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A Cyber-Journal of Fact and Opinion (and periodic rants) published by Russell L. Schetroma of Culbertson, Weiss, Schetroma And Schug, PC |
7/27/2010
In Penneco Oil Company, Inc., Range resources-Appalachia, LLC and the Independent Oil & Gas Association of Pennsylvania v. The County of Fayette, Pennsylvania and the Office of Planning, Zoning and Community Development of Fayette County, Pennsylvania (2010 Pa.Commw. LEXIS 397), the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court upheld the regulation of oil and gas development by the zoning ordinance of Fayette County was not preempted by the Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Act (see 58 P.S. §§ 601.101, et seq. and particularly §601.602.) The ordinance discriminated between mining (surface and deep) and oil and gas activities in the same zoning districts by permitting mining as of right while subjecting oil and gas activity to a special exception process. Further, the ordinance authorized the County’s zoning hearing board to impose conditions upon oil and gas activities as part of any special exception process “to protect the public’s health, safety and welfare.” The ordinance provided no assurance that required permits could be obtained by a proposed oil and gas operator even upon compliance with reasonable and lawful requirements of the municipality.
The ordinance was challenged on various bases including a.) the protection of the public health, safety and welfare is an express purpose of the Oil and Gas Act thus triggering preemption of local regulation for the same purposes; b.) the protection of the environment of the Commonwealth is a purpose of the Oil and Gas Act thus preempting the ordinance which claims to have been enacted to protect the environment of the County; c.) the stated purpose of the ordinance to “encourage …commercial…and industrial uses” rendered the ordinance preempted by the Oil and Gas Act which has as one of its purposes to “permit optimal development of the oil and gas resources of Pennsylvania”; d.) the unbridled discretion granted by the ordinance to the zoning hearing board was arbitrary and excessive and in clear derogation of a purpose of the Oil and Gas Act—“to permit optimal development of the oil and gas resources of Pennsylvania” (58 P.S. § 601.102) and e.) the ordinance requirement for an oil and gas developer to obtain a “zoning certificate” was, in fact, a requirement for a drilling permit and thus preempted by the permitting provisions of he Oil and Gas Act.
The Commonwealth Court rejected all challenges to the act applying the reasoning of the Pa Supreme Court in Huntley & Huntley, Inc. v. Borough Council of Oakmont, 597 Pa. 62, 950 A.2d 267 (2008). Interpreting Huntley, the Commonwealth Court distinguished between facially identical “purposes” of the Oil and Gas Act and a local ordinance by finding a perceived distinctions in the “most salient objections” of the two legislative acts. The Commonwealth Court also determined that the Fayette County Zoning Hearing Board was not given “virtually unbridled discretion to deny permission to drill an oil and gas well even after compliance with applicable zoning regulations.”
The analytical challenge triggered by the Pa Supreme Court’s simultaneous and different decisions in Huntley and Range Resources / Salem Township, 600 Pa. 236, 954 A.2d 872 (2009) continues. The patch selected by the Commonwealth Court is not surprising in the context of its prior oil and gas / local land use jurisprudence. One can hope that Penneco, et al apply for and receive permission to present the important issues of this case to the Pa Supreme Court for further refinement of its Huntley and Range/Salem rulings.
5/6/2010
On May 3, 2010, Judge A. Richard Caputo of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania granted motions to dismiss a federal suit filed by Charles Puza, Jr. et al against Elexco Land Services, Inc. and Southwestern Energy Production Company. The suit claimed a.) that the plaintiffs had been induced to sign an oil and gas lease by misrepresentation of the agents of the Defendant Elexceo and b.) that the Plaintiffs had been promised a 1/8th royalty but that the lease signed by them failed to give a 1/8th royalty because it permitted the deduction of post production costs.
