February 23, 2012
The Transatlantic Academy's Pennsylvania Shale Gas Tour
On November 21 Transatlantic Academy fellows Geoffrey Kemp, Corey Johnson, and Tim Boersma, along with Academy Program Officer Nick Siegel, participated in a tour of Marcellus Shale gas fields around Tunkhannock, in northeastern Pennsylvania.
This tour came amid a growing and at times controversial shale gas revolution in the United States, which has seen some sixteen hundred wells drilled in Pennsylvania in the last year alone. The day began with a meeting in Dimock, Susquehanna County, at the headquarters of Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation, where the group was given a brief introduction into the process of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” The group then visited a site where Cabot and several subcontractors were in the process of drilling and preparing a new shale well. There the group was briefed on the process of drilling, risk management, and eventual conversion of the site into a functioning gas field. The tour then moved to a Williams compressor station, where natural gas is treated before it reaches the pipeline system for transport – a process that involves water partition, and the separation of undesired chemicals. The tour concluded with a meeting with representatives from the Wyoming County Chamber of Commerce.
