A "deep-drilling" well extracts natural gas from the
Marcellus Shale on a farm in Washington County.
It's shaping up to be Pennsylvania's own gold rush.
And like that freewheeling time in the old West, extracting the deep but potentially oh-so-profitable natural gas from the dark Marcellus Shale formation is generating some wild speculation.
Swindle, conspiracy, happy days are here again, and doom and gloom to name a few.
To be sure, an unprecedented boom of gas drilling in Pennsylvania's mountains seems to be under way. Meteoric rises in the value of natural gas and advances in horizontal drilling technology that enable gas to be extracted from deposits more than a mile below the surface are fueling the venture, even with wells at $3 million a pop.
"Landmen" are fanning across all but the southeastern corner of the state, trying to lock up leases and royalties for mineral rights, setting off such turmoil that Penn State put together a primer for befuddled private landowners (
www.naturalgaslease.pbwiki.com).
The approaching wave of new energy extraction will boost employment, economic output, personal income and increase the state's population by the thousands, according to a consortium of Penn State researchers convened to study the approaching phenomenon.
But what about the wear and tear on the environment? Are state forests and game lands destined to be topped with a maze of gas rigs and bulldozed roads?
Some feel the cash-strapped Pennsylvania Game Commission and state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources will succumb to the smell of money at the expense of sound stewardship of natural lands.
As drilling for Marcellus gas is allowed, where will the copious amounts of water needed to fracture rock deep underground come from — and go, once it's flushed back out, contaminated with grime?
Environmental groups, scrambling to sort out fact from fiction and the seemingly overnight suddenness of it all, have been uncharacteristically mum so far.
But some dark clouds already have formed.
On May 30, the state Department of Environmental Protection shut down two Marcellus drilling operations in Lycoming County after dangerous dams, inadequate erosion and sediment controls, improper waste disposal and water being sucked from nearby streams were found.
That prompted DEP Secretary Kathleen McGinty to convene a summit to lay down the law for 150 current and future gas operators.
McGinty sought to assure the public their beloved public lands would not be trampled in an energy stampede that will be lucrative to the state agencies that oversee them.
"Rules are in place to protect our natural resources and we will not compromise on them," she said. She also announced that the agency was hiring additional inspectors to keep watch.
But not everyone is so sure.
Noting each gas well can use up to 6 million gallons of water, "It's becoming a very large concern to us both from the environmental standpoint and the water they need to use," says Mike Brownell, chief of water resource management with the Susquehanna River Basin Committee, the state-federal group that regulates water use in the Susquehanna River drainage.
Much of the drilling will take place in mountains where the headwaters of streams are located, Brownell notes.
That worries the Pennsylvania Council of Trout Unlimited.
Can the land give up large quantities of water that is not placed back in waterways? And are there adequate disposal facilities for water that comes back up from the earth, often contaminated by grime containing salt and heavy metals?
Those questions bother Karl Sheaffer, a former DEP official who now is the new chair of TU Pennsylvania's environmental committee.
He also has concerns about forest fragmentation from new drilling roads and disturbance in the same areas that harbor the state's exceptional value and high-quality watersheds.
The Commonwealth's 2.3 million acres of state forests — one of the largest tracts of public forestland in the eastern U.S. — and parks are under the stewardship of DCNR.
Every acre of state forestland is desired by gas companies that have approached the agency. The agency owns mineral rights on 85 percent of its land.
DCNR allowed its first well in 1947, and since then more than 1,300 gas wells have been allowed — about half on land where DCNR doesn't own the mineral rights. In 2007, that resulted in $4.3 million to the DCNR treasury, money which must be spent on conservation, recreation and flood control.
Eight new state parks have been opened and 31 others expanded with that money. Over time, about 100,000 acres of land has been purchased by DCNR. In some cases, the money is used to buy mineral rights on state land.
Asked about the potential value of Marcellus gas rights on DCNR land, spokeswoman Christine Novak said, "We don't know. I've heard anywhere from $2 million to $50 million."
DCNR recently decided to allow limited wind development on ridges and mountaintops.
The focus of future gas drilling on state lands will be for the Marcellus shale. Deep wells will result in fewer wells and less roads than shallow gas wells that have traditionally dotted state forests. That will be "more compatible with forest values," according to DCNR.
Deep wells generally are spaced at least 1 square mile apart.
At the end of this month, DCNR will announce high bidders for deep-drilling wells on 75,000 acres at various locations.
In April, DCNR Secretary Michael DiBerardinis appeared before the state Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee to address the Marcellus gas well issues.
"Our proposal enables DCNR to proceed cautiously," DiBerardinis told legislators. "It balances our legislative requirement to provide for the economic use of mineral resources under the state forests while also sustaining those forests and their ecological, recreational and cultural benefits for present and future Pennsylvanians."
To be off-limits are designated natural and wild areas, dark-sky areas, state parks and vistas.
What about the 1.4 million acres of state game lands?
The Game Commission intends to cash in on gas leases but spokesman Jerry Feaser told the Pennsylvania Outdoor News that "most" mineral rights on game lands are not owned by the agency. He could not supply an exact number.
Many tracts of land purchased by the Game Commission came from gas, oil or coal companies that held on to mineral rights, Feaser said.
"We are approaching this with caution," he said. "We do not have an interest in having that much impact on the wildlife or the environment," he added, noting the 10-acre footprints of gas rigs would hinder hunter access.
The extreme water needs of gas wells could affect wildlife and wells of rural communities, he said.
"We are approaching this with cautious optimism, but I don't see it as the be-all, end-all some make it out to be."
Feaser was referring to the conspiracy theory recently leveled against the agency and DCNR by the Unified Sportsmen of Pennsylvania.
USP suggests the controversial statewide deer-trimming policies by both agencies in recent years were driven by a goal to collapse the hunting economies in the big woods counties, thus lowering the value of land so the agencies could snap acreage up for gas royalty riches.
The Marcellus shale gas under public lands is worth $200 billion, according to letters to the editor USP sent to newspapers around the state.
DCNR spokeswoman Novak said, "Our deer management is focused around the health of the forest."
Feaser's response to the USP charges: "It's utterly ridiculous."
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