Thousands Protest Outside Shale Drilling Conference In Philadelphia

An estimated 2,000 people showed up this morning to protest the industry and its controversial drilling process known as “fracking.”

“My backyard is a wildlife habitat,” noted Susan Breese of Susquehanna County (right), who calls herself a natural-born environmentalist.  But she says that’s been a lot tougher since a shale-gas well was drilled near her home in 2008.

The main issue for her, and one echoed by other foes, is contaminated water.  Hers has more than double the allowable limit of barium and nearly four times the limit for strontium.

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Fracking eyed as drain on water

The Marcellus Shale natural gas industry has a huge thirst for water — to hydraulically fracture a single gas well requires upward of a thousand tanker-trucks of water.

And so during the summer, when some streams here in gas-rich northern Pennsylvania naturally turn into trickles, the Susquehanna River Basin Commission pays close attention to ensure that drilling interests don’t suck the state’s creeks dry.

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Geologists Sharply Cut Estimate of Shale Gas

Federal geologists published new estimates this week for the amount of natural gas that exists in a giant rock formation known as the Marcellus Shale, which stretches from New York to Virginia.

The shale formation has about 84 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas, according to the report from the United States Geological Survey. This is drastically lower than the 410 trillion cubic feet that was published earlier this year by the federal Energy Information Administration.

As a result, the Energy Information Administration, which is responsible for quantifying oil and gas supplies, has said it will slash its official estimate for the Marcellus Shale by nearly 80 percent, a move that is likely to generate new questions about how the agency calculates its estimates and why it was so far off in its projections.

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Looking for Gas in All the Wrong Places

Interspersed with the expressions of love, hope and resolution were substantive points of anxiety. No one knows how much contaminated water will escape and where it will go. Even if we stop it here other towns might surrender and we could see a truck kicking up dust and leaking sand every 60 seconds, seven days a week. The noise level will make conversation impossible; no more sitting on the porch of the hotel or the coffee shop. Property values will plummet by 50 to 75 percent (this from a long-time Realtor). Banks are reluctant to write mortgages on property that is being drilled on. There might be limited short-term benefits to a few, but the boom will be followed by a bust, and when it is all over “people won’t want to live here anymore.”

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