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REPORT:

GASDRILLING

INNEPA

TODAYScientists warn of

the impact gasdrilling will have. A11

MONDAYReview of

records showshundreds of

problems since 2005.

TUESDAYChemicals usedto coax gas fromshale a mystery.

WEDNESDAYWoes in western Pa.

offer lesson forregion.

For past storiesabout gas drilling andDEP violations data-

base visit: thetimes-tribune.com/gas

Continued on Page A10 Please see LACKAWANNA, Page A11

ABOVE: A natural gas drilling rig operates in Dimock Twp., Susquehanna County.

PHOTO BY BUTCH COMEGYS / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

BY LAURA LEGERE

STAFF WRITER

As the nation remains riveted bythe deadly explosion and ongo-ing environmental catastrophe

of a deep-water oil rig accident in theGulf of Mexico, the need for oversight,public infor mation and disaster-response plans in efforts to extract theEarth’s fuel resources has come intosharp focus.

In Pennsylvania, the troubled promise isin the Marcellus Shale, a natural gas-richgeological formation below three-fifths ofthe state that holds enough recoverable gasto satisfy all of America’s gas needs for morethan a decade.

A six-month investigation by The Times-Tribune, including a review of thousandsof pages of Department of EnvironmentalProtection documents made availablethrough a Right-to-Know request and inter-views with regulators, citizens and scien-tists, shows the limits of the current regula-tory environment to prevent contaminationof the state’s land and water during deepgas drilling in the shale.

It reveals costly environmental and safety

BY LAURA LEGERE

STAFF WRITER

One natural gas well has been drilled intothe Marcellus Shale in Lackawanna County,but much more development is on the coun-ty’s doorstep.

Already more than an eighth of thecounty’s land has been leased to compa-nies planning to drill in the MarcellusShale, according to deeds recorded withthe county.

The total land leased — about 38,000 acres— amounts to an area roughly twice the sizeof Scranton.

Those leases carry a soft deadline for drill-ing: Many of them have a primary term offive or seven years, which means the compa-nies have to make some progress to developthe gas within that time or renegotiate toextend the agreement and risk losing thelease to a competitor.

Because the vast majority of the leases inthe county — 816 of them — were recorded in2008, the incentive for developing the gas isapproaching.

The land rush has touched a vast area ofthe county. Land in 20 of Lackawanna’s 40municipalities has been leased, with the larg-

Investigation:little oversight,

looming problems

Lackawanna:About 38,000 acres

leased in county

Partly cloudyhigh 83

See Page B12

JUNE 20, 2010

SC_TIMES_TRIB/TIMES_PAGES [A10] | 06/19/10 21:58 | SUPERIMPSC

6,500- 7,500feetdeep(nottoscale)

2,500 - 3,500 feet horizontally

Watertable

Concrete

Steelcasing

Shale

Drilling in the Marcellus Shale

Mud pondPlastic-linedexcavation usedto contain debrisfrom drilling.

Site prepArea has tobe cleared

and preppedfor drilling

operations.

Access roadHas to be cut throughland so equipmentand workers can getto drilling site.

Drilling rigSet up and drilling takeseveral weeks. Rig is removedand replaced with equipmentto control gas extraction. Wellcan produce for decades.

Water table

The steel drill shaft is encased

in concrete to prevent possible

contamination of groundwater.

Extraction — The drill shaft is perforated with explosives. A slurry of

water and sand is then pumped down into the shale. The pressurized

mix fractures the shale, and forces the gas out and up the shaft.

Gas pipelines

Needed to move gas off

site once well is producing.

KEVIN O’NEILL / STAFF ARTIST

In North Pennsylvania, the shale is 7,000 feet deep. Horizontal drillingreaches the shale and then follows the layer a couple thousand feet.It can give a greater return than vertical drilling.

DEEP IMPACT

FROM PAGE A1

errors made by a growingindustry that has become thestate’s economic hope, anddetails the often frustratedefforts of regulators to policeit using outdated laws andincomplete information.

The investigation found:■ There have been hun-

dreds of spills at natural gaswell sites in the common-wealth over the last fiveyears, the vast majority ofwhich have never been publi-cized by the DEP.

■ The massive effort toexploit the shale has left anindelible mark on the land-scape, with communities inthe state’s Northern Tier andsouthwestern region bearingboth economic benefits andenvironmental costs.

