STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE
A top Patrick administration official says he could support a fracking ban in Massachusetts to ensure that a potential natural gas reserve in the Springfield area is never tapped using the relatively new gas extraction practice.
“Even the experts who say there’s potentially a resource there, identify it as being of poor quality and limited amount, so economically it’s really not going to happen,” said Rick Sullivan, the secretary of energy and environmental affairs. “And certainly from an environmental point of view, not something that we’d be supportive of.”
[While Sullivan is opposed to drilling here, Massachusetts has benefited tremendously from drilling in other states that has produced cheap American supplies of natural gas that have pushed down heat and electricity prices and helped reduce emissions of carbon.] The method of extracting the natural gas from deep underground, called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has raised concerns among some environmentalists but also been welcomed by others because the cheap natural gas has reduced the viability of dirtier coal plants.
The gas is taken out of the earth by drilling a hole, dropping explosives into the hole, and then flushing the hole with a mixture of water, sand, and chemicals to widen fissures, sending the gas up the well, according to a fact sheet posted by the Environmental Defense Fund. The EDF is concerned about impacts on groundwater and the disposal of wastewater while noting natural gas “releases the least amount of carbon pollution of all the fossil fuels when burned.”
While the industry has reaped in billions of cubic feet of gas from the shale deposits underfoot in states such as Pennsylvania, Massachusetts was largely off the radar before a U.S. Geologic Survey report last summer.
The USGS report identified the Hartford Basin, an area formed 227 million years ago, stretching from Connecticut into the Pioneer Valley that the government believes contains “tight gas sandstone,” which could yield natural gas.
That discovery was alarming to some lawmakers, including Rep. Peter Kocot, a Northampton Democrat, and Rep. Denise Provost, a Somerville Democrat, who filed legislation (H 788) that would ban fracking and its wastewater from Massachusetts.
The bill being reviewed by the Committee on the Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture, where it had a hearing last week.
While Sullivan said it is unlikely for a company to frack in Massachusetts, the laws around that area are unclear.
“It’s probably a little unclear right now, because it’s not an operation that has happened here before,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan said economic hurdles would likely prevent the industry from entering Massachusetts, but said he would be receptive to the legislation banning it.
“We’d want to see the specific language, but it’s probably something that we can be supportive of,” Sullivan said.