CHARLESTON — Regulation of the Marcellus shale development died in the West Virginia House Saturday night on the last day of the session with multiple pending amendments.

Though many interested parties were looking toward state lawmakers to call for a special session to finish the weeks of work poured into the legislation, the House failed to get the Senate’s House-amended version on the floor Saturday.

A bill that would provide various incentives for industry products, such as ethane crackers and other "downstream" projects, did pass both the House and Senate on Saturday. Opponents to the bill said it was inappropriate to offer incentives to industry without regulating them. The bill would also require a certain amount of those jobs to be given to West Virginia workers in order for the company to qualify for the incentives.

Acting Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin said he is not sure yet if there is an immediate need for a special session on the Marcellus shale regulation bill.

“I’m not sure what we are going to do right now,” Tomblin said. “I know that the (Department of Environmental Protection) has the ability to go ahead and create rules right now to be able to deal with the environmental part of the drilling.”

House Speaker Rick Thompson, D-Wayne, said he anticipates a special session. He said the Marcellus bill failed to pass largely due to the complexity of the bill.

Thompson added that a special session on the bill would allow lawmakers to properly evaluate the regulation without distraction of other pieces of legislation.

“Marcellus is very complicated; it has a lot of different people interested in it,” he said.  “We just couldn’t get all those things together between the House and Senate version.”

Randy Huffman, secretary of the DEP, said the bill may have been a little too much to attempt in one session.

“I think we were all being very optimistic to think that we could get that much stuff, that is that controversial, that has so many interests involved, to pass. We were optimistic, and a lot of people put in a lot of hard work to get where we are now.”

Huffman continued, “We will continue to press on and continue to do what we’ve been doing. I think that we have enough regulatory authority to prevent disaster, to prevent environmental disaster, and to adequately protect the water and the public from the adverse impacts of drilling.

“The good news is that everyone is talking about it,” Huffman said. “It’s not going to go away just because the session ends.”

The news that the bill would not pass upset a number of interest groups and delegates who had poured a lot of work into the bill.

“It seems to us like the House speaker killed the bill,” said Julie Archer, of the West Virginia Surface Rights Organization. “We don’t understand why. We think there was a lot of good work done by the DEP, by members of the Senate and particularly the House Judiciary Committee. It’s just really disappointing that we got this far, and we aren’t going to get a bill.”

Archer said the Legislature really needs something this year and said she hopes the upcoming gubernatorial election will spark lawmakers who are candidates in the race to action.

Executive director of the Citizens Action Group Gary Zuckett, said he was disappointed in how the bill went.

“We think it’s really a shame that it came down to the wire, and it didn’t make it over the goal line,” Zuckett said.

Supporters of regulation are still hoping regulation may happen soon.

“Hopefully, someone will call for a special session,” Archer said. “There are several in the run for governor. It gives them the opportunity to show some leadership and show them what kind of leaders they would be.”

The other alternative Archer and others had hoped for was that the DEP would slow the permitting process to match the number of available inspectors. However, Huffman said he did not plan to slow the permitting process or see the need for it.

“We permitted over 400 Marcellus wells last year, but only 58 were completed, which means there is a whole lot more permitting activity going on than there is actual drilling activity going,” Huffman said. “The potential is there for drilling to increase, but (natural) gas prices have just recently dropped significantly. The economics of it will slow it down more than I could slow it down.”

Even if environmental concerns were minimal, said Dave McMahon of the West Virginia Surface Rights Organization, surface owners are still threatened by the absence of regulation to provide notice to enter land, horizontal drilling of shale beneath their property without a lease and other considerations.

“There’s just lots of things in the bills that were important for surface owners and environmentalists,” McMahon said.

Delegate Barbara Fleischauer, D-Monogalia, one of the lead supporters of the bill, was upset when the House had recessed without addressing the bill before reconvening at 8:45 p.m. The time was significant, because, without a rules suspension, the bill would have needed to leave the House and go to conference committee and come back before the 9 p.m. deadline.

“Oh, it’s dead,” Fleischauer said with less than four hours remaining in the session. “Big industry has won again, and the people are the ones that are losing. This industry is virtually unregulated. It’s going to have a huge impact on our rural areas.”

Many were upset and confused about the bills failure to pass, since the bill was seen to represent a compromise between all parties.

Industry leaders are not necessarily celebrating the defeat of the bill. Corky DeMarco, executive director of the West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association, said the industry needed the certainty of legislation.

“We worked very hard for the best part of eight months with the DEP to come up with some legislation that the industry, the environmental community, the citizens and the state of West Virginia would all feel comfortable with,” DeMarco said. “It’s really a shame that we’ve gone through this 60-day process, we’ve all worked hard, and this legislation didn’t come forward on the last night.”

DeMarco said without regulation that allows certainty, the industry doesn’t have the ability to maximize investments in West Virginia. He added that he hopes the Legislature will continue to work toward creating a regulatory environment that would satisfy all interests.

As for a special session, Fleischauer said there should be no need — the Legislature had time to pass the bill and failed to do so.

“I think we could have got it done tonight,” Fleischauer said. “It got slowed down earlier this week, and I am not a happy camper.”

Sen. Mike Green, D-Raleigh, called the inaction of the House “shameful” and voiced his opinion on the Senate floor indicating “complete disappointment and utter disgust” at the House inaction on Marcellus regulation.

Green said the Senate bill was adequate to regulate the industry and addressed the various concerns raised by drilling.

 Delegate Rick Snuffer, R-Raleigh, said the Senate bill, without amendments from the House, lacked strength and also held up the process.

“For the Senate to blast the House, when the Senate basically just gutted their bill…I am equally upset that the House leadership sat on it, but for the Senate to sit down there and blast the House leadership — maybe hypocritical is the word, but maybe it’s just politics at its best,” Snuffer said after hearing about Green’s comments.

Among other regulations, the amended bill would have required contracts to contain language encouraging landowners to consult with an attorney before signing a new oil and gas lease; give a 30-day advance notice of entry to survey; and require drillers to meet with the surface owner.