House Democrats renew severance tax pitch
HARRISBURG – Facing an uphill political climb, a group of House Democrats said Tuesday that a state facing a $4 billion deficit can’t afford not to levy a severance tax on natural gas production.
They gathered at a press conference to revive legislation that at one point appeared close to passage last year, but whose prospects have faded greatly with a Republican-controlled statehouse. The measure sponsored by Rep. Greg Vitali, D-166, Havertown, would levy a tax at 5 percent of the value of each 1,000 cubic feet of gas produced, plus 4.6 cents per thousand cubic feet extracted. An estimated $245 million in first-year revenue would be distributed in one-third chunks to environmental programs, local governments and the state general fund.
Republican Gov. Tom Corbett is opposed to a severance tax, while Senate GOP leaders have floated the idea of giving local governments authority to levy impact fees on natural gas firms to offset the cost of drilling activities on public infrastructure and the environment.
However, Rep. Dan Frankel, D-23, Pittsburgh, said it makes no sense given the deficit not to consider tapping revenue from a severance tax.
“The revenue could also help alleviate some of the devastating state budget cuts that are expected to be proposed by Gov. Corbett,” said Sid Michaels Kavulich, D-114, Taylor.
Senate Republican leader Joseph Scarnati, R-25, Jefferson County, is willing to support an impact fee as part of a package addressing a number of Marcellus Shale drilling issues, said Scarnati aide Drew Crompton.
While not commenting directly on the severance tax issue, the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry trade group, said it wants policies that encourage capital investment in the natural gas industry and create jobs.
by robert swift (harrisburg bureau chief rswift@timesshamrock.com)
Published: February 9, 2011
http://republicanherald.com/news/house-democrats-renew-severance-tax-pitch-1.1102254
Who owns the natural gas?
Owning land doesn’t guarantee you own what lies hundreds or thousands of feet below the surface.
Mineral rights – ownership of coal, gas or other valuable resources – doesn’t automatically come with the deed.
“I never even gave that any thought,” Bonnie Minnich, 2225 E. Grand Ave., Porter Township, said Tuesday.
The Minnichs were one of nine households that received letters in December from Rausch Creek Land LP, a Valley View company that hopes to begin extracting up to 100,000 gallons of water each day from an abandoned strip mine pit in Porter Township. The company’s stated purpose would be “to supply water for drilling and hydrofracturing of proposed Marcellus Shale natural gas wells which are to be drilled and developed on property owned by Rausch Creek Land,” but many questions remain and the company has refused to speak about its plans.
J. Scott Roberts, former deputy secretary for mineral resources management at the state Department of Environmental Protection, said last week that the language surrounding mineral rights is often “bewildering” in estate records, wills, deeds and other documents.
“The amount of money that’s at stake here, the land owner may want to read it one way” and the drilling company another way, Roberts said.
Those differences in interpretation sometimes are not resolved until they reach a courtroom.
Further complicating matters, Ross Pifer, professor and director of the Agricultural Law Resource and Reference Center at Penn State Law, said Pennsylvania law does not always define natural gas as a “mineral.”
“In some respects, oil and natural gas are considered to be minerals and in some respects, they aren’t,” he said.
That could mean that if natural gas or oil were never mentioned in a deed – even one that addresses “mineral rights” – the original property could still hold the rights.
The nine households in Porter Township that received the letters regarding water usage border the land from which water may be extracted, if Rausch Creek Land’s plans are approved by the Susquehanna River Basin Commission.
Experts said last week they believe someone will eventually drill an exploratory well to see if Marcellus Shale reserves lie beneath Minnich’s home and others nearby.
Minnich knows her family does not own the rights to natural gas, coal or other minerals underground.
Paul Ruth, 56, of 1002 Colliery Ave., Tower City, who also got the letter, said he knows he doesn’t own the mineral rights, but is unsure who does.
Finding out who holds the mineral rights for a particular parcel can be an arduous process usually left to attorneys and title insurance companies.
“Very few people own their mineral rights (in Schuylkill County). You could be doing research for days” to find out, county Recorder of Deeds A. Matthew Dudish said Tuesday as he looked through decades of deed information.
That information sometimes raises more questions than it answers. For example, there are instances of an owner selling the surface property but reserving the rights to all minerals up to 500 feet below the surface. Such a clause was valuable in Schuylkill County because of the abundance of anthracite coal.
