The Marcellus Shale – America's next super giant
Down in Texas the big gas companies are talking about northeast Pennsylvania and New York as the place to be. The Catskills and the Delaware River Valley sit on top of Marcellus Shale. Marcellus Shale lies under much of northern Appalachia 6,000 to 8,000 feet below the surface; the pores in the shale contain large quantities of natural gas. The shale layer becomes thicker from west to east beginning at about 50 feet in Ohio to more than 100 feet thick in central PA and NY. Geologists have known about the gas here for years but now with the new technologies of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, recovering the gas is now the big new "Shale Play" as the industry refers to it. We are seeing the "land men" knocking on doors to obtain gas leases for various companies, with Chesapeake leading the charge in our area (mostly the Delaware River Valley in PA, Sullivan and Delaware counties). Community groups are forming on both sides of the issue from landowner associations to better negotiate a lease to groups fighting drilling altogether.
Source: Appalachian Fracture Systems, Modified from U.S. Geological Survey sources
Link to picture as it appeared in Business First of Buffalo is here:
http://buffalo.bizjournals.com/buffalo/stories/2008/02/11/story2.html?b=1202706000%5E1587557
What does this all mean to the average resident? It means that landowners, towns, counties and regional organizations have a very short time to come up to speed with all the issues involved with gas exploration. As a new "shale play" we don't have a history in this particular formation but we certainly have a history with gas exploration and the complexity of the issues involved. Here are a few topics we all need to look closer at:
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Hydraulic Fracturing: "Fracking” as it is called within the industry involves injecting water, sand and special chemicals into the shale layer at extremely high pressure. This then separates the pores in the rock and the sand particles "hold" the cracks open so the gas can flow back to the drill bore. Some of the injected fluids remain trapped underground. A number of these fluids qualify as hazardous materials and carcinogens, and are toxic enough to contaminate groundwater resources. There are cases in the U.S. where hydraulic fracturing is the suspected source of impaired or polluted drinking water. In Alabama, Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming, incidents have been recorded by people who have gas wells near their homes. They have reported changes in water quality or quantity following fracturing operations. Most of these incidences involve coal-bed methane production, which is a much shallower drilling process, but it highlights how poorly the gas companies are protecting the communities they are working in.
• Regulatory Issues: After decades of deal making between government and the industry it has resulted in exemptions for the oil and gas companies from protections in the clean water act, the environmental response, compensation, and liability act (CERCLA also known as the Superfund law), the resource Conservation and recovery act, and the Safe Drinking Water Act. Also, the gas industry is not covered by public right to know provisions, which mean companies can withhold information about the chemicals they use in the "fracking” process.
• Pollution: The pollution from oil and gas exploration and production has involved known carcinogens, reproductive toxicants, and other toxic chemicals like arsenic, hydrogen sulfide, mercury and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) including benzene and xylene.
• Fragmentation: The Catskills and adjacent lands in Pennsylvania contain some of the largest contiguous forest blocks east of the Mississippi River. This area acts as an important species corridor between the Catskill Park, the Shawangunk Ridge, the Hudson Highlands and the Poconos. There are multiple species of either endangered or special concern and indicator species of healthy vibrant habitat found here. The number of roads and increased heavy truck traffic and cleared swaths for pipelines to connect the drilling pads to the millennium pipeline will dissect these important forest blocks and corridor.
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Air and Noise Pollution: Drilling for gas is a highly industrial undertaking which includes numerous truckloads of equipment, chemicals, sand and water along with generators, pumps, drilling rigs and hoists. All of which are running at all hours of the day producing noise and exhaust fumes. When gas is found there can be a release of the various gases in the formation.
• Normally Occurring Radioactive Material (NORMS): NORMS are found in many geological formations and can be brought to the surface on drilling equipment and in fluids. Once at the surface it can accumulate as sediments in holding tanks and ponds. This is an issue in the Barnett Shale, which are not the same rock. However, NORMS occur in NY at higher levels than in PA and have not been tested in the eastern part of the state.
• Development: Increased development in other rural areas of the country where there are productive Gas fields has resulted in large influxes of industry workers which will have multiple impacts to the respective communities.
• New York City's Watershed: On August 6, 2008 New York City officials demanded a ban on natural gas drilling near upstate reservoirs because they fear the drilling could contaminate the city's drinking water.
The Ashokan Reservoir is part of the city's Catskill water supply system. (Credit: Jim McKnight/AP Photo)
They've asked the state Department of Environmental Protection to establish a one-mile protective perimeter around each of the city's six major Catskill reservoirs and connecting infrastructure -- a buffer that would put at least half a million acres off-limits to drilling. They also want to wrest more regulatory control from Albany. New York is one of just four major cities in the United States with a special permit allowing its drinking water to go unfiltered, and that pristine water comes from a network of reservoirs and rivers in five upstate counties. If the special permit was revoked, the city would have to build a treatment facility that could cost nearly $10 billion, said Walter Mugden, a senior official at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. That's roughly what the state estimated it would earn from gas development over the next decade. In a
letter (PDF) from the city Department of Environmental Protection to state officials, obtained by ProPublica, commissioner Emily Lloyd said she was not satisfied with the state's assurances that the environment would be protected from drilling in the Marcellus Shale, a layer of rock that dives up to 9,000 feet below much of the Appalachian east, including south central New York state and the 2000-square-mile watershed.
Find out more at Propublica from Investigative Journalist Abrahm Lustgarten here
There are some excellent web sites out there covering these issues more in depth such as The Oil and Gas accountability project By Earthworks
www.ogap.org. A very important document they have produced is Oil and Gas at Your Door? A landowner’s guide to oil and gas development.
Another great document put out by the Natural Resources Defense Council is:
NRDC Natural Gas Drilling Fact Sheet: Drillng Down: Protecting Western Communities from the Health and Environmental Effects of Oil and Gas Production. (October, 2007 PDF)
Most of the National groups have information on this topic especially concerning public land and the Sierra Club's Atlantic Chapter and Trout Unlimited are actively involved in the issue here in the Catskills.
There are many community groups throughout the country faced with gas drilling that have websites. Here are two for example that offer valuable information;
FWCANDO.ORG from Fort Worth Texas, which is in the Barnett shale Similar to Marcellus and Damascus Citizens for Sustainability at
www.DamascusCitizens.org an organization based in Damascus PA dedicated to
"preventing the dire effects of gas well drilling, such as polluted drinking water, carcinogens in the farmland and food chain, torn-up roads, risk of gas fires, plummeting real estate values, and screeching noise polution."
In the Catskills there are a number of groups that are now working on the gas drilling issue.
Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy is a newly formed grassroots organization specifically focused on the gas drilling issue and keep a calendar of important events related to drilling of the Catskills.
The Delaware Riverkeeper and the Hudson Riverkeeper are closely monitoring and informing the public about gas drilling and it's potential impacts on there respective wathersheds.
**all photo's above courtesy of the New York Times**
** The Marcellus shale maps, horizontal well art, photomicrograph and image captions below are used with permission of Geology.com. Do not reproduce, reprint or otherwise use this content without permission from Geology.com. **
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