Pittsburgh is asking for a moratorium on drilling while it crafts an ordinance

BY ERIC LIDJI FOR GREENING OF OIL 

Pittsburgh and resource development aren’t strangers. It’s just been a while since the two have been in touch. One of the first oil refineries in America was built in what is now the Lawrenceville neighborhood, set on the Allegheny River. Today, though, as the booms and busts of coal and steel give way to an emerging economy of education and healthcare, Pittsburgh is now scrambling to get reacquainted with fossil fuels, namely shale gas.

The impetus was news that some Lawrenceville landowners had leased their mineral rights. While that doesn’t mean drilling rigs are inevitable or eminent, it does mean they are a possibility. That, combined with public concern about resource development in the wake of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and about natural gas drilling in particular since the airing of the documentary “Gasland,” has brought shale gas to the forefront of public discussion, with local officials staking their positions and studying their rights.

While Marcellus Shale development is a hot topic across Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh is late to the discussion. The 564 wells drilled this year alone are in small towns or rural areas.

Following news about the leases, Councilman Patrick Dowd, whose ward includes Lawrenceville, introduced zoning codes for drilling inside the city limits, a move he said drew complaints from both sides of the drilling debate. Opponents saw it as caving to industry, while supporters saw it as infringing on both property rights and state law.

The two-page ordinance sketches out rough guidelines: drill sites must have at least 15 free acres and take place at least 1,000 feet from “any residential or public structure,” gas companies must test soil and water before and after drilling, and local public safety officials must be kept in the loop about emergency plans and chemicals used for drilling.

Dowd called his ordinance a starting point for policymakers. He wants the city to form a special team to offer recommendations for revisions. Under the rules of the Pittsburgh City Council, the ordinance is the law of the land while it works its way through the local planning commission, but it can and most likely will be replaced in the coming years.

Before he’ll feel comfortable seeing drilling rigs inside the city limits, Dowd said he wants to know that taxpayers won’t bear the cost of development through increased wastewater rates or road maintenance fees, and that drinking water is protected from fracturing fluid and well brine.

“Technology can solve problems, but I’m just not sure that these problems are in the range of ‘solvable,’” Dowd said. He sees urban drilling as a public safety issue. “This isn’t out in the countryside, where the number of public you’d have to evacuate, for example, would be small… The potential disaster-level is huge.”

The Pittsburgh City Council recently passed a resolution asking the state to impose a one-year moratorium on shale drilling to give cities time to answer these questions. State Sen. Jim Ferlo, whose office sits on the main drag of Lawrenceville, already proposed such a moratorium for exactly that reason, a move the industry argues will stall a fast-growing economic driver in a state and at a time when job creation is a constant priority. Ferlo believes the wait is worth it. “We know that there’s a state pre-emption for a lot of issues on the well and the drilling, but that does not negate the power of local zoning,” he said. 

Local authority rests on zoning

Because they can’t pass bans or moratoriums like state governments, local municipalities must be creative if they want control over drilling, and most local authority comes about through zoning codes that guide where and how industrial work like drilling can be done.

The prime example is Fort Worth, which has more wells producing shale gas inside its city limits than Pennsylvania does across the entire state. That drilling hasn’t been incident free. A 2006 blowout on a rig in a Fort Worth suburb killed one worker and caused an evacuation, some believe unnecessarily. And debates continue to rage about whether Barnett Shale drilling is making air in North Texas unsafe to breathe. Still, Fort Worth’s 66-page drilling ordinance is a model for big cities anticipating development.

That ever-evolving document began in 2001 using decades-old policy from Midland, Texas, as a guide. It expanded in 2006 following the recommendations of a task force, and reached its current length in 2008, after a second task force met to discuss the issue. The guidelines cover everything from setbacks to enhanced standards for well classifications.

That stepwise advance came as the city stumbled in unanticipated problems, according to Tom Edwards with the Gas Drilling Division of the local planning department, who believes industry could have been more upfront about the potential issues during those years. The current guidelines strive to be precisely vague: concrete enough to close any loopholes but abstract enough to let industry find creative solutions. Edwards said the city drafted strict guidelines for drilling in floodplains, but admitted that other similarly tight rules lead to unintended consequences. Guidelines to make fracture pits more pleasing to the eye ultimately increased the size of drill sites and created noise problems. Generally prohibiting drilling from “parkland” kept rigs out of beloved urban parks, but also made it off limits for companies to drill on empty pasture classified as “parkland” in city code.

Edwards said Fort Worth wants to exert control without triggering a precedent-setting lawsuit that could strip away its authority. However, as Fort Worth and Barnett Shale drilling grow, the day will inevitably come when a company can’t find a place to put a rig. “If it becomes impossible to put a well in, you don’t put a well in,” Edwards said.

Pittsburgh and Fort Worth are very different

Pittsburgh will inevitably look to Fort Worth as it studies urban drilling, but the two cities aren’t the same. While Fort Worth is twice as populous as Pittsburgh, it’s also half as dense. Many wells are in the wide-open northern end of the city, where it is much easier to find room for unavoidable drilling facilities like compressor stations and fracture pits.

And, Fort Worth, in the heart of the Texas oil patch, is more accustomed to drilling.

On some issues, Fort Worth may not have answers either. The city placed a moratorium on saltwater disposal, an issue on the minds on many Pittsburgh policymakers. Increased and improved recycling methods could ease that concern, but without those measures drillers are forced to use water treatment plants or deep injection wells, both of which would require companies to truck millions of gallons of brine over city streets.

One thing the cities share, though, is that the citizens for and against drilling will most likely be neighbors, as some landowners lease mineral rights and others don’t. In Pittsburgh, a city constantly concerned about its budget, Dowd worries the issue will create two camps: those who see a more jobs and lower taxes and those who see a looming environmental disaster. He calls that “the worst possible climate for debate.”

Shale news in brief

Range Resources decided to voluntarily disclose the chemicals it uses to hydraulically fracture wells in Pennsylvania and make the information publically available.

Several environmental and public health groups in Pittsburgh recently launched Fraktracker.org, a website for mapping information about the Marcellus Shale. 

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection is taking comments on new regulations for drilling, casing, cementing, testing and monitoring oil and gas wells.

An industry-funded study concluded that Barnett Shale drilling isn’t a major cause of air pollution in North Texas.

The Texas Department of Transportation is looking into using a product called Soundfighter, which cuts noise at Barnett Shale drilling sites, to reduce noise on I-30.

Contact Eric Lidji at ericlidji@mac.com