However, it may not spell out who owns substances farther down, such as shale gas, which can lie many thousands of feet underground. “It’s possible to sever the subsurface rights by substance, by depth or by geologic strata, which means it’s possible that you can have several parties claiming ownership of a mineral interest,” Pifer said. “It could put a land owner in a situation where it’s difficult to tell what he owns.”
During property transactions, land owners usually retain what they perceive to be valuable at the time. Therefore, Schuylkill County deeds may have extensive language on coal rights and not mention natural gas.
“That’s not uncommon. You have to presume when people bought their parcel, they were not putting any value in that. If it were that important, they would have gotten an answer” to who owns natural gas rights, Pifer said.
Drilling companies, Pifer said, will be dealing with the natural gas owner, not the surface property owner, unless it turns out the same person owns both. Pennsylvania case law also gives the owner of the subsurface the ability to undertake “reasonable use” of the surface property to get to the minerals – coal, gas or otherwise – contained underground, according to Pifer.
He said surface property owners are entitled to very little say in mineral extraction beneath their property.
Marcellus Shale drilling technology makes the surface property owner even less relevant.
“One of the big distinctions … is the horizontal drilling portion of it. Quite honestly, they can reach out a mile or more on either side of that well without disturbing that surface,” Roberts said.
Roberts is now an adviser for L.R. Kimball, an Ebensburg-based architecture, engineering and communications technology company.
“It (drilling technology) allows the well paths to be located on less sensitive areas. You can avoid environmental resources … and can still get the gas underneath it,” he said.
http://republicanherald.com/news/who-owns-the-natural-gas-1.1102282
BY BEN WOLFGANG (STAFF WRITER bwolfgang@republicanherald.com)
Published: February 9, 2011
Analysis of Marcellus Shale gas tax issues offered in Feb. 16 webinar
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — An online seminar offered by Penn State Cooperative Extension at 1 p.m. on Feb. 16 will cover what Pennsylvania residents who benefit financially from natural-gas wells on their properties need to know about tax implications.
In his presentation, “Dealing with Gas Tax Issues: What You Need to Know,” Associate Professor of Forest Resources Mike Jacobson will address primarily landowners who want to understand the basic issues. However, he also will provide financial advisers, accountants and tax preparers with some useful information.
“Landowners who lease gas rights will receive an up-front bonus payment and then receive royalty payments when production begins,” Jacobson said. “Dealing with this new-found wealth requires careful financial and tax planning.
“The tax law surrounding gas leases and royalties is complex with its own specific rules,” he said. “By understanding these rules, landowners possibly can save money by avoiding unnecessary taxes.”
The webinar will address mainly the tax consequences of gas income, Jacobson noted. It will cover issues such as types of income, how to report income, depletion and expensing opportunities, wealth and family planning, and property and severance taxes.
The tax-issues webinar is part of an ongoing series of workshops and events addressing circumstances related to the state’s Marcellus Shale gas boom. Information about how to register for the webinar is available on the webinar page of Penn State Extension’s natural gas impacts website at http://extension.psu.edu/naturalgas/webinars.
Another one-hour webinar, “Natural Gas Well Development and Emergency Response and Management,” will be held at 1 p.m. on March 17.
Previous webinars, publications and information on topics such as water use and quality, zoning, gas-leasing considerations for landowners and implications for local communities also are available on the Extension natural-gas impacts website (http://extension.psu.edu/naturalgas).
For more information, contact John Turack, extension educator in Westmoreland County, at 724-837-1402 or jdt15@psu.edu.
http://live.psu.edu/story/51221#nw69
Friday, February 4, 2011
Heinz Endowments awards Marcellus Shale research grant to Penn State
University Park, Pa. — The Heinz Endowments recently awarded a team of Penn State researchers a $412,000, three-year, grant to identify and mitigate the effects of Marcellus Shale natural gas exploration and development on the forest ecosystem. The interdisciplinary research team, led by Margaret Brittingham, professor of wildlife resources, and Patrick Drohan, assistant professor of pedology, both faculty members in the College of Agricultural Sciences, also will develop land management practices and a monitoring program to reduce the Marcellus disturbance footprint.
Focusing on the north-central region of Pennsylvania, the research incorporates four broad components. First, researchers will use a database to evaluate landscape change as a result of gas exploration disturbances. Second, they will assess local and landscape-scale changes to the forest ecosystem utilizing birds, invasive plant species, and soils as indicators of broader environmental effects. The team will also develop an electronic field guide for onsite remediation and wildlife habitat enhancement at Marcellus drilling sites and pilot a long-term citizen-science based monitoring program to track changes to the physical landscape and biotic communities across the Marcellus shale formation in Pennsylvania.
