This article originally provided by Clarksburg Exponent-Telegram

May 21, 2010

Salem Council hears request for moratorium on gas drilling

by Darlene Taylor-Morgan staff writer

SALEM — About three dozen people attended a Salem City Council public hearing Wednesday evening to learn more about a possible moratorium on horizontal drilling near water reservoirs in the city.

Council plans to study the information and make a decision at the next regular meeting scheduled for 6 p.m. Tuesday in City Hall.

Four people spoke, including representatives of two oil and gas associations, a Hall Drilling employee and the Upper Tenmile Watershed Association president.

The watershed association asked city council two weeks ago to be the first city in the state to impose a moratorium on the practice near Dog Run Lakes, the town’s water source. The lakes are also used for recreation purposes.

This region has Marcellus shale, one of the most promising natural gas resources in the Appalachian Basin, according to experts. It is a rock formation 6,000 to 8,000 feet beneath Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia and Ohio.

Energy companies combine drilling with hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” a technique that injects thousands of gallons of water, along with sand and chemicals, underground to break up the shale and release the gas.

Watershed President Don Stamm gave the Delaware River Basin as an example of a reservoir in which oil and gas exploration has been denied.

“We are tempting fate near our water,” Stamm said. “We still have to live in nature and make sure the water is clean whether it is our water source or not.”

Hall Drilling/Bluestone Energy is drilling for natural gas in various parts of the city through an agreement with Salem.

“Corky” DeMarco, executive director of the West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association, distributed a few copies of data from the National Groundwater Protection Association to council. He said the information backed his claim that the possibility of cross-contamination of the lakes is “non-existent.”

The association represents pipeline companies, producers and drillers throughout the state.

He brought a well bore to explain how the process works but was cut short since each speaker only had five minutes.

Charlie Burd, executive director of the Independent Oil and Gas Association of West Virginia, Inc., said that a fracturing survey of 24 states shows that there has never been any harm done since fracturing began at different times throughout the country.

West Virginia began drilling in 1929 and has been fracturing since the 1960s for oil, natural gas and natural gas from coal seams with approximately 1,000 wells fracked annually for a total of 25,000 wells or 95 percent of all wells, Burd said.

Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission provided the independent data he shared with the audience.

“I believe we should monitor the situation,” said “Bobby” Samples, a Salem resident who works for Hall Drilling. “The problems are with the older wells that are not plugged properly.”

Councilman Al Romagnoli had both support and questions, including wanting 100 percent assurance that nothing could happen to the water.

Neither expert seemed able to guarantee that.

Staff writer Darlene J. Taylor-Morgan can be reached at (304) 626-1403 or by e-mail at dtaylor@exponent-telegram.com.