire State? New theory holds geology, not politics, thwarts NY fracking <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>Cabot Oil & Gas Map showing thickness of Marcellus shale, one measure</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>of it's viability. Other factors include depth, organic content,</b></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><b><span style="font-family: Cambria;">thermal maturity, and
myriad political and market factors</span><!--EndFragment--> </b></span> </td></tr>
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A collection of factors stalled the Pennsylvania shale gas rush at the New York state border, including grass roots opposition, a market glut, the threat of local bans and -- above all -- the state’s reluctance to complete permitting guidelines without more information about health impacts. That, at least, is the familiar version of the story recounted through the popular press. But a group of activists – some uniquely qualified – are building an argument that something more profound and fundamental is at work: A lack of gas.<br />
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“Simply put, we now know that the Marcellus is likely only marginally productive in a few townships by the border - and may not be economic there until after 2020,” said Chip Northrup. “The Utica may not be here at all - or in a few pockets.”</div>
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Next week, Northrup, a former oil and gas investor from Texas, will publically make this case along with a select group of anti-fracking activists, some with industry resumes. <a href="http://www.nofrackingway.us/2013/10/01/shale-oil-and-gas-potential-in-new-york-state/" target="_blank">The event</a> is scheduled for 7 p.m. at Cornell University’s Hollister Hall Auditorium. In addition to Northup, presenters will include Lou Allstadt, a retired senior vice president for Mobil Oil, Jerry Acton, a systems analyst for Lockheed Martin, and Brian Brock, a retired geologist. The event will be moderated by Tony Ingraffea, a Cornell engineering professor specializing in fracturing mechanics that are integral to shale gas production.</div>
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The argument isn’t really about whether there is gas under New York – geologists agree that multiple gas-bearing formations, conventional and otherwise, lie beneath upstate’s countryside from the Catskills to the Allegany region. It’s a question of whether the broad mantels of Devonian shale, which hold prospects of drilling, fracking, and infrastructure development on an unprecedented scale, are economically viable under current or future market conditions.</div>
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Interest in New York’s unconventional reserves peaked in 2008, when the price of natural gas was three to four times higher than it is now. Since then, production of Marcellus wells coming on line in Pennsylvania and West Virginia <a href="http://www.kentucky.com/2013/10/22/2889432/marcellus-shale-gas-growing-faster.html" target="_blank">has soared</a>, contributing to a price collapse that is not forecast to change anytime soon. While this is a contributing factor, Northrup argues that the much-hyped future for shale gas as an economic engine for New York was a bust from the start. The team of presenters next week at Cornell will base this outlook both on analysis of available geological records and the status of leasing and development trends by major oil and gas companies. So far, only one major, Exxon Mobil, holds significant leases in New York – 50,000 acres in Broome and Delaware counties, near the Pennsylvania border. Moreover, Northrup said, analysis of well data filed with the DEC shows a range of major companies including Chevron, Gulf and others, tested upstate reserves prior to the “the fury” of the gas rush unfolded in 2008. “They kicked the tires and left well before the moratorium was in place,” he said.</div>
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Since the moratorium preventing high volume hydraulic fracturing began in the summer of 2008, midsize companies have faired poorly in their shale gas quest in New York. Norse Energy, a Norwegian company, was planning to tap Marcellus reserves in Oneida and Chenango counties. But officials recently announced they <a href="http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2013/10/norse_energy_were_leaving_new_york_because_we_cant_frack.html" target="_blank">will close operations</a> that remain insolvent after the company’s failure to sell pipeline rights of way and gas leases on 130,000 acres to pay debts. Chesapeake Energy, meanwhile, is letting its leases in New York expire after losing a legal battle to extend them indefinitely (through a process called force majeure) while waiting out the resolution to the state’s moratorium. Prior to that, Talisman, a Canadian company that was a big player in New York’s Trenton Black River boom, began shifting it’s operations from conventional resources in New York to Pennsylvania’s shale gas.</div>
