Letter-to-the-Editor: Board of Oil and Gas Presentation
Dear Editor
As people are learning, natural gas extraction is most likely coming to the Shields Valley. Estimates for it happening are around five years, sooner or later depending on the price of natural gas. As an indicator, this past Tuesday (Nov. 29) a presentation by the Montana Board of Oil and Gas Conservation and the Montana Petroleum Association at the City-County Complex provided the industry perspective concerning the history and status of the oil and gas industry in Montana.
From the perspective of the Park County Natural Gas Committee, I’d like to make a couple of representative points:
The majority of the presentation was about the hydraulic fracturing process (“fracking”) with the intent of not only explaining how it is used but to indicate that it is environmentally safe. The industry continually refers to fracking as a process developed 60 years ago, implying that it is tried and true. Here in Park County the process that will be used is actually “horizontal fracturing”, where fracking is performed horizontally for thousands of feet in layers of shale. This process was introduced in the late 1990’s and is still under development. Most of that development involves not one well but a “pad” of up to 32 wells with horizontal fracturing in all directions. The interactions with the underlying geology are obviously complex, especially when there are hundreds of pads in one area. This is new technology and it is not yet proven ‘safe’ for groundwater. This leads to the second point. […]