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.