CEO Leadership Conference zeros in on Marcellus Shale
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The CEO Leadership Conference held Monday at St. Barnabas Health System in Richland. -
Scott Perry, director of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection's Bureau of Oil and Gas Management, talks about fracking safety Monday during the St. Barnabas CEO Leadership Conference.
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The Marcellus Shale rock formation has been around for 350 million years, but presenters at Monday's St. Barnabas CEO Leadership Conference wanted to make sure they're good caretakers.
Scott Perry, director of the state's Bureau of Oil and Gas Management, wants to see state regulations that don't "unnecessarily increase costs" for drillers and are "responsive to industry needs."
After running down a litany of benefits brought to Pennsylvania by shale drilling, Mr. Perry said, "As a regulator, I'm not supposed to have an opinion. But really, how could I not?"
He joined representatives from the region's energy industry for the 25th year of the CEO Leadership Conference at St. Barnabas Health System in Richland, whose theme this year was, "We've Got Energy: Earth, Wind and Fire," but whose focus seemed to stay on the Marcellus Shale.
Regulation wasn't the only topic coming out of Harrisburg. The business leaders also addressed the increased chatter about a tax or fee on the companies that have drilled more than 3,000 Marcellus Shale wells in the commonwealth.
The prospect of a tax or fee has received "disproportionate attention," said Kathryn Z. Klaber, president and executive director of the Marcellus Shale Coalition industry group. The attention focused on such details risks causing the state to lose the big picture, she said.
Still, Ms. Klaber said a flat, per-well fee that could be "managed predictably" by companies would help the communities where drilling is taking place.
Lieutenant Gov. Jim Cawley, also speaking at the conference, said the administration would begin discussions on impact fee legislation. That echoes comments made by Gov. Tom Corbett and his staff this past week, as lawmakers return to Harrisburg with shale fees at the top of the agenda.
Overall, the economic outlook for shale gas drilling has been helped and hindered by the record-low prices at which natural gas is currently trading, Ms. Klaber said. With prices consistently hovering below $5, it's an easier sell for businesses that are thinking about converting their fleets to natural gas vehicles, she said.
At the same time, the low price cuts into profits, though Ms. Klaber said drilling in the Marcellus Shale remains economically viable and that the state has become a net exporter of the resource.
All the attention lavished on the natural gas source underneath much of Pennsylvania was enough to confuse Simon Tripp, a senior officer at the Battelle Group, a nonprofit science and technology research and development institute with headquarters in Columbus, Ohio.
"I seemed to have walked into the Marcellus Shale love-fest," he joked.
His talk focused more on local industries that can help produce energy elsewhere. For example, manufacturing materials built to generate energy in the ocean or other "high-wear" environments could come from Pittsburgh businesses such as PPG Industries or BPL Global.
That potential is undercut, he later said, by a stigma that manufacturing jobs can't be good because they don't require a college degree. The industry, Mr. Tripp said, is fighting the impression that "there's one way to win: a four-year college."
First Published September 20, 2011 12:01 am
