Don't like websites? Fine...ask me. I spent time in the 80's and 90's drilling, completing, recompleting, fracing and producing oil and gas wells. Every technique I used for all of those activities was industry standard except one, and I ran off the service rig which did it. I don't need a website to know safe drilling practices, and certainly someone ignorant enough to think that reading a website will impart knowledge on any particular of this topic is delusional.
My career has been Environmental engineering. I have monitored air, water, soil, stack emissions and toxic and hazardous waste since 1984. I know something about contractors, industry lobbyists, state and federal regulators and the regulations they promulgate. I also live in the heart of the Marcellus Shale deposits right where Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia meet. The issue is both wholly comprehensible by me and local to me.
The utter lack of regulatory oversight scares the bejeebus out of me. Infrastructure demands, particularly on small, often one lane rural bridges should have been met BEFORE the invasion of drill rigs and the convoy of heavy equipment and trucks.
And, in Pennsylvania for now, those infrastructure demands must be borne by the county township or state. There's no extraction tax imposed to pay for the infrastructure improvements!
Rural wells and small municipal water supplies are at jeopardy because there's not enough in the state's treasuries to pay inspectors and technicians.
While exploiting the natural gas would be a great thing for our energy outlook, there's been very little care taken to protect the environment and the people who staked their claim to the ground before the energy companies staked claim to the stuff beneath it.
No one's looking to cripple the gas industry, drive away many very needed jobs or bankrupt our national energy security. But people trump profit. Homes beats Executive Suites. It's high time to be careful and thoughtful when an industry invades farmlands.
