As the drilling for Marcellus Shale becomes more a part of Centre County’s future, the debate over it continues to heat up
By Jenna Spinelle
In 2008, Penn State professor Terry Engelder estimated that nearly 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas was trapped beneath the ground in Marcellus Shale rock, and said it could be extracted using a horizontal drilling method across a rock’s natural fractures. That process, more commonly known as hydrofracturing or “fracking,” has become the center of the debate surrounding Marcellus Shale.
On one hand, drilling for the previously inaccessible gas has created jobs and brought new revenue sources to many communities. However, fracking also can pose a serious threat to the environment if not done properly. That conflict has escalated over the past year, and the debate spans political and municipal lines and is at the forefront of state and local discussions.
At least for one weekend, the two sides will come together when Penn State hosts the Marcellus Summit November 16-18 at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel. The summit will bring together legislators, industry executives, academics, and environmental activists to discuss what has become an issue that will affect Centre County’s future.
Though gas companies had long known about the presence of gas in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale, they lacked an economically viable way to extract it from the ground until Engelder’s report in 2008. Within a few months, a boom of Marcellus activity in Pennsylvania was underway — and the debate over economic benefits versus environmental concern started.
Locally, the shale is found in the northern and western parts of Centre County, including Snow Shoe and Philipsburg boroughs, and Boggs, Burnside, Rush, Liberty, and Curtin townships. As of press time in late September, 57 wells had been drilled in the county with 52 more permitted but not yet drilled.
Marcellus also has impacted Penn State and its research efforts. Several centers and research groups at the university focus on aspects of Marcellus activity, including the Marcellus Center for Education and Outreach and the Marcellus Shale Education and Training Center, a partnership with the Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport.
Tom Murphy, a codirector of the Marcellus Center for Education and Outreach, says the center was created to be an “umbrella for all things Marcellus” and is a partnership between Penn State Outreach, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, and College of Agricultural Sciences. The center conducts research in areas such as environmentally best practices, work-force development, and impacts to roads and infrastructure.
“We’re able to bring together researchers who have different areas of expertise,” Murphy says. “We’ve had interest in our research from a variety of entities, including industry as well as political and environmental groups.”
Recently, John Hellmann and Barry Scheetz, two Penn State professors in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, founded Nittany Extraction Technologies, LLC and received a Technical Breakthrough Award for their development of proppants that are made out of recycled materials. The proppants are used to “prop” open rock fractures that occur during the fracking process to help the extraction of natural gas. Hellman told the Daily Collegian that after the well is no longer producing gas, the proppants will form back into rock, sealing up the cracks.
Over the summer, a story on the radio show This American Life alleged Penn State was perhaps too close in its relationship with the gas industry, leading to a bias in its research that was favorable to companies and overlooked concerns about the environment. Murphy disagrees with that characterization and says that a stigma has been placed on the university for simply working on issues related to Marcellus Shale, drawing comparison to its role in the climate-change debate.
“There are real questions that need to be answered through tough research,” he says. “It doesn’t mean we suggest bias just because we’re involved in the conversation.”
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Outside of Penn State’s research, Centre County created a Natural Gas Task Force in January 2010 to discuss issues related to Marcellus operations in the county. The task force comprises industry representatives, legal counsel, elected officials, and community leaders. The group is housed within the county’s Planning and Community Development Office and is supported by the office’s staff, including assistant director Sue Hannegan.
Among the task force’s accomplishments, Hannegan says, are an online listing of available commercial buildings in the county that might be of interest to gas companies, updated maps of drilled and permitted wells on the county Web site, and a brochure about predrill water testing for people living in areas affected by Marcellus activity.
“Most of the drilling activity in Centre County is occurring in remote areas where residents might not have Internet access, so the task force identified a need to reach the public in a written format in addition to the information posted on the county’s Web site,” she says.
The task force also has recommended that property owners should talk to an expert before signing any agreements.
Ken Hall, a member of the task force, told the Centre Daily Times in late September that “That’s our biggest weakness — trying to convince people to get professional help.”
The number of well permits requested in the county has decreased since last year, from roughly three wells per month to less than one well per month. Hannegan says this can hardly be considered heavy volume given the activity in other Pennsylvania counties. She did note, however, that Rush Township, located near Philipsburg in the western part of the county, had seen an increase in permit activity in 2011 compared to that of previous years.