Experiences in thoseregions offer a preview of gasdevelopment in the sevencounties of Northeast Penn-sylvania, where a dozen Mar-cellus Shale operators holdleases to drill.

■ Despite industry claimsthat it discloses all of thechemicals it uses in the gas-extraction process, DEPdocuments from a series ofspills in SusquehannaCounty show the industry’sdisclosure is incompleteand insufficient for deter-mining contamination insoil and water.

■ A growing chorus of sci-entists is arguing that notenough is known about theeffect widespread gas drill-ing will have on water sup-plies, air quality and humanhealth to justify the intensivedevelopment of the resourcealready taking place.

“There’s a massive indus-trialization experiment hap-pening in West Virginia andPennsylvania right now,”said Anthony Ingraffea, aCornell University engineer-ing professor who has stud-ied rock fractures in oil andgas wells for two decades.

“It might sound cruel tosay this, but people in NewYork are very happy to seethat West Virginia and Penn-sylvania jumped in with bothfeet, eyes closed, as quicklyas they could.

“We’re learning from yourmistakes. You’re the guineapigs.”

Two goals

Amongthesixstatesunder-lain with Marcellus

Shale, Pennsylvania has thelargest portion of the gas-bearing rock and the mostcurrent wells. It will be wed-ded to the industry for thecentury and the 380,000 to760,000 wells the industry esti-mates it may take to drain theshale’s promised reserves.

The state has already ben-efited from a tremendousinvestment, including $1.8billion in upfront leasebonuses paid to propertyowners in 2009 alone inexchange for the right toprospect below their land.

But Pennsylvania has nev-er performed a comprehen-sive study of the accumulat-ed impacts of drilling on acommunity or a watershed.

It has never declared ahigh-value watershed — likethose around the reservoirsthat feed Syracuse and NewYork City — off limits to gasextraction, as New York statehas effectively done.

And Pennsylvania has nev-er attempted to stop or slowthe deep drilling since thefirst Marcellus well was sunksix years ago, unlike NewYork, which has imposed amoratorium on MarcellusShale drilling as the statecrafts an environmentalimpact statement, and unlikethe interstate commissionthat regulates water qualityin the Delaware River Basin.

Calls for caution haveincreased after a MarcellusShale well in Clearfield Coun-ty blew gas and waste fluidsuncontrollably for 16 hourson June 3. State Sen. Jim Fer-lo, D-38, Allegheny County,introduced legislation lastweek to pause drilling on

both private and public landsin the state for a year.

Industry groups say callsfor a moratorium are mis-guided. They emphasize thatthe gas companies’ economicinterests are naturallyaligned with environmentalinterests.

“The only thing that differ-entiates you as a corporationis your image, your reputa-tion, your costs and workforce, and innovation,” Kath-ryn Klaber, the head of theMarcellus Shale Coalition,said. “Environmental com-pliance is a much bigger partof who you are.”

Matt Pitzarella, a spokes-man for Range Resources,one of the largest MarcellusShale leaseholders in thestate, simplified the equa-tion: “We will make moremoney if we do it the rightway,” he said.

But last week, at a hearingabout the Clearfield Countywell accident, DEP SecretaryJohn Hanger said he is “notpleased” with the industry’senvironmental performanceand that his own agency is notyetuptohishigheststandards.

“This industry’s got to bebetter,” he said. “There’s toomany leaks, too many spills,too many incidents of gasmigration.”

He has a goal for the indus-

try and his regulatory agen-cy to be world class, he added.“We’re not there.”

The commonwealth’s envi-ronmental regulator mustbalance two simultaneousaims: “to produce the gas andprotect the environment aswe do that,” Mr. Hanger oftenrepeats.

In the field, those direc-tives can become morecomplicated.

In early 2009, after witness-ing a string of diesel spills atCabot Oil and Gas Corp. drill-ing sites in her small Susque-hanna County township, res-ident Victoria Switzerappealed to one of the state’senvironmental regulators toimpose stiff fines and stopthe accidents before theyworsened.

At the time, there were twoinspectors to police the pro-liferating wells being drilledin Northeast Pennsylvania.Then as now, drillers wereexpected to report any spillsto DEP, as required by law.

But as he stood near herhome in Dimock Twp. theregulator told Mrs. Switzerthat the agency had to moder-ate its penalties or risk beingsued by the gas companies —taking inspectors out of thefield and into courtrooms todefend their decisions.

