Marcellus Shale

The Marcellus Shale – America’s next super giant

Fragmentation: The Catskills and adjacent lands in Pennsylvania contain some of the largest contiguous forest blocks east of the Mississippi River.  This area acts as an important species corridor between the Catskill Park, the Shawangunk Ridge, the Hudson Highlands and the Poconos. There are multiple species of either endangered or special concern and indicator species of healthy vibrant habitat found here.  The number of roads and increased heavy truck traffic and cleared swaths for pipelines to connect the drilling pads to the millennium pipeline will dissect these important forest blocks and corridor.

Air and Noise Pollution: Drilling for gas is a highly industrial undertaking which includes numerous truckloads of equipment, chemicals, sand and water along with generators, pumps, drilling rigs and hoists. All of which are running at all hours of the day producing noise and exhaust fumes.  When gas is found there can be a release of the various gases in the formation.

Normally Occurring Radioactive Material (NORMS): NORMS are found in many geological formations and can be brought to the surface on drilling equipment and in fluids.  Once at the surface it can accumulate as sediments in holding tanks and ponds.  This is an issue in the Barnett Shale, which are not the same rock.  However, NORMS occur in NY at higher levels than in PA and have not been tested in the eastern part of the state.

They’ve asked the state Department of Environmental Protection to establish a one-mile protective perimeter around each of the city’s six major Catskill reservoirs and connecting infrastructure — a buffer that would put at least half a million acres off-limits to drilling. They also want to wrest more regulatory control from Albany.  New York is one of just four major cities in the United States with a special permit allowing its drinking water to go unfiltered, and that pristine water comes from a network of reservoirs and rivers in five upstate counties. If the special permit was revoked, the city would have to build a treatment facility that could cost nearly $10 billion, said Walter Mugden, a senior official at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. That’s roughly what the state estimated it would earn from gas development over the next decade. In a letter (PDF) from the city Department of Environmental Protection to state officials, obtained by ProPublica, commissioner Emily Lloyd said she was not satisfied with the state’s assurances that the environment would be protected from drilling in the Marcellus Shale, a layer of rock that dives up to 9,000 feet below much of the Appalachian east, including south central New York state and the 2000-square-mile watershed.
Find out more at Propublica from Investigative Journalist Abrahm Lustgarten here

There are some excellent web sites out there covering these issues more in depth such as The Oil and Gas accountability project By Earthworks www.ogap.org. A very important document they have produced is Oil and Gas at Your Door? A landowner’s guide to oil and gas development.

There are many community groups throughout the country faced with gas drilling that have websites.  Here are two for example that offer valuable information; FWCANDO.ORG from Fort Worth Texas, which is in the Barnett shale Similar to Marcellus and Damascus Citizens for Sustainability at www.DamascusCitizens.org an organization based in Damascus PA dedicated to “preventing the dire effects of gas well drilling, such as polluted drinking water, carcinogens in the farmland and food chain, torn-up roads, risk of gas fires, plummeting real estate values, and screeching noise polution.” In the Catskills there are a number of groups that are now working on the gas drilling issue.
Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy is a newly formed grassroots organization specifically focused on the gas drilling issue and keep a calendar of important events related to drilling of the Catskills.

The Delaware Riverkeeper and the Hudson Riverkeeper are closely monitoring and informing the public about gas drilling and it’s potential impacts on there respective wathersheds.
** The Marcellus shale maps, horizontal well art, photomicrograph and image captions below are used with permission of Geology.com. Do not reproduce, reprint or otherwise use this content without permission from Geology.com. **

Thickness map of the Marcellus Shale. Modified after: United States Geological Survey, Open-File Report 2006-1237, Assessment of Appalachian Basin oil and gas resources: Devonian Shale-Middle and Upper Paleozoic Total Petroleum System, by Robert Milici and Christopher Swezey.

Wells drilled into the Marcellus employ two technologies that are relatively new in the Appalachian Basin. One is horizontal drilling, in which a vertical well is deviated to horizontal so that it will penetrate a maximum number of vertical rock fractures. The second is “hydrofracing” in which a portion of the well is sealed off and water is pumped in to produce a pressure that is high enough to fracture the surrounding rock. The result is a highly fractured reservoir that is penetrated by a long length of well bore.

