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Fracking growth fueled by drilling technology advances

Process brings in jobs and tax revenues, but questions remain over environment

Published: February 4, 2014   

By Dennis Sadowski
Catholic News Service

CNS photo/Dennis Sadowski
Jennifer Schaffner (left) listens to a presentation during a meeting of parents concerned about natural gas drilling near schools in Butler, Pa., Sept. 26.

BUTLER, Pa. — The history of slick water hydraulic fracturing extends back more than 60 years as America seeks solutions to its seemingly unquenchable thirst for energy.

Also known as fracking, the process has been used to extract oil and natural gas since 1947, said Peter MacKenzie, vice president of operations for the Ohio Oil and Gas Association. He and other industry representatives argued that the process is safe and even when problems occur, companies work to alleviate any concerns.

Advances over the years have allowed the process to be readily duplicated across the country. These days the Marcellus Shale under Pennsylvania is among the most active natural gas plays in the country. Along with the rapid development comes questions about safety and environmental protection.

“Certainly folks have questions and they deserve answers,” Travis Windle, spokesman for the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry group, told Catholic News Service.

He suggested, though, that all Americans benefit from the shale development through lower priced natural gas, while the people of Pennsylvania have seen more than $1.8 billion in tax revenues and $406 million in impact fees for wear and tear on infrastructure and increased demands on local communities.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimated in 2009 that the U.S. had 1,722 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas in six key shale formations, including the Marcellus in the northeastern U.S. and the Fayetteville Shale in Arkansas. EIA projected that identified natural gas deposits in the shale plays was enough to supply the country’s needs for 90 years at then-current production rates. Other estimates of shale gas reserves extend the supply to 116 years.

It is the tremendous gas reserves in the Marcellus Shale deep under Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and West Virginia that have attracted the interest of the country’s largest energy firms — Shell, Chevron, Range Resources, XTO Energy, Hilcorp among them.

In Pennsylvania, wells have sprouted from Greene County in the southwest to Susquehanna County in the northeast. In West Virginia and Ohio, where the Utica and Point Pleasant shales also come into play, production is in its early phases. New York’s long moratorium on drilling remains in place as a study on the health effects of fracking continues.

U.S. Catholic Church leaders have largely remained neutral on shale gas development nationwide, neither supporting nor opposing it outright. However, state Catholic conferences in New York and Ohio as well as individual bishops have posed numerous questions stemming from Catholic social teaching on the environment.

In public comments submitted to New York officials in January 2012, the New York State Catholic Conference cited several concerns that it considers crucial in deliberations on lifting the state’s moratorium on fracking.

The detailed statement pointed to the need for public input on all industry regulations; promoting citizen awareness of social and economic costs of fracking including job creation and sustainability; the potential for contamination of drinking water; transparency on chemical usage; industry responsibility for cleanup of fracking fluids; payments for withdrawal of water from public sources; adequate buffer zones between wells and homes, businesses, schools and hospitals; and home rule for local communities to regulate well development.

“All of these things come directly out of Catholic social teaching,” said Richard Barnes, the New York conference’s executive director. “We didn’t comment in a way that we were answering the questions so much as we were asking state officials to make sure that they were addressing the questions.”

Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, where environmentalists, hunters and farmers have organized campaigns against the energy industry, the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference has yet to address fracking, said Amy B. Hill, the conference’s executive director.

“As a whole as far as public policy is concerned, we have stayed out of that debate because it affects the dioceses in different ways,” Hill said.

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