Worse, he said, the agency

feared that if it was too hardon the gas companies, theymight stop reporting theirspills.

‘We could stand tocatch our breath’

Difficult decisions abouthow and when to curb an

industry that is acclimatingto the state’s current andchanging laws have becomecommonplace for the state’senvironmental oversightagency.

According to Scott Perry,head of DEP’s Bureau of Oiland Gas Management, theregulatory agency does nothave the legal right to hit thebrakes on the whole industrythe way New York has done.

Instead, the agency canrestrict individual compa-nies that have committedparticularly severe violationsafter the fact — a tool it infre-quently uses.

In April, the departmentselectively halted drillingoperations by Cabot in a 9-square-mile area, and stoppedissuing permits for it to drillelsewhere, after it found thecompany failed to correctproblems with its wells thatcaused methane to seep intoresidents’ drinking water inDimock Twp.

In his testimony last week,Mr. Hanger asked the legisla-tors to craft a law with “crys-tal clear language” givingDEP the authority to withholdpermits from operators withunsafe practices, since its cur-rent authority could be opento challenge by companies.

Even without a law, “Wedon’t hesitate to take thoseactions when they arerequired,” he said.

But last fall, legal hurdlesapparently contributed toDEP officials’ decision toreject the most stringentoptions for stopping Cabot’soperations, even as the com-pany experienced its 19th,20th and 21st spills at its drill-ing sites in the rural town-ship in less than two years.

Over two days in Septem-ber, pipes and hoses carryinga water and chemical mix-ture across a steep hayfieldbreached three times, dump-ing about 8,400 gallons of thefluid around a Cabot well siteand allowing up to 1,900 gal-lons of it to leak into a wet-land and creek.

In internal e-mails in thedays after the spills, JenniferMeans, the oil and gas pro-gram manager in DEP’s Wil-liamsport office, wrote thats h e “ w h o l e h e a r t e d l yendorsed” either revokingdrilling permits the companywas already issued or haltingpending permits “to slow

down their future activity.”It “would go a long way

with the public” whose “big-gest frustration ... is the rateat which they are allowed tocontinue given all these inci-dents,” she wrote.

“Also — we could certainlystand to catch our breath.”

But after the agency’s topattorney warned about pro-cedural hurdles to suspend-ing permits under state law,the department decided notto take that step.

It opted instead to issue anarrower order that cur-tailed — but did not halt —the company’s operations,and allowed Cabot to resumefull development after threeweeks.

‘Self-regulationdoesn’t work’

Like the offshore oil rigsthat have come under

national scrutiny, MarcellusShale drilling operations areregulated by laws and agen-cies that rely heavily on theindustry’s cooperation inpolicing itself.

In Pennsylvania, Marcel-lus Shale gas producers areresponsible not only forreporting their own spills,but for leading their cleanupoperations and, with guid-ance from state regulators,for assessing the damagedone by their mistakes.

At the Marcellus Shale Pol-icy Conference in Pittsburghlast month, Mr. Hanger calledfor stronger rules to help pre-vent drilling from pollutingthe state’s streams and air.“Self-regulation doesn’twork,” he said.

But even proposed rules toi m p r o v e t h erequirements ofthe cement andsteel casing thatprotects an aqui-fer from a natu-ral gas well willstill rely on thecompanies to per-form their ownquarterly inspec-tions of the integ-ri ty of theirwells.

Shortly beforethose new regula-tions were prepared for pub-lic comment, Mr. Hanger saida mixture of company report-ing and department inspec-tion is appropriate.

“We make it very clear tocompanies that hold permitsthat filing misinformation orwrong information or delib-erately inaccurate informa-tion is a very serious matter,”he said. “Any company thatis sloppy or, even worse,deliberately false, is almostsurely going to get itself intovery deep and hot water.They don’t want to go there.”

‘We’re changinglives’

Marcellus Shale gas oper-ators, many of which

have national or internation-al operations and are public-ly traded companies, fre-quently surpass the state’ssafety and environmentalrequirements — a fact stateregulators often mention tocalm public concern aboutthe safety of the process.

At twilight on a May eve-ning, George Stark stoodwearing a hard hat and safe-ty glasses at the foot of astate-of-the-art drilling rigablaze with stadium light ina Dimock field.