The court dismissed both defendants as to the first count because:
Plaintiffs allege false representations upon which they relied and that they suffered damage as a result, Plaintiffs complaint contains no allegations of scienter; Plaintiffs never allege that Defendants or their agents knew the statements were false, nor that they recklessly disregarded the truth. Piper, 228 F. Supp.2d at 558 ("scienter, which may be either actual knowledge or reckless indifference to the truth"). Because Plaintiffs' complaint fails to allege all of the necessary elements for a claim of fraudulent inducement, Defendants' motion to dismiss Count I will be granted.
Plaintiffs were granted 21 days in which to amend their pleading to assert an actionable claim if they are able to do so.
The opinion states that the Plaintiffs complained that a lease that permitted post production cost deductions violated an apparently oral, pre-lease representation that Plaintiffs "would receive royalties in the amount of one-eighth of the amount realized." The opinion also states that "Plaintiffs' second theory is that the lease agreement should be voided because it does not comport with the minimum royalties required by the Pennsylvania Law. See 58 P.S. § 33. Plaintiffs argue that the leases [sic.] method of calculating royalties by first deducted [sic.] "post production" costs from the sale price is inappropriate." The court then held that the Pa Supreme Court in Kilmer "evaluated similar lease agreement language permitting a one-eighth royalty to be calculated by first deducting "post production" costs and held that this method is appropriate under the statute."
This is an important case because it is the first dispositive decision in a post production cost deduction case post Kilmer v. Elexco Land Services, Inc., No. 63 MAP 2009, 2010 Pa. LEXIS 517 (Mar. 24, 2010.) It appears that the Plaintiff made two claims: a.) a lease permitting the deduction of post production costs violated a pre-lease oral promise for 1/8th "of the amount realized" and b.) that the language permitting deduction of post production costs violated the Pennsylvania Minimum Royalty Act. The Court's decision clearly and expressly decided that the second theory was invalid under Kilmer. The Court was silent as to its reasoning in rejecting the first basis of the claim. It appears that the court considered the first royalty complaint to have been part of the fraudulent inducement claim rejected for failure to plead essential elements of a sustainable action. However, Kilmer's strong assertion of the propriety of an "at the well head" determination of royalties is clearly adequate to support rejection of the Plaintiff's claim that requiring a landowner to share in post-production costs constitutes paying less than 1/8th "of the amount realized." 5/1/2010
In Louis W. Catalano, Jr. v. Dominion, Successor in interest to The Peoples Natural Gas Company, Dominion Exploration & Production, Inc., Victory Energy Corporation and VEC Partners-1993, Defendants, No. 11479 of 2008, 2009 Pa.Dist.&County.Dec. LEXIS 262, (an April 6, 2009 decision of the Court of Common Pleas of Westmoreland county that somehow just found its way to Lexis on April 30, 2010!), a Pa trial court encountered an interesting set of oil and gas lease issues:
The Plaintiff purchased land after an oil and gas lease had been granted by his grantors' predecessors in title to Peoples. Plaintiff's deed was expressly subject to all matters of record at the time it was delivered and Plaintiff'sthe deed into Plaintiff's predecessor in title contained the following language:
SUBJECT to gas lease held by Peoples Natural Gas Company, [  Dominion's predecessor] in which Henry C. Bughman, et al. are the Grantors, dated August 31, 1909, and recorded in Deed Book 473 Page 358, as extended by an agreement entered into with Joseph C. Head and wife, later owners, dated May 15, 1924, and recorded in Deed Book 747 Page 591, and the Grantors reserve all the emoluments or sums of money, if any, hereafter payable or due under the terms of said recited agreements. Grantors [*3] agree that if the Lessee in said leases shall drill a producing well upon the premises herein conveyed, that any royalties or rentals due by reason thereof shall be pro-rated as between the parties on the basis that the acreage hereby conveyed bears to the entire area of land contained within the gas lease
The Plaintiff sought a declaratory judgment ruling that Plaintiff owned the oil and gas under its severed portion of the ancient lease as the result of the lessee's "partial abandonment" thereof. Dominion filed preliminary objections to the action claiming:
- Pennsylvania law does not recognize partial abandonment of a lease
- The Plaintiff has no standing
- The Plaintiff failed to join indispensible parties.