“Exploration and development of natural gas within the Marcellus Shale formation is occurring at an accelerating rate across much of Pennsylvania and has the potential for large-scale ecological change,” said Brittingham. “There is a critical need among public and private landowners for information on how to develop drilling sites, and their associate infrastructure, in a way that minimizes ecological damage and that can restore sites to pre-drilling conditions.”
The project addresses a central goal of the endowments’ Environment Program, to support sustainable communities within a sustainable region by promoting environmentally responsible land use and by protecting and restoring terrestrial ecosystems.
“We are grateful to The Heinz Endowments for funding this research, which was initiated with a seed grant from the Penn State Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research (MCOR),” said Brittingham. “The funds from Heinz will enable us to begin to document and monitor how Marcellus-related exploration and development is changing the landscape of Pennsylvania and to develop mitigation and remediation strategies to minimize negative environmental impacts.”
The University has been at the forefront of research and outreach efforts since advances in horizontal drilling technology sparked interest in unconventional gas shales. Through MCOR, Penn State scholars and researchers are working on many of the most critical technical aspects of Marcellus Shale development, providing science-based programming on the Marcellus and other unconventional gas shales, and protecting the Commonwealth’s water and forest resources. Penn State researchers also are exploring community, family, health and population impacts of Marcellus development; effects on the transportation infrastructure; and labor issues such as the housing, job creation and training needed to develop and sustain a local workforce.
The Heinz Endowments’ mission is to promote progress in economic opportunity, arts and culture; education; children, youth and families; and the environment. The Endowments supports efforts to make southwestern Pennsylvania a premier place to live and work, a center for learning and educational excellence, and a region that embraces diversity and inclusion.
http://live.psu.edu/story/50857#nw69
Monday, January 31, 2011
Follow Pa.’s lead on gas drilling? No thanks
Kathryn Z. Klaber, Pennsylvanian and longtime gas industry spokesperson, now crosses the border to lecture New Yorkers on how dumb we are to hesitate joining the big gas blowout.
In her Jan. 17 Star-Gazette viewpoint (“Delaying drilling will hurt N.Y.”), Klaber berates new New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Joe Martens for saying: “I see no reason to rush to judgment on a decision as monumental as hydrofracking.”
“The short-term economic case for harvesting clean energy resources from the Marcellus is … compelling,” Klaber responds.
Harvesting? You know, like corn and potatoes. Clean energy? Yes, right in there with oil and coal.
How could we not want to emulate Pennsylvania’s 1,610 DEP violations since 2008, 1,057 of which were judged likely to impact the environment?
How could we not envy the 3.6 million barrels of waste water sent to Pennsylvania treatment plants, and, according to DEP records, emptied into Pennsylvania rivers?
How could we not want Dimock’s drinking water? Or the industrialization of Pennsylvania’s Endless Mountains and of Williamsport’s Little League World Series? The gas companies are just licking their chops to do the same for Cooperstown and the Finger Lakes.
“Has there ever been a more important time to take advantage of these opportunities?” Klaber asks.
Yes — how about never?
Steve Coffman
January 26, 2011, 12:00 am
http://www.stargazette.com/article/20110126/VIEWPOINTS03/101260302/1121/Follow-Pa.-s-lead-on-gas-drilling?-No-thanks
Why don’t we know how many drinking water sources have been harmed by natural gas operations?
How many drinking water sources have been harmed by oil or gas operations? According to a recent report
[ http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/how-many-water-supplies-have-been-impacted-by-gas-drilling-pa-doesn-t-keep-count-1.1063683#axzz1BzibG6Fv ]
from Pennsylvania, no one knows in that state. This alarming article quotes an environmental engineer as estimating that as many as 50 homes in Bradford County, Pennsylvania alone are currently getting replacement water supplies provided by gas companies.
But no one knows the real number, and here’s why: the article explains that companies often will not replace a homeowner’s contaminated water unless the homeowner signs a document promising not to tell anyone about the contamination. Therefore, we don’t really know how many people have contaminated water because many cases have been kept secret.
This makes it impossible for public agencies charged with protecting public health and safety to have adequate data to understand the full health and environmental impacts of oil and gas operations.
According to the article, Pennsylvania is consider a new rule that will require oil and gas companies to notify the state’s Department of Environmental Protection within 24 hours of receiving a complaint about contaminated drinking water. This rule should be in place everywhere in the country.
