A new photo exhibit on Marcellus Shale is up at the Gershman Y in Philadelphia, and it’s worth a look if you’re in town. Several years ago six professional photographers, including a Pulitzer Prize winner, decided to document the Marcellus Shale drilling boom in Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh resident Brian Cohen helped conceive the idea, and simply calls it the Marcellus Shale Documentary Project.The photographers also include Noah Addis, Nina Berman, Scott Goldsmith, Lynn Johnson, and Martha Rial. A panel discussion and reception takes place Wednesday evening, January 23. I spoke with Brian Cohen last week as he was hanging the show in Center City Philadelphia.
Jodie Simons shows the methane filled water that comes out of her kitchen faucet. Shortly after a second well was drilled and fracked near their property, Jodie's daugther became sick with nausea and headaches. When she stopped drinking the tap water, the symptoms stopped. Their animals died after a first well was drilled.
Skylar Sowatskey, 3, poses for a portrait near her home in Connoquenessing Township, Pa. Sowatsky's family moved after their well water turned black and then dried up. Her mother Kim McEvoy blames their water problems to nearby gas drilling.
Scott Goldsmith / Marcellus Shale Documentary Project permalink
Flames show where natural gas bubbles up into a natural spring, Smithfield, Pa. David Headly discovered the gas after wells were fracked on his property, and his horses stopped drinking it.
Lynn Johnson / Marcellus Shale Documentary Project permalink
Activists and a gas rig worker meet at the edge of a drilling operation in Moshannon State Forest. The activists, calling themselves "Earth First Marcellus," built a barricade, and managed to shut down operations for several hours last July.
Consol Energy drill site. Consol was the only gas company that agreed to give the photographers access to drilling operations and workers.
Brian Cohen / Marcellus Shale Documentary Project permalink
Janet McIntyre at her home in Connequenessing Township, Butler County. McIntyre says her water was good before drilling, but has since made them sick.
Q: When was the first time you heard of fracking or Marcellus shale?
A: It really came on my radar in an immediate way when we moved to Pittsburgh, six years ago. This is a huge story, much more than any one photographer could do on their own. So I proposed a collaborative project.
Q: It’s an impressive group.
A: Yes, Lynn [Johnson] and Scott [Goldsmith] work with National Geographic, Martha [Rial] has a Pulitzer prize.
Q: What was your goal?
A: The ultimate goal was to tell this story through multiple perspectives, through different eyes, and different narrative styles. So we could have a more well rounded view of Marcellus Shale drilling than we would otherwise. There’s a lot of heat that’s generated by this subject but there’s not a lot of light and I want this project to shed some light. Continue Reading →
Thanks to Bill Foster and Arianne Sellers, I recently got a chance to fly over Bradford and Wyoming Counties in a Cessna, to take a look at what Marcellus Shale operations look like from above.
Here’s the bird’s-eye view of the drilling and hydraulic fracturing process, as well as completed well pads.
We also circled Towanda, which StateImpact Pennsylvania recently profiled in "Boomtown." View the report here: http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/boomtown
Craig Czury hitches a ride on Route 29 in Springville, Susquehanna County.
Susan Phillips / StateImpact Pennsylvania permalink
A view of Route 29 from inside a car that has picked up Craig Czury.
Susan Phillips / StateImpact Pennsylvania permalink
Drilling trucks travel along backroads throughout Northeast Pennsylvania.
Susan Phillips / StateImpact Pennsylvania permalink
Before the gas drilling came to town, a major industry in this part of Pennsylvania was dairy farming. Farmers with large pieces of land have benefitted by leasing their mineral rights to gas drillers.
Susan Phillips / StateImpact Pennsylvania permalink
Craig Czury stands outside of the former schoolhouse in Springville, where he keeps a mattress and a desk for his trips up and down Route 29.
Susan Phillips / StateImpact Pennsylvania permalink
Along Route 29, as well as the backroads, pipeline construction is evident.
Susan Phillips / StateImpact Pennsylvania permalink
Craig Czury works at his desk at the old schoolhouse in Springville.
Susan Phillips / StateImpact Pennsylvania permalink
Czury outside of MaryLynn's Country Cafe, Springville, Pa.
Susan Phillips / StateImpact Pennsylvania permalink
Craig Czury uses a wall to post notes from his rides, which inspires his poetry.
