Pennsylvania

Energy. Environment. Economy.

Introducing StateImpact’s New Marcellus Shale App

December 14, 2011 | 9:35 AM
By Scott Detrow

StateImpact’s new app tracks Mar­cel­lus Shale wells

Who’s drilling where?

It’s the basic ques­tion every­one wants to know about Pennsylvania’s Mar­cel­lus Shale boom, and it’s some­thing StateImpact’s new inter­ac­tive app will help answer.

More than 1,600 shale gas wells are plot­ted in the app, which reflects the state’s most-updated data for 2011. Click on a well, and you’ll learn who owns it, how much gas it’s pro­duc­ing, and whether Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion inspec­tors have cited it for vio­la­tions. Problem-free wells are green on the map. If inspec­tors have cited a site for vio­la­tions, it’s plot­ted as a orange dot — and the cita­tion details are listed on the page.

Click on the image to view StateImpact’s new Mar­cel­lus Shale app

Every sin­gle well has its own own page, so you can link to them or share them via Twit­ter and Face­book. If you think there’s more we need to know about the drilling site, there’s a space for you to share com­ments, sto­ries or pictures.

The app helps answer broader ques­tions, too. Try­ing to fig­ure out who the biggest play­ers are, or what areas are drilling hot spots? You can nav­i­gate to wells by county, munic­i­pal­ity or oper­a­tor to learn that information.

Our app is based on data from DEP’s web­site. The depart­ment updates pro­duc­tion infor­ma­tion twice a year, and refreshes vio­la­tion reports about once a month. The next pro­duc­tion update is sched­uled for early next month. We’ll refresh the app as soon as the new data is public.

Some con­text on the app’s infor­ma­tion: the pro­duc­tion data cov­ers DEP’s last report­ing period, so the total you’ll see for each well is the amount of gas pro­duced between Jan­u­ary and June 2011. The app only tracks pro­duc­ing wells, so the thou­sands of addi­tional wells DEP has issued per­mits for, but aren’t yet pro­duc­ing, do not appear on the site. Finally, a reminder that 1,608 wells doesn’t mean there are 1,608 large drilling rigs dot­ting Penn­syl­va­nia. Energy com­pa­nies drill mul­ti­ple wells on each site.

So click on the app, and after you do, let us know what you think by send­ing us an email. Also, be sure to check back through­out the week, as we pub­lish reports based on the infor­ma­tion in the app.

Comments

  • Ban­jo­tune

    I haven’t noticed this in my state of West Vir­ginia.  How was this made? 

    • http://twitter.com/purifypolitics not joe the plumber

      magic

  • Penguin5b

    NPR needs to be defunded NOW. Let’s see…George Soros, ultra-progressive, ultra lib­eral, gives 1.8 mil­lion to NPR to start his pet project called “State Impact”. Now go to the NPR site, specif­i­cally the State Impact area. Look who else is cur­rently fund­ing it:

    Doris Duke Char­i­ta­ble Foun­da­tion
    Ethics & Excel­lence in Jour­nal­ism Foun­da­tion
    The William and Flora Hewlett Foun­da­tion
    The Melville Char­i­ta­ble Trust
    Open Soci­ety Foun­da­tion
    The Wal­lace Foun­da­tion
    Ultra pro­gres­sives all. Now, does any honest-thinking per­son actu­ally believe that report­ing born of this parent­age will be fair and bal­anced? Any­one? If you doubt me just visit the sites of the 8 dif­fer­ent states cov­ered by State Impact and look at the issues focused on and the slanted cov­er­age thereof.

    Here in PA the major focus is drilling the Mar­cel­lus shale. EVERY SINGLE STORY is a hit piece against the indus­try and are lit­tle more than op/ed columns. State Impact? Couldn’t “impact” be both good and bad? Then where are the sto­ries about how drilling has ben­e­fited PA? Jobs, tax rev­enue, eco­nomic plusses, less reliance on for­eign energy, among oth­ers. Surely these things should rate at least a story or two every now and then.

