A line in the drilling debate

By FRITZ MAYER

REGION — The Northern Wayne Property Owners Alliance and various other landowner groups and organizations who have been promoting natural gas drilling in the region have expressed opposition to the new drilling regulations proposed by the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC).

One complaint, which was spelled out on a website that connects 21 pro-drilling groups and organizations, www.naturalgasnow.info/drbc/RegulationProblems.pdf, is that the regulations were based on several erroneous assumptions. And one of those erroneous assumptions was that drilling would occur on about 36% of the Delaware River Basin.

The document on the website says, “While 36% of the basin does have Marcellus Shale, only 36% of that shale has gas and 37% of that is in the NYC reservoir watershed. Gas acreage accounts for only 8% or 1,116 square miles of the basin and not 36%.”

The document shows a map where the drilling will occur, which includes none of Pike County, PA, about half of Wayne County, PA, about a fourth or less of Sullivan County, NY and not quite half of Delaware County, NY. Much of the land in Delaware County is contained within the New York City watershed, and the authors assume drilling in this area will be too difficult because of burdensome regulations.

The line that separates the drilling areas from non-drilling areas in Pennsylvania begins in Wayne County near Waymart, runs just north of Bethany and continues to the Upper Delaware River near Milanville. In New York, the line continues through Cochecton, heads into Jeffersonville or perhaps just north of it, through Youngsville and south of Livingston Manor.

There has been speculation for more than a year that much of the shale beneath much of Sullivan and Pike does not have recoverable gas because of the geologic conditions underneath, and this is the first map seen by The River Reporter that shows where the boundary might be drawn.

Efforts to reach a person who could provide information about how the map was created have so far been unsuccessful; therefore the accuracy of the map cannot be verified.