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/amall/why_dont_we_know_how_many_drin.html
Amy Mall’s Blog
Posted January 24, 2011
Committee deciding Marcellus Shale bills to have just one Northeastern Pa. lawmaker
HARRISBURG – Only one lawmaker from Northeastern Pennsylvania sits on a key House committee that will handle bills dealing with the environmental impact of Marcellus Shale drilling this session.
This happens despite the fact that the region has been at the center of a drilling boom for the past four years and deals with a legacy of environmental issues dating from the heyday of anthracite mining.
Rep. Mike Carroll, D-118, Hughestown, is the region’s sole representative on the 25-member House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, the springboard for legislation dealing with protecting water supplies from drilling activities, severance taxes or impact fees on natural gas production, and boosting development of the deep gas pockets in the Marcellus Shale formation.
Panel members often emerge as bill co-sponsors or offer amendments at the early stage of consideration before a bill reaches a floor vote. The committee traditionally holds public hearings on environmental issues and meets with the secretaries of the departments of Environmental Protection and Conservation and Natural Resources.
The House panel is led by Rep. Scott Hutchinson, R-64, Oil City, and dominated by lawmakers from western Pennsylvania and the shallow-gas well region in northwestern Pennsylvania where drilling has occurred for 150 years. The panel is composed of 15 Republicans and 10 Democrats.
The House set up committees Wednesday for the 2011-2012 session.
Last session, four lawmakers from the region, including Carroll, sat on the House committee. Two are no longer in the House and the third, freshman Sen. John Yudichak, D-14, Nanticoke, is now ranking Democrat on the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee.
Sens. Lisa Baker, R-20, Lehman Township, and Gene Yaw, R-23, Williamsport, remain members of that panel.
The makeup of the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee is “a tragedy because the Northeast is so affected by the impact of drilling,” Capitol activist Gene Stilp said. “This will mean that the citizens will have to take their concerns to their elected representatives who do not serve on that committee. The people will have to work harder to have a voice.”
Stilp was among demonstrators calling for stricter state regulation of drilling at Gov. Tom Corbett’s inaugural Tuesday. A large contingent from Northeastern Pennsylvania was among that group demanding that their voice be heard on drilling issues.
House committee assignments are determined by a special committee with House Speaker Sam Smith, R-66, Punxsutawney, and Minority Leader Frank Dermody, D-33, Pittsburgh, in lead roles.
The GOP assignments on the environmental panel were determined by openings, ranking members’ requests and an effort to put the large number of freshmen lawmakers on committees where their background will be a plus, Smith said. There were three openings on the GOP side filled by freshmen.
Still, not having more lawmakers from the northeast drilling region on the panel strikes one member as unusual.
“It’s baffling to me,” said Rep. Eugene DePasquale, D-95, York, a former deputy DEP secretary in the Rendell administration. “I hope it’s not intentional.”
By robert swift (Harrisburg Bureau Chief)
rswift@timesshamrock.com
Published: January 24, 2011
http://standardspeaker.com/news/committee-deciding-marcellus-shale-bills-to-have-just-one-northeastern-pa-lawmaker-1.1094559
DEP losing staff to gas drilling industry
The Marcellus Shale natural gas industry has jobs to offer in Pennsylvania and, in many cases, environmental regulators that once watched over the drillers are stepping in to fill the openings.
The state Department of Environmental Protection does not track where former employees work after they leave the agency or count how many have left for jobs with regulated businesses, but officials admit that competing with the booming – and well-paying – industry for employees has become an ongoing challenge.
“Losing good employees, for whatever reason, is always a problem,” former DEP Secretary John Hanger said before he left the state’s top environmental post with the change of administrations last week. “The turnover in staff is one of the hurdles that has to be overcome.”
On Wednesday, L.R. Kimball, an architecture and engineering firm, announced it hired J. Scott Roberts as an adviser to help the company expand its operations in the Marcellus Shale. Roberts, a 25-year DEP employee, retired as deputy secretary for mineral resources management in December. He was one of the department’s most knowledgeable leaders on Marcellus Shale issues and often testified along with, or in place of, Hanger at public hearings concerning the industry.
Prior to Roberts’ hiring, the highest profile departure from the department to the industry was Barbara Sexton, then the department’s second-highest ranking official, who left to become director of governmental affairs in the state for Chesapeake Energy last year.
