This article originally provided by The Charleston Gazette

January 30, 2011

S. Thomas Bond: What will remain after Marcellus?

The resource development of West Virginia has come in waves. The early oil and gas drilling came in the 40 years around 1900. Anyone who has seen the 1912 geologic map of I.C. White covering Harrison and Doddridge counties must be impressed with all the red dots signifying wells.

After that it petered out as oil and gas came in further West. Timber cutting in the Eastern Mountains produced impressive wealth for a few decades, including the great houses that now belong to Davis & Elkins College. Coal stripping in the North Central part of the state began shortly after World War II and burned itself out by 1990, and a similar wave in Southern West Virginia now appears to be ending, more for political reasons than economic.

The only long-lasting resource extraction is deep mining, now in progress for more than a century, but showing serious problems, particularly since the recent spectacular failure of the carbon capture experiment in Saskatchewan, Canada.

Each of these waves has been characterized by environmental degradation and discomfort of the previous owners of the land and resources and their neighbors. Salt water down the hillside, oil on the creeks and the earth left full of uncharted well holes characterized the early oil rush.

The timber around Thomas and Davis and in other areas has not recovered a century later. Deep coal brought acid mine water and sinkholes. The mine water is only now being treated effectively in some small areas. The West Virginia mine wars, so easily forgotten, were a product of deep mining, too. The problems of strip mining are the stuff of daily news.

The next wave is upon us, the Marcellus "gold rush." Like each of the previous waves, in the beginning the Legislature and the Chamber of Commerce types can't wait. There is a great stampede to avoid regulation and taxation. The environment and the interests of the "little people" are as forgotten the last disappearing star in the morning.

This wave will cover most of the state, however. The Marcellus is under every acre of the western three-fourths of the state. A map of the once available deep coal is spotty. The timber resources were available in a few large areas, as was the shallow oil. To fully exploit the Marcellus, 75 percent or more of the surface of the state will be affected.

This too shall pass. Marcellus wells produce fantastic volumes of natural gas, but decline rapidly. The infrastructure is being built to get it out as rapidly as possible. Forty years and it will be a seriously declining industry.

What of the water resource with which we in West Virginia are blessed? What will be the effect of corroding pipelines, eroding access roads, the inevitable leaks and contamination of the buried pits?

Now is the time to develop appropriate regulation of this diverse, sprawling, competitive industry, which will leave a footprint over most of the state. The objectives should be to save the people, save the environment and to get the most natural gas possible from the shale.

Without regulation the only objective will be to get the most immediate return on investment.

Bond, of Jane Lew, is an organic chemist and a retired professor at the former Salem College.