"Marcellus panel looks for common ground at first meeting"

[Divernan]

Saturday, March 26, 2011
By Laura Olson, Post-Gazette Harrisburg Bureau

HARRISBURG -- The public comments at the end of Friday's inaugural meeting of the state Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission showed part of the challenge facing that panel during the next four months.

One county commissioner stood up to laud the number of jobs that gas drilling has brought to his community. He was followed by a northeastern resident who said her property value has plummeted because of the surrounding well pads, and another woman citing concerns about water quality.

"I moved up here to be at peace with nature," Wyoming County resident Joanne Fiorito told the panel. "You have now ripped my American dream apart, and I am appalled and outraged."

The 30-member panel has 120 days to assess how the state is managing natural gas drilling, as well as find some policy agreement between those skeptical of the booming business and those benefiting from it.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11085/1134884-503.stm#ixzz1HhZqFBZY

_________________________________________________________________________________
The article has a sidebar listing all members of this advisory group, which is heavily weighted with oil company executives and Corbett's cabinet members who are former oil company executives.

[Divernan]

1. This commission is Big Oil's version of the Cat Food Commission

It is super top heavy with Big Oil representatives, plus Corbett's cabinet members who have ties to Big Oil. There are only three token good guys - the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's PA Director, the Nature Conservancy & Western Pennsylvania Conservancy - greatly outnumbered by corporate interests & Corbett's political puppets.

What about academia? We all know how Corbett respects education!
The sole representative is a professor from Penn State, one Larry Engelder. Dr. Engelder is a professor of geosciences at Penn State. His entire professional career, thirty years, has been dedicated to promoting exploration of the Marcellus Shale and debating what is the most profitable way to drill - horizontal or vertical.

Yes, it's all about VAST profits:
"The value of this science could increment the net worth of U.S. energy resources by a trillion dollars, plus or minus billions," said Terry Engelder.
http://live.psu.edu/story/28116

And nary a damn word about public health impacts, private property values or environmental damage to water and air.

Prepare to be shocked! Engelder works with a SUNY professor, Gary Lash.

"Engelder and Lash are principals in Appalachian Fracture Systems Inc., a consulting firm."
And the following link tells us that Professor Engelder is a darling of the Association of Petroleum Geologists.
Hey, Pennsylvanians! What's not to like?!?!?
s immeasurable.’”

For more information, you could read a paper written by Engelder and Lash, “Systematic joints in Devonian black shale:
A target for horizontal drilling in the Appalachian Basin” (PDF format, 19 pages, 489 KB, courtesy of the Pittsburgh Association of Petroleum Geologists (PAPG)). The two researchers will present some of their recent work at the 2008 American Association of Petroleum Geologists Annual Convention and Exhibition this spring.

In fact, the more I learn about Engelder, the more he deserves his own thread.

[supersnooper58]

2. re:"Marcellus panel looks for common ground at first meeting"

funny how the media only honed in on that part of my entire statement that I gave yesterday.....

I would have felt better if they focused in on the part where I told them that their science is unsound and that this industry knows its casings fail (EVERYONE OF THEM)......

ya see BRINE eats through cement and steel....and we live in an earthquake zone, plagued by tornadoes due to climate change....

what's worse is that the DEP guy Scott Perry lied when he told the newly formed commission that the brine water is only 10 times saltier than sea water.....because what they don't tell you is... that there's a play of salt down below that gets affected at the same time when they frac, turning the brine into something that's actually 300 times saltier than the sea.....

I know plenty of taxpaying citizens who are now drawing their water from plastic water buffalos, provided by industry that vehemently denies any wrongdoing on their part.... and there's been no discussion as to who shall pay those who are affected doctors' bills now that they've been poisoned by frac water and the toxic parts of the play that's impacted their private well water. Their homes are now worthless, and they can't afford to move out of the poisoned zones.....

quite frankly the people up here in the "core" (as these Corbett putz's like to call it), have had enough of their lies and deceit......

they cannot sacrifice our lives for profit and get away with it in the 21st Century, and that... I can promise you....

[Divernan]

3. Welcome to DU in general and the Pennsylvania forum in particular.

Your input on brine is very significant. Please post a lot and tell us what you observe.

Do you have links to any blogs or other sources you would recommend? Especially re your points on casing failure and brine concentration? Reporters typically need at least two sources before they'll print allegations.

