Recent News on Natural Gas Drilling

A list of news articles and editorials on the issue of natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale and protecting New York’s water supply.

Featured News Source on Gas Drilling

ProPublica Buried Secrets: Gas Drilling’s Environmental Threat ProPublica, an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest, offers ongoing and extensive reporting on the threat of natural gas drilling to the environment.

Recent News on Gas Drilling (week of May 18, 2012)

LOCAL ACTIVISTS SKEPTICAL OF FRACKING POLL

The Daily Star

Opponents of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas outnumber advocates of the controversial drilling method in upstate New York -- but registered voters statewide are evenly divided on the issue, a new poll shows.The Siena College Research Institute poll, released Wednesday, indicated that 37 percent support hydrofracking, with 36 percent opposed and 25 percent undecided.High volume shale gas drilling was more popular in the suburbs of New York City than anywhere else in the state, with 44 percent supporting the technique and 30 percent opposed to it.

NY REPORT: STATE REGS REDUCE GAS-DRILLING IMPACTS

Business Week

A study released Tuesday by the University at Buffalo's new shale gas institute concludes that state oversight of gas drilling has been effective at reducing environmental problems in Pennsylvania and will prevent major problems in New York if the state allows drilling to begin.Environmentalists criticized the study as superficial and overly simplistic. The university-funded report examined almost 3,000 violations from nearly 4,000 gas wells in Pennsylvania since 2008. It found that 62 percent of the violations were administrative and 38 percent were environmental. The environmental violations stemmed from 845 events — 25 of them classified as "major," defined as site restoration failures, serious contamination of water supplies, major land spills, blowouts, and venting and gas migration.

REPORT FINDS LITTLE DRILLING DAMAGE; ENVIRONMENTAL GROUP SAYS AUTHORS OF STUDY SIDE WITH GAS INDUSTRY

Albany Times Union

A report by a new natural gas institute at the University of Buffalo concluded Tuesday that environmental problems caused by natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania were isolated, mostly minor and on the decline."This study presents a compelling case that state oversight of oil and gas regulation has been effective," said Tim Considine, who wrote the inaugural report for the university's Shale Resources and Society Institute.The report examined Pennsylvania enforcement records reflecting nearly 3,000 violations on about 3,500 gas wells drilled during the last four years using the technique of natural gas hydrofracking.

STUDY: NY COULD REDUCE FRACKING PROBLEM

Press Connect

New York's proposed regulations for hydraulic fracturing would have sufficiently curbed many of the environmental impacts experienced in Pennsylvania, according to a study released Tuesday by the University at Buffalo. The report received immediate criticism from environmental and anti-hydrofracking groups, with one accusing its authors of "drawing rosy conclusions based on limited information. "The study focused on 2,988 violations filed by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection from January 2008 through August 2011, covering close to 4,000 gas wells.Of those, 25 violations were considered "major," which include events like blowouts at gas wells, land spills and water contamination. New York's proposed permitting guidelines for high-volume hydrofracking would have helped "avoid or mitigate" the "major" violations, according to the report. "To me, New York has the adequate understanding and experience to manage this industry," said John Martin, director of the university's Shale Resources and Society Institute. The peer-reviewed report was the first released by the school's shale institute, which was launched in April to study shale-gas drilling.The study was funded entirely by the University at Buffalo and did not receive industry funding, according to Martin, one of the report's authors.

AREA HAS MIXED VIEWS ABOUT EPA FRACKING REPORT ON WELL WATER

Daily Star

Gas drilling advocates said they are hopeful that hydrofracking will get a boost in New York from last week's announcement by federal watchdogs that drinking water in the rural Pennsylvania village of Dimock is safe to consume despite fears by some residents that it was contaminated by shale gas extraction.However, opponents of hydraulic fracturing said the announcement by the Environmental Protection Agency is not backed by the agency's own report, suggesting the agency's conclusions on Dimock water will change few minds on a topic that has become a contentious environmental battleground."The EPA's own press release isn't backed up by its own data," said Ronald Bishop, a State University College at Oneonta chemistry professor critical of New York's draft gas drilling regulations still being evaluated by the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

FRACKING IN NEW YORK: GAS DRILLERS WRANGLE OVER LIMITATIONS, BANS ACROSS EMPIRE STATE

Huffington Post

With all the restrictions in proposed state regulations and local bans, gas companies say about half of their lease holdings in the lucrative Marcellus Shale region in New York state will be off-limits or inaccessible to drilling if the state gives the green light to developers this year. A coalition of environmental groups is pushing for a complete ban on shale gas drilling, but the industry and landowners hoping to lease to drillers are working to lift some of the restrictions and halt the movement toward local bans."Industry estimates that when you look at the cumulative effect of prohibitions and setbacks, 40 to 60 percent of their leasehold is effectively undevelopable," said Tom West, an Albany lawyer representing gas companies.The Marcellus is a gas-rich shale deposit thousands of feet underground in parts of Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and West Virginia. It's estimated to contain 84 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas, enough to supply the nation's gas-burning electrical plants for 11 years.

EPA: WELL WATER IN PA. GAS DRILLING TOWN IS SAFE

Business Week

Federal environmental regulators say testing of scores of drinking-water wells in a northeastern Pennsylvania village has failed to turn up unsafe levels of contamination, providing ammunition to a gas driller that denies it polluted the aquifer with hazardous chemicals while prompting accusations the government is distorting the data.The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released test results for an additional 12 homes on Friday and said they "did not show levels of contaminants that would give EPA reason to take further action." It was the fourth and final release of data for homes in Dimock, a rural Susquehanna County community that's found itself in the middle of a passionate debate over the safety of drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in deep rock formations like the Marcellus Shale.