PA DEP acts swiftly to protect citizens from potential Marcellus Shale disaster

Marcellus Shale

• Marcellus Shale Series Introduction
• PA Budget Toads salivate over the Marcellus Shale goose
• Will EPA strangle the Marcellus Shale golden goose with red tape?
• Environmental justice and the EPA’s “new look” at regulating Marcellus Shale
• A Management and Process Look at PEC’s Marcellus Shale Report
• Forget Marcellus Shale; let’s turn Pennsylvania into a wildlife preserve
• Marcellus Shale; Pooling and Property Rights
• PA DEP acts swiftly to protect citizens from potential Marcellus Shale disaster
• Fees a Marcellus Shale cost of doing business; severance tax remains a bad idea
• Did PA DEP bash Marcellus Shale drillers for failing to report they had nothing to report?
• Should states compete to see which one can collect the most taxes?
• What in the name of liberty is a “competitive” tax?
• Cape Wind; too big to fail and too stupid to succeed
• Note to PA GOP state senators – Subject: Marcellus Shale Tax – There is nothing to negotiate.

The good citizens of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania can all sleep better knowing that their Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has posted the names of companies that did not submit a Marcellus Shale gas well production report by August 15, 2010.  Failure to submit such reports represents a clear and present danger to the citizens of the Commonwealth.  Having a state agency such as DEP on top of this situation and making timely press releases so that the Associated Press can report this to the public should be comforting to all concerned.  

The DEP was so effective in making sure this critical public safety information was released that the AP had the information for their story before the information was posted to the DEP Web site.  In fact the information was posted to the Web site specifically as part of the press release about this.  Actually you can only see the one report in an Excel file by clicking on the link in the press release.  Apparently the crack IT staff at DEP was on top of it and made this one file available to support the critical press release posting. 

How bad is the situation?  Clearly when 41 of 74 companies fail to meet a reporting deadline for something as critical as how much gas they pumped out of a well in the past 12 months we have a potential environmental disaster of epic proportions on our hands.  If those folks down on the Gulf Coast thought they had it bad just wait until these gas production reports are a month late.  We may have to evacuate the entire state of Pennsylvania before this is over.  We can all thank our lucky stars that a man of John Hanger’s caliber is in charge at DEP who takes this sort of reporting deadline failure seriously. 

More importantly the question that should be asked is why aren’t other state agencies as proactive as DEP in protecting the citizens of the Commonwealth?   Surely there are other evil capitalist companies that have failed to meet a reporting deadline established by other state agencies.   Where are those reports?  Where are those press releases?  Citizens should be demanding action on this.  Perhaps hearings in the U.S. Senate are in order.  Surely this is as important to the nation as hearings on whether or not the coach of the New England Patriots was stealing signals from an opponent in an NFL game or whether or not Roger Clemens lied to a bunch of liars when he said he didn’t use steroids. 

Note: Only the report of the companies that reported, reported late, or did not report as of the time of the press release is available.  The actual production reports were not scheduled to be available to the public until November 1, 2010.   The following is from the Marcellus Shale section of the DEP web site:

Marcellus Shale Production Information

On November 1, 2010, all production information reported to DEP will be publicly available online.

Beginning August 1, 2010 all Marcellus Shale Well and Waste Production Reports can be entered online and must be completed by August 15, 2010. This report must be for the 12 month period of July 1, 2009 thru June 30, 2010. Thereafter, reporting for Marcellus Shale well production must be done every six months.

Operators should register for the new Online Reporting System at:

http://www.marcellusreporting.state.pa.us