Cabot’s newly hired publicrelations manager pointedout the safety features on therig, contracted from Patter-son-UTI Drilling Co., includ-ing a system of tanks and fil-tration devices, called a“closed-loop” system, thatmakes it so used fluids andmud can be reused on-sitewithout ever flowing into alined earthen pit. The pitsare prone to leak, like the oneat a Cabot site in the sametownship that DEP foundcontaminating groundwaterweeks earlier.

Pits at 29 of the 364 Marcel-lus wells drilled in the statethis year were improperlyconstructed or maintained,

according to DEP records.Cabot has been operating

in Dimock since 2006, but theseries of wells being drilledwith the Patterson rig are thefirst the company developedusing a closed-loop system —a best practice that is notrequired by Pennsylvanialaw.

Beneath the rig, workersplaced a giant mat of black,heavy plastic on the acres offlat earth — a guarantee thatmost anything spilled onsitewould not hit the ground.The company had been usingthat best practice for abouteight months.

Earlier in the evening, ona tour of a reclaimed wellsite where deer nibbled onclover near tanks hooked upto a completed well, Mr.Stark listed highlights ofthe investment Cabot hasmade in Susquehanna Coun-ty: The company has leasedmore than a third of thecounty’s total acreage. Itpaid property owners $75million in 2009 alone toacquire the right to drill ontheir land. Between 2006 and2009, the company spent $500million on its operations inthe county. In 2010, it expectsto spend $400 million more.

“We’re changing lives,” hesaid, “in a positive way.”

Tough love andtough rules

Not everyone agrees withMr. Stark.

After speaking withDimock residents who haveexperienced water contami-nation from Cabot’s drilling,Robert F. Kennedy Jr. drovethrough the township’s wind-

ing roads to abarbecue standi n a t r a i l e rparked on theside of Route 29— one of thebusinesses in thetownship thathas been born oraltered to cater tot h e i n d u s t r yworkers.

Mr. Kennedy,p r e s i d e n t o fWa t e r k e e p e rAlliance and a

professor at Pace Univer-sity School of Law’s Envi-ronmental Litigation Clin-ic, drew a comparisonbetween the confused andapparently insufficientregulation of offshore oildrilling with the regula-tion of onshore energyextraction, like MarcellusShale production.

Unfortunately, he said, “Ithink that’s a template forwhat’s happening all acrossthe country.”

The best technologies andenforcement practices neces-sary to minimize mistakes bynatural gas drillers are wellknown, he said, but they arerarely adopted by govern-ments and imposed on theindustry.

“What they need is toughlove from the regulators andfrom themselves,” he said ashe drove.

“They need restraint. Theyneed tough rules that allowthem to make money, and bigmoney, but force them to do itin a way that’s not going topenalize the public.”

Mr. Kennedy said the gasindustry’s record of mistakesis contributing to a growingpublic reaction against gasextraction in Pennsylvaniaand drilling regions acrossthe country. That is unfortu-nate, he said, because naturalgas is a cleaner-burningalternative to traditional fos-sil fuels and will play a criti-cal role in leading the coun-try away from oil and coaland toward green energysolutions.

“Nobody’s going to believethat about them when they’redoing these kind of shenani-gans,” he said.

“Nobody’s going to believethat they’re good guys whenthey’re blowing up people’shouses and poisoning theirwells.”

Contact the writer:

llegere@timesshamrock.com

‘WE’RE LEARNING FROM YOURMISTAKES. YOU’RE THE GUINEA PIGS’

ANTHONY INGRAFFEA, Cornell University engineering professor, speaking about New York watching what is happening with gas drilling in Pennsylvania

“We’rechanginglives in apositiveway.”

George Stark

Cabot Oil and Gas

public relations

manager

Philadelphia

Scranton

Pittsburgh

Marcellus Shale

SOURCE: PENN STATE EXTENSION KEVIN O’NEILL / STAFF ARTIST

Bradford903

Sullivan2

Columbia3

Lacka-wanna

28

Luzerne4

Wyoming34

Wayne14

Pike0

Susquehanna334

Monroe0

Drilling permitsNumber of MarcellusShale well drillingpermits issued throughJune 14, 2010

SOURCE:

PENNSYLVANIA

DEPARTMENT OF

ENVIRONMENTAL

PROTECTION BOB SANCHUK / STAFF ARTIST

A10 THE SUNDAY TIMES JUNE 20, 2010

SC_TIMES_TRIB/TIMES_PAGES [A11] | 06/19/10 21:49 | SUPERIMPSC

FROM PAGE A1

est concentration of leases innorthern municipalities,including Scott, Benton andGreenfield townships, as wellas areas of the Abingtons.

