HAMILTON – In a response to a Binghamton Press & Sun article on Sunday about hydrofracking into the Marcellus Shale, a Chenango County planner said yesterday that natural gas exploration and the importance of planning for it are “a reality,” not the far off in the future fantasy as so described.
The Chenango County Natural Gas Advisory Committee and its economic development consultant have been actively educating themselves and county residents on how the community “can all benefit as well as protect our resources from the reality of natural gas exploration,” said Planner Rena Doing in an e-mail distributed yesterday. 
“(We are) keeping this door open, working toward economic development, as well as opening doors for education and job opportunities. This is sometimes a thankless job, but when dealing with the reality before us, it is appreciated.”
As far as Chenango County is concerned, when it comes to exploring the natural gas-rich Marcellus Shale, energy companies won’t be as interested in the northern half of Chenango County because the formation there is much too shallow. Geologists say the Marcellus lies only 2,000 to 3,000 feet deep north of the town lines of Smithville, Oxford and Guilford versus more than 4,000 feet deep below the demarcation.
Hydraulic fracturing, the controversial technique used to extract natural gas from fissures in organic rich black shale, simply won’t work in formations less than 4,000 feet, and is more likely in depths almost twice that amount.
New York State Department of Education Museum geologist Taury Smith, during a tutorial at Colgate University in February, explained how the overlay of marine matter was collected in deep basins that were formed during tectonic plate convergence millions of years ago. The black shale that resulted has been widely publicized for its potential, and is known in eastern parts of the United States as the Barnett, the Fayetteville, the Haynesville, and the Marcellus.
The Marcellus is considered the mother lode, with about 500 trillion cubic feet of gas and the potential to supply the nation’s domestic needs for up to two decades. With more than 5,000 Marcellus wells permitted to be drilled in Pennsylvania this year alone, and a handful of multinational oil and gas companies poised to drill anywhere from 2,000 to 4,000 sites in neighboring Broome County, it’s no surprise that companies are also eyeing southern Chenango County.
George Seneck, Town of Guilford supervisor, said the town was recently approached by a land coalition to sign up the 200 acres that it owns. And natural gas companies have already purchased four large properties in the town.
“It’s beginning for us now,” he told county lawmakers in committee this month.
Two landowners coalitions in Chenango County, the Oxford Land Group and the Central New York Landowner Coalition, are both well-represented in the southern towns.
Norse Energy of Norway, the company already drilling into the Herkimer and Oneida formations for natural gas in Smyrna, Plymouth and Preston, has leased land and applied for permits to drill five Marcellus wells in the Coventry, Afton and West Bainbridge areas. In addition to drilling, plans are for the company to extend its pipeline from Preston south through Oxford, Coventry and Afton, ultimately connecting with the Millennium in Broome County.
Norse is actively pursuing a partner to help develop its shale holdings, and once the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation completes its regulations for hydrofracking, its safe to say that more companies will move into southern Chenango County.
Smith and Colgate University Geologist Bruce Selleck told students and others attending the seminar that New York was “miles ahead of the country on regulations” for hydrofracking. The high water volume pressurized drilling technique opens fissures in shale formations with the aid of what some say are toxic fracking chemical components. Prompted by reports of well contamination and even birth defects, the federal Environmental Protection Agency recently stepped in to take a closer look at its safety.
Drilling place accidents in Dimock, Pa. were the result of surface spills from trucks, not from the activity of hydrofracking, Selleck said. He said he couldn’t think of a single example where fracking, itself, has threatened ground water.
The amount of water needed to drill a well, five million gallons, is less than it takes to water the average golf course. Fracking solutions contain 99.4 percent water, some sand, bleach to kill micro-bacteria and various concentrations of chemicals that create a slick or soap consistency that reduces friction.
“We really do have a system in this state that going to come up with the right regulations. We have to balance environmental discussions with the bigger picture of feeding the nation’s energy consumption with cleaner burning fossil fuels,” said Selleck.
Smith, the state’s authority on Trenton Black River, Utica and Marcellus shale formations, said he had worried about oil being a finite source of energy in the United States when production began to outpace new discoveries back in 1980. Most geologists had also calculated that the country’s natural gas reserves had peaked in 2006.
“We now have 30 years of natural gas supply that we didn’t even know we had. If people were convinced back then that we had this long term supply of natural gas in the Marcellus, we’d have fleets of cars running on it by now,” he said.