1

Impact of Proposed Environmental and Drilling Regulations on Recoverable Shale Gas Reserves in New York State

By Jerry Acton and Ben Wunder

The surface setback regulations in the revised draft SGEIS must be taken into account in order to determine New York’s likely recoverable shale gas reserves. The table below is a summary of the relevant proposed water, land, and buildings setback regulations. Each of the setbacks listed is to the edge of the well pad. There is no setback for infrastructure or ancillary systems, such as pits, compressors, etc.

NYS Setback Regulations

500Inhabited Dwelling, Public BuildingBuildingsWithin

State Land, State ParkWildlife Mgmt Area

Land

150Perennial or Intermittent Stream

Lake, Pond, Storm Drain

500

Primary Aquifer,Residential Water Well,

Livestock / Crop Water Source

Within100 Year Floodplain

2000Public Water Supply / Reservoir

Natural Lake / Man-made Impoundment

4000FAD Watershed NYC

Water

Setback (ft)Protected Feature

2

Setback regulations were modeled in GIS software using source data from a variety of publicly available sources. Setback distances were applied to each individual instance of a setback object as indicated below.

• NYS GIS Clearinghouse (rivers, creeks, streams, ponds, lakes, reservoirs, wells, public water supplies, state parks, state lands, WMAs, land use)

• PA Spatial Data Access • Broome County GIS (buildings, storm drains, water wells, public

water supplies) • National Atlas • FEMA (flood plains) • Cornell University Geospatial Information Repository (CUGIR)

Water and land object data was available across the entire 6 county fairway area – Chemung, Tioga, Broome, Chenango, Delaware, Sullivan. Broome County had the most complete data across all object types, and includes the broadest range of area development profiles ranging from the highly populated areas along the Susquehanna River to very rural areas in northern and eastern parts of the county. As a result Broome County has the largest percentage of area restricted by setbacks as depicted in the map below. Only the area above the 150 feet shale thickness line was considered in the calculations.

3

Broome County had the highest restricted percentage at 47%. Chenango county had the lowest percentage restricted area at 24%. The combined percentage of restricted area within the fairway across all 6 counties was 39%, representing 966 square miles. This leaves a total of 1,474 square miles of Marcellus fairway accessible for well pad locations.