Shale

Penn State University and two other schools will launch training programs this summer aimed at instructing regulators and policymakers about the latest developments in producing oil and natural gas from shale formations. The program, which will also be hosted at the Colorado School of Mines and the University of Texas at Austin, will provide regulators with an intense two-week overview of the latest geologic, technological and environmental developments, said Thomas B. Murphy, co-director of the Penn State Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research.

Don't count on the already-besieged Exxon public-relations department to alert you. But June 13 will mark the 10th anniversary of one the biggest corporate missteps of all time. Top brass of the world's biggest corporation swooped in by corporate jet to the little city of Grand Junction on Colorado's remote, sagebrush-covered Western Slope. And there, to a stunned audience of 800 people, Exxon unveiled a "white paper" for extracting 500 billion barrels of oil from the deposits of oil shale, a rock rich in hydrocarbons, in western Colorado and neighboring Utah.

The Marcellus Shale Coalition on Tuesday unveiled an online business directory of small and medium-size firms that want to be part of the shale gas economy. The aim of the Marcellus on Main Street site is to facilitate connections among businesses in the supply chain, Kathryn Klaber, the coalition's president, told a gathering Tuesday at the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, one of five events announcing the site. She said the outreach is also intended to counter "unfair" negative portrayals of natural gas development.

Let Mr. Holland fiddle while schools burn. A more effective way to save public education, asserts the politically incorrect film The Substitute, is to send military covert operatives to bring control to classrooms where gang members, not teachers, are in charge. It's a crudely entertaining argument for redeploying the U.S. military into our schools. In this vigilante fantasy fully loaded for drug dealers and other social vampires, Tom Berenger plays Shale, a soldier of fortune who does to Miami's Christopher Columbus High what he has already done to Nicaragua and Cuba.

PITTSBURGH - The Marcellus Shale is about to become the most productive natural gas field in the United States, according to new data from energy industry analysts and the federal government. Though serious drilling began only five years ago, the sheer volume of Marcellus production suggests that in some ways there's no going back, even as New York debates whether to allow drilling in its portion of the shale, which also lies under large parts of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio.

Philadelphia Gas Works on Friday announced the latest decrease in natural gas rates, which have been falling because of low commodity prices. The new rate for residential customers is $1.35623 per hundred cubic feet, down about 2.5 percent from $1.40. Rates also decreased for commercial, industrial and municipal customers. In the last year, PGW's residential natural gas rate has fallen 13 percent. On an annualized basis, a typical PGW residential customer now pays $181 less than 12 months ago. PGW is required to adjust its gas-cost rate quarterly to reflect market conditions, and must pass commodity costs through to customers without markup.

In September 1993, a quarry applied for a zoning ordinance amendment that would allow it to mine land where mining is prohibited. After attending Planning Commission meetings in January and February, quarry officials stood up the commission in March and April. On Monday, officials from the New Hope Crushed Stone & Lime Co. finally showed up at a special hearing, but with a different proposal. Irritated by the quarry officials' performance, commission member Ed DuBois made a motion to reject the proposal.

HARRISBURG - Counties in the state's gas drilling region shouldn't start counting their riches from impact fees just yet - they may be waiting a little longer than they thought for those dollars. An analysis of the latest state Department of Environmental Protection data shows that there were about 1,650 Marcellus Shale wells producing in Pennsylvania as of June 30. That's a little more than half the minimum 3,000 wells that will be needed to rake in the $120 million that Gov. Corbett estimates his proposed impact fee would raise in its first year.

Pennsylvania's experience with shale-gas drilling has given the Delaware River Basin Commission plenty of reason to take a long and careful look before letting the rigs set up shop in the region's most important watershed. Gas wells bring up millions of gallons of water that carries high levels of radioactivity. Air pollution builds up as drilling rigs and diesel trucks and huge gas-pumping compressors proliferate. Pipelines spread across the land, even where landowners don't want them to cross.

