THE MARCELLUS SHALE FORMATION IN PENNSYLVANIA:

PUBLIC POLICY WITH THE CAT OUT OF THE BAG

                As we have already reported, hydrofracturing of the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania began in 2008, without fanfare and without notice. The drilling was loud, and used millions of gallons of water with each well, but there were not many of them, and the wells were far away in the countryside. As the landmen descended on the Pennsylvania countryside, offering signing bonuses and generous royalties for natural gas extracted from the shale underneath farmers' lands, and the drilling equipment began to rumble over rural roads, people began to take notice. At first, the income that the was promised was seen as a boon, perhaps enough to save a family's farm for the presence of a well on their land, perhaps even to make a family rich. As momentum built, however, people began to see their roads ruined by the heavy vehicles for which they were never designed, and, with its epicenter in Dimock, PA, a small town between Binghamtom, NY and Scranton, PA, just west of U.S. 81, the hazards of the hydrofracturing process revealed themselves. In Dimock, families who drank well water near the gas wells became sick, stories of water catching flame from the tap, and spills of foul smelling "slick water" became the subject of a documentary titled "Gasland" that outlined the dangers of the process.

                Once "Gasland," a documentary film about Dimock and hydrofracturing, won a Sundance Film Festival Prize, hydrofracturing became a subject of public outrage, and a sounding board on which anger toward the powerful energy industry could resonate. Because the drilling took place in a temperate, forested, Eastern state, rather than in some remote far western prairie that was almost desert, it threatened not only fragile watersheds, which would have been as threatened by coal mining or even tract house development, but also many people's sense of themselves and where they lived. A vocal group began to protest, some agitating for an outright ban on the process as too hazardous and destructive, others for rigorous regulation. An equally vocal group, organized by the gas industry involved in what was called in the biggest natural gas "play" in decades, insisted on its safety and touted the jobs, and the royalty income hydrofracturing brought to Pennsylvania. Yet a third group, mostly public employees looking at the shrinking state budget and fighting to fund their jobs, agitated for a severance tax on the gas. So now the battle is joined, with an embattled legislature in the middle, and a regulatory scheme that is short on staff, but has moved to fine and punish gas drillers who break the rules. This fight will go on as long as there is natural gas in the shale underneath Pennsylvania, so we are in for a long haul. New York State is watching, and so should you.