This first arti­cle, basi­cal­ly a rehashed press release if you ask me, gives you the gas com­pa­ny per­spec­tive, as well as the web address of the Mar­cel­lus Shale Coali­tion, a group of (wait for it–not gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tors, not com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers, not EPA reps) gas com­pa­nies (oh, we can trust them, big busi­ness has nev­er screwed over rur­al com­mu­ni­ties) who assure us through their pret­ty web­site that every­thing is A‑OK, and boy,  isn't this a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for Penn­syl­va­nia. Entire arti­cle follows:

Gas industry responds to flowback concerns

Pub­lished: Wednes­day, Feb­ru­ary 10, 2010 3:54 PM CST, in the Wells­boro (PA) Gazette

The Mar­cel­lus Shale Coali­tion issued the fol­low­ing state­ment Feb. 4 regard­ing water use and flow­back water man­age­ment in the devel­op­ment of nat­ur­al gas from the Mar­cel­lus formation:

“Penn­syl­va­ni­ans deserve to get the facts about water man­age­ment for Mar­cel­lus shale devel­op­ment. We need to put an end to the sup­po­si­tions that could threat­en our state’s abil­i­ty to cre­ate jobs and invest­ment here at home.

“Reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing the use and man­age­ment of water need­ed to drill a Mar­cel­lus shale well in Penn­syl­va­nia are among the most strin­gent in the nation, and ensure the pro­tec­tion of the commonwealth’s water resources. Water with­drawals from streams and rivers must be approved, includ­ing the with­draw­al loca­tion and amount of water required for each well, as well as detailed stor­age and treat­ment plans.

“The indus­try cur­rent­ly treats or recy­cles all of its flow­back water. Recy­cling accounts for approx­i­mate­ly 60 per­cent of the water used to com­plete Mar­cel­lus shale wells, with greater per­cent­ages pre­dict­ed for the future. There are more than a dozen approved water treat­ment facil­i­ties avail­able to treat flow­back water, with plans for addi­tion­al capac­i­ty in the future.

“Com­pa­nies are work­ing with inter­na­tion­al water qual­i­ty experts and are fund­ing research and devel­op­ment projects to devel­op mobile and per­ma­nent treat­ment tech­nolo­gies such as evap­o­ra­tion and crys­tal­liza­tion. These efforts will enhance the commonwealth’s over­all water treat­ment capa­bil­i­ties, while bring­ing more com­merce into Penn­syl­va­nia. We’re also research­ing and devel­op­ing deep under­ground injec­tion well tech­nol­o­gy, which is a proven, safe dis­pos­al method in oth­er regions of the country.

“Claims about ele­vat­ed lev­els of Total Dis­solved Solids (TDS) in the Monon­ga­hela Riv­er from nat­ur­al gas devel­op­ment have been refut­ed by stud­ies that attribute a min­i­mal amount of the total TDS lev­els to Mar­cel­lus shale drilling activ­i­ty. In fact, his­tor­i­cal mon­i­tor­ing shows the vari­abil­i­ty of TDS lev­els in the Monon­ga­hela and oth­er rivers to be a cycli­cal phe­nom­e­non over the past 30 years.

“The indus­try is com­mit­ted to the use of Best Man­age­ment Prac­tices in all aspects of its oper­a­tions, includ­ing sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment in advanced flow­back water treat­ment capa­bil­i­ties and recy­cling technologies.”

The Mar­cel­lus Shale Coali­tion is com­prised of dozens of drilling and ser­vice com­pa­nies who work in Pennsylvania’s oil and gas indus­try. Its Web site is www​.pamar​cel​lus​.com.

It's a damned good thing the US Supreme Court recent­ly grant­ed 'per­son­hood' to cor­po­ra­tions. These new­ly made Adams can now spend all the mon­ey they like sup­port­ing their favored can­di­dates, and we can look for­ward to more of this PR tripe even out of elec­tion sea­son. This is how the busi­ness con­glom­er­ate-per­son speaks, as if it has no per­son­al stake nor respon­si­bil­i­ty. In vapid, Orwellian PR-speak, it pays lip ser­vice to the idea that it sup­ports the peo­ple it's bend­ing over a chair and screw­ing. For all those quo­ta­tion marks in this piece, not one is attrib­uted, and there­fore no one is respon­si­ble for its verac­i­ty. Just this new­ly-made 'per­son': the gas companies.'

capped well, Spring Lake, Brad­ford Coun­ty PA

Here's anoth­er per­spec­tive from Lau­ra Shin's blog on http://​www​.solve​cli​mate​.com, dat­ed 9/29/09:

Last week, three spills of poten­tial­ly car­cino­genic haz­ardous chem­i­cals at a nat­ur­al gas drilling site in Penn­syl­va­nia prompt­ed the state’s envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion agency to sus­pend Cabot Oil & Gas's oper­a­tions in the county.

The spills were just a small part of a larg­er phe­nom­e­non — acci­dents at nat­ur­al gas drilling sites that have imper­iled the drink­ing water of near­by com­mu­ni­ties in states from Penn­syl­va­nia to Wyoming and that have no gov­ern­men­tal oversight.

They call it the “Hal­libur­ton Loop­hole” — an exemp­tion for oil and gas com­pa­nies to inject haz­ardous mate­ri­als direct­ly into or near under­ground drink­ing water sup­plies in a process called hydraulic fracturing.

Hydraulic frac­tur­ing, com­mon­ly called “frack­ing,” is used in nat­ur­al gas wells to push flu­id and sand at very high pres­sure into rock for­ma­tions to release gas. Frack­ing flu­id can con­tain chem­i­cals that are haz­ardous and car­cino­genic. Hal­libur­ton, a pio­neer of the tech­nique, says 35,000 wells are fracked each year.

As more acci­dents are report­ed at wells being “fracked” (under­go­ing hydraulic frac­tur­ing), both hous­es of Con­gress are con­sid­er­ing leg­is­la­tion to close the Hal­libur­ton Loop­hole, so nick­named not just because Hal­libur­ton devel­oped the tech­nique but also because for­mer Hal­libur­ton CEO and ex-vice pres­i­dent Dick Cheney urged the cre­ation of the exemp­tion in 2005. More than 160 com­mu­ni­ty and nation­al groups have signed a let­ter of sup­port for the bills in Congress.

“We think every­body deserves to have their drink­ing water pro­tect­ed. It’s pret­ty sim­ple,” says Amy Mall, senior pol­i­cy ana­lyst at the Nat­ur­al Resources Defense Coun­cil, who has blogged reg­u­lar­ly about frack­ing acci­dents. Con­tin­ue read­ing.

Some oth­er links of interest:

http://​un​-nat​u​ral​gas​.org/​w​e​b​l​o​g​/​t​a​g​/​h​y​d​r​a​u​l​i​c​-​f​r​a​c​t​u​r​i​ng/

http://frackmountain.wordpress.com/2010/02/04/educate-yourself-7-minutes‑2/

http://​www​.don​nan​.com/​M​a​r​c​e​l​l​u​s​-​G​a​s​_​H​i​c​k​o​r​y​.​htm