Many of the county’s mostprominent farmers, includ-ing the Manning, Eckel, Robaand Pallman families, havesigned leases.

Although much of the landhas been leased outside ofthe population centers alongthe Lackawanna Valley,leased parcels are not strictlyon farms or in rural areas.

Baptist Bible Collegeleased 114 acres on its SouthAbington Twp. campus.

The Abington Hill Ceme-tery Association leased 120acres in South Abingtonalong the Morgan Highway.

Leases also have beenagreed to on land near resi-dential areas. For example, 38acres have been leased alongthe 900 and 1000 blocks ofFairview Road in SouthAbington Twp.

Property owners with leas-es include private individu-als, but also churches, golfcourses, businesses and com-

munity associations. TheGreenfield Twp. SewerAuthority leased 7.3 acres;the Fleetville Volunteer FireCompany leased 65 acres inBenton.

The Newton Lake Associa-

tion and the Associates atChapman Lake, two commu-nity associations that owntheir namesake lakes and thearea around them, bothsigned leases.

Religious organizations

have also signed on, includ-ing the Harmony Heartchurch camp in Scott Twp., a59-acre parcel owned by Park-er Hill Community Church,the Evangelical Free BibleChurch in North AbingtonTwp. and Community BibleChurch in Greenfield Twp.

Three national energy com-panies, Oklahoma-based Ches-apeake Appalachia, Texas-basedExcoResourcesandTex-as-basedSouthwesternEnergy,hold nearly all of the leases.

Theamountof LackawannaCounty land leased for gasdevelopment surprised evenpeople who have followed thesubject closely for years.

Lee Jamison, a leader of themultimunicipal AbingtonCouncil of Governments,which has hosted educationalevents and speakers regard-ing Marcellus Shale drillingsince 2008, did not know theextent of the leasing or itsreach to areas outside of therural northwest of the county.

He said despite education-al events and active gas drill-ing in nearby communities,Lackawanna County munici-palities have to do more tofollow changing legislation

and precedent-setting courtcases to prepare for the com-ing development.

“I still think there’s quite alack of preparedness on thepartof thelocalmunicipaloffi-cials,” he said. “Often timesyou get conflicting reports andconfusing stories.”

Mr. Jamison, who recentlylost in the Republican prima-ry race for state representa-tive in the 114th House Dis-trict, made Marcellus Shale acentral part of his platform.

“Over 90 percent of thepeople I’ve spoken to are infavor of developing the Mar-cellus resource,” he said, “butthey want it done correctly.With that caveat.”

Mary Felley, the open spacecoordinator of the Country-side Conservancy and a rep-resentative of Dalton in the

Scranton-Abingtons Plan-ning Association, said resi-dents and municipal officialsare “aware that it’s comingbut not quite here.”

“I come to my local bor-ough meetings, and peopleask what can we do as a bor-ough to regulate this, and wedon’t know,” she said.

Because of unsettled caselaw regarding what rolemunicipalities can take inregulated drilling, “we’re notgetting a whole lot of clearguidance on what we can andcannot do here,” she said.“That’s kind of scary.”

Therehasalsobeenadearthof local training specificallytargeting municipal officialson preparing for gas develop-ment. Even if there were suchmeetings, “my concern is peo-ple may not attend those untilthere’s a lot more activity inthe county,” she said.

“This is the way we’veevolved apparently: Yourespond to urgent threatsyou can see. You don’trespond to slow, impendingthreats that are over the hillsomewhere.”

Contact the writer:

llegere@timesshamrock.com

LACKAWANNA: Widespread drilling on doorstep of county

DEEP IMPACT

BY LAURA LEGERE

STAFF WRITER

Michel Boufadel began arecent presentation

about Marcellus Shale drill-ing with a photo of the rup-tured Exxon Valdez oil tank-er spilling into Alaskanwaters, a disaster whose rem-nants the Temple Universityengineering professor hasbeen studying for years.

He flipped to a photo ofhimself and some graduatestudents standing around apool of oil in a hole in thesand of an Alaskan beach.