The court sustained Dominion's second and third preliminary objections resulting in a dismissal of the case but rejected the first. As to standing, the court ruled that the Plaintiff's "interest is neither direct nor immediate but, rather, at most, is a contingent future interest in royalties,. . . ." The court also found that declaratory judgment may not be granted in anticipation of events that may never occur. The court also agreed with Dominion that the owner of the oil and gas underlying the balance of the original lease who held an express right to royalty on any well drilled on the Plaintiff's property was an essential party to any action affecting the lease.
The court's treatment of Dominion's claim that Pennsylvania oil and gas jurisprudence does not permit partial abandonment of leases is interesting. The argument was, apparently, rejected for lack of cited authority after the court rejected Dominion's effort to us Jacobs v. CNG Transmission Corporation,i565 Pa. 228, 772 A.2d 334 (Pa 2001) in support of its position. Readers will remember that Jacobs involved, inter alia, an analysis of whether an oil or gas lease could be severed into rights under the storage clause and rights under the base lease so that a lessee exercising an express storage power would continue to be subject to implied covenants of production development and at risk of losing the right to develop while continuing its storage activities. The Pennsylvania Supreme court found that such leases were not severable. The Westmoreland court rejected any relevance of Jacobs to the issue before it stating that Jacobs "deals with the severability of contract terms and provides no authority concerning abandonment as it might pertain to a portion of the leasehold." Hmmm. 4/28/2010
The long awaited decision of the Commonwealth Court (Pennsylvania's intermediate appellate court that deals with appeals from local and state agencies) in the Foundation Coal v Penneco case has been issued. Readers of this blog will remember this as the case that was interminably lost in the processes of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources before a decision was finally issued by the Environmental Hearing Board largely in favor of the oil and gas industry. Foundation appealed that decision to the Commonwealth Court, the case was argued in October of 2009 and decided on April 27, 2010. The case is unique in that it represents the first case in which DEP faced a coal challenge from a coal company not actively engaged in mining the land subject to challenge or seriously prepared to do so.
Pennsylvania has a long and difficult jurisprudence addressing the relative rights of coal and oil and gas operators. Several important developments in that jurisprudence are summarized in the opinion. In addition, the author has a short book setting forth that history in more detail that is available to oil and gas clients of the firm at no cost upon request. The last case in the development of this phase of Pennsylvania law was the 1982 decision of the Commonwealth Court in Einsig v. Pennsylvania Mines Corporation, 69 PaCommw. 351, 452 A.2d 558 (Pa. Cmwlth. 1982) which held that DEP's authority to deny oil and gas permits over coal is limited to only two determinations: a.) whether the well can be safely drilled and b.) where on the driller's tract of land the well can be located to do the least interference with the mine.
Foundation challenged DEP's issuance of drilling permits to Penneco under the Oil and Gas Act (58 P.S. §§ 601.1 et seq. ) for various reasons including DEP's refusal to impose conditions dictated by Foundation upon Penneco's right to access its recourse. Penneco challenged Foundation's standing to state and objection and its right to impose conditions upon access to the oil and gas underlying its coal. The standing issue was based upon the fact that Foundation could not demonstrate that it had "projected and platted but not yet [begun operations] in coal over Penneco's oil and gas.
DEP decided that it was not necessary for Foundation to have actually projected and platted proposed operations to have a right to delay the issuance of Penneco's permits through objection because DEP read the Oil and Gas at Act at 58P.S. § 601.501(a) to permit "any person having a direct interest in the subject matter of this act" to request a conference as part of any permit application process. In issuing the permits, DEP imposed three conditions modified from Foundation's proposal: a.) Penneco was required to notify Foundation prior to logging; b.) Penneco was required to permit Foundation to conduct a deviation survey and a logging of Penneco's well at the time Penneco was prepared to log its well and c.) Penneco was required to notify Foundation at the time the well was to be plugged and to permit Foundation to make inspections of the plugging to satisfy itself that the plugging was completed in accord with then applicable regulations.
