Politics & Government

Truitt Discusses Marcellus Shale Drilling

State Rep. Dan Truitt meets with community members to discuss Marcellus Shale legislation.

State Representative Dan Truitt met with members of the community in East Bradford Thursday night to discuss issues surrounding the drilling of natural gas in the Marcellus Shale deposit in northern Pennsylvania.

“I don’t know exactly what the impact will be,” Truitt said.  “But you take a look back at the way mining was handled 30 years ago, and there are definitely things we could’ve done differently.”

Currently there are two bills being discussed in the state legislature: the first bill was voted on and passed in the state house of representatives.  The second bill was put together in the state senate.

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“During the summer people would come up to me and ask why we haven’t done anything with this yet,” Truitt.  “The problem I would tell them is at the time we were trying to get 254 people to agree on 16 different bills.  Now, we’ve narrowed it down to two.”

According to Truitt, the bill passed in the house would impose an “impact fee” on the drilling companies to the tune of about one percent.

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“I talk to people in Chester County, and I would say a good 80 percent of them want a good stiff tax,” Truitt said.  “But the people in the northwest part of the state don’t want that because they’re afraid it’ll drive away the industry.”

Truitt said that the house bill would charge a one percent tax on each natural gas well, which would bring in around $150,000 in revenue per well.

“Right now, there are a 110 rigs in the state,” Truitt said.  “However, by the time they’re done drilling it could be as many as 30,000 holes.”

Basically, the 110 rigs that currently reside in the state move to a new hole when the previous well is tapped out.

The fear is, according to Truitt, that if taxes on the drilling companies are too high they will simply leave the state.

“Once that rig has been packed up, it’s just as easy for them to move to Ohio or somewhere else as it is to move to a new location in Pennsylvania,” Truitt said.

Truitt added that current drill companies are already being recruited by states like Ohio.

“This could be a huge economic boom for us,” Truitt said.  “But we need to figure out a way to do it without wrecking the environment.”

The house bill has environmental protection measures, but it’s uncertain how effective those measures will be.

“There’s a bill that would require companies to disclose what chemicals they’re using in the fracking process,” Truitt said.  “We don’t know how to test for something if we don’t know what to test for.”

Truitt admitted that the biggest concern for everyone is methane and similar chemicals leaking into the water supply.

“There’s the potential here for tremendous gain,” Truitt said.  “But we have to make sure we do it the right way.”


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