“Everyone assumed in1992” that the oil from thespill had been properly reme-diated and was “going to dis-appear,” he said. “Yet it is stillthere. That is the problemwith groundwater pollution.It doesn’t go away that fast.”

Dr. Boufadel is one of thescientists who study therocks, water and peopledirectly affected by Marcel-lus Shale drilling who cau-tions that everything fromthe way the rock breaksunderground to the way con-taminated water travelsthrough an aquifer has notbeen — or cannot be —thor-oughly considered.

Muchof theattentionaboutthe environmental risks ofnatural gas drilling in theMarcellus Shale has focusedon the potential for hydraulicfracturing to contaminatedrinking water aquifers.

According to the industryand both state and federal reg-ulators, there has never been aconfirmed case of contamina-tion being caused by the frac-turing — a process of injectingmillions of gallons of water,sand and chemical additivesunderground at high pressureto break apart the rock.

The industry takes a nar-row view of what such con-tamination would mean, lim-iting it to what they saywould be an impossibleinstance of the toxic mixturemigrating through the newcracks caused by the fractur-ing operation, up a mile ofrock, and into a drinkingwater aquifer.

But legislators and federalregulators are increasinglylooking at hydraulic fractur-ing as more than the isolatedact of breaking apart the gas-bearing rock; they see it aspart of an interconnectedseries of often hazardoussteps, from trucking and stor-ing toxic chemicals on a wellsite to disposing of the fluidlaced with salt, metals andradiation that comes backout of the wells.

In March, the Environ-mental Protection Agencyannounced plans for a studyof hydraulic fracturing thatwould consider all of those

factors — the whole life-cycleof a well.

Kathryn Klaber, the headof the Marcellus Shale Coali-tion, a Pennsylvania-basedgas drilling cooperative, saidthe industry supports theEPA study, as long as it doesnot halt or slow the pace ofdrilling.

“I don’t think you have tostop something in order tostudy it,” she said.

The industry also points toa previous EPA study of

hydraulic fracturing that didnot find any instances of thepractice causing water con-tamination, but which waslimited to only one type ofhydraulic fracturing, in coal-bed methane wells.

“What we’re missing is thatdefinitive, absolutely unques-tionable, science-based, non-politically influenced study,”said Dr. Anthony Ingraffea, aCornell University engineer-ing professor who has twodecades of experience work-

ing on computer simulationof hydraulic fracturing in oiland gas wells. “And that iswhat everybody is hoping thatthe EPA will do.”

‘What can welive with?’

Many scientists, includ-ing Dr. Ing raf fea,

acknowledge that there arelimits to the usefulness of theEPA study, no matter howambitious the final scope,because it must be completedby 2012, a relatively shortamount of time.

“There shouldn’t only beone study or awaiting theEPA study,” said Dr. Boufadel,who advocates for risk-assess-ment studies tailored to indi-vidual communities near gasdrilling. “There should be 10or 20 studies. That wouldallow the truth to come out.”

He proposes studies thatwould measure and assign avalue to the relative risk ofliving among a certain num-ber of wells, compressor sta-tions, pipelines, wastewaterimpoundments and the otherinfrastructure necessary fordrilling and production.

Evaluating risk, he said,

is “how insurance compa-nies make decisions. That’show we, as people, makedecisions.

“It is not yes or no. It iswhat can we live with.”

Asked if he knew of any-one conducting a study likethat he said, “No. Not to myknowledge.”

Dr. Boufadel also suggeststhat several practices that arestandard in Pennsylvania formeasuring contaminationfrom drilling are questionable.

The weight of any watercontaminated with the saltywaste produced by MarcellusShale wells will cause it to sinkinanaquifer,hesaid,belowthereach of conventional measur-ing tools, like groundwatermonitoring wells.

“We really need moreadvanced models than we aretalking about now,” he said,or the state will risk misjudg-ing the scope of a contamina-tion incident until a “wholeaquifer is polluted.”

‘Nobody knows; noone can know’

Conrad Dan Volz, directorof the Center for Healthy

Environments and Commu-

nities at the University ofPittsburgh, also arguesthat science has been miss-ing in much of the consid-eration of long-term orcumulative effects of shalegas exploration.

