Lindsay Lazarski/WHYY A drill worker covered in mud, shale, and drill cuttings seals off a well and cleans the blowout preventer at a Cabot Oil & Gas natural gas drill site in Kingsley, Pa. A waste disposal company has backed off its controversial plan to use 400,000 tons of natural gas drill cuttings to help [...]
Tapping the Utica Shale in north central Pennsylvania could become the state’s next natural gas drilling boom, at least once the pipelines get built. Seneca Resources has announced the successful completion of a well on state forest land in Tioga County. Seneca, a subsidiary of National Fuel Gas Company, says its test well generated 22.7 [...]
A federal court weighed in on a contentious debate over air emissions from Pennsylvania’s oil and gas sector this week. In Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future v. Ultra Resources Inc., Pennsylvania’s Middle District Court ruled against the environmental group, more commonly known as PennFuture, and in favor of the gas company. But in the 31-page decision, U.S. [...]
Two years ago, we told you about a Tioga County farm where heifers gave birth to dead calves after coming in contact with wastewater from natural gas drilling that had leaked onto the cow pasture. In May 2010, the herd was quarantined by the state Department of Agriculture. The following spring, eight of the 11 [...]
In an exit interview with the Financial Times, outgoing Royal Dutch Shell CEO Peter Voser says the company has yet to profit from its $24 billion investment into “unconventional” shale oil and gas in the U.S. Voser’s comments come just a little more than a week after Shell announced it would be selling its stake in [...]
Earlier this week, we told you about efforts to use polluted water from abandoned mines to frack natural gas wells. Some energy companies say they’d be happy to use mine drainage rather than fresh water but they want to be sure that they won’t also get stuck with liability for cleaning up the mine water [...]
In the Susquehanna River Basin, just one well can use an average of 4.4 million gallons of water during a frack job, which can last several days to a week. The majority of that water comes from Pennsylvania’s rivers and streams. Meanwhile, more than 4,000 miles of streams polluted by abandoned coalmine drainage flow through Pennsylvania’s forests, [...]
About half a dozen anti-drilling activists locked down to a paper mache pig on Sunday, blocking the entrance to a well site operated by Shell. Maggie Henry, an organic pig farmer whose farm is next door to the Marcellus Shale drill site, says she’s worried how the operation may impact her livestock and organic certification. [...]
In February 1932, the United States was in the midst of the Great Depression. Franklin Roosevelt was plotting a run for the White House. And in Union Township, Tioga County, the Morris Run Coal company had just finished drilling a gas well on a farm owned by Mr. W.J. Butters. The Butters well was 5,385 feet [...]
Note: Chesapeake Energy’s production data has not been included in the Department of Environmental Protection’s report yet. The company says it submitted the information to the state by Wednesday night’s deadline, and blames a “technical issue” for the snag. Once Chesapeake’s information is included, Bradford County’s totals will certainly go up . We’ll update this [...]
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