Biblio
Residents of others states are issuing words of warning for New Yorkers who may soon allow companies to use the "fracking" process to drill for natural gas.
I live and work in Marcellus shale ground zero -- central New York State, just south of the Finger Lakes, one of the biggest and best watersheds in the hemisphere. My home is in economically challenged, mostly rural Tioga County, and I work in Tompkins County. Almost all our neighbors for several miles around have signed gas leases. I participate regularly and actively as a client, colleague, patient, or volunteer with businesses, organizations, and institutions in 19 other New York counties.
I have been economically poor and landless, economically comfortable and landless, comfortable and landed, and poor and landed. I've been rural, suburban, and urban. And I've spent most of my adult life paying state and local taxes in New York State (and a whole lot of national taxes, most of which have gone toward things I do not condone).
Writer Maura Stephens lives in the hills outside Spencer, New York. She wrote this using voice recognition software.
Radio Broadcast. Interview with Mayor Calvin Tilman.
Vast new natural gas fields have opened up thanks to an advanced drilling technique. While natural gas is a cleaner burning fuel than coal or petroleum, extracting it is still hard, dirty work.
Some people who live near the massive Barnett Shale gas deposit in north Texas, have complaints. Health and environmental concerns are prompting state regulators to take a closer look.
Includes transcript. 7 min. 18 sec.
See: Dish Mayor Calvin Tilman Testifies at Railroad Commission - Oil and Gas Lawyer Blog.
See: How Should We Do the Mountain?: Who the heck is Calvin Tilman?
Announcer: Paul Bison agreed back in March to let Chesapeake drill a well on his 80 acres in Keithville.
Paul Bison: Nobody in the section, in the neighborhood is gonna ever benefit unless somebody lets 'em drill and when we leased three years ago, we knew what it was for, we took the money and now it's time for somebody to step up to the plate and help em let it happen.
1976 video clip of M King Hubbert speaking about world oil depletion and explaining the concept of peak oil.
See article on the Energy Policy Act (2005).
A report on how the Federal Safe Drinking Water was amended by the U.S. Congress in 2005 to exempt hydraulic fracturing from its regulations.
WASHINGTON — Over the last four years, the Bush administration and Vice President Dick Cheney's office have backed a series of measures favoring a drilling technique developed by Halliburton Co., Cheney's former employer.
The technology, known as hydraulic fracturing, boosts gas and oil production and generates $1.5 billion a year for the company, about one-fifth of its energy-related revenue. In recent years, Halliburton and other oil and gas firms have been fighting efforts to regulate the procedure under a statute that protects drinking water supplies.
The 2001 national energy policy report, written under the direction of the vice president's office, cited the value of hydraulic fracturing but didn't mention concerns raised by staff members at the Environmental Protection Agency.
Since then, the administration has taken steps to keep the practice from being regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act, which Halliburton has said would hurt its business and add needless costs and bureaucratic delays.
An EPA study concluded in June that there was no evidence that hydraulic fracturing posed a threat to drinking water. However, some EPA employees complained about the study internally before its completion, and others have strongly criticized it publicly since its release.
