The Joint Select Committee on Marcellus Shale meets for one last time. (Photo/Steven Allen Adams)

By Steven Allen Adams | West Virginia Watchdog

CHARLESTON — After five months of work and meetings, the Joint Select Committee on Marcellus Shale passed draft legislation governing the fracking and drilling procedures used by companies to extract natural gas from underground.

The draft legislation, S.B. 424, passed the committee 8-1, with state Sen. Karen Facemyer (R-Jackson) voting against the bill. State Sen. Corey Palumbo (D-Kanawha) was absent.

The bill now goes to the Joint Committee on Government and Finance, chaired by House Speaker Rick Thompson (D-Wayne) and Senate President Jeff Kessler (D-Marshall). The Marcellus Shale Committee voted to write a letter encouraging Thompson and Kessler to support a call for special session to pass the bill.

The bill increases permit fees to $10,000 for the first well and $5,000 for each additional well, giving the Department of Environmental Protection the authority to increase permit fees in the future with approval from the Legislature’s Rule-making Committee. The bill includes greater flexibility for the DEP to approve drilling permits.

The raised permits fees will allow DEP to hire more inspectors. The bill set salaries and qualifications from inspectors, with supervisors receiving $40,000 a year and inspectors receiving $35,000 a year. Inspectors need to have three years of experience in the oil and gas industry.

The bill gives more power to surface owners and concerned parties, setting public comment and public hearing rules. The bill requires operators to compensate surface owners for damages to property. Operators must give surface owners 30 days notice of their operation plans before enter a surface owners property, which includes a surface use and compensation agreement.

Committee co-chairmen, state Sen. Doug Facemire (D-Braxton) and Del. Tim Manchin (D-Marion), were pleased that the committee completed work on the bill.

“My job was to chair this meeting and come up with a bill. We’ve done that and our job is complete,” Facemier said. “It’s up to the leaders of the respective bodies and the Governor to do what they feel  is the right thing to do.”

“We were able to vote a bill out and I’m tickled to death,” Manchin said. “It’s been a lot of work and members have worked hours and hours and hours, and this is supposed to be our off-session time.”

Not everyone was happy with the bill. Facemyer, who voted against the bill, called it “anti-business.” Facemyer, who only attended four of the committee’s eight meetings and received the second highest number of donations from the oil and gas industry, said the permit fees were too high.

“Most of these gas wells pay $1.3 million over the life of the well in severance tax, then we tack on another $10,000 permit fee when Pennsylvania and Ohio charge $20,000 total,” Facemyer said. “I understand we need more inspectors, but that can be handled without this bill at all. All it needs is a supplemental appropriate from the Governor’s office to allot the money for DEP to hire additional inspectors.”

David McMahon, co-founder of the West Virginia Surface Owners’ Rights Organization, said his organization was not pleased with the bill and would not support it if it came to a vote in a special session.

“We’re very disappointed in this bill. It’s a collection of half-measures, baby steps, and outright omissions,” McMahon said. “We’re not sure if we can support it when it comes to the special session.”

Despite displeasure by all interested parties, Manchin said he was happy with the bill.

“I think we addressed everything we could address,” Manchin said. “I don’t think anybody is happy. The industry doesn’t seem to be happy; they think we’ve gone too far. The environmentalists think we haven’t gone far enough. The surface owners don’t think we’ve gone fare enough. Yet, we’ve addressed a lot of areas that are all meaningful to them. There are things that are going to be really helpful to the State of West Virgina and our citizens and our environment.”

Jacqueline Proctor, spokesperson for Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, said his office would review the legislation would be reviewed before making any decisions on a special session.

“We have been and will continue to analyze the legislation that the committee has submitted,” Proctor said. “Just like any other interim committee legislation, we will now turn our attention to working with the Legislative leadership to determine what aspects of the proposed legislation can be agreed upon and what changes are needed so that the Governor and the Legislature can come together in the hopes of passing a piece of legislation that will provide clear rules of the game for the companies that power a significant portion of our economy while at the same time protecting our environment.”

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• Marcellus Shale regulations inch closer to completion (westvirginia.watchdog.org)
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