(In a strange silence, DEP failed to state which party should pay for the new rights granted to Foundation as conditions to Penneco's permits. According to the decision, DEP claims that although it had the power to impose the conditions, it did not have the power to direct which party was to pay for meeting them! Penneco noted that out of 700 permits, the ones involving Foundation were the first to have any conditions imposed by DEP. Penneco insisted and Foundation acceded to payment by Foundation of its costs in exercising its rights under the Penneco's permit conditions.)
The Environmental Hearing Bard determined that until a coal company has completed the required modules in DEP's coal mine permitting process, it does not meet the standard under the Oil and Gas Act as a company with a projected and platted but not yet commenced mine. The Commonwealth Court agreed with that conclusion but continued its policy of deferring to DEP in DEP's interpretation of the Oil and Gas Act as providing Foundation with access to agency proceedings under a more general provision of the statute.
We now need to see if Foundation will seek allocator to the Pa. Supreme Court and if a right of appeal will be granted.
If not, we can conclude that:
- Einsig continues to set very strict limitations upon DEP's ability to deny oil and gas drilling permits over minable coal even after the legislative developments since that decision.
- DEP may impose conditions upon drilling permits that it believes are necessary to assure compliance with the statutes administered by DEP but not conditions outside that limitation
- DEP may not substitute plugging standards proposed by a coal operator in a customized well permit application for those applicable under general law.
- The Commonwealth Court has signaled agreement with the Environmental Hearing Board's dicta that "just because something is arguable safer . . . does not mean that either the Department or this Board can simply mandate it. This is especially true when the legislature already has enacted statutes directly on pint. Special permit conditions were never meant as vehicles to circumvent the law."
4/15/2010
Citing a perceived conflict in Pennsylvania Supreme Court authority, the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania refused to consider a declaratory judgment action brought by an operator to resolve a dispute with a landowner over alleged failures of an oil and gas lease. Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation v. Carol Manning Jordan, CA 3:09-CV-2143 (Judge Conaboy) 2010 U.S.Dist. LEXIS 36988.
The landowner claimed the lease was invalid because:
(1) the individual who notarized the documents was an agent of the operator whose fee was contingent upon the Lease being entered into, and
(2) the operator's representatives made false representations to the landowner which induced her to enter into the lease, and
(3) the bonus payment required by the lease was not timely and, when made, was not in the proper amount.
The landowner apparently abandoned its claim that the acknowledgment of the lease was invalid leaving the misrepresentation and the bonus payment issues before the court. After reviewing the different approaches that have been applied to the interaction of the parol evidence rule with integration clauses in Pennsylvania agreements, the Court decided to exercise its right to decline to resolve the declaratory judgment action before it. The court reasoned, in part, in reliance upon a Third Circuit insurance coverage case:
"[D]istrict courts possess discretion in determining whether and when to entertain an action under the Declaratory Judgment Act, even when the suit otherwise satisfies subject matter jurisdictional prerequisites." Wilton v. Seven Falls Co., 515 U.S. 277, 282 (1995). The Third Circuit Court of Appeals has noted that federal courts should hesitate in exercising jurisdiction over declaratory judgment actions "when the state law involved is close or unsettled." State Auto Insurance Companies v. Summy, 234 F.3d 131, 135 (3d Cir. 2001).
The court noted that Summy cautioned that district courts "should give serious consideration to the fact that they do not establish state law but are limited to predicting it," a consideration especially important in insurance coverage cases but not confined to that category of cases.
This is the second recent case known to this author that the Middle District has declined to resolve involving fundamental oil and gas lease issues. The first (Belcher v. The Keeton Group, et al, No:09cv504 (Judge Munley) was, frankly, more understandable in that it involved a determination of state law upon issues never addressed by the state courts. The present case presents issues upon which there is substantial conflicting state authority. Pennsylvania has a long history of apparently inconsistent decisions of its Supreme Court. There is no reason to believe that such conflicts will ever be resolved by future cases given that court's historic willingness to simply ignore prior precedent inconsistent with its intended result in a specific case. Judge Conaboy acknowledged in his opinion that the state Supreme Court had actually attempted to rationalize its prior holdings but concluded that the rationalization did not extend to the situation before the federal court.