[supersnooper58]

5. re: Welcome to DU in general and the Pennsylvania forum in particular.

speak with Dr. Anthony Ingraffea of Cornell U...

http://tinyurl.com/4ody5fu

Dr. Ingraffea's videos are very enlightening, however, I prefer going to wherever he's been asked to speak on the subject....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_05A3Rr4t0

or see some comments in the NYTimes:

The cementing integrity of well bores is a serious issue that hasn't received enough gas industry or regulatory attention. Cement failure is a chronic problem in the industry, according to Dr. Anthony Ingraffea, a fracking expert and professor of civil and environmental engineering at Cornell. Ingraffea has said in various articles that cementing is a complex, fallible process in horizontally drilled wells. Many of the wells have horizontal bores running up to three miles in length. Each time the well bore is re-pressurized for a frack job, it puts the cement at risk. A long horizontal well that has to be re-pressurized over and over again to frack each 500-foot section is at greater risk for failure.
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/us/04gas.html?sort=recommended&offset=3

or you can contact Prof. Durand out of Canada...

http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/Fracking+will+cause+irreversible+harm/4387383/story.html

and if you really want the truth about endocrine disruptors, then I suggest you familiarize yourselves with Dr. Theo Colborn

http://tinyurl.com/68vvdw3

she's even testified before our FEDERAL Congress about the subject....

her website:

http://www.endocrinedisruption.com/chemicals.video.php

buon appetito

[blue neen]

4. Well, the Post Gazette endorsed Tom Corbett so they're doing their best to softpedal what he does.

We've been relying on each other to find out the real truth. What you posted about the brine is QUITE interesting.

We know that the Marcellus Shale drilling will go on. Why can't they take their time and do it right? It's not like it's going to disappear!

Welcome to DU! :)

[supersnooper58]

6. re: Well, the Post Gazette endorsedTom Corbett so they're doing their best to softpedal what he does

"We've been relying on each other to find out the real truth....Why can't they take their time and do it right? It's not like it's going to disappear!"

we here in the shale play have been learning the same way....it's like a dentist working on a patient's mouth, where it takes a tooth pulling to extract the truth out of those in the know...

as to why they don't take their time, that's not a hard one to understand, they're greedy capitalists who are hellbent on an immediate payday....

it's not like our gov't LOCAL/STATE/FEDERAL have been upfront with us on the issue, and if you think about it, there's never been a order by any of those gov't entities demanding that we render our lands unto Caesar, just yet.....so if we were in fact at that cusp, it would be imperative that we submit, tho' it would not sit well with landowners....right now the industry/state gov't are fashioning laws to steal our lands through eminent domain, just so over 50 different companies can run their gathering lines through HOLDOUT lands....I being one of those people.....

I'm on the National DO NOT CALL LIST, but that hasn't stopped Chesapeake Energy from hounding my house (ILLEGALLY) with phone calls using pressure tactics to get me to sign on....but I'll sue them before that day ever comes to fruition...

we have overweight vehicles that belong to this industry, and its subcontractors that have damaged our 10 ton roads.....I even have a 30ft section of guide rail that was ripped off its supports stanchions because the wide load was in fact wider than the road.....

when the drillers vent/flare a gas well up here, our air becomes putrid, and it makes a person gag, while one's eyes welt up with tears that try to drive off the offending chemical assault on our eyes....

if this is left unfettered...meaning that if the rush to gas isn't stopped now, there will be no safe water to drink, no air to breathe, and the land will be rendered useless and unable to grow food that is safe to consume....

there are many lawyers working on stopping this onslaught but hey, if a court refuses to hear a case based on facts, then what.....it is to the point of mutiny as we speak.....

this isn't America anymore....we are a third world nation, thanks to Darth Vader Dick and his mini-me lil Shrub.....and Obama better get with it or this Democrat will vote differently in this next selection round of why I even bother to vote, it's all a lie anyway. It's times like this that makes me wonder why I even bothered to don a US Navy Uniform back in the day....

[blue neen]

7. I saw a Chesapeake Energy van in my driving through the neighborhood yesterday.

I thought, Oh God, they're already here.

The way they have invaded our state has been insidious, like stealth missions--"We don't want them to know exactly where we are!"

We spend 50 years cleaning up the rivers and the hillsides because of the environmental disasters the coal industry left us. Now those same waterways are having fracking water dumped into them--and no one will tell us what is really in it.

Governor Gasshole and all of his Marcellus Shale cronies are just as toxic as the drilling itself.

[supersnooper58]

9. Softpeddling.....mafisto is more the word

stop worrying about the damn salt.....when weapons grade material ends up your morning cup of JOE...

'Fracking' Mobilizes Uranium in Marcellus Shale, UB Research Finds

http://www.buffalo.edu/news/11885

one glass (tiny dose) of this stuff and you'll be peeing hot until your body parts finally melt into goo....

I gots d'Wellsboro Blues....

http://www.tiogapublishing.com/articles/2011/03/16/news/doc4d80fc47ed432308361259.txt

[supersnooper58]

8. Marcellus Shale Commission is jaded.....

Others, such as Bradford County commissioner Doug McLinko, were far more enthusiastic.

"We have a climate change in Bradford County -- the climate is, family farms are being saved, mom and pops are seeing so much prosperity that they've never seen before," he said. "The best unemployment gauge in Bradford County: if you want to go to work, you can find a job." http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9M6I1H02.htm

Yo McLinko (aka McKlinko), so much for your smoke and mirrors effect......eh

The Buffalos of Bradford County
Three families file lawsuits against Chesapeake

http://pubcomm.blogspot.com/