Statement on the Delaware River Basin Commission

The action of the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), to postpone its vote on natural gas drilling and hydrofracturing (“fracking”), demonstrates both the critical importance of this watershed and the political power of the natural gas industry. It also illustrates why a complete ban on such “unconventional” gas extraction is the only realistic means of protecting the life-supporting environment of our nation.

The Commission delayed action on a proposal to permit up to 300 natural gas wells in the Delaware Basin, a number which may eventually grow to 30,000 if industry forecasts are met. (Of course, any one of even 300 wells could cause incalculable and irreparable damage to the health and safety of the 15 million people who depend on the Delaware for their drinking water.) Although the Commission’s delay means that drilling continues to be blocked in the Basin, the threat to this vital watershed has not ended.

Public statements against the DRBC proposal by Governors Jack Markell (Delaware) and Andrew Cuomo (New York) are widely credited for scuttling the November 21 vote. Apparently the Commission has a pattern of holding votes only after an affirmative majority has been assembled. That is, rather than recording a “No” vote, the Commission simply declines to decide. In this instance, with two Governors already announcing their opposition, all three remaining votes would have been required in order to adopt the drilling proposal.

As Pennsylvanians, we recognize that our Governor Corbett’s vote was never in doubt. His commitment to gas industry interests has been a hallmark of Mr. Corbett’s administration from the beginning. We can also assume that Governor Chris Christie (New Jersey) was prepared to vote “Yes”. This casts the President’s appointee as the deciding vote – on a controversial matter which this President will not want to “own” in an election season.

And the natural gas industry will not allow this decision to remain in doubt for another twelve months. The intensity with which they have been lobbying DRBC to hurry its vote might appear surprising, since the Delaware River Basin accounts for less than 6% of the Marcellus Shale ‘play.’ But industry advocates need to maintain the aura of ‘inevitability’ around gas extraction: if one region (no matter how critical to population centers) is able to exempt itself from drilling, other regions will be inspired to resist. Thus, the Delaware River Basin becomes a high-priority target.

Democratic Governors Cuomo and Markell will now feel relentless pressure – from the White House as well as the gas industry – to find a face-saving path into the “Yes” column and to allow Mr. Obama to join in a 4-1 or 5-0 decision. The Governors’ positions will be probed and spun until some logic is found for reversing their opposition. This sort of political war of attrition will always favor the drillers over the environment, until there is an absolute ban on such drilling anywhere, under any regulatory scheme.

For example, the DRBC’s still-pending proposal includes a statement of intent “to provide a streamlined process for approval of projects,” as if the Commission feels a need to atone for even the meager time spent to-date on drafting regulations. Such a posture puts the Commission squarely on the wrong side of any future tensions between the competing pressures of extraction and preservation.

We are grateful for the wisdom and courage of the DRBC Executive Director, who blocked drilling in the Basin on May 19, 2009, pending risk assessment and development of appropriate regulations. The industry responded with merciless pressure to get on with drilling, attacking the Executive Director’s authority, and managing to restrict public comment on the proposed regulations. We thank her for the protection which she has provided to the Basin during the past 30 months, and for as long as her action remains in force.

The industry’s arguments for haste are fallacious: there is no urgent demand for the gas from this region, and no public purpose will be served by proceeding with less than a full regard for the environmental consequences. In truth, the industry is now propelled by its own desperation to report ever-higher Marcellus acreage, to maintain its stated ‘reserves’ and to inflate its market capitalizations.

To cite one example, existing leases in Wayne County, Pennsylvania, (in the Delaware River Basin) will begin to expire unless they are ‘held by production’. By blocking drilling, the DRBC has cast a shadow over industry projections for those Wayne County leaseholdings, which are touted as among the most promising in the entire Marcellus ‘play’. And, in the current slow economy, with low natural gas prices, the accumulation and anticipated sale of Marcellus acreage – not delivery of gas to market – drives ‘shareholder value’ and becomes industry’s highest priority. So “uncertainty” (in the Delaware Basin or elsewhere) threatens the energy industry’s fiscal house of cards.

As behind-the-scenes maneuvering continues, we reiterate that “regulation” of shale gas development is self-defeating. This industry, using its corrupting influence over elected officials, and a sophisticated campaign of public disinformation, has poisoned the political (as well as the physical) environment, to the point where no responsible “cost-benefit” consideration of drilling can occur. We remain convinced that the only responsible public policy is a total ban on shale gas extraction by hydrofracturing.

Marcellus Protest will continue our fight for clean water, and air and land, in all spheres of public activity. The oil and gas industry has been working “top-down,” dictating the energy policy of the United States and dominating state-level politics. In contrast, Marcellus Protest encourages citizen involvement in democratic action at the local level, to assert their right of local control over invasive industrial processes such as natural gas extraction.

In Pennsylvania, proposed legislation seeks to deny any role in oversight of oil and gas activities by municipal officials and citizens. Nevertheless, we will advocate local democratic action as the best remedy for the contemptuous overreach of our Governor and the majority in our Legislature. We look forward to success in the courts, and at the ballot box, to turn back their schemes for giving away Pennsylvania’s natural resources.

BACKGROUND on Marcellus Protest:

Marcellus Protest is a grassroots citizens organization with over 300 members in Western Pennsylvania, where large-scale Marcellus Shale gas development has been underway since 2005. We are one of dozens of similar grassroots groups in Pennsylvania, and even more across the United States and around the world.
We support a total ban on so-called ‘unconventional’ natural gas extraction (e.g., hydrofracturing – or ‘fracking’ – of shale formations) for the following reasons:

1. The gas industry’s on-going campaign of misinformation makes any responsible public ‘cost-benefit’ analysis impossible. Risks (of all kinds) are being consistently underestimated, covered-up or snowed-under by industry ‘happy talk’. Their claims for an ‘economic windfall’ from shale gas, endlessly echoed by this industry and their political patrons, are based on discredited ‘research’ and are promoted in deliberately dishonest language.
2. There is no adequate scientific basis on which to establish ‘safe’ practices for unconventional gas development. The industry has worked to establish ‘innocent until proven guilty’ as the standard of proof for environmental impact, in spite of strong anecdotal evidence of serious and potentially irreparable harm to human health, to the climate, and to food supplies from unconventional gas development. Extraction techniques are too immature, and the potential damage is too widespread and long-lasting, to proceed on any other basis than maximum possible caution.
3. Democratic processes are being corrupted to accommodate this singular industry. Municipalities are being railroaded and silenced; states and counties are set against each other by ‘divide and conquer’ manipulation. Lobbying and campaign money has stacked the regulatory environment against the public interest and in favor of rapid development. Funding for enforcement is gutted, and fee-based revenue for regulatory agencies has been made dependent on the volume of permits issued to the regulators’ ‘clients’ in the drilling industry.
4. A false sense of urgency has been created, based mostly on phony promises of ‘job growth’ and ‘energy independence,’ in order to overwhelm reasonable public skepticism. In truth, the rapid pace of gas development is driven by the need for declared ‘reserves’ to support the high share prices of energy companies. When, inevitably, gas development stalls, the energy industry’s fiscal house-of-cards will collapse, just as the subprime mortgage market collapsed. Energy companies will look for bailouts, and the public will be holding the bag for environmental damage that may endure for generations to come.

For these reasons, we are convinced that ‘doing it right’ is not possible. We consider public forums on ‘managing development’ as misguided, and we insist on a total ban as the only responsible public policy.