Page 181 - Environment: The Science Behind the Stories

CentRal CaSE StUDY

Hydrofracking the Marcellus Shale

VERMONT
NEW
YORK “Safe drilling for natural gas has the poten-
tial to create thousands of new jobs and
Albany
MASSACHUSETTS millions of dollars in economic investment.”
Dimock CONNECTICUT
—New York Senate majority leader Dean G. Skelos
PENNSYLVANIA
Pittsburgh Philadelphia New York “There’s no safe way to put toxic chemicals
OHIO NEW City into the ground and control them.”
Marcellus Shale MARYLAND JERSEY
formation —New York schoolteacher Elizabeth Bouiss
WEST DELAWARE
VIRGINIA VIRGINIA

When the men from Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation came schoolteacher Victoria Switzer said she approached Cabot,
to the small town of Dimock in rural Pennsylvania, many of her local political leaders, and the Pennsylvania Department of
Dimock’s 1500 residents were happy to sign on to the con- Environmental Protection (DEP) but was turned away by them
tracts the company offered. In exchange for the right to drill all. Then she went to the news media, and the story began
for natural gas on their land, Cabot would pay them royalties to get out. Documentary filmmaker Josh Fox came to town
on sales of the gas extracted from drilling pads placed on and filmed residents setting their methane-contaminated tap
their property. For some in the small, rural community, the gas water on fire. His 2010 film Gasland won numerous awards,
money seemed like a ticket to economic security. and Dimock became Ground Zero in the burgeoning national
Soon the new drilling sites around Dimock were produc- debate over hydraulic fracturing.
ing the most natural gas from anywhere in the Marcellus Shale, In the United States, virtually all the easily accessible oil
the vast gas-bearing rock formation that underlies portions and natural gas has already been discovered and extracted.
of Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia, and Ohio. Money To extract more, we’ve needed to develop ever-more powerful
and jobs from the gas boom kept Dimock economically afloat, technology to reach petroleum deposits that are deeper under
even as other towns reeled from recession and cut funding for the earth, deeper under the ocean, and at lower concentra-
schools and basic services. tions. In areas such as the Marcellus Shale, a great deal of natu-
Yet despite the economic gains, some Dimock residents ral gas is locked up deep underground in countless tiny bubbles
were having second thoughts about drilling. Their once- dispersed throughout formations of shale. The technique of
peaceful community was now experiencing constant noise hydraulic fracturing is now making this shale gas accessible.
and lights, heavy truck traffic, toxic wastewater spills, and Hydraulic fracturing (also called hydrofracking, or sim-
air pollution from the drilling sites. Then people’s drinking ply fracking) involves drilling deep into the earth and then
water began to turn brown, gray, or cloudy with sediment, angling the drill horizontally when a shale formation is reached.
while strange chemical smells began wafting from their An electric charge sets off targeted explosions that perforate
water wells. On New Years Day, 2009, Norma Fiorentino’s the drilling pipe and create fractures in the shale. Drillers then
well exploded. Methane had built up in her well water, and pump a slurry of water, sand, and chemicals down through the
a spark from a motorized pump set off a potentially lethal pipe under great pressure. The sand lodges in the fractures
blast. and holds them open, while a portion of the liquids return to the
Residents blamed the drilling technique that Cabot Oil surface. Bubbles of natural gas trapped in the shale migrate
and Gas was using: hydraulic fracturing. Citizens who could into the system of fractures and gradually rise to the surface
180 no longer drink their own well water appealed for help. Retired through the drilling pipe (Figure 7.1).

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