Susan Phillips / StateImpact Pennsylvania permalink
Czury's desk has a book of poetry from the 13th century mystical poet Rumi, and a notebook courtesy of Cabot Oil and Gas.
On any given day, drivers along Route 29 in Susquehanna County might spot a gray-haired man with a small notebook in one hand, and his thumb out in the other. He’s Craig Czury, a 61-year-old poet who grew up in the coal regions, and began his writing career delving into that dying industry.
“I was just picking up the echoes of ghosts from a dead industry,” says Czury. These days, the energy industry in Northeast Pennsylvania has more lure and excitement for a poet. So he’s documenting the shale gas rush in his own unique way, hitchhiking up and down Route 29, collecting stories, and turning those vignettes into poetry.
“We are right at the beginning of the gas boom,” said Czury. ”And it’s alive and it’s new and here come the filmmakers, here come the photographers and I don’t know who is getting the story down. The media is getting the loud story down. They got the company and the company line and they got the environmentalists and the mic checks and they’re yelling back and forth at each other. But I am not quite certain who’s getting the story underneath that.”
The Cline 1 oil well was drilled in the 1870s. Since then, a McDonald's has sprung up around it.
Correction:A previous version of this story stated the well produces 3/4 gallons of oil a day. The correct total is 3/4 barrels.
Bradford, McKean County is littered with abandoned oil and gas wells. More than a third of the 8,200 known abandoned wells in Pennsylvania’s statewide database are located in McKean County.
But drilling isn’t entirely a thing of the past in Bradford, as I discovered when I visited McKean County to report for StateImpact Pennsylvania’s “Perilous Pathways” series. Even though the Bradford area hasn’t been part of the Marcellus Shale boom, it’s still covered with signs of active oil and gas drilling: pumpjacks, green storage containers, refineries.
One site, in particular, stands out, and that’s not because it’s Bradford’s oldest producing oil well. It’s the fact that the well is located smack in the middle of a McDonald’s drive-through lane.
The well – Cline Number 1 is its official name – is 1,125 feet deep. 140 years after it was first drilled, a McDonald’s has sprung up around it, but the well still produces ¾ barrels of oil a day. “That’s where they get the oil for the fries,” a motorcyclist joked as I stood there taking pictures.
Here are a few more pictures of Bradford’s drive-through oil well.
The Drake Well museum hosts a replica of the world's first oil well
The Marcellus Shale drilling boom is bringing a lot of changes to Pennsylvania, but the drilling itself isn’t one of them. Pennsylvania hosted the world’s first oil well, after all.
The recently-renovated Drake Well Museum in Titusville, Crawford County tells the story of the first-ever oil boom.
The first stop at the museum is a cartoon. On the screen, Edwin Drake tells you about his crazy idea -that deep pools of oil exist below the earth’s surface, and that all you need to do to reach them is drill a hole.
The video explains Drake’s main innovation – the decision to line his well with pipe, in order to keep the ground from caving back in. It tells the story of the energy industry, from the whale oil that preceded Drake, to the natural gas boom taking place in Pennsylvania and other states.
It’s a sensory experience – the audience is squirted with water when the whales come on the screen, and the seats rumble when Drake drills his well.
Susan Phillips / StateImpact Pennsylvania permalink
Tom Stroup, Tom Savko and Bill Peiffer are fighting the deep injection well.
Susan Phillips / StateImpact Pennsylvania permalink
A view of a beaver pond, in the Tamarack Natural National Landmark Swamp.
Susan Phillips / StateImpact Pennsylvania permalink
This former gas well in Bear Lake Township has been permitted by the EPA to become a deep injection well. The landowner's hunting cabin is located near the well.
Susan Phillips / StateImpact Pennsylvania permalink
This home sits near a proposed deep injection well site.
Susan Phillips / StateImpact Pennsylvania permalink
Bill Peiffer checks out an abandoned oil well in the Tamarack Swamp in Warren County. Tom Savko sits in the distance.
Susan Phillips / StateImpact Pennslyvania permalink
This road leads to another old gas well that the EPA has permitted to be turned into a deep injection well. The permit was challenged by area residents.
Susan Phillips / StateImpact Pennsylvania permalink
An abandoned oil well dating back to the early 19th century spills oil into the Tamarack Swamp in Warren County.
Susan Phillips / StateImpact Pennsylvania permalink
The Tamarack Swamp at sunset.
When you drill for natural gas, for every gallon of gas produced, some amount of wastewater gets created as well.