Extending the federal deference analysis to the instant case effectively closed the federal courts to a party with an obvious preference for a federal forum. The parties had already invested substantial time and money in the case before the federal court. Pennsylvania courts will face the same need to wrestle with conflicting appellate precedent that confronted the federal tribunal. The parties have no assurance that relief and final, definitive resolution will be afforded by the state's highest court at the end of state proceedings because the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has the option whether to accept cases for resolution or not. All in all, an understandable while troubling decision.
4/10/2010
On April 8, 2010, in Gates v. Exco Resources, 2010 U.S. Dist.LEXIS 34716, senior federal judge Maurice B. Cohill, Jr. resolved a landowner's encyclopedic claim for damages alleged to have been suffered as the result of operations under an oil and gas lease. Among the theories under which landowner Gates claimed damages were: lessee's failure to properly reclaim land damaged in operations, failure to pay the $1.00 consideration stated in a extension agreement for the lease (the receipt of which was acknowledged in that agreement), failure to pay certain per-rod right of way fees, placement of pipelines under written rights-of-way agreements upon which the landowner claimed his signatures had been forged, failure to pay taxes on a compressor site and, most importantly, for the loss of royalty upon gas used to operate a compressor servicing the lease and other properties.
The court awarded some surface damages and the contractual right-of-way fees and the lessee agreed that it owed the taxes. The forgery claim was found not to have been proved and the claim for the $1.00 extension consideration was found not to be "credible." The most important element in the decision was the court's determination that the lessee was entitled to use gas for compression free of cost and royalty. The landowner made several claims to circumvent the express language of the lease permitting use of gas among which were an alleged verbal promise that compression would increase not decrease royalty and that the landowner was entitled to payment for the portion of the 300,000 cubic feet of gas available for use by him that was not actually consumed. The court reasoned:
As for royalties on the gas taken from wells on their property and used to operate the compressor, we agree with EXCO that the Gates are not entitled to the payment of such royalties. Paragraph 4(B) of the February 18, 1998 Oil and Gas Lease (the legal enforceability of which plaintiffs do not dispute) states that a royalty will be paid "for the gas marketed and used off the premises." We find that common sense and the plain meaning of these words dictate a conclusion that gas used to operate the compressor is not "gas marketed and used off the premises." Mr. Gates claims that he was told that the compressor would increase production and therefore, increase the amount of royalties they would receive; such extraneous evidence must be disregarded. Where the contract or agreement is unambiguous, parole evidence of prior inconsistent terms or negotiations is inadmissible to demonstrate intent of the parties. Mellon Bank. N.A. v. Aetna Business Credit. Inc., 619 F.2d 1001, 1010 (3d Cir.1980). [*30] A contract is ambiguous if, after hearing evidence presented by the parties, the court determines that objective indicia exist to support the view that the "terms of the contract are susceptible of different meanings." Teamsters Indus. Employees Welfare Fund v. Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, Inc., 989 F.2d 132, 135 (3d Cir. 1993). Furthermore, we note that the Agreement states that "this instrument contains and expresses all of the agreements and understandings of the parties in regard to the subject matter thereof;" the easement to allow EXCO to install the compressor states that "[t]his agreement embodies all of the understandings and promises of the parties and there is not any contrary or additional understanding that shall survive the execution of this document." Def.'s Ex. A. Moreover, the provisions of paragraph 6 of the Agreement (which addresses the Gates' right to three hundred thousand cubic feet of gas each year at no cost to them) does not entitle them to be paid for gas not used by them (except to the extent that they are entitled to a royalty on gas "marketed and used off the premises" by EXCO, which we have found does not apply to the operation of the compressor). This provision says nothing about paying them for any unused gas. We therefore also find that the Gates are not entitled to an accounting of royalties to which they have no legal right.