THE FOSSIL-fuel industry always promises to bring jobs and prosperity, but the promise always proves false. For 150 years, coal has been extracted from West Virginia, yet West Virginia is 48th in the nation in terms of per-capita income. The state is in effect a sort of Third World nation, the coal being exported for use elsewhere while the state receives little in return beyond environmental devastation. Pennsylvania is about to follow the same route with Marcellus shale natural gas. The only beneficiaries will be the minority of those who own most of the mineral rights, so we might as well get at least some benefit by taxing the extraction process.

Pennsylvania State University geoscientist Terry Engelder spent most of his career toiling in obscurity, studying fracture behavior of rocks known as black shales. Even among geologists, he says, it was kind of a boring topic, and he was often slotted to present his papers on the last day of professional conferences. "Not only was it the last day, but it was in the afternoon of the last day," he said. But then, Engelder and Gary G. Lash, a colleague from New York, discovered natural gas in the Marcellus Shale.

Since the Marcellus Shale boom began in 2008, there has been much debate and disagreement over the effect natural gas development would have on Pennsylvania's economy. Gov. Corbett, who found himself in the hot seat last week over his comments on the state's lagging employment rate, has promoted Pennsylvania as a rival to Texas as a regional energy hub. In his budget address this year, he talked about the energy sector creating "hundreds of thousands of new jobs. " Most economists credit the Marcellus Shale development with creating jobs and having a profound economic effect in the rural areas where drilling is taking place.

Penn Virginia Corp., which has a long history in the coal and gas business, is becoming more oily. The Radnor energy company announced that it was dramatically expanding its holdings in the oil-rich Eagle Ford Shale in south Texas with the acquisition of 19,000 acres of prospective and producing leases for $401 million. The company agreed to buy the leases from Magnum Hunter Resources Corp. The acreage contains estimated proved reserves of 12 million barrels of oil equivalent.

Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale drilling fee revenue fell by 3 percent to $198 million last year because of lower natural gas prices, according to figures released Wednesday by the Public Utility Commission. Gas companies were assessed an impact fee of $45,000 for each of the 1,357 new horizontal wells drilled in 2012. In 2011, first-year wells were assessed an annual fee of $50,000. The impact-fee law provides for the levy to decline if the price of natural gas goes down, said Jennifer Kocher, the PUC's spokeswoman.

A consortium of environmentalists, philanthropies, and energy companies that are frequently at odds over fossil-fuel development has created a certification program they say will hold shale-drilling companies to higher performance standards. Much as the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification program has become the gold standard for green buildings, the new Center for Sustainable Shale Development aspires to create a rigorous environmental seal of approval for companies developing the Marcellus Shale and other Appalachian formations.

PITTSBURGH - Late last year, representatives from one of the world's largest energy companies went to the home of Lydia and Sam Mast. The company planned to drill a gas well on an adjacent property and needed to test the Masts' water. By November, the access road had been paved and the rig was drilling day and night into the shale formation thousands of feet below the Masts' seven acres in Lawrence County. "That was the first I knew there was a company called Chevron," Sam Mast said.

Pennsylvania natural-gas producers are stepping up a campaign to lobby the White House to allow more fuel exports and accelerate drilling in the Marcellus Shale region. Nine state representatives, 17 state senators, and the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry have sent nearly identical letters to President Obama, urging him to expedite the approval process for exporting liquefied natural gas. The U.S. Energy Department is considering whether to approve requests from 15 companies to begin exporting LNG to countries that don't have free-trade agreements with the United States, such as China, Japan, India, and Germany.

Before many Pennsylvania moviegoers settle in for Matt Damon's film about the fight over natural gas drilling, they will see a message from the energy industry offering "straightforward facts" about hydraulic fracturing. The unorthodox, on-screen pre-rebuttal of Promised Land , which opens nationwide Monday, is part of an industry campaign aimed at heading off criticism about the process known as fracking. Instead of direct attacks, which the industry used against the documentary Gasland, it is trying to paint Damon's movie as derivative, condescending, and cliched.