PA Imposes Moratorium on Gas Drilling in MontCo
The provision against fracking was attached to a state budget measure which lawmakers approved late Saturday night.
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Companies that want to drill for natural gas in Bucks or Montgomery counties will have to wait.
State lawmakers on Saturday night approved a moratorium on gas drilling in Bucks, Montgomery and parts of Lehigh, Berks and Chester counties. The moratorium will affect any oil or gas operations in the South Newark Basin, which underlies a swath of territory extending from Bucks through Montgomery and into Berks County.
Do you agree with the moratorium? Tell us in the comments.
The moratorium is needed so scientists and engineers can better study the gas deposits held deep below ground, lawmakers said Saturday.
It was passed as an amendment to the state's fiscal code, in SB 1263. (Click here to read the full text of the bill or for more information.)
The state House and Senate approved the budget late Saturday and Gov. Tom Corbett signed it just before midnight, the end of the state's current fiscal year.
Background on Area Geology
A 2011 report from the United States Geologic Survey outlined the results of surveys of five basins along the east coast, from northern New Jersey down to North Carolina. The study was released on June 20, 2012.
One of those basins, the South Newark Basin, underlies much of Bucks and Montgomery counties, according to the report. Geologists estimate that basin contains at least 363 billion cubic feet of undiscovered natural gas deposits, and could contain much more. They estimated the mean amount to be 876 billion cubic feet.
The five basins together hold an estimated mean natural gas resource of 3,860 billion cubic feet, the report concluded.
Confronted with evidence that gas drilling could, indeed, affect Bucks and Montgomery counties, lawmakers scrambled to amend Act 13, the controversial state law regulating drilling in the Marcellus Shale formation.
The technique drilling companies use to fracture the rock formation to release the gas, called fracking, has faced stiff opposition from those worried about the environmental and health affects of the practice.
"The recent report by USGS has shed a new light on the possible circumstances in Bucks and other southeast PA counties. We believe it is necessary, given this new information, that these counties must be given the opportunity to have a greater say about things happening in their own backyard," Mensch said in the joint statement. "Originally Act 13 was viewed as primarily an issue for the northern tier counties. This new information proves otherwise."
Reaction
But while the moratorium exempts Montgomery and the other areas in the South Newark Basin from drilling for now, other parts of the state still must comply with Act 13. Some characterized it as a move by legislators in a wealthy part of the state to protect their backyards, while leaving other Pennsylvanians unprotected.
"Where was our study? Where was our six years?" Democratic Rep. Jesse White was quoted as saying in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. "What makes Bucks and Montgomery [counties] so special?"
White represents part of Washington County, on the far western Pennsylvania border, an area that hosts "a significant amount of Marcellus Shale drilling," according to the Pittsburgh newspaper.
The moratorium could run as long as six years, John Micek, The Morning Call's state politics reporter in Harrisburg, reported on the blog, Capitol Ideas. The addendum prevents drilling permits from being issued until a state study of the formation is completed, or until 2018, whichever comes first.
Edward Tobin
8:23 am on Monday, July 2, 2012
Fracking is one of the most dangerous ways to extract natural gas from the Earth. First they drill about 5k through bedrock, then pump millions of gallons of water loaded with unsafe chemicals to release the gas. This process has been proven to cause earthquakes! Let's still the drill !!!
Tobias Cabral
9:17 am on Monday, July 2, 2012
Proven by whom? Read the EPA report. Despite considerable political pressure from the environmental lobby (hardly a stranger at the table in this Administration), there was no evidence of groundwater contamination from this decades-old practice. Zilch. Also, some mild tremors have been noted over fractured gas-bearing rock, but no noteworthy damage in all the time this technique has been used...and the data are even equivocal that there's a link between the tremors and fraccing (I have to spell it this way; I'm a Battlestar Galactica fan, so if I don't, I start giggling and lose my train of thought). Personally, I think there *is* a connection, but the point is that their incidence is similar enough to minor seismic activity happening anyway that one may raise the question. Hardly a smoking gun.
Tobias Cabral
9:18 am on Monday, July 2, 2012
These gas beds are **THOUSANDS** of feet deeper than the aquifers in which we drill our wells. The only way fraccing fluids are getting into the water is through a cracked shaft, and this has NEVER happened in the decades that this technique has been used. The ONLY contamination ever has been from shoddy waste water treatment AT THE SURFACE (look it up. And not in Mother Jones, please).
The entire moratorium is foolishness...or, rather, its length is foolish. Sensible regs about the safety infrastructure at drill heads are appropriate (though, the beauty of fraccing is that you can drill in horizontally from a head which is a considerable distance from populated areas).
Tobias Cabral
9:21 am on Monday, July 2, 2012
Again, *we've been doing this for a long time*. Only difference now is the potential VOLUME, but the superb safety record of fraccing is, in my considered opinion, quite scalable.