Lessons learned:
- Lessees should pay what they clearly owe
- Lessees should be certain to write a check (or get and landowner receipt) for even nominal consideration stated in important instruments
- Lessees can use lease gas for operational purposes if their leases provide for it
- Do NOT shortcut the general provisions of collateral agreements---the integration clause on the compressor station agreement was an important consideration in the court's reasoning
Of course, we must always remember that federal courts do not make state property law. Only the state courts can do that. The decision in Exco is typical in that there are no Pennsylvania oil and gas cases cited as disposing of the oil and gas issues presented. Exco is, however, persuasive authority on the right to use lease gas for compression and on the important issue of the landowner's non-right to compensation for house gas not used. All in all, a valuable and good decision despite potentially bad facts. 3/24/2010
Today the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that natural gas royalties can properly be calculated at the well head net of post production costs under the net-back (or work-back) method. The net-back method referenced in a footnote to the decision is defined in 30 C.F.R. 206.151 as follows:
Under this method, costs of transportation, processing, or manufacturing are deducted from the proceeds received for the gas, residue gas or gas plant products, and any extracted, processed, or manufactured products, at the first point at which reasonable values for such products may be determined by a sale pursuant to an arm's-length contract or comparison to other sales of such products, to ascertain value at the lease.
In Kilmer v. Elexco Land Services, et al (No 63 MAP 2009) the court ruled ". . . we hold that the GMRA [minimum royalty act] should be read to permit the calculation of royalties at the wellhead, as provided by the netback method in the Lease, and thus, affirm the trial court's grant of summary judgment to the Gas Companies."
Kilmer is an exceptional case in many respects. It is one of the few cases in the history of the Commonwealth in which the Supreme Court agreed to by-pass Pennsylvania's intermediate appellate court (the Superior Court) and take a trial court decision for direct review. The Supreme Court was persuaded to take this extraordinary step because of the number of cases pending in state and federal courts in which landowners were seeking to avoid their obligations under oil and gas leases that provided for the landowners to bear their pro rata share of post production costs. The Court appeared to be persuaded by the standard definition of a royalty in the industry as a landowner's share of production. The Court was also expressly appreciative of an amicus brief filed by former Texas Tech Professor Bruce Kramer that detailed the history of natural gas price regulation and its impact upon the placement of the price setting point in the gas fields (In addition, Professor Kramer rejected the interpretation of his published work asserted by the Landowners in favor of their position).
Read the full opinion 2/25/2010
Governor Rendel called the imposition of a extraction tax on Marcellus Shale natural gas a "no-brainer" in remarks reported in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette today. His justification for a new tax? A claim that in 2012 Pa will face a "budget tsunami."
Read the entire report:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10056/1038615-100.stm
It is time for Pennsylvanians to stand up and tell the Governor and pro-tax legislators to stop this nonsense. They attempt to justify imposing a selective industrial tax upon a lot of bases including (but certainly not limited to): a.) because others do it, b.) the state somehow deserves a "fair share" of gas production, c.) local governments need the money, and (most frequently) d.) they simply “need” more money to spend.
Together with their amazingly uncritical friends in the press they impliedly market that a severance tax is really not paid by anyone.
What these pro tax politicians don’t consider is a.) no informed citizen believes that any tax produces free money---they know that a tax on a basic home and business commodity becomes a hidden tax upon all aspects of modern life; b.) Pennsylvania, its counties and townships do not have any ownership in or right to share in the production of the oil and gas underlying privately owned lands---this is America; c.) gas exploration and production companies do have a choice as to where they spend their development dollars---we don’t own all of the shale gas in the world and there are states with far more favorable regulatory and business tax environments; and d.) the proposed tax is not a tax on faceless, stateless companies, it is a tax on rural Pennsylvanians for the benefit of urban Pennsylvanians and that is simply and outrageously unfair. Ask the landowners of rural, western New York who can see Marcellus rigs bringing incredible wealth to their Pennsylvania neighbors across the state border the cost of urban dominated anti-development regulations about the cost of such governmental idiocy.
