Download - American Association of Petroleum Geologists

AAPG
EXPLORER
Marcellus: Blessing? Curse?
Author Knows Both
Sides of a Controversy
By DAVID BROWN, EXPLORER Correspondent
In answer to the question “Is the extensive
Marcellus shale development a blessing
or a curse for landowners?” author
Seamus McGraw has been known to
answer:
“Both.”
He bases that answer on experience.
His widowed mother signed a lease on her
Pennsylvania farm with Chesapeake Energy
Corp. at the peak of the Marcellus land
frenzy. That brought her a handsome lease
bonus on her hundred acres.
A blessing.
It also brought a
disorienting incursion
of trucks and heavy
equipment, the
grinding roar of
drilling rigs, worries
about water quality,
the discharge of
chemical-laced fluid
into rivers and streams,
a disruption of lifestyle
and landscape, a crippling strain on
community.
The curse.
McGRAW
McGraw related his family’s experiences
during the advent of the Marcellus shale
play in “The End of Country,” published in
2011. The book provides a window on the
many ways the developing play affected
his mother and her neighbors in their rural
neighborhood.
He will discuss that period and his
current perspective on oil and gas
development on Tuesday, May 22, as
speaker for the Energy Minerals Division
luncheon at the AAPG Annual Convention
and Exhibition in Pittsburgh.
About “The End of Country,” McGraw
said, “I think it’s about the challenge that
comes from what happens below the
surface being mirrored in communities
above the surface.”
“The word ‘fracking’ has come to be a
very powerful word in this conversation,”
he added. “We push the word and pull
it – we Silly Putty it to cover everything that
happens in the process.”
In McGraw’s view, hydrofracturing
equates to pumping fluid down a hole
under enormous pressure to create fissures
and to exploit existing fractures. He thinks
communities go through something similar
when an unconventional play develops.
“They have been exploiting existing
fractures within these communities,” he said,
“with enormous consequences.”
Regrets? He’s Had a Few
McGraw described himself as still deeply
conflicted about his family’s actions in
leasing their farm for drilling. He recounted a
Award-winning author Seamus
McGraw will be the speaker for
this year’s Energy Minerals Division
Luncheon, set at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday,
May 22, at the AAPG Annual Convention
and Exhibition in Pittsburgh.
McGraw’s talk will be titled
“Comfortable in Our Own Ignorance.”
The session will focus on how
extreme voices on both sides of the
radio interview during which he was asked,
“Do you regret the decision you made?”
“I said, ‘I’m a 54-year-old, chain-smoking,
recovering alcoholic. I can probably count
the things I don’t regret on the fingers of one
hand,’” he recalled.
The better question would be “Would
you do it again?” McGraw observed.
“And the answer is, ‘Yes, I would,’” he
said.
In a way, that answer reflects McGraw’s
environmental beliefs.
“I’m a 54-yearold,
chain-smoking,
recovering alcoholic.
I can probably count
the things I don’t
regret on the fingers
of one hand.”
“We’ve reduced our coal consumption
partly by development of renewables,”
McGraw said. “We’ve reduced our carbon
output by about the total carbon output of
England. We’ve taken some real steps. Not
enough, but real steps.”
Yet the United States’ recent ability
to curb pollution and greenhouse gas
emissions largely comes from something
else.
“If you listen to the EIA (the U.S. Energy
Information Administration), the biggest
reason is natural gas,” he said.
Unconventional resource development
has produced not only more abundant but
also much cheaper natural gas supplies,
shifting the balance away from morepolluting,
coal-fired power plants.
It also has lessened America’s
dependence on imported oil and gas. And
McGraw said that’s important when he
thinks about his young son, and his own
days as a journalist writing about the war in
Iraq.
“I don’t want him standing on the same
sand I was standing on with a gun in his
hand, trying to protect someone else’s water
or someone else’s oil,” he said.
McGraw might have seen the worst of
the industry’s early push into shale gas.
Numerous frac fluid spills occurred in
northeast Pennsylvania, many caused when
drillers lost control of flowback.
His family’s farm is just five miles from
Dimock, where an operator was ordered
See McGraw, page 67
public debate over shale gas exploration
and development are effectively
undermining efforts to develop the
resource more safely, damaging efforts
to maximize its potential environmental
advantages and preventing the real
economic benefits from taking hold.
The perspective, he says, goes for
both sides of the debate.
64 MAY 2013 WWW.AAPG.ORG