February 24, 2011

Marcellus Bills Advance in House and Senate

Although our chances of passing legislation this session to addresses problems with both Marcellus Shale and other gas well drilling were starting to dim this week, as things currently stand there are two bills still in play. 

After several strengthening amendments were adopted by a House Judiciary subcommittee, one version spent a couple of days being almost too good to be true. Unfortunately, many of the changes adopted by the subcommittee were not considered in the final version of the bill advanced by the full Judiciary Committee.  However, HB 2878 still includes several good provisions including:

• A requirement that drillers give surface owners at least 30 days notice before coming onto the land to survey for proposed well sites, access roads or other work requiring disturbance disturbance of the surface.
• A requirement that drillers offer to meet with surface owners prior to surveying to explain their preference for locations of well sites, impoundments, access roads, pipelines.
• For horizontal wells, increasing the distance gas wells must be from dwellings and water wells from 200 to 1,000 feet. 
• For horizontal wells, the presumption of water well contamination or loss is expanded from 1,000 feet to 2,500 feet and pre-drilling testing parameters are expanded to include chemicals know to commonly used in hydraulic fracturing.