What the tax hogs miss most sadly is that they are playing with the Commonwealth’s (possibly last) greatest chance at reindustrialization. Marcellus Shale exploration has brought tens of thousands of jobs to this job starved state. Marcellus Shale exploration has the potential to create jobs that will enable Pennsylvania’s children to not move away to find jobs. The jobs it brings span from totally unskilled, to highly skilled blue collar to geophysicists. There is simply no other potential industrial revolution that can match the benefits to Pennsylvania’s workers. The gas that can be produced from the Marcellus Shale can enable power dependent industries to locate in the Commonwealth and provide additional and different new quality jobs.
Any scam artist needing cash can get substantial state and local infrastructure and development assistance by promising to create a few jobs. An industry that has already created tends of thousands of jobs, that has the potential to create more than a hundred thousand more high quality jobs and that can revolutionize the marketability of Pennsylvania as an industrial state is viewed only as source of cash----and is expected to repair the public roads it uses to make Pennsylvania farmers rich.
What is wrong with this picture?
The Governor is correct, suggesting the imposition of a single resource tax as the solution to the Commonwealth’s cash flow shortfall is a “no-brainer”—it can only be conceived by those with “no brains.”
Other than that, I have no opinion on this subject. 2/23/2010
The complete disconnect between fact and the evolving and escalating anti-development political theater is truly amazing. Too many who know the facts simply choose to ignore the theater. A consequence is that only the anti-development message is communicated thoughout the Commonwealth.
There are hard facts and solid resources that can be used to "set the record straight!". Among the best are:
"Hydraulic Fracturing Opponents Say the Darndest Things" which does a point by point knock down of the most common anti-development theatrical devices on the frac front.
Another great (and non-intuitive) sources is the text of the NY draft supplemental "generic" environmental study now under consideration. It is available (all 800+ pages) at
What is non-intuitive is that the study (after wading thru a LOT of theatrical fog) truly gives the lie to many of the hysterical theatrics used by anti-development folk in their efforts to stop development
Also on the NY DEC site is a 2008 study of hydraulic fracturing of shale formations that concludes:
The potential for impacts to surface water and groundwater from development of the Marcellus shale are expected to be minimal because of the regulatory requirements from state oil and gas agencies involved and the practices operators are implementing to ensure fluids are contained. In evaluating the risk of fluids migrating up to reach groundwater; the depositional environment of the Marcellus Shale that produced a thick blanket of Devonian aged shales above the Marcellus should also be considered as this thick sequence of overlying shales act as series of confining layers to prevent the vertical migration of fracturing fluids toward groundwater systems.
Read the entire study:
AND, once ready to champion truth over theatrical fiction, call 610-291-1403 to arrange for a bus ride from the Neshaminy Mall to the "shale pits of northeastern Pennsylvania" with folk who believe that "the pollution it causes mining the gas far exceeds any value of bringing the gas to market." Read the entire story of this amazing autobus pilgrimage for true believers and anti-development thespians sponsored by "Delaware Riverkeeper Network" from the phillyBurbs.com site:
Each day becomes more shocking tales of fear and impending disaster. If all the people and their legislators hear about Marcellus production is negative, false theatrical inuendo, can anyone expect anything but negative decisions and legislation? It's time for those who know the truth to actively and consistently end the innuendo and fiction spun by those not bound by the facts!
Other than that, I have no opinion on this matter! 12/15/2009
Federal District Judge Sean McLaughlin today ruled that the US Forest Service has acted improperly in imposing a ban on drilling in the Allegheny National Forest and in proposing to make all future drilling permits subject to individual NEPA proceedings. The Forest Service claimed its actions were justified by a "settlement" it reached in a lawsuit with its employees (and various environmental groups). In addition to agreeing with its employees in its "settlement", the Forest Service is reported to have paid nearly $20k in public funds toward the employees' legal fees!
The proposed actions and reasoning of the Forest Service and its co-operating anti-development groups were categorically rejected and enjoined by the court.
Read the entire opinion in the Full Text Documents tab under "Links" in the bar on the left side of this page. |
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