City Wants Answers, Input
On Upstate Drill Plan

New York State sits atop what may be one of the world's greatest supplies of natural gas, at a time when climate concerns have increased demand for it, when advanced technology has made it more accessible and when Albany is hungry for new economic opportunities. That's why in a draft State Energy Report issued last month, Governor David Paterson said the upstate gas reserve "presents an opportunity for the State to unlock substantial economic value while helping to achieve a key energy policy objective of importance to the state's energy security."

But a broad coalition of upstate environmental groups, local community boards and elected officials from City Hall to Washington has emerged to resist plans to extract that subterranean fuel until key environmental questions are addressed. The reason? Some of the state's underground treasure of natural gas is located under and around another precious resource: New York City's water supply system.

Getting the gas could require intensive drilling near the watershed, and will produce millions of gallons of contaminated wastewater. As New York State finalizes its assessment of the potential environmental impact of natural gas drilling and finalizes the permitting process it will use, drilling companies are already leasing property upstate—and opponents are gathering stories of gas-retrieval projects in other states that may have created serious public health problems.

Underground treasure

Interest in natural gas has soared because it produces lower carbon emissions than oil and because it has become more feasible to unlock domestic gas deposits thousands of feet beneath the earth's surface. A quarter of New York's current energy needs are met by natural gas, mainly supplied by the Gulf Coast and Canada.

New York State sits on top of one of the largest shale formations in the United States, the Marcellus Shale, which contains large deposits of natural gas and extends northeast from West Virginia, through Pennsylvania to southwestern New York. Named for an exposed shale outcrop in Marcellus, N.Y., 15 miles southwest of Syracuse, the formation covers almost the entire mid-section of the Empire State. The quantity of recoverable natural gas in New York is not known with total certainty but it could be as much as 20 times what is currently produced annually in the United States, according to Gary Lash, a professor of structural geology at the State University of New York at Fredonia.

Recovering natural gas in the Marcellus Shale will require a process called hydraulic fracturing or "hydro-fracing" (pronounced frack-ing), the high-pressure injection of hundreds of thousands of gallons of water, sand, foaming, gel and acid into wells as deep as 10,000 feet below the surface. These wells cut horizontally through the Marcellus Shale, "fracturing" it and releasing gas to the surface.        

The Marcellus Shale has incredible allure for gas companies that are accustomed to trial and error. Gas development in New York to date has had "a 20 percent success rate," says Brett Chedzoy, a member of Cornell University Cooperative Extension's Marcellus Shale research team. "The Marcellus Shale offers an almost 100 percent success rate anywhere that shale exists."

In the state energy strategy released this summer, Paterson wrote that, "Natural gas extraction would create jobs, create wealth for upstate land-owners, and increase State revenue from taxes and land-owner leases and royalties." He added that it might "spur economic development and job creation in economically depressed regions of the state" and "place downward pressure on natural gas prices, thereby potentially lowering the cost of energy for New Yorkers."