The proposal aims to address concerns over the powerful technique called "fracking," which companies have used elsewhere in the state to extract the bountiful gas reserves trapped in a rock formation called the Marcellus Shale. With this proposal, the commissioners waded further into a debate with a raft of environmental and economic issues.
Fracking provides access to a fuel that is cleaner burning than coal, for example, and landowners say the lease payments from drillers enable them to maintain open space. Yet the technique, in which large amounts of water are used to dislodge gas deposits, involves the use of chemicals that can contaminate waterways.
As part of the 83-page rule proposal:
Companies would have incentives to drill away from forested areas and farther back from stream banks.
Contaminated wastewater from fracking would have to be held in tanks rather than open ponds, as is done elsewhere in the state.
Drilling refuse - called "cuttings" - could not be buried onsite, as Pennsylvania allows. It would have to be "beneficially used" or disposed of properly off the site.
Moreover, the commission would require water-quality monitoring plus water and wastewater tracking to keep tabs on the volumes used and where it all goes for treatment and disposal, said Carol R. Collier, the commission's executive director.
The rules also propose a $125,000 fee per well as financial "assurance" for the plugging and restoration of natural gas wells.
Among the more unusual steps, the commission would allow "natural gas development plans" for broad lease areas rather than individual wells.
Collier said that would allow the commission to take a "holistic approach" to the issue and allow wells to be drilled in less environmentally sensitive areas.
