DEP Chief, John Hanger Hammers Drillers

Gas industry urged to act soon on drilling rules
By Andrew Maykuth

Inquirer Staff Writer

On the heels of penalizing one natural gas operator $240,000 for contaminating water wells, Pennsylvania's top environmental official Thursday urged the industry to immediately adopt proposed new drilling standards rather than waiting for them to be formally enacted.
John Hanger, secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection, summoned industry representatives to Harrisburg to discuss new construction standards for wells drilled to tap natural gas reserves. The new guidelines are designed to reduce the chance of incidents such as the one that has contaminated 14 water wells in the Susquehanna County town of Dimock.

"I made it clear that this industry needs to have world-class standards, deploy the best practices possible, and needed to reach excellence in environmental protection and safety," Hanger said in an interview after meeting with about 100 representatives of companies drilling for gas in the Marcellus Shale formation.

Hanger encountered little resistance to the new standards, which set stricter casing and cementing requirements for gas wells and require operators to test those gas wells quarterly for leaks. "I'm not aware of a company in the industry that objects to the strengthening of the standards," he said. (WHAT?)

Hanger last month issued a tartly worded invitation to Thursday's meeting after fining Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. and ordering it to plug three wells that he blamed for contaminating drinking-water supplies in Dimock. The invitation had the tone of a regulatory call to the woodshed.

But participants at the meeting described the tone as positive and said that neither Dimock nor Cabot was mentioned by name.

"The industry is fully supportive of the proposal," said Kathryn "Kool-Aid" Klaber, executive director of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry trade group.

Hanger said the industry had worked closely with DEP to devise stricter well standards, whose chief purpose is to prevent natural gas from migrating into freshwater aquifers. DEP said it believed that natural gas from a shallow formation migrated alongside the steel casing that transports gas from the deep Marcellus formation to the surface.

The new standards call for improved cementing to seal any voids that provide pathways for stray gas to migrate into groundwater.

"As we have seen in Dimock, stray gas migrating from improperly constructed wells can build up to explosive levels near and inside homes and can make residential water supplies unusable," Hanger said.

The new regulations will be presented to the Environmental Quality Board on Monday, and Hanger said they would be enacted later in the year. He called upon the industry to embrace the standards immediately.



OK. Now knowing all that you know... Do you think this will stop the destructtion of our environment? It won't. But it's a start.
http://www.marcellus-shale.us/

Philly.com

http://www.philly.com/philly/business/20100514_Gas_industry_urged_to_act_soon_on_drilling_rules.html?nlid=3006987#ixzz0nwfCLrNJ

Deranged

de·range   /dɪˈreɪndʒ/ [dih-reynj]
–verb (used with object),-ranged, -rang·ing.
1.to throw into disorder; disarrange.
2.to disturb the condition, action, or function of.
3.to make insane.

I haven't been able to describe the behavior of public officials and agency bureaucrats across the state of Pennsylvania other than deranged.

No matter the reward. No matter the benefit of power and control afforded to political operatives...

The end-game will be horrific.

An un-inhabitable state. Property values bankrupted. A disaster that will never be able to be corrected or repaired.

And the most discouraging part is this, the very people who stand to lose everything, health, property and prosperity, are indifferent or at best just resigned. That scares me.

My heart breaks for the children of Pennsylvania. They are the most vulnerable. What 5 year old can go to a town meeting or call a state representative and contend with the assault on the air, water and land? They can't. They are trusting the adults, the guardians of their safety. And those guardians are neutralized. Neutralized by the day-to-day activities of life. Ironic.

There's a term in the coporate banking world I came from. It's called "knowledge deficit". Companies cash in on the consumer’s “knowledge deficit”. If you want to be the most profitable bank or credit card company, you must exploit the consumer's "knowledge deficit".

That is what the gas drilling companies have done. They not only exploit the landowner's knowledge deficit, they also exploit the politician's knowledge deficit and greed.

Incidentally, most politicians also have to rely on exploiting the taxpayer's knowledge deficit to get their deranged agendas passed.

How Much Is That Gubanatorial Candidate In The Window?

"What would motivate a homemaker from Florida to donate so much, ($180,000) to a gubernatorial candidate in a state 1,100 miles away?
Well, Pegula’s husband Terry is CEO of East Resources Inc., the third largest driller for natural gas in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale region. The firm has leased about 900,000 acres."

Philly.com
Friday, April 2, 2010
State Needs Limits On Campaign Contributions
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/inq_ed_board/State_needs_limits_on_campaign_contributions.html
The race for governor is again illustrating everything that’s wrong with Pennsylvania’s system of paying for election campaigns. Pennsylvania is one of 11 states without limits on cash contributions from individuals or political action committees. The more you have, the more you can give.

