— Realizing that recent attention has brought Marcellus shale drilling to the forefront, industry representatives say they no longer have the option to drill quietly.

Officials from the Independent Oil and Gas Association, or IOGA, say they have hired Charles Ryan Associates to provide public relations services to help spread information to the public. IOGA, mostly made up of smaller-scale drilling operations, has more than 600 members.

“With this session particularly, it became pretty apparent (avoiding attention) wasn’t going to happen in the future,” said IOGA President Mike McCown. “The Marcellus was arguably the most talked about, most discussed, debated issue before the Legislature.”

Now, McCown said, IOGA is attempting to “shine a positive light on the industry.”

“We do some good things, and we are good citizens of the state and are proud of our industry,” he said. “We operate in 53 of the 55 counties, and we generate $170 million in tax revenue for the state every year.”

Although IOGA represents drillers in and outside of the Marcellus shale, McCown said it was the Marcellus discovery that has been shining a spotlight on the industry as of late.

“That technology could lead to opportunities down here where there could be other reservoirs, and I predict it will one day,” McCown said. “Fifteen years ago, no one could spell Marcellus; now it’s a household name.”

The oil and gas industry, McCown pointed out, already employs about 35,000 at an average salary of about $60,000 per year.

While he said reasonable regulations were to be expected, he also feels the industry is already well-regulated. McCown also acknowledged that the complexity of a horizontal well versus a vertical well may merit additional scrutiny from regulators.

Conventional drillers, he said, would not be able to tolerate some of the proposed permit fee increases and other cost-increasing measures.

“They can’t stand it. With product prices being so low because of the Marcellus and developments like that, supply has increased, and prices are down,” McCown said. “The conventional drillers don’t need any other burden on them.”

McCown said the industry has been cooperative in working to reach reasonable compromises with regulators that would protect the environment without crippling the industry.

Charlie Burd, executive director of IOGA, pointed out several measures that began reasonably enough but soon became threatening to the industry. One was the issue of requiring additional notice to landowners.

Burd said the industry was initially compliant with the rule but then found opposition groups were posting guides to “sterilize” properties in order to make them incompatible for drilling by building structures or waterways in a manner that would prevent drillers from drilling the property.

“When these things start happening to you, you have to figure that the way that provision was crafted opened that up to happening to you,” Burd said. “We were trying to prevent that.”

He also took issue with a rule that requires 2,500 feet between a well and a “watercourse,” a term not explicitly defined in West Virginia code.

“Where in the world could you walk anywhere in this state and not come across a watercourse of some kind?” Burd said. “If you walked a mile in the woods someplace, where do you not come across water running off a bank somewhere?”

The phrasing, he said was clipped from Pennsylvania law, where watercourse is defined. He also criticized some lawmakers for simply copying and pasting coal mining regulations into proposed laws for the natural gas industry.

“That language didn’t help the mining industry, and we didn’t see how it could help us,” Burd said.

Now, McCown said, with no set regulations and constant talks of moratoriums, the industry could face difficulty attracting investors. He said Marcellus drilling is lucrative but not to the degree many are led to believe.

“You hear about all the successes, but you don’t hear about all the problems,” McCown said. “You don’t hear about how a $4 million well becomes a $10 million well. It happens. There’s a lot of risk to the operator, and it can change the profit margin quickly.”

McCown said uneasiness in West Virginia, like the moratorium in New York, could potentially send drillers to Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania, he points out, has no severance tax, but regulations and the business environment are more conducive in West Virginia.

If that is lost, McCown said, and West Virginia loses its competitive advantage, investors will direct their money elsewhere.

A letter calling for a moratorium, signed by several delegates concerned about continued drilling, McCown said, cited “fairy tales” as their reasons for calling a moratorium.

Burd said accusations against the industry are also accusations against the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection. He said criticisms of both are overblown and largely false.

“The DEP Office of Oil and Gas really should be held up as a model,” Burd said. “They really do an outstanding job. They listen to the environmental community, they work closely with the industry and in the end, the right thing happens.”

Many of the problems between West Virginia citizens and drillers stem from mass separation of mineral and surface land ownership decades ago. Now, people who own the surface lands, who may have never considered a driller could one day be interested in the gas beneath their property, are facing conflict with people trying to reach the minerals they have obtained.

“If they own the surface and they own the minerals, they are happy,” Burd said. “The rub comes when the minerals were separated from the surface years ago. In some respects, shame on that individual for buying that piece of property and knowing the minerals were severed to start with.”

— E-mail: tkuykendall@register-herald.com