Hess: Update The Oil and Gas Act, Already

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

September 2, 2011 | 11:00 AM

Former Department of Environmental Protection Secretary David Hess says lawmakers have waited long enough to update Pennsylvania’s Oil and Gas Act.

In a lengthy post on his PA Environment Daily blog, Hess writes, “Since the first Marcellus Shale natural gas well was drilled in Pennsylvania in 2003, eight years ago, over 7,200 Marcellus Shale well permits have been issued, hundreds of miles of pipelines lain and billions of gallons of water used for fracking. But Pennsylvania’s Oil and Gas Act remains essentially the same, regulating these high-tech wells like they were the shallow wells Col. Drake drilled in Titusville in 1859.”

He wants the General Assembly to change that, when it reconvenes later this month.

Is eight years too long to wait for changes to a 27-year old law to regulate an activity that is fundamentally changing Pennsylvania’s economy, environment and landscape?

Yes.

What we need is leadership. The Senate returns to voting session September 19 and the House on September 26.

Let’s get busy.

Hess ran DEP from 2001 to 2003, during the Schweiker Administration.