    But I’m sure Scott Detrow and Suzy Phillps would like to keep their jobs. And when your bosses are Soros and Ann Bee­son, well you just bet­ter be sure to toe the line.

    So how about it Scott &Suzy? How about a lit­tle bal­ance? Surely not every per­son in PA is against drilling. Maybe you could find a few and stick your mic in their faces, as repul­sive as you find this to be. You see, if you really want your sto­ries to have the “impact” that Soros/Beeson intended with their grant, here’s what to do: Prac­tice some hon­est, objec­tive jour­nal­ism and print of few of those sto­ries I men­tioned. That way, your hit pieces will actu­ally have more legit­i­macy by com­par­i­son. Get it? I’m not sure that Soros/Beeson will be pleased, but if they remove you from the project at least you’ll have the sat­is­fac­tion that you actu­ally per­formed what you got into the jour­nal­ism busi­ness to do — tell the truth.

    • Deanna

      I have to say this site has been one of the only places around to get objec­tive infor­ma­tion about drilling.  There are very few sources of infor­ma­tion NOT funded by the indus­try.  In my oppin­ion, our indus­try funded gov­er­nor and leg­is­la­tors are putting the health and wel­fare of the cit­i­zens of Penn­syl­va­nia at risk by allow­ing this toxic indus­try to freely pol­lute our air and water.    He is also intent on tak­ing away basic rights of cit­i­zens to have a voice in whether or not they want frack­ing to hap­pen in their com­mu­ni­ties.  As a mother, I feel a strong respon­si­bil­ity toward allow­ing my chil­dren to grow up in a healty envi­ron­ment.  As it stands Penn­syl­va­nia is on a path toward large scale pol­lu­tion and envi­ron­men­tal dev­as­ta­tion. I am a sup­porter of NPR because I can get unbi­ased infor­ma­tion that is not avail­able from other media sources.  I would not be if they sim­ply repeated the same rhetoric as every­one else.  I thank them for qual­ity reporting.

    • patriot

      I sug­gest that Penguin5B should buy a home near a Mar­cel­lus well at the price it would have brought before we all learned of the Mar­cel­lus and live in it.  And drink the water from the home’s water well and have his whole fam­ily drink the water.  This may give him a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive on the devel­op­ment of the Mar­cel­lus shale.  I believe that very few peo­ple are totally against any devel­op­ment of the Mar­cel­lus shale, but many peo­ple think it should be man­aged to make its devel­op­ment safe for those of us who are here now and those who will come after us.  I would wager even money that Penguin5B ben­e­fits in some way from the Marcellus.

      Drop the ad hominem attacks and address the issue of less­en­ing envi­ro­men­tal damage.

  • Scott

    @Penguin5b: Every­one I know is against the drilling, specif­i­cally the chem­i­cal frack­ing tech­nique. I’m all for a free mar­ket, but the issues raised about water usage, pos­si­ble ground­wa­ter pol­lu­tion, and the release of methane into neigh­bor­ing wells is all very impor­tant stuff.

    • ajm8127

      I agree. I live right at the west­ern tip of Allegheny county. It seem that the con­cern over the frac­ing fluid migrat­ing through thee bedrock is mask­ing another threat. We need to look at the thou­sands of ponds that hold the frac­ing fluid on the sur­face. Not only can spills occur, but out gassing of the com­pounds in the fluid is a major con­cern to nearby ingredients.

      I think that nat­ural gas can be a great energy source as we move away from coal and towards truly renew­able non fos­sil fuel energy. The eco­nomic ben­e­fits are unde­ni­able. The drilling need the man­aged respon­si­bly, how­ever, and we know that the free mar­ket is not that great at keep­ing the public’s inter­est in mind.

  • http://twitter.com/fracktrack Mar­cel­lus Mapper

    This infor­ma­tion has been avail­able on http://www.fracktrack.org/search.php for the past year.

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