Experts present pros, cons of shale drilling

FAIRLAWN

A panel of experts was on hand to discuss the pros and cons of hydraulic fracturing before a crowd of more than 100 concerned citizens at a local parish here Wednesday.

The event was sponsored by the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland, and co-sponsored by the Youngstown Diocese in an effort to educate the public on both the perils and promise of the rapidly rising shale industry throughout northeast Ohio.

Peter MacKenzie, of the Ohio Oil and Gas Association, a trade group that represents oil and gas producers within the state, kicked off the discussion by reminding attendees that the Buckeye state is not the first in the country to see a surge in natural gas and oil exploration.

He made a case for the “current reality” of the country’s energy issues by pointing out that the U.S Energy Information Administration, an extension of the U.S. Department of Energy, predicts that both natural gas and oil consumption will dramatically spike between now and 2035.

But if Mackenzie was decisive, John Stolz, a professor of environmental microbiology at Duquesne University in Pennsylvania, was skeptical.

“You just don’t understand the magnitude until you get up in the air and see this stuff,” Stolz said as he ticked off slides showing aerial photographs of arid farmland and the stressed environments of West Virginia and Pennsylvania that were caused by both vertical and horizontal injection wells.

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