Marcellus Drillers Exceed DEP Safety Standards

At a community forum in Luzerne County Scott Perry, Director of Oil and Gas Management for the PA Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) explained how Marcellus natural gas drillers are constructing wells that far surpass DEP standards:

I will tell you that the Marcellus operators have been building their wells to exceed our current regulatory standards; they’re building their wells in a manner that exceeds the [new] standards that we have actually proposed, in many respects.

He also set the facts straight on a number of additional environmental concerns, including water withdrawls and hydraulic facturing:

. . the Susquehanna River Basin Commission estimates it will be using less water than our golf courses and ski resorts; it’s going to be using less water than recreation.

First of all, it’s [hydraulic fracturing] standard operating procedure in Pennsylvania. And it’s important to point out that we’ve never seen an impact to fresh groundwater directly from fracking.

A lot of folks relate the situation in Dimock to a fracking problem. I just want to make sure everyone’ s clear on this – that it isn’t. What happened in Dimock was that a company was drilling in the Marcellus, and they encountered a shallow gas producing formation … which is common in this area of Pennsylvania. It wasn’t a fracking problem.