Pennsylvania

Energy. Environment. Economy.

Pa.‘s Congressional Delegation Pushes to Keep the Feds Out of Fracking

October 19, 2011 | 11:00 AM
By Scott Detrow

Scott Detrow / StateImpactPA

A Brad­ford County drilling rig

A dozen of Pennsylvania’s U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives have sent a let­ter to the White House, urg­ing Pres­i­dent Obama to keep the bulk of nat­ural gas drilling reg­u­la­tion at the state, not fed­eral, level.

Mem­bers of both par­ties signed onto the document.

Lan­caster Online has more:

The law­mak­ers, in a let­ter to senior White House eco­nomic adviser Gene Sper­ling, say the “eco­nomic ben­e­fits of shale gas to ordi­nary cit­i­zens” are being over­looked as envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tors study the impact of hydraulic frac­tur­ing, the pro­ce­dure used to extract nat­ural gas from the earth.

“The exis­tence of shale gas in the United States, cou­pled with the tech­no­log­i­cal achieve­ments that have made its pro­duc­tion pos­si­ble, present a tremen­dous eco­nomic oppor­tu­nity for our nation,” the let­ter states.

“It is our view that the states are in the best posi­tion to reg­u­late the activ­ity, given that the types of frac­tur­ing oper­a­tions, local pri­or­i­ties, and envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns vary widely among the regions in which hydraulic frac­tur­ing is used,” the let­ter, dated Oct. 13, says.

Read more: http://lancasteronline.com/article/local/481362_Pitts–Leave-natural-gas-drilling-regs-to-states.html#ixzz1bEjeteo6

Comments

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_T5AQOTQAX3TMF7AVYYRUW3THMY Julieann Woz­niak

    Unfor­tu­nately for our Con­gres­sional del­e­ga­tion, reg­u­lar Penn­syl­va­ni­ans (read: “con­stituents”) WANT fed­eral over­sight in frack­ing because PADEP, in its entire his­tory, has never pro­tected the pub­lic inter­est in any extrac­tive indus­try. We aren’t bet­ting our health and safety on them. The con­gres­sional del­e­ga­tion needs to remem­ber that they are replace­able. We are the 98 percent.

  • cku­ni­holm

    States don’t have the exper­tise or man­power to reg­u­late frack­ing appro­pri­ately. They also don’t want to, since so many have deep finan­cial ties to the nat­ural gas cor­po­ra­tions. How many of our con­gres­sional del­e­gates have leased land? And how many more have received major con­tri­bu­tions from those who ben­e­fit from frack­ing?
    The Hal­libur­ton Loop­hole needs to be removed, the EPA needs to com­plete its research and cre­ate appro­pri­ate leg­is­la­tion, and there should be a mora­to­rium on new wells until that leg­is­la­tion is in place. Accord­ing to an arti­cle in the lat­est Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can: “A long list of tech­ni­cal ques­tions remains unan­swered about the ways the prac­tice could con­t­a­m­i­nate drink­ing water, the extent to which it already has, and what the indus­try could do to reduce the risks. To fill this gap, the U.S. Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency is now con­duct­ing com­pre­hen­sive field research. Pre­lim­i­nary results are due in late 2012. Until then, states should put the brakes on the drillers.“http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=safety-first-fracking-second

    • Gary­David

      Thank you for sav­ing me the time of writ­ing such an elo­quent com­ment. Although less elo­quent, I think I still would have ref­er­enced the good ‘ol “fox watch­ing the hen house”.

      Seri­ously, I will now go find the sig­na­to­ries to this let­ter and make long term note of the their names for exclu­sion from any votes I cast in the future.

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