Take Kim Pegula, who’s listed in state campaign finance records as a homemaker from Boca Raton, Fla. In a two-month span late last year, Pegula donated $180,000 to Republican candidate Tom Corbett. And if she wanted to give Corbett even more this year, state law allows it. If Pegula donates to a candidate for Congress, however, federal law limits her to a maximum contribution of $2,400.

Frack Fluid Spill in Dimock Contaminates Stream, Killing Fish

by Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica
Pennsylvania environment officials are racing to clean up as much as 8,000 gallons of dangerous drilling fluids after a series of spills at a natural gas production site near the town of Dimock last week.
The spills, which occurred at a well site run by Cabot Oil and Gas, involve a compound manufactured by Halliburton that is described as a "potential carcinogen" and is used in the drilling process of hydraulic fracturing, according to state officials. The contaminants have seeped into a nearby creek, where a fish kill was reported by the state Department of Environmental Protection. The DEP also reported fish "swimming erratically."

http://www.propublica.org/feature/frack-fluid-spill-in-dimock-contaminates-stream-killing-fish-921

Weekly Recorder: "Range Lease to Be Approved in Canonsburg"

http://www.weekly-recorder.com/index.html
Fri, May 7, 2010
By Amanda Gillooly

Canonsburg Council is expected to approve a lease with Range Resources Monday that will allow for non-surface extraction of gas at Falconi Fields on Cecil Street.
Borough manager Terry Hazlett said Canonsburg will receive an $1,800 per-acre signing bonus of sorts for use of the 24-acre parcel. That money will be released to the municipality within 90 days of the lease signing, he said.
Canonsburg will also receive a 16-percent royalty on any gas extracted. He said Range Resources indicated royalties could amount to up to $300 per acre each month. It wasn’t clear when extraction would begin.
Council earlier this year approved a similar lease with Range Resources for use of Town Park’s 52 acres for non-surface gas extraction.
But Councilman Rich Russo said that while proceeds from the Town Park lease were accounted for in the borough’s 2010 budget, money from this pending contract wasn’t.
"We always have unexpected expenses,” he said. “It’s nice having an unexpected revenue stream.”
Councilman A.J. Williams agreed.
“We are landlocked, and we have limited resources. This gives us another option to work with,” he said.
Both councilmen said that if the contract is approved, they hope at least a portion of the proceeds would go toward infrastructure needs.
Russo said the borough’s patching and paving has “been lean” because of budgetary constraints over the past couple years. Williams said the municipality’s secondary roads and alleys are in particular need of attention.
Hazlett said that if council approved the lease, he would recommend some of the proceeds be earmarked for reimbursement of costs incurred during February’s snow storms. He said nearly $110,000 was spent for overtime, salt and removal of downed trees.
“That’s almost 3 mills,” he said. “We have to account for that somehow.”
Councilman George Coleman said that while he supports the business relationship with Range Resources, he won’t vote yes until he is guaranteed that the extraction process will not disturb any of the current land, and that there will be no excessive noise at the sites.
And he said representatives from Range have assured him that those would not become issues. Russo added that the lease was carefully examined by both the borough’s solicitor and its engineer.
Coleman was adamant that his first concern was for the safety of the properties involved and the residents who live near them.
“I read what’s going on (with this sort of extraction process in other areas),” he said. “There are people who are tasting bad water and complaining about excessive noise.”
Canonsburg Council will hold its voting meeting at 7 p.m. Monday in the borough building.

Amanda Gillooly is a freelance writer and can be reached at amandabgillooly@gmail.com. Weekly Recorder

To Subscribe to the Weekly Recorder, send your check or money order with the form below to The Weekly Recorder, P.O. Box F, Claysville, PA 15323
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"Not In My Backyard"

Photo courtesy of www.clearville.wordpress.com

The parcel of land on this map link below is where my "Frac Attack" nightmare began.....and ended...thanks to Ron Gulla and many others who answered my questions truthfully.

On April 23, 2010, a seller I was negotiating with told me he signed a gas lease. This property is above Canonsburg Lake and within drilling distance of my home, about 4,000 feet away.

Of special concern is the fact that this proposed well is near the Columbia Gas transmission lines. And with about 90 acres of space on this site, there is plenty of room to build a nice big plant.
This increases the chance that this site could become a permanent gas processing site. A place where the 'dirty' gas is cleaned and highly volatile condensates are removed and collected.
Transmission line sidings are valuable to drillers for moving processed gas. Processing plants are obvious high risk contamination sources.