Sometimes it can be simple brine that can be disposed of in simple ways, such as using it to melt snow on Pennsylvania’s roads in winter. Or to keep the dust down in summer.
But the wastewater can also be pretty nasty stuff, which can’t be cleaned up by water treatment plants. One option is to dump it down an old gas well, shooting it deep into the earth. It’s a method used in thousands of wells across the country. Only five of those currently operate in Pennsylvania.
Click on the above map to get more information on Pennsylvania's deep injection wells.
A proposal to add to that number is stirring concern among some who live in Warren County, Pennsylvania, near the New York state border.
Fueling those concerns are the headlines such deep injection wells, or underground disposal wells, recently made when one such well in Youngstown, Ohio, caused several earthquakes. But residents are also worried about the impact on water supplies and natural areas. With the Marcellus Shale boom, the EPA has received several new applications for deep injection wells in Pennsylvania. Continue Reading →
On Friday, the StateImpact Pennsylvania team toured Cabot Oil and Gas operations in Susquehanna County. Susan Phillips and I visited an active rig, as well as a facility where the company cleans and recycles its fracking fluid.
Volvo's new C-30 plug-in electric vehicle at the Philadelphia Auto Show
There’s plenty of green at the Philadelphia Auto Show this year with new all-electric and hybrid vehicles. For the well-heeled green consumer, there’s a new luxury electric vehicle from Fiskar going for $100,000 dollars. But for those of lesser means, even the much-maligned internal combustion engine is sporting some shades of green.
Kevin Mazzucola is the executive director of the Auto Dealers Association of Greater Philadelphia. Mazzucola says the old tradeoffs that used to confront car buyers looking for top fuel economy may no longer apply.
“It used to be, the better gas mileage, the greener the car, the less performance,” says Mazzucola. “That’s not the case anymore. You don’t have to sacrifice one for the other. You have V6’s that get 300 horsepower but they’re getting over 30 miles to the gallon. Not 40 or 45 (mpg) like the green green car, but considering 30 miles to the gallon at 300 horsepower, it’s a great compromise.”
Mazzucola doesn’t see the combustion engine going anywhere near the trash heap of history. In fact, flipping through some old Philadelphia Auto Show brochures that date back to the early 1900’s, Mazzucola made a discovery.
“There was an advertisement for electric vehicles,” he said. “The ad said we are moving toward electric. The internal combustion engine will go by the wayside, it’s dirty, it’s this, it’s that and that was 1910 or ’12. And here we are 100 years later, different vehicles. But still, you’re starting to see a jostling between the two technologies and it’s 100 years later and they’re saying similar things.”
Eric Schubel works at the Bailey mine in Greene County, Pa.
Coal produces nearly half the electricity in the U.S., but the mercury, sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide it emits also make it one of the most controversial energy sources.
New EPA regulations and a national Sierra Club campaign have added to rising anti-coal sentiment. For many environmental activists, coal represents an old, dirty source of power, but for coal-mining communities around the country, the story is different.
One of those places is Greene County, Pa., in the far southwest corner of the state. It is bordered on two sides by West Virginia, and outside of its towns, it is filled with winding country roads flanked by rolling hills. Here, coal still reigns.
Every summer, the county hosts the King Coal Show, a week-long festival with mine rescue contests, a parade, and the Pennsylvania Bituminous Coal Queen Pageant. On a stormy Sunday evening in August, high school girls in evening gowns touted their coal-mining pedigrees along with their good grades and volunteer work. Like many in the area, most could find a great-grandfather, uncle or father who worked in the mines to claim as their connection to the industry.
Senior biologist Richard Horwitz measures stream velocity.
Picture a map of Pennsylvania. Now picture dots for every new natural gas well. The dots cluster in the northeast near Scranton, and in southwest, near Pittsburgh. These are the areas that have experienced the greatest natural gas development over the past couple of years. No state rules regulate how many natural gas wells can be drilled within a specific area. But researchers at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia want to know if heavy concentrations of these wells impact the environment.
Deep in the Susquehannock State Forest flows one of the headwaters of the Susquehanna river, a little stream about 3 to six feet wide running over gravel, surrounded by hemlocks, and wild flowers, and known as Horton Run. This is where the researchers, led by David Keller, start looking for fish.
“We’re expecting to see a brook trout, at least a few, we haven’t seen one yet. Oh, there we go, there he is, speak of the devil.”
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