“Gasland” Comes to Our Area
“Gasland” director, Josh Fox, is now tour New York and Pennsylvania. His stops in New York: Tioga County, Elmira, Cortland, Syracuse, Ithaca, Callicoon, Milford, Binghamton, Cooperstown and Albany. In Pennsylvania: Doylestown, Harrisburg, Hickory, Washington, Pittsburgh, Erie, Bradford, Montrose and Bradford County.
Who’s Doing the Numbers This Week?
According to Penn State, the natural gas industry in the Marcellus Shale provided 44,098 jobs last year, and this number will quadruple to 160,205 by 2015. According to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry, Marcellus drilling would increase the gas industry workforce from 8,025 to 12,423 in 2016. Jan Jarrett, president of Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future said, the Penn State report is based solely on assumptions provided by the natural gas industry.
Most Endangered River
The Upper Delaware has been labeled “the most endangered river in America” by American Rivers. The report says that natural gas drilling could contaminate the water. Reservoirs along the river provide unfiltered drinking water to millions of people in New York City, Philadelphia, and Trenton.
Judge Says, “Fraud”
In a court hearing on Wednesday June 9, a federal judge in Scranton, Pa. ruled that John Kropa, a Susquehanna County landowner, can sue Cabot Oil and Gas on behalf of fraud charges. Kropa is among several other people who are suing the company for inducing them to sign leases for $25 an acre. An eight-page memorandum noted that Cabot’s agents told Kropa that they would never pay more than $25 per acre for a lease, while his neighbors were paid more for leasing their property. The agents also told Kropa that if he did not lease his land they would drill under a neighbor’s land and extract the gas anyway.