With Marcellus activity happening in and around Centre County, Hannegan says the Natural Gas Task Force also saw an opportunity to train workers for Marcellus-related jobs and, hopefully, ensure that jobs on well pads are filled locally.
In October, the Central Pennsylvania Institute of Science and Technology (CPI) launched the Emerging Energy and Infrastructure program in its adult and continuing-education division. The program offers courses and certificate programs in areas such as gas production, drilling, and wastewater treatment.
Todd Taylor, CPI’s director of continuing and adult education, says the idea for the program came in 2009 as Marcellus and other energy technologies, such as wind power began, to take hold in Pennsylvania. CPI worked with the county’s Natural Gas Task Force to develop courses and, since the group’s meetings are held at its Pleasant Gap facility, Taylor anticipates students will have opportunities to connect with company representatives.
“We really think that we’ll be in a good position to place people into jobs in many areas of natural gas extraction and production,” he says. “There’s tremendous opportunity in a lot areas related to Marcellus and we’re gearing up to be able to help meet that demand.”
He also anticipates having open houses and other events to connect students in the program with gas companies and help them secure jobs upon completion of their courses.
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The fracking process used in Marcellus Shale extraction has become the center of controversy surrounding its effects on water, wildlife, and other natural resources. By most accounts, Marcellus drilling is not and will not be a direct threat to State College proper. However, a group of concerned citizens is taking steps to ensure that borough residents have a say in what happens to their environment.
Groundswell PA, a group founded by Penn State alumnus and borough resident Braden Crooks, successfully petitioned for an Environmental Bill of Rights to appear as a referendum on the ballot in November’s general election. The group collected more than 1,000 signatures over the summer for the bill, which would be an amendment to the borough’s home-rule charter banning natural-gas drilling and affirming residents’ rights to clean air and water.
“I was really impressed by the positive response that we got from a diverse group of people politically and demographically within the community,” he says. “There’s a lot of people out there who want to do something about natural gas drilling and this was a way for them do that. Even the people that weren’t sure wanted to know more about it before they signed.”
A similar effort is underway in Rush Township, where the citizens’ group Rush for Clean Water worked with the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund to draft an ordinance calling for an end to drilling activity there.
“At least 12 or 13 municipalities count on watersheds originating in Rush Township, and most of our water has already been contaminated by acid mine drainage,” Tom Harper, a Rush for Clean Water member, told the Centre Daily Times in a September 2011 article. “We’re not just concerned about frack fluid getting into aquifers, we’re worried about drillers boring a hole that would transfer water that’s already tainted into our good aquifers.”
Unlike the State College measure, stopping drilling that’s already taken place would prove more difficult and more legally questionable. As of press time, the ordinance was under review by Rush Township supervisors.
Earlier this year, the ClearWater Conservancy, Spring Creek Chapter of Trout Unlimited, and Sierra Club Moshannon group wrote a joint letter to state and local legislators urging them to support a temporary halt to all drilling activity in Centre County until questions related to the impact of fracking on local waterways could be addressed. The letter also called for stiffer regulations and oversight of drilling activity from the Department of Environmental Protection.
“We believe that the rapid expansion of natural-gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, the projected enormous scale of the industry, the use of new technologies and management practices whose impacts are not fully known, and the limited ability of our regulatory agencies to deal effectively with this burgeoning industry pose grave threats to public health, to our natural resources, and to the welfare of our local communities,” the letter reads, in part.
Judi Stitler, president of the Spring Creek Chapter of Trout Unlimited, says the group’s biggest concern is disposal of fracking water into Spring Creek.
“Municipal wastewater plants are ill equipped to deal with fracking fluid, and thus pose a pollution threat to the stream,” she says. “Recently the state Department of Environmental Protection asked drillers not to use this method of disposal, and at this time, we are unaware of any specific plans to treat and dispose of more waste fracking fluid within the Spring Creek Watershed.”
The letter was set to state senator Jake Corman and state representatives Kerry Benninghoff, Mike Hanna, and Scott Conklin. Stitler says Hanna was the only one to respond, vowing to support legislation that would help implement some of the requests made. The chapter also feels partnering with the other organizations provided a louder voice to share their message.
“We wanted to show them that a significant number of people in their districts are concerned about this issue, and that we are united in our position,” Stitler says. “The joint statement is our way of voicing that collective concern to the legislators.”