Lower-profile senior staff members that offered the department decades of knowledge and experience also have found jobs with the industry.
Richard Adams, a 30-year veteran of the department who played an influential role when DEP began developing rules for treating the salty wastewater that comes from the deep shale wells, is now senior environmental adviser for Chief Oil and Gas.
Joe Umholtz, the former surface activities division chief in the department’s bureau of oil and gas, joined Colorado-based MWH in the environmental engineering firm’s oil and gas sector last year.
Gary Byron, who worked for the department for 33 years before retiring as assistant regional director in the Williamsport office in 2008, founded Dux Head Environmental Services, which specializes in environmental consulting for the natural gas industry. He is a frequent contractor with Carrizo Oil and Gas.
And Helen Humphreys, a seven-year spokeswoman for the department’s Pittsburgh office who served as the agency’s communications director for five months last year, has been senior corporate communications specialist at Williams, a natural gas production and transportation company, since November.
At a time when DEP is building its staff of oil and gas regulators, the industry has also attracted employees from among those ranks, although a complete list has never been compiled.
Range Resources, Chesapeake Energy and Atlas Energy have together hired at least four former well-site inspectors to work in environmental compliance and other aspects of their Marcellus Shale operations.
The competition has not hampered the department’s ability to build its oil and gas program from 88 to 202 employees since 2008, Hanger said.
“In this period of time when we have very high unemployment, we’ve been able to recruit people to these positions by and large,” he said.
“Retaining them has been a second challenge.”
The retention problem is not unique to employees whose experience is desired by the gas industry. The department has trouble retaining employees in information technology and engineering, as well as those who work in positions, like mine inspectors, whose equivalent jobs are paid more by federal agencies, Hanger said.
“This is a clear demonstration that state wage rates and salary rates are not competitive with the private sector in many cases,” he said.
“The truth is, in many cases, the private sector is paying much more.”
Department officials are careful not to imply that the movement from the agency to the Marcellus Shale industry has been a stampede for the door.
Daniel Spadoni, a spokesman for DEP’s Williamsport office, said the department’s Eastern Region Oil and Gas Program began in the office with 17 people in 2008 and was increased to 50 people about a year ago. The program has filled 47 of the 50 positions, he said. “DEP does not formally track where people go when they leave our employment, but probably only two staff have left here for industry positions,” he said.
Some landowners at odds with the gas companies and the advocates that work with them have noted the departures and say they erode public trust in the state’s environmental oversight.
Jan Jarrett, president of the environmental organization PennFuture, said the departures sap experience from the agency “that it could really badly use,” but it does not indicate to her a lack of commitment among the former employees to the department or to environmental protection in general.
“With the uncertainty about what budget cuts will do to the agencies, you can’t blame these folks,” she said. “But it does weaken the department, and it diminishes its institutional memory.”
A reverse migration, however unlikely, would be more disturbing, she added.
“I’d be more concerned if it were gas industry people all of a sudden infiltrating the department.”
By Laura Legere (Staff Writer llegere@timesshamrock.com)
Published: January 24, 2011
http://republicanherald.com/news/dep-losing-staff-to-gas-drilling-industry-1.1094487
Peer-review panel for EPA fracking study includes six Pa. scientists
Peer-review panel for EPA fracking study includes six Pa. scientists
By Laura Legere (Staff Writer)
Published: January 18, 2011
A panel of geologists, toxicologists, engineers and doctors that will peer-review a high-profile Environmental Protection Agency study of hydraulic fracturing will include six scientists from Pennsylvania, more than any other state.
The panel will review the techniques and analysis the EPA uses to draft a study of the potential environmental and health impacts of hydraulic fracturing – the process used in natural gas exploration of injecting a high-pressure mix of chemically treated water and sand underground to break apart a rock formation and release the gas.
The panel might also be called on to review the conclusions of the study, which are slated for release in 2012.
The board, called the Hydraulic Fracturing Study Plan Review Panel, was narrowed to 23 members from a list of 88 nominated candidates, some of whom were criticized in public comments submitted by industry or environmental groups for being biased.
All but four members selected for the panel are affiliated with research universities and none is currently employed by an oil or gas company.
Five of seven members of a previous peer-review panel involved in a 2004 EPA study of hydraulic fracturing in coal-bed methane wells were current or former employees of the oil and gas industry. That study’s findings, that hydraulic fracturing poses “little or no threat” to drinking water aquifers, has been touted by the industry but challenged by an EPA whistle-blower.
