Greg Staple, CEO of the American Clean Skies Foundation, the sponsor for ShaleCountry.com, provides some background:

"Given all the energy buzz about shale gas, as well as the environmental concerns, we wanted to find an engaging way to share the actual day-to-day experiences of people living in the areas where the gas is being produced – the Haynesville shale in Louisiana, the Fayetteville in Arkansas, and the Marcellus in New York and Pennsylvania.

These geologic formations – formed by ancient seas – were once obscure. Now, the names of these methane-rich rock strata have entered the mainstream.

And for good reason: the Haynesville, the Fayetteville, the Marcellus and America's other shale gas "plays," together with existing resources, provide us with the potential to derive more energy from natural gas than all the oil in Saudi Arabia. This vast and primarily onshore U.S. gas supply opens new options for using natural gas to reduce our dependency on oil – to power trucks and buses, and to generate electricity with over 50% less global warming pollution than coal.

But how do the people of Shale Country see things? Many of them have been thinking about and living with natural gas production for a long time, and they have drawn conclusions about the process that are worth hearing.

That is what this web site is all about:

A family restaurant whose dreams have come true, the banker who quit his day job to start a welding supply service, a man who harvests rain water for drill sites by day and puts shale country to music in his off-hours, an Iraq war veteran who traded in his gun to drill for energy security at home. You'll find all of these people and many more at ShaleCountry.com.

What About The Environment?

The stories here are not all about jobs or the new money flowing to hard-pressed rural communities. Shale gas has sounded environmental alarm bells in some communities and ShaleCountry.com gives voice to these concerns, too.

It talks about such issues from a local perspective: protecting drinking water supplies, and what happens when heavy drilling equipment is hauled on country roads.

Along the way, you'll hear and see some unusual things. As one local landowner tells us, the Marcellus region has long provided geological surprises. Natural gas has seeped into water wells and basements for decades, far from any oil or gas drilling sites. And it can lead to some dramatic pictures when water well pipes can be lit with a match.

When it comes to talking about water issues, however, it bears noting that shale gas formations typically lie more than a mile underground, thousands of feet below local water tables. But environmental challenges remain with respect to the water used and produced in the drilling process.

The Drilling Process

Gas bearing shale rocks are not very porous. To start the gas flowing, production companies must direct high-pressured streams of water and sand down a protected drill hole to fracture the shale formations. This process is known as hydrofracturing or fracking. Sand or another kind of proppant (e.g., tiny glass beads) is used to wedge open the fractures.

The water used for fracking typically contains a small volume of chemicals. They are used to aid the production process (e.g., to prevent pipes from corroding; to keep the proppants in solution). Because the improper use of or exposure to some of these chemicals can pose serious health risks
or environmental hazards, it is very important that all the chemicals on a site be appropriately managed, and that the waste frack water (along with any water that comes up with the raw gas)
be properly recycled or treated.

State regulatory agencies currently oversee the permitting of shale gas drilling sites as well as the fracking process. Over 25,000 shale gas wells have been fracked during the last decade and the vast majority of these wells have not led to any reported environmental incidents.

There have been some deplorable exceptions, however, such as where an improperly cased and cemented drill bore has leaked methane into nearby ground water, or where frack fluids or produced water has been spilled or disposed of improperly. The environmental harm from these illegal activities should not be minimized even though it generally has been limited to the immediate vicinity, and the companies responsible have been disciplined by state regulators.

See, for example, this testimony by the head of Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection. In May 2011, the department also recommended that the state's drilling rules be tightened to provide added protection for local water sources.

Recently, Pennsylvania took an important first step toward developing a strategic plan for responsible gas drilling in the state when the Marcellus Shale Advisory Committee, formed by Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett, published its final report. The report outlined 96 recommendations to ensure that hydraulic fracturing is conducted in an environmentally sound way, promotes the use of natural gas-powered vehicles and creates jobs.

Continued vigilance by gas producers and government agencies is essential.

In 2010, at the request of the Congress, the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began a comprehensive study on whether the fracking process used to produce shale gas presents any unacceptable health or environmental risks. Various members of Congress have also called for the public disclosure of the chemicals used in the fracking process.

We welcome this new EPA study, and we support appropriate public disclosure of the chemicals used in the fracking process, as some drilling companies already do.

Greater disclosure of fracking chemicals is also being considered by several states. Notably,the new drilling regulations adopted in June 2010 by Wyoming's Oil and Gas Conservation Commission require operators to make detailed disclosures to state regulators regarding any chemicals in the fracking fluids used to stimulate gas wells. In June 2011, Texas – with the support of industry – also began requiring companies to make public the chemicals they use on every hydraulic fracturing job in the state.

Chemical disclosures under the Texas law will be based on disclosure forms filed by a number of existing producers at FracFocus.org.

On July 1, 2011, the New York Department of Environmental Conservation issued a draft recommendation that would allow the permitting of shale gas wells in the state, subject to new operating conditions. Drilling would be off limits in the New York City and Syracuse watersheds as well as state parks, forests, wildlife management areas and within all primary aquifers. Drilling would be permitted on other private land with rigorous protections. If the regulations are adopted in final form, about 85 percent of the Marcellus Shale in New York would be accessible to natural gas extraction. By January 2012, more than 40,000 comments had been submitted to the state in response to the draft recommendation, including comments from federal agencies, environmental groups and landowners. To get an overview of the range of views expressed in the comments, click here.

At the federal level, in May 2011, U. S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu appointed a group of environmental, industry and regulatory experts to make recommendations to improve the safety and environmental performance of hydraulic fracturing. The SEAB’s Subcommittee on Shale Gas Production recently released a 90 day interim report, which identifies industry best practices for shale gas drilling. Their final report is to be released on November 18, 2011.

President Obama directed Chu to convene this group as part of the president's "Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future" – a comprehensive plan to reduce America's oil dependence, save consumers money, and make our country the leader in clean energy industries.

"America's vast natural gas resources can generate many new jobs and provide significant environmental benefits, but we need to ensure we harness these resources safely," Chu said.

In response to a request from Chu, the National Petroleum Council, an oil and natural gas advisory committee, recently released a comprehensive two-year study that examined how to prudently develop vast oil and gas resource. The report noted the significant technological advances in tapping natural gas and oil resources, and suggested that natural gas was a good near-term answer for reducing America’s carbon footprint.

A Word Of Thanks

Finally, let me say how grateful we are to the people who made this site possible – the residents of ShaleCountry.com. This site could not have been created but for the generosity of each of the people who agreed to share their stories with us. Everyone featured in ShaleCountry.com volunteered to talk with the independent documentary team, Getzels Gordon Productions, that recorded their stories. No one who appears on camera was offered or received any compensation for doing so.

Share Your Thoughts With Us.

We hope the stories presented here will provide people across America with a better sense of what is happening in Shale Country and enlarge the conversation about America’s energy options.

If you want to share your own shale gas story with us, please get in touch, or post a comment on our site.

Thanks for visiting."