Photomicrograph of a polished section of Marcellus Shale in reflected light. The gold particles are pyrite grains which are common in organic-rich rocks. The large brown elongated body is a compressed plant spore with a few pyrite grains in the central cavity. The remainder of the rock is a clay matrix with a heavy brown organic stain.The width of this image spans about 0.2 millimeter of the shale.

THE MILLENNIUM PIPELINE
The 182-mile Millennium Pipeline was approved late last year by federal regulators and workers have begun laying pipes.  When it’s done, the line will run from Corning in Steuben County across New York’s Southern Tier and down the western side of Sullivan and Orange counties, ending at Ramapo in Rockland County. It will replace a 10-inch pipeline owned by Columbia Gas with a 30-inch line. The project is expected to be completed late next year, when the line will begin supplying natural gas to utilities along its route.

The pipeline will be the main outlet for all of the natural gas drilling in the Delaware River Valley and the Catskills.Millennium Phase 1 will include the 186-mile section of Millennium from Corning, N.Y., to Ramapo, N.Y. This section replaces and upgrades an existing Columbia Gas Transmission natural gas pipeline:

Visit the New York State Landmarks website for an excellent photo journal of the Pipeline coming through Binghamton, New York in the Summer of 2008.  Click here to see the online gallery

Diagram of the Marc I Hub Line (Graphic: Business Wire).  The above grapic shows the various natural gas pipelines and hub lines that criss cross the Marcellus Shale formation in our area.  Click on the picture above for a larger version courtesy of Business Wire.

Other regions …

Midwest – IL, IN, MI, MN, OH, WI
Southeast – AL, FL, GA, KY, MS, NC, SC, TN
Southwest – AR, LA, NM, OK, TX
Central – CO, IA, KS, MO, MT, NE, ND, SD, UT, WY
Western – AZ, CA, ID, NV, OR, WA

Other Natural Gas Transportation Topics:
Interstate – Pipeline systems that cross one or more States
Intrastate – Pipeline systems that operate only within State boundaries
Network Design - Basic concepts and parameters
Pipeline Capacity & Usage
Regulatory Authorities
Transportation, Processing, & Gathering
Transportation Corridors
Underground Natural Gas Storage
Pipeline Development & Expansion
U.S./Canada/Mexico Import & Export LocationsNortheast Region Natural Gas Pipeline Network

• General Fund for State Reforestation and Multiple Use Areas
• Conservation Fund for Wildlife Management Areas
• Through DEC exchange account to the appropriate other state agency

New York State Oil and Gas, Mining And Reclamation Laws

The policy statements for the Mined Land Reclamation Law and the Oil, Gas and Solution Mining Law are posted on this site. Complete text of both laws can be found at the New York State Legislation website. From this opening page select the link “Laws of New York”, then choose “ENV” for Environmental Conservation Law, then pick Article 23 or Article 71 and the relevant Title.

Article 23 – Mineral Resources

Title 1 – (23-0101 – 23-0102) Definitions
Title 3 – (23-0301 – 23-0313) General Provisions
Title 5 – (23-0501 – 23-0503) Well Permits and Well Spacing in Oil and Natural Gas Pools and Fields
Title 7 – (23-0701) Voluntary Integration and Unitization in Oil and Natural Gas Pools and Fields
Title 9 – (23-0901) Compulsory Integration and Unitization in Oil and Natural Gas Pools and Fields
Title 11 – (23-1101 – 23-1103) Leases for Production and Storage of Oil and Gas on State Lands
Title 13 – (23-1301 – 23-1307) Underground Storage of Gas
Title 17 – (23-1701 – 23-1727) Liquefied Natural And Petroleum Gas
Title 19 – (23-1901 – 23-1903) Oil, Gas and Solution Mining Regulation and Reclamation Fee
Title 21 – (23-2101) Interstate Compact to Conserve Oil and Gas
Title 23 – (23-2301 – 23-2311) Rerefining of Used Oil
Title 24 – (23-2401 – 23-2402) New York State Oil Energy Conservation Program
Title 27 – (23-2701 – 23-2723) New York State Mined Land Reclamation Law

Article 71 – Enforcement

Title 13 – (71-1301 – 71-1311) Enforcement of Article 23