Fracking on Public Land: An Empirical Study of Inspection Results for Natural Gas Drillers

• In Event: Financial and regulatory reporting, at home and abroad.
  In Dialogue Session: Financial and Regulatory Reporting, at Home and Abroad.

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to examine the inspection record for oil and gas companies drilling and fracking wells on public lands. The issues are varied and contentious and embody important implications for governmental and corporate accountability. The study utilizes regulatory records for oil and gas development in Pennsylvania. Most wells in the state are drilled on private land. However, the state government has sold a limited number of leases to specific drilling firms that allowed fracking on state forest land. Using inspection data for fracked wells on both public and private land, the study showed that compliance statistics for fracked wells on state forest tracts were similar to other wells in the state. This result implies that the wells in the state forests were generally receiving the same inspection scrutiny that wells on private lands received. While the aggregate compliance rates for state forest versus non-state forest were comparable, the data did reveal certain anomalies for individual drillers. These anomalies were identified and described so that they may be analyzed in future research. The conclusions reached in this paper may give regulators, and others in authority, information useful in the administration of the current leases and new leases that have recently been approved.

Author

• John A Pendley, Susquehanna University