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Permalink Reply by Hopeful About Natural Gas on August 13, 2011 at 20:15

Thanks for posting this. it's good to read some good new for a change.  It looks like the subcommittee had a range of technical folks.  Over and over the report mentions the poor public relations job the industry has done - but it also comes down hard for disclosure of fracking chemicals.  The overall thrust of it will be to move shale gas forward.

 

The report is fairly easy for novices like me to understand. Neither industry nor environmentalists will be totally satisfied with this report and I think that's a good thing.  Here's an industry blog and an environmental one.

 

http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2011/08/12/industry-group-c...

 

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/amall/doe_panel_finds_natural_gas...

 

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Permalink Reply by essay on August 14, 2011 at 15:31

i read it, and this is a good initial result, admittedly better than my cynical nature was willing to initially allow, but we'll see if this gets positive attention from the powers that be, or ignored like the recent economic commission.

 

i would only add, the natural gas industry has done a bad job at PR relative to what exactly, the various well established, highly organized and deep pocketed organizations that stand in the way?  practically a given.

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Permalink Reply by LP on August 15, 2011 at 0:08

I'm in the process of reading the report but this caught my attention:

 

The challenges of protecting human health and the environment in

light of the anticipated rapid expansion of shale gas production require the joint efforts of

state and federal regulators. This means that resources dedicated to oversight of the

industry must be sufficient to do the job and that there is adequate regulatory staff at the

state and federal level with the technical expertise to issue, inspect, and enforce

regulations. Fees, royalty payments and severance taxes are appropriate sources of

funds to finance these needed regulatory activities.

 

"adequate staff" in government usually means redundancy. Paying 5 people to do what one could do efficiently.

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