No. 1: Marcellus shale industry booms in W.Va., but some raise concerns
20.05.12
Even in a year with an unusual gubernatorial election and a redistricting controversy, no topic occupied more minutes of water cooler conversation or more inches of newsprint than the extraction of natural gas from the Marcellus shale.
It was a year of academic and governmental studies on shale's economic potential and environmental threat, a year of municipal drilling bans passed and repealed and, most of all, a year of lawmaker wrangling.
"Marcellus," the name of a geologic formation, has become shorthand for West Virginians for a complex set of opportunities and concerns. But what drives the hubbub are the technologies that have made the Marcellus, Utica and shales nationwide productive: the horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing that have allowed for fewer, larger wellpads and changed the way natural gas extraction affects the land and people.
West Virginia lawmakers' second run at comprehensive legislation regulating shale gas extraction — addressing everything from the reporting of chemicals used in fracturing fluid to "forced" or "fair" pooling that would bring holdout landowners into contracts — failed when the regular session ended in March, setting the stage for much that followed.
Source: State Journal