Yes, you are on both counts.
I hinted in my opening comments that I wanted to have the opportunity to correct some of the earlier testimony that your committee has received. In particular, I noted that during a previous meeting, the senior vice-president of Talisman was quoted as saying “We have been fined in Pennsylvania three times in the last three years a total of $21,000. None of it was for contaminating surface water.” With respect to your second point, about whether regulations are in place that are adequate, I should point out that he failed to point out that his company has been cited for violations of regulations in Pennsylvania 285 times in the last three years. The fine was only $21,000 because the fines hadn't been assessed yet for the 285 regulation violations.
I should also quote someone that you would do well to invite to a future meeting, and this is the outgoing director of the department of environmental preservation in the State of Pennsylvania, John Hanger. Right now the department really has very questionable authority when telling a company that it operates so badly that the department is not going to give it permission to get any more permits. He's also quoted as saying “the maximum fines that environmental regulators can issue to violators of the state's oil and gas law are...'scandalously low'”. He goes on to say that currently a gas company like Talisman operating in Pennsylvania pays a $25,000 bond to cover as many wells as that company would ever develop in the state, and that's one quarter of the cost to the state of plugging an abandoned well, of which there are 100,000 in Pennsylvania.
So the point I made before, to look before you leap, to go slowly, and to study what's already been done wrong in other places.... The gentleman from New Brunswick is right on target. He just needs to expand a little farther and ask more questions in more places. Don't count on hearing from just the industry people in one location as to how to proceed. Ask people like him, the director of environmental preservation in Pennsylvania. He'd be glad to come up and talk to you. By the way, he was charged with both promoting--which he did--and regulating shale gas development in Pennsylvania, and he did both jobs very well. But he is very realistic about the current state.