A need for uniform industry standards
The Navigant analyst, Pickering, said improving the technology that has resulted in a twelvefold increase in shale gas production in a decade isn't a stretch.

"We're talking about a technology that's not rocket science; it's been in place for 30 or 40 years," Pickering said. "Doing better is quite within the industry's capability."

Service companies like Halliburton and Schlumberger are heavy hitters in federal and state-level debates about the extent to which technology should be improved, particularly with regard to chemicals blasted into the underground formations. Exxon and Chesapeake, and the cadre of other multinational and domestic gas producers tied in with the shale, have the wherewithal to make improvements and comply with regulations.

Pickering and others say gas companies need to transition from dogged opposition to regulation to an understanding that persnickety landowners and environmental issues are no longer just a local and regional headache. Gas has gone from the second city of energy sources to being a reliable replacement for coal and a point of departure for cutting harmful emissions and diversifying the nation's energy fleet.

It shifts global energy dynamics, too. If environmental issues aren't taken seriously, analysts are telling Chu's panel, companies won't get the gas.

"The stiff-arming needs to stop, because there needs to be communication on these issues to find out what's important," Verrastro said. "If you're drilling somebody's land, it gives you the rights to access the minerals, but not the right to ride roughshod over the community, and I think that needs to be brought home."

"Some companies recognize that," he said, "and some companies don't."

Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500

7 Comments

1. 1. JamesDavis 12:50 PM 7/26/11

   Without rules and regulations governing the natural gas fracking, we will be plunged back into the Bush administration's reign of "no rules, no regulations, no responsibility" for business and landowners will have to comply to every whim of the business that is destroying their water, land and air. These gas companies will destroy everything in sight, then pack up their bags and leave the landowners with the clean up...just like they did in the Gulf and the coal companies (Massey Energy) are doing in West Virginia.

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2. 2. hotblack 02:18 PM 7/26/11

   Since the point of any post is to convey my very important judgement on whatever I just read, I'll take this opportunity to proclaim that as an anti-everything angry republican, & big oil shill, I'm with Soccerdad on this. No rules. Drill tens of thousands more oil wells. This country is merely a waste of space anyway, waiting to be used and used up, by gods true gift to the world, us. If it makes me, no, anybody, a penny, then that's worth more than it is presently, because it's not the country I value, it's the accumulation of money.

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3. 3. justanobody in reply to JamesDavis 03:17 PM 7/26/11

   You know that the only thing that would have prevented BP from being fully responsible for the spill was gov't regulation, right? I'm not saying regulations aren't necessary, but don't be so foolish or naive as to believe our politicians will regulate in a way that benefits you or me. And that is the reason so many of us are wary of gov't regs in the first place.

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4. 4. Soccerdad in reply to hotblack 03:23 PM 7/26/11

   I take exception to your characterization that I'm anti-everything.
   
   I'm in favor of responsible fracking and abolition of the Department of Energy, among other things.

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5. 5. Unksoldr 05:27 PM 7/26/11

   Accumlation of money, is the reason we are in the place we are. Please keep it up, I look forward to the collapse then your handful of gold will earn you a bullet.

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6. 6. Shoshin 01:44 AM 7/27/11

   Anybody here ever fracced a well???
   
   I have, lots of them and I'm proud of the job I do. Been doing it for years. You should be thanking me otherwise oil would be $1000/bbl and your Free Trade Cafe Americano's would be non-existent and the people growing the Free Trade coffee would be starving.
   
   I can tell you absolutely that 98% of what people right on this website about fracking is inaccurate and the rest is imaginary.
   
   At the end of the day the eco-jihadists want one thing... Compliance with their manifesto.
   
   How many people have to suffer and starve because of their destructive and misguided jihad against an element on the periodic table?
   
   

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7. 7. ~~~~~ 01:44 PM 7/29/11

   > misguided jihad against an element on the periodic table?
   
   if only it were that.

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