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Interest from major oil companies is one of multiple measures of shale gas prospects, and it is not always a defining one. As Russell Gold <a href="http://stream.wsj.com/story/latest-headlines/SS-2-63399/SS-2-361742/" target="_blank">recently reported</a> for the Wall Street Journal, majors have not typically thrived in the natural gas business, and Shell Oil is selling off some assets in Texas after suffering from a market glut that has held prices down to below $4 per thousand cubic feet for several years. The industry moves in cycles, however, along with prices and demand, and independents play an important if not critical role in exploring resources that might otherwise go undiscovered as business cycles ebb and flow. Gold explains:</div>
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Smaller producers have tended to be more successful in shale than major oil companies, in part because they can move more quickly to lease up acreage before land prices rise and are more nimble at experimenting with different well designs to maximize output and drive down unit costs.</div>
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In short, smaller independents commonly venture where majors don’t. There is a lower barrier of entry to leasing, exploring, and experimenting in unproven areas, and rewards of discovery are greater. So are the risks.</div>
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This is a concern for Allstadt, who has led the push for a precedent-setting municipal ban (<a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2013/09/home-rule-adversaries-welcome-date-with.html" target="_blank">now being tested</a> before the state’s high court) on drilling in Cooperstown. He has told me he does not generally fear the work of major oil companies, but he is wary of wildcatters – independents with limited capital who live or die in the world of speculative ventures. “They (Independents) play on the fringes,” Allstadt said. “They are the ones most likely to screw things up.” (Drillers have already left a legacy in upstate New York. Regulators estimate there are 57,000 abandoned and orphan oil and gas wells statewide, many of them left by firms that went broke or walked away from them. Of these, the state has listed 4,722 as a priority due to health and safety risks, but lacks funding to plug them. More on that <a href="http://tomwilber.blogspot.com/2013/09/will-natural-gas-future-break-from.html" target="_blank">here</a>.)</div>
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In addition to a market evaluation, Northup said the presenters at Cornell will offer geological data that shows underwhelming results for shale gas samples collected from wells drilled in the 1990s and the early part of this century targeting conventional formations – mostly the Trenton Black River. Operators had to drill through the Utica and Marcellus to get to the Trenton Black River, which provided a small boom of its own when natural gas prices began rising several decades ago. The Marcellus is generally thought to be too thin and too close to the surface to be effectively developed in western New York, where most of the Trenton wells are drilled. But some geologists have argued that the prime drilling fairway of the Utica shale, which is providing productive wet gas and oil wells in eastern Ohio, may overlap the Trenton fields in western New York. Northup argues the opposite. “If those had shown Utica potential, all the majors would be here - and they never were,” he said. Take into account these factors, plus limitations imposed by natural barriers, topography, and regional no-drilling zones the state has imposed for ecological reasons, the much-touted drilling fairway for shale gas extending into New York’s Southern Tier “looks more like a putting green,” Northrup quipped on a recent appearance on Liz Benjamin’s Capital Tonight.<br />
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Terry Engelder is a geologist from Penn State whose career has been defined by his knowledge of Devonian shale. In a series of calculations in 2008 and 2009, he estimated that the Marcellus contained enough recoverable gas – nearly 500 trillion cubic feet -- to last decades, and his very public encouragement to investors and the media served as a catalyst to the gas rush in Pennsylvania. Now, with prices a fraction of what they were, Engelder is cautious about assessing the economic breakeven point of New York’s shale reserves, which, he said, “need careful evaluation.” In an email this week, he responded to my requests to assess the validity of claims by Northrup’s team that New York’s reserves are too small and problematic to be worthwhile.</div>
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Now it may turn out that shale gas in New York will not work for less than, say, $5.00/MMcf, BUT the the state should thoroughly evaluate this possibility and not have a bunch of born-again anti-frackers shout the industry down before sensible geologists and engineers really understand what the possibilities are. </div>