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While many have expressed environmental concerns, many others believe increased drilling activity has positively impacted Pennsylvania’s economy. Rex Energy, a State College-based company involved in Marcellus drilling, is one of many benefiting from the Marcellus boom. The company operates its own wells in Butler and Westmoreland counties and partners with Williams Energy, an Oklahoma-based company with offices in Pennsylvania, for its operations in Centre and Clearfield counties.
Tom Stabley, the company’s chief financial officer, says such partnerships are common in the industry and help Rex to maintain a financial stake in local wells while leaving day-to-day management tasks to someone else.
Chief operating officer Patrick McKinney says the group meets and exceeds standards set forth by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and is always looking for ways to improve its drilling technology to make it safer for the environment.
“DEP requires that we sample private water wells within a 1,000-foot radius that we’re going to drill; we regularly exceed that circumference,” he says. “We were one of the first companies to go to pitless drilling using a closed-loop system where there’s no chance for any kind of fluids to be spilled on the well side.”
The company also tries to hire local workers as much as it can to keep jobs in the state rather than bringing them in from outside.
“The longer this activity goes at this level, the contractors understand that we have to get a base of workers here, and we encourage vendors we work with to hire locally,” Stabley says. “Being a Pennsylvania company, we take pride in the fact that this is our state and it’s a privilege to operate here.”
From royalties paid to landowners to new jobs created at drilling sites, Marcellus Shale development supported between 23,385 and 23,884 jobs in the state and generated around $3.1 billion in economic activity, according to results of a study in 2009.
These findings were published in August in the study “Economic Impacts of Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania: Employment and Income in 2009.” Researchers from Penn State, Pennsylvania College of Technology, and Colorado State surveyed residents, business owners, and municipal governments in the counties with the largest amounts of Marcellus activity.
Tim Kelsey, a professor of agricultural economics at Penn State, headed the research. While Marcellus is still fairly new in the research world, Kelsey says the issues surrounding it are many of the same ones he’s been researching for years, such as the relationship between industry and local government and how industrial activity impacts community and economic development.
Two things the study did not examine, he says, are the costs associated with Marcellus drilling activity and how those costs relate to revenue.
“It’s easy to count benefits, but it’s much harder to count costs because they’re not always obvious,” he says. “Putting a dollar figure on exact costs is hard to do because it’s hard to tell exactly how many employees a company might have, what benefits they’re receiving, and things like that. Those are all costs that need to be accounted for.”
Like Murphy, Kelsey says he and his colleagues tried their best to remain objective in their research and not appear to favor economic development over environmental impacts. He says people on all sides of the issue can likely find data and observations in the study to support their respective causes.
He and his colleagues are shying away from perhaps the biggest economic issue related to Marcellus — the local impact fees — because they feel it has already become too politicized to conduct fair research and provide an objective take on the issue. In early October, Governor Tom Corbett unveiled a plan that would allow counties to impose an impact fee for up to 10 years.
“That issue became polarized so quickly that the moment for learning has passed and any research would be portrayed as being in support of one side or the other,” Kelsey says. “We try to be neutral, even if it means not stepping in.”
When the 2009 study was released, Kelsey said, “The long-run implications of Marcellus Shale development are still unknown. We believe our results must be viewed as a preliminary, short-term view of the impacts of Marcellus Shale and should be placed in the broader context of these other important concerns.”
Now with Penn State set to host the Marcellus Summit for the fourth year, Dave Messersmith, a Penn State cooperative-extension educator and member of the summit’s planning committee, says it will explore a variety of issues relating to Marcellus development and its impact.
And with experts predicting that Marcellus can be actively drilled for at least the next two decades, he adds that the focus has evolved to a discussion of the long-term implications of Marcellus activity rather than capitalizing on a short-term boom.
“Looking back at our first event in 2008, we were looking at exactly what the impacts were for Pennsylvania and wondering whether it’s a short-term thing for the industry,” he says. “Even as a little as a year ago, a lot of people were questioning whether the Marcellus industry is here to stay. It’s certainly evident now that it is and it will be part of our future.”
Jenna Spinelle is a freelance writer in State College. She works in Penn State’s Undergraduate Admissions Office and is an adjunct lecturer in the College of Communications.
