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While you were taking summer vacation, city officials were wrangling over the politics of natural-gas drilling. Pittsburgh City Council sought to put a referendum on the November ballot allowing voters to ban such drilling in city limits. The effort failed in the face of opposition from Mayor Luke Ravenstahl.
So should you expect a crop of drilling rigs in your backyard? Judging from trends in the buying and selling of drilling rights over the past two years, the answer is “no.”
Allegheny County real-estate records track the leasing of drilling rights, and the transfer of those leases to other parties. According to an electronic database of those transactions, 60 percent of the county’s 130 municipalities have seen some kind of leasing activity since August 2009. In most of those communities, however, fewer than 10 such transactions were completed; the busiest markets have been the outermost suburbs. Pittsburgh, by contrast, barely cracks the top 10 for leasing activity. And while the map doesn’t reflect the total acreage at stake, those leases amount to less than 1 percent of the city’s 55 square miles. By contrast, data compiled last year by the University Center for Social and Urban Research suggests that in other “top 10” municipalities, as much as 40 percent of the land may be leased.
What’s more, drillers seem to be losing what little interest they had in Pittsburgh. While the airport-area communities of Findlay and North Fayette have seen increasing lease activity in the past 12 months, not a single new lease has been signed within city limits for more than a year.
Methodology: Numbers reflect oil-and-gas lease transactions between August 2009 and August 2011, available online at https://pa_allegheny.uslandrecords.com/palr/. The numbers track only the total number of transactions; since property boundaries vary, they do not reflect total acreage leased in these communities.
This article appears in Sep 22-28, 2011.
The Mayor’s blocking of the referendum had no effect on the Community Bill of Rights ordinance that bans corporate gas extraction. It was enacted in November of last year and remains in effect. The article fails to mention this. Maybe the prohibition on drilling has something to do with the lack of leasing activity?
Just saying….
Or maybe there’s no where worth drilling in Pittsburgh. The CELDF is a joke and whenever their community bill of rights ordinances are challenged they’re overturned. Ben Price should stick to grooming his beard. At least no one can overturn his bad taste in court.
Believe me, PPPKME, the industry would not be spending thousands of dollars signing leases within the City of Pittsburgh (102 leases were signed prior to the ban) if they had no intention of doing so. Actually, Katie Klaber, Exec Dir & Pres of Marcellus Shale Coalition said this herself. This ban is the first step of citizens to protect their land rights and constitional rights. Note, that no community has ever fought for their ban all the way to Federal Court beyond reach of politicians whose campaigns were funded by this industry.
Further, you don’t change state policy through one whack. Communities across the Commonwealth need to unite. France banned fracking in June because of the irresponsible dumping in our rivers have made our water “unfit for consumption”. We need to follow suit. Only through a ban will our country get serious with pursuing renewable energy sources.