CITIZEN POWER ALLIANCE

On Wednesday, July 23, Gov. David A. Paterson signed a bill that permits additional natural gas wells and drilling activity in New York State and allows for new and under-researched methods. The Environmental Conservation Law had previously established requirements for a spacing unit (the area of land from which a well recovers oil or gas) and set back measurements (the distance between the well and the boundaries of the spacing unit), but Paterson's pen changed that: the legislation passed Wednesday reduces required well spacing from 640 acres per well to 25.

This change is significant, and potentially devastating to the Finger Lakes region, as the Southern Tier of New York has been discovered as the Mother Lode of Marcellus Shale, a rock layer that some geologists predict could meet the nation's natural gas needs for more than two years. Three companies in the natural gas industry have submitted drilling applications for gas wells in Chenango, Tioga, and Chemung Counties in New York. On his Web site, the Governor claimed that "natural gas exploration has the potential to increase domestic supplies of natural gas, create jobs, expand the tax base and benefit the upstate economy." But because of New York's geological formation and the techniques required to reach the desired resources, Paterson's decision has created anger among locals who understand the potential consequences.

What is Marcellus Shale, exactly? It is a Devonian-age black, low density, carbonaceous (organic-rich) shale that occurs beneath much of New York, Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Marcellus Shale is said to have "favorable mineralogy" in that it is a lower-density rock with more porosity, which means it may be filled with more free gas. In its 2002 Assessment of Undiscovered Oil and Gas Resources of the Appalachian Basin Province, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) calculated that the Marcellus Shale contained an estimated undiscovered resource of about 1.9 trillion cubic feet of gas.

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