Drilling at National Park Sites Reviewed
Pittsburgh Tribune
Review
26 February 2011
By Jennifer Reeger
The National Park Service plans to rewrite its more than 30-year-old
regulations on oil and gas development on its lands — regulations that
could impact the Flight 93 National Memorial.
The public has until Monday to provide the Park Service with comment on
how it should go about rewriting those regulations, which were last
updated in 1978.
Currently, 11 of 392 National Park sites are home to oil and gas
development. None are in Pennsylvania.
More than 30 National Park properties are located in or near the
gas-rich Marcellus shale region and could be impacted by such
development. Those include five in Western Pennsylvania -- the Flight
93 memorial, Fort Necessity National Battlefield, Friendship Hill
National Historic Site, Johnstown Flood National Memorial and Allegheny
Portage Railroad National Historic Site.
Park Service officials said the writing of a new environmental impact
statement to revise oil and gas regulations is needed to reflect
current policies, legal requirements and technology, and to avoid or
minimize adverse effects on resources and visitors.
While the Marcellus shale gas boom wasn't a "primary driver" to the
rewrite, "it certainly was a consideration and something we're looking
at," said Ed Kassman, regulatory specialist with the geologic resources
division of the National Park Service.
The park service has been soliciting public opinions on the issue since
the end of last year. Once a draft is written, the public will have
another opportunity to comment.
"We do have certain provisions in the regulations that we're looking to
change," Kassman said. "One of the major things is that under current
regulations, about 50 percent of the (oil and gas) operations in one
way or another have been exempt from the regulatory provisions."
Closing that "loophole" is one of several suggestions the Sierra Club
has made.
"We're sort of taking a proactive approach in that we want to provide
to them recommendations on what is best policy, based on what we're
seeing as best practice in other states," said Deborah Nardone, the
senior campaign representative for natural gas for the environmental
organization.
Beyond removing "grandfather" status for currently operating oil and
gas wells, Nardone said the Park Service should have a say when oil and
gas extraction is occurring, even on adjacent lands that might impact
park property.
"We feel if you're extracting gas from underneath National Park Service
land you should have to comply with drilling regulations the National
Park Service has on the books." she said.
The Sierra Club would like to see a rigorous set of standards imposed
if drillers want to access the minerals underneath national parks.
Nardone said the strictest regulations of the states should be brought
together into one document.
"It should be the gold standard, and we should require no less on
National Park land," she said.
The Sierra Club suggests the regulations include a way for the National
Park Service to assess and hold drillers accountable for any damage
done by the drilling.
The Pennsylvania Independent Oil and Gas Association has not taken a
stance on the regulations because the issue does not apply to anything
the association is involved with in Pennsylvania, said Lou D'Amico,
president and executive director.
Neither has The Families of Flight 93, said Patrick White, vice
president of the group and an attorney who practices primarily on land
use matters.
"We don't have a position on it. We're not monitoring it. We don't
intend to comment (through the current process)," White said.
While White is not aware of any proposals to drill on the memorial
land, he said if one should come up, the families would like to look at
it.
"Although people try to write general rules of applicability, we'd want
to make sure that under any individual set of facts we'd have a chance
to look at it," he said.
Jennifer Reeger can be reached at jreeger@tribweb.com or 724-836-6155.