He lists a number of ele-ments of the drilling processthat require further study,and plans to begin research-ing some of them this sum-mer in southwestern Penn-sylvania. His work willinclude baseline testing ofrivers and comparisons ofdrinking water wells in areasfull or free of gas drilling.

“The question is, whydidn’t we do the sciencebeforehand on this?” he said.

“What we’re really bad at —and we have the tools to do this—isanticipateproblems.AndIdon’t see where anyone hasdonemuchanticipatorywork.”

Even the most straightfor-ward assurance about thehydraulic fracturing process— that aquifers are protectedfrom fracturing by thousandsof feet of layered, solid rock— is not as certain as theindustry insists, Dr. Ingraffea,of Cornell, said.

Although he does agreethat the chance of contami-nation through those lay-ers is minuscule, he alsoknows from experiencethat the work to predictand measure where frac-tures go is necessarily inex-act, and the rock “unfortu-nately” is not solid orimpermeable.

To say that hydraulic frac-turing contaminationthrough direct communica-tion with an aquifer is impos-sible is “nonsense,” he said.“To say that it is inevitable isnonsense.

“We’re dealing with a high-ly probabilistic undergroundsystem, where nobodyknows, no one can ever know,exactly the geology that’sdown there, exactly the geom-etry of what’s down there.”

Add the very remote riskof fractures causing directcontamination, to the largerrisks of well casing failuresand human errors on the sur-face and the total probabilityof failure during MarcellusShale gas production “startslooking, to me, high,” he said.“Very risky.”

Gas drilling companieshave financial incentives toavoid mistakes, he said, butthe experience of MarcellusShale exploration so far —what he calls “ground truth”— has been a series of mis-takes followed belatedly byattempts at improvement.

“They could have done thistotally differently if theyweren’t in a hurry,” he said.

Contact the writer:

llegere@timesshamrock.com

DO WE REALLY KNOW WHATEFFECT DRILLING WILL HAVE?

Many scientists will tell you there is no way to predict industry’s impact

BUTCH COMEGYS / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Jerry Dugas, originally from Louisiana now living in Tunkhannock, a drilling superintendent for Cabot Oil & Gas

Corp. North Region, works at a natural gas drilling rig in Dimock Twp., Susquehanna County.

“What we’re missing is thatdefinitive, absolutely unquestionable,science-based, non-politically

influenced study.”Dr. Anthony Ingraffea

Cornell University engineering professor

who studies hydraulic fracturing

MICHAEL J. MULLEN / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

A gas drilling rig rises above the trees in rural

Susquehanna County.

Spring BrookSpring Brook

ThornhurstThornhurst

CliftonClifton

ScrantonScranton

Roaring BrookRoaring Brook

CovingtonCovington

MadisonMadisonMoscowMoscow

JeffersonJefferson

ElmhurstElmhurst

MoosicMoosicOldOld

ForgeForge

TaylorTaylorRansomRansom

NewtonNewton

DunmoreDunmore

ThroopThroopOlyphantOlyphant

JessupJessup

BlakelyBlakelyDicksonDickson

CityCity

ArchbaldArchbald

JermynJermynMayfieldMayfield

CarbondaleCarbondale

VandlingVandling

FellFell

Scott

Greenfield

SouthSouthAbingtonAbington

Benton

NorthNorthAbingtonAbington

WestWestAbingtonAbington

ClarksClarksSummitSummit

ClarksClarksGreenGreen

AbingtonAbington

GlenburnGlenburn

DaltonDalton

La PlumeLa Plume

Spring Brook

Thornhurst

Clifton

Scranton

Roaring Brook

Covington

MadisonMoscow

Jefferson

Elmhurst

MoosicOld

Forge

TaylorRansom

Newton

Dunmore

ThroopOlyphant

Jessup

BlakelyDickson

City

Archbald

JermynMayfield

Carbondale

Vandling

Fell

SouthAbington

NorthAbington

WestAbington

ClarksSummit

ClarksGreen

Abington

Glenburn

Dalton

La Plume

0%.1 - 10%

10.1 - 30%30.1 - 50%50.1 - 75%

Percent of eachmunicipality thathas been leasedfor gas drilling

Leasing in Lackawanna County

BOB SANCHUK / STAFF ARTIST

On the WebCheck out our search-able Lackawanna andLuzerne counties data-base on natural gas drill-ing leased land atthetimes-tribune.

com/gas

JUNE 20, 2010 THE SUNDAY TIMES A11