Out West, Campus Gas Wells are Old Hat
Philadelphia Inquirer
29 May 2011
By Amy Worden and Angela Coulombis
HARRISBURG - The reactions ranged from startled to silly. Was Gov.
Corbett serious when he said last month that Pennsylvania college
campuses situated over the Marcellus Shale could be opened to natural
gas drilling?
Environmentalists conjured images of dirty, dangerous drill rigs
sprawling across campus quadrangles. In newspaper website comment
fields, readers asked, "Is he joking?"
Corbett was not joking.
An upstate legislator has already crafted a bill that would allow
campus drilling. Preliminary talks with school officials have begun.
And there is a model to work from: Oil and gas wells are nothing new on
campuses and other public spaces out West.
Natural gas wells drilled in 2009 are generating millions in royalties
for the University of Texas in Arlington.
Multistory oil derricks sit just outside the front door of the state
capitol in Oklahoma City. Even in the western end of Pennsylvania,
where the modern oil industry was born, Indiana University of
Pennsylvania once powered its campus with natural gas from four wells.
Now Corbett, who wants to lift a moratorium on expanded gas drilling in
state forests and open prison property to drilling, says the Marcellus
Shale natural gas reserve could be a boon to state-supported colleges.
Those are the same schools whose funding he proposes to cut 50 percent
to help offset the state's $4 billion deficit.
In a speech near Erie to trustees from the 14 universities in the state
system, Corbett said it was time to consider opening land to drilling
on the six campuses within the shale reserve. He reiterated the point
the next day during a visit to the other end of the state, talking to
reporters after a tour of Chester Community Charter School and calling
drilling on campuses a "commonsense" move for a college if it had
adequate room.
"I will tell you, we are looking at the prisons of Pennsylvania and the
land that they have," he added.
Kenn Marshall, spokesman for the State System of Higher Education, said
preliminary discussions had been taking place about using gas drilling
to generate revenue for the system's universities. Four of those
schools are directly atop the shale: Mansfield, Lock Haven, Indiana
University of Pennsylvania and California. Two others, Clarion and
Slippery Rock, are on the edges of the reserve.
Because those colleges' lands are state-owned - as are the mineral
rights - any income from such drilling would have to go into state
coffers. That is, Marshall said, unless the law is changed to allow
universities to keep gas royalties.
State Rep. Matt Baker, R., Tioga, whose district is in the heart of the
Marcellus Shale drilling region, has introduced a bill that would
permit the schools to retain 60 percent of the gas royalties, with the
rest going to state-system universities that didn't host well sites.
The proposal says schools could use the money to pay for capital
projects and to improve energy efficiency.
"This would put them in a more modern era in terms of trying to find
ways to be more self-sustaining," said Baker, who also serves on the
state college system's Board of Governors. "Most universities do a fair
amount of fundraising, and if they have a tremendous natural resource
underneath them, it makes sense that they would try to take advantage
of it."
Some academics and environmentalists promptly condemned the idea.
Robert Myers, director of environmental studies and a professor of
English at Lock Haven University, said he had been thoroughly disgusted
when he heard of Corbett's comments.
"It suggests how detached from reality he is," said Myers, who supports
a moratorium on drilling. "The thought of exposing our students to an
industry with such a long record of accidents is appalling. They've had
fires. They've had explosions. They've had spills of tens of thousands
of dangerous chemicals. Perhaps we can bring in logging crews to cut
down trees to bring in more dollars."
David Masur, executive director of the advocacy group PennEnvironment,
likened the proposal to "turning off someone's heat in the middle of
winter and then telling them to stay warm by lighting their house on
fire."
No Pennsylvania State University land, either at its 8,500-acre
University Park campus or its branches, is within the exploration area
for the shale, a spokeswoman said.
But Penn State president Graham Spanier, who has blasted Corbett for
proposing what he called crippling cuts in aid, offered a more muted,
positive reaction to the idea of campus drilling: "We are supportive of
the concept," he said in a statement.
And officials at one north Texas school have only good things to say
about gas drilling.
The University of Texas at Arlington took advantage of its location
atop the Barnett Shale, a deep reserve expected to produce large
quantities of natural gas much like the Marcellus.
"We're on a sweet spot, and it's been very good," spokeswoman Kristin
Sullivan said. "We've worked hard to be sensitive to our neighbors and
do what we can to minimize disruptions."
In 2009 the college leased land to a driller on the southeast corner of
the 400-acre campus. Since then, the university has received $7 million
in royalty payments that have funded scholarships, helped with faculty
recruitment, and provided matching funding for private donations.
Sullivan said that during the first six months of drilling there had
been heavy truck traffic and noise but that afterward, most of the
activity had gone underground. Today, she said, all that's visible at
the landscaped pad site are some pipes and valves.
At Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where four gas wells powered the
campus in the late 1970s and into the '80s, spokeswoman Michelle
Fryling said, "We are certainly appreciative of the governor's comments
about how the universities need to think outside the box on ways to
generate new revenues."
But before any final decisions are made, Fryling said, "we would need
to study it very carefully."