New York Judge Rules Town Can Ban Gas Hydrofracking

As natural gas development has pushed into
populated areas, gas drillers have consistently sent
their shareholders and potential investors daunting
lists of possible mishaps, including leaks, spills,
explosions, bodily injury, limited insurance coverage
– and death.

The reason for these warnings: federal law, enforced by
the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, aims to
protect investors against fraud by requiring companies
that sell stock to disclose “the most significant factors
that make the offering speculative or risky.”

But according to landowners, attorneys and industry
documents, gas drillers paint a far more benign picture
in the millions of unregulated transactions in which
they persuade landowners to lease their property for
drilling in exchange for a share of the proceeds. In its
filings with the SEC, Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake
Energy Corp., the nation’s second-largest natural gas
producer, proudly called its aggressive pursuit of these
leases a multi-million-acre “land grab.”

In personal interviews, nearly two dozen landowners
who live atop the gas-and-oil-rich Marcellus and
Utica shale formations that stretch from New York
to Kentucky told Environmental Working Group
researchers that drilling industry representatives, often
known as “landmen,” never mentioned possible risks
to their water supplies or health as they negotiated
gas-drilling leases. The landowners, in Maryland, New
York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, said that some
landmen even denied that any such risks exist – despite
SEC filings to the contrary by multiple companies
including Chesapeake, Irving, Tex.-based Exxon Mobil
Corp. and Houston-based ConocoPhillips.