McDowell Rd. - 70 acres
Blow up the map to 100%.
Look for land shaded with pink + plus signs
http://www.paturnpike.com/monfaysb/79tomfexpress/plt2.pdf

This is the sat map
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=mcdowell+rd+%2B+foxchase+15317&sll=40.266543,-80.149233&sspn=0.008236,0.021887&ie=UTF8&ll=40.268131,-80.150886&spn=0.016471,0.043774&t=h&z=15

Wayne County Drilling Put On Hold

"We're looking at things that have happened to the west of us and what needs to be put in place to prevent that," Collier said. "We're learning a lot, and we want to do it right."
Executive Director Carol R. Collier, Delaware River Basin Commission (Northeastern Pa)
http://www.state.nj.us/drbc/

By Sandy Bauers
Inquirer Staff Writer

Drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania's easternmost counties has been put on hold for months, if not longer.
On Wednesday, the Delaware River Basin Commission voted unanimously to draft new regulations to govern natural gas projects and not to issue any permits until the new rules are in effect.
The decision means that even as activity escalates throughout the state - nearly 900 Marcellus permits have been issued this year - no production drilling can be done in the Delaware watershed.
Adopting new rules could take six months to a year, commission Executive Director Carol R. Collier said Thursday.
It will stall indefinitely the lone application before the commission - for a well site in Wayne County at the northeastern tip of the state.

"I know there are many that want the gas-well drilling to move along quickly because of the economics and the issue of national security and providing clean fuel," Collier said. "But I really think we have to do it correctly and smartly. There's just too much at stake in the Delaware River basin."

Environmental groups cheered the decision, saying it was the "pause button" they have long sought statewide as the tally of explosions, spills, and pollution incidents mounts. So far this year, the state Department of Environmental Protection has initiated 116 enforcement actions against drillers.
"The DRBC has taken a sensible and laudable step today toward keeping gas drilling from running wild here," said Maya van Rossum, the Delaware riverkeeper.

Spokesman Tim O'Leary of Stone Energy Corp., which is seeking commission approval for a well, said only one of its 14 wells in the region was in the Delaware watershed.
"Stone Energy looks forward to working with the DRBC in answering any remaining questions," he said.
The Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry group, did not respond.
John Hanger, secretary of the state Department of Environmental Protection, which also has regulatory authority over natural gas drilling, said the two agencies should work together so no conflicts arise and "to provide strong oversight of this industry."
The commission is an interstate agency, formed by a federal compact, that has legal authority over water quality and quantity in the basin. The governors of the four basin states - Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Delaware - plus a federal appointee are commissioners, but they often send representatives.
The New Jersey representative at Wednesday's meeting, Fred Sickels of the state DEP water-supply division, said that with all the activity, "the cumulative impacts could be significant if there aren't appropriate safeguards."
Pennsylvania's northeastern counties - where the shale region and the Delaware watershed overlap - have been deemed a high-stakes area.
The pressure to drill there could be even more intense than elsewhere. Geological maps indicate that corner of Pennsylvania is a sweet spot with huge quantities of natural gas.
More than 6,000 leases have been signed in Wayne County alone, said Brian W. Smith, chairman of the Wayne County supervisors.
No drilling other than test wells, which are still allowed, has been done in the watershed.
But environmental concerns are high. The Delaware River from Hancock, N.Y., south to Trenton is so clean that it is under stricter, "special protection waters" regulations. Also, the federal government has designated portions of the river wild and scenic areas worthy of enhanced protection.
And downstream - where the river's quality is the sum of everything that has occurred upstream - are Philadelphia's water intakes.
Proponents say natural gas drilling is adding millions of dollars to local economies and has environmental benefits because the fuel burns cleaner than coal.
Critics say the drilling process is fraught with hazards and the regulatory baseline is inadequate.

In March, Philadelphia City Council unanimously passed a resolution asking the commission not to approve any applications in the Marcellus Shale until a full environmental impact assessment is done.
At the time, the commission was considering the Stone Energy proposal. A decision, which many felt would have set a precedent, was not expected until July at the earliest.
Stone Energy received DEP permission for the well in March 2008 and began construction without commission approval.
That December, the commission and Stone Energy reached a settlement agreement that required the company to submit an application and pay a $70,000 penalty.
Stone Energy submitted two applications - one for the well and one for a withdrawal of 700,000 gallons of water a day from the west branch of the Lackawaxen River - a basin waterway - for fracturing the well so the gas can be extracted.

The application was submitted to the commission more than a year ago. But unlike the DEP, which has 45 days to consider a well permit and can deny one only under specific conditions, the commission has no deadline. No clock is ticking.
During a public-input period, the commission received more than 2,000 comments.
"We're looking at things that have happened to the west of us and what needs to be put in place to prevent that," Collier said. "We're learning a lot, and we want to do it right."
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/health_science/daily/20100507_Some_Marcellus_Shale_drilling_put_on_hold.html