Landscape consequences of natural gas extraction in Allegheny and Susquehanna Counties, Pennsylvania, 2004--2010

Abstract

Increased demands for cleaner burning energy, coupled with the relatively recent technological advances in accessing unconventional hydrocarbon-rich geologic formations, have led to an intense effort to find and extract natural gas from various underground sources around the country. One of these sources, the Marcellus Shale, located in the Allegheny Plateau, is currently undergoing extensive drilling and production. The technology used to extract gas in the Marcellus Shale is known as hydraulic fracturing and has garnered much attention because of its use of large amounts of fresh water, its use of proprietary fluids for the hydraulic-fracturing process, its potential to release contaminants into the environment, and its potential effect on water resources. Nonetheless, development of natural gas extraction wells in the Marcellus Shale is only part of the overall natural gas story in this area of Pennsylvania. Coalbed methane, which is sometimes extracted using the same technique, is commonly located in the same general area as the Marcellus Shale and is frequently developed in clusters of wells across the landscape. The combined effects of these two natural gas extraction methods create potentially serious patterns of disturbance on the landscape. This document quantifies the landscape changes and consequences of natural gas extraction

Quantifying biodiversity trade-offs in the face of widespread renewable and unconventional energy development

“…1) with the spatial footprint of approved, but not yet developed, rights-of-way for gas extraction, refinement, and transportation infrastructure outside the shale basins. Unconventional oil and gas extraction results in a network of well pads, access roads, pipelines, powerlines and seismic lines that tends to cover broad spatial areas 61 compared to highly localized wind farms and run-of-river hydro and their estimated linear infrastructure. In addition, within the two BC shale gas basins, the exact footprint and location of future shale development is uncertain, and extraction activities are by nature, distributed across many individual wells.…”

“…For any given resource type, individual distributed energy resource facilities may have small physical footprints compared to single large facilities, but cumulatively may require substantially more infrastructure (roads, powerlines) per unit of energy produced (e.g., many small hydropower projects with little to no water storage capacity vs. a single large dam flooding vast areas) 10,11 . Similarly, shale gas extraction and transportation is characterized by a dense network of well pads, access roads, seismic lines, and pipelines which can cumulatively affect large geographic areas 12,13 . As such, both renewable distributed energy resources and shale development may result in similar spatial footprints that can be difficult to evaluate or integrate into land use planning, as well as conservation planning.…”

An Independent Scientific Assessment of Well Stimulation in California Volume II: Potential Environmental Impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing and Acid Stimulations

“…In regions outside of California, there are a number of locations where hydraulic fracturing enables production in areas never before developed for oil and gas. When these areas happen to underlie areas of relatively pristine habitat, the oil and gas production enabled by hydraulic fracturing causes habitat loss and fragmentation (Slonecker et al, 2013;Roig-Silva et al, 2013;Johnson et al, 2010).…”