In a memo announcing the new panel, the EPA found “no conflicts of interest or appearances of a lack of impartiality for the members of this panel.”
It will be led by David A. Dzombak, professor of environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, and include Michel Boufadel of Temple University; Elizabeth Boyer of Penn State University; Richard Hammack, a Pittsburgh-based roject manager for the U.S. Department of Energy; Jeanne VanBriesen of Carnegie Mellon and Radisav D. Vidic of the University of Pittsburgh.
Contact the writer: llegere@timesshamrock.com
http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/gas-drilling/peer-review-panel-for-epa-fracking-study-includes-six-pa-scientists-1.1091757#axzz1BD70q5Rd
Departing DEP secretary says more rules needed for Marcellus Shale
http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/departing-dep-secretary-says-more-rules-needed-for-marcellus-shale-1.1091068#axzz1BD70q5Rd
Departing DEP secretary says more rules needed for Marcellus Shale
By Laura Legere (staff writer)
Published: January 16, 2011
The maximum fines that environmental regulators can issue to violators of the state’s oil and gas law are “way too low,” and the bonds drillers post to guarantee plugging of all their natural gas wells are “scandalously low,” the departing secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection said last week.
State law does not currently give regulators the right to ban gas drilling in floodplains nor has it mandated a large enough distance between gas wells and drinking water reservoirs, Secretary John Hanger said.
And state legislators need to amend sections of the oil and gas law to give regulators clear legal authority to deny permits to drillers that habitually cause significant environmental and safety problems.
“Right now the department really has very questionable authority to tell a company you operate so badly we’re not going to give you any more permits,” he said.
Hanger led the state’s environmental oversight agency during two-and-a-half years when Marcellus Shale drilling grew from an infant industry in Pennsylvania to an established one, and the department under his guidance made substantial updates to the Oil and Gas Act and other environmental laws to respond to that growth.
But in an interview last week with Times-Shamrock newspapers about the past and future of Marcellus Shale oversight, Hanger said many more changes are necessary to ensure proper regulation of the industry, and many of those changes must come from the Legislature.
Despite the prominence of Marcellus Shale drilling as an environmental issue during his tenure, Hanger put it in the context of other environmental threats facing the state, including air pollution from coal-fired power plants, climate change that is contributing to the warming of the state’s rivers and thousands of miles of streams that remain dead from acid mine pollution.
“Marcellus Shale is both an environmental threat and an environmental opportunity,” he said.
The state should tax the industry and use some of the money to clean up legacy environmental problems that otherwise do not receive enough funding, and it should transition to using natural gas in fleet vehicles and power plants, he said.
“The worst case for Pennsylvania would be to be the host of natural gas and not use more natural gas to make electricity and to replace dirty diesel buses and trucks,” he said.
The state also must work to avoid creating future environmental problems from shale drilling by increasing the blanket bond for natural gas wells to make sure they are properly plugged at the end of their lives.
Currently, a $25,000 bond covers as many wells as a company wants to develop. Plugging one Marcellus Shale well costs about four times that much, he said.
“During the Rendell administration, we spent $16 million of taxpayer money to plug 1,600 oil and gas wells that had been abandoned by companies in the past,” he said. “We have these abandoned oil and gas wells with no money to pay for them because we didn’t require the gas companies decades ago to post a reasonable bond.
“We’re in the process of repeating the same mistake.”
Gov.-elect Tom Corbett included increasing well bonds in the environmental position he outlined as a candidate, and State Rep. Phyllis Mundy, D-Kingston, plans to re-introduce legislation to restrict drilling within floodplains and prohibit hydraulically fractured or horizontally drilled wells from being drilled under or within 2,500 feet of a drinking water reservoir.
Hanger also offered advice to Environmental Hearing Board Judge Michael Krancer, who has been nominated for the DEP secretary post.
“The single most important thing” is for the agency to be a “professional, independent watchdog,” he said, and echoed the words Corbett used to describe the appropriate role of the department: a “cop.”
“Sometimes I hear some in the industry and some in business say DEP should be the partner of the gas industry, or should treat the gas industry as a customer or a client,” Hanger said. “That’s not correct. The gas industry companies have partners. They’re called investors.”
If the agency falls short of being an independent, professional watchdog “it doesn’t matter how much staff you have, and it doesn’t matter how tough or weak the words on the rule page are,” he said. “The regulatory role won’t work.”
llegere@timesshamrock.com