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His dismissal with the anti-fracking movement aside, Engelder’s cautionary theme is a contrast to brimming enthusiasm he expressed along with lawyers, elected officials, landowners, and landmen that reflected a sense of giddiness over prospects of the shale gas boom in 2008. Interest in New York peaked in the summer of 2008, after a coalition of landowners near the Pennsylvania border landed a deal with XTO Energy (later bought by Exxon Mobil) to open 50,000 acres for development for $110 million plus royalties. Although that acreage remains undeveloped due to the moratorium, Engelder’s estimates <a href="http://www.kentucky.com/2013/10/22/2889432/marcellus-shale-gas-growing-faster.html" target="_blank">were supported</a> by <a href="http://breakingenergy.com/2011/08/25/natural-gas-reserves-debate-intensifies/" target="_blank">production figures</a> as the shale gas rush took shape in Pennsylvania over the next few years. By early 2009 drilling proponents in Pennsylvania and New York began looking for political leverage to encourage government support of the industry. As the economy sunk into recession, the case for jobs seemed to be the hot button. Stakeholder-funded studies purported to show economic potential that, in retrospect, stretch the limits of good sense in some cases. An enthusiastic Broome County legislature paid University of North Texas scholars for <a href="http://www.pressconnects.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100327/NEWS01/3270373/&template=artiphone" target="_blank">a study that concluded </a>Broome County was “fortunately located in the epicenter of the play” and shale gas development would produce 4,000 wells that would bring $15 billion to the economy, create 16,000 jobs, generate $792 million is salaries and $85 million in tax revenue. The study encouraged county officials – before a single well was drilled or land leased -- to budget $5 million of expected lease payments on county-owned land near the landfill. Five years later, the county is yet to collect a dime from its shale gas assets, whatever they may be.</div>
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Engelder’s predictions remain controversial. And while early production numbers in Pennsylvania have met and in some cases exceeded them, questions about production have given way to questions about sustainability. (Will Bunch, of the Philadelphia Daily news, explores unmet expectations in Pennsylvania’s gas rush <a href="http://articles.philly.com/2013-09-12/news/41974274_1_fracking-boom-penn-state-marcellus-center-marcellus-shale" target="_blank">here</a>, and Kevin Begos, of the Associated Press, looks at the concern of pension fund managers over the long-term profitability of the industry <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/major-pension-funds-climate-change-study-20668494" target="_blank">here</a>.)</div>
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Chris Denton, an attorney who represents landowner coalitions, has seen the rise and fall of gas prices and corresponding interest in shale gas leases in New York. He pointed out that geological assessments are unique, piecemeal, and often proprietary, so it’s hard to usefully extrapolate figures from conventional wells, many which are in western New York, to the parts of the Marcellus shale thought to have the greatest potential, which are more toward the east. “I don’t really pay much attention unless it’s hard data from wells,” said Denton, who added that there is no mystery to why shale gas has not taken off in New York while it’s flourishing just across the boarder in Pennsylvania. “We’ve spoken with a lot of interested parties, and as it stands, it’s really too easy for them to go someplace else. They tell us, ‘call us after the moratorium’s been lifted.’”</div>
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For every argument against shale gas, it’s easy to find a countervailing argument. Theories about the geology in New York bring a chicken-or-egg quality to the discussion. Denton says the geology has not been proven because of the moratorium. Northup says the lack of interest – based on available geological data -- makes it politically comfortable for Governor Andrew Cuomo to extend the moratorium indefinitely.</div>
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The argument for or against the geology aside, there are new signs that Northrup has correctly pegged the political atmosphere. In <a href="http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2013/10/dec_commissioner_martens_has_not_seen_controversial_health_report_on_hydro_frack.html" target="_blank">an interview</a> earlier this week in the Syracuse Post Standard, DEC Commissioner Joe Martens told reporter David Figura the health review needed to complete the state’s permitting policy is “going to take some time… We really don’t feel that there is any great urgency. People really want to be satisfied that this can be done safely and that's what [Department of Health Commissioner] Dr. Shah is trying to get to the bottom of.”</div>
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Will the geology of New York support a full-scale gas development by major energy companies or even speculative exploration by wildcatters? For now, a number of influences – including markets, political pressures, and unproven geology -- have created a feedback loop that favors the status quo.</div>
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TOM WILBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103105549852845055noreply@blogger.com15