If operators and service companies want to succeed in shale plays, they should keep an eye on state regulators, even in states far from where they plan to operate, “simply because those regulations tend to get passed around,” said a contractor active in shale.

“Any good idea that a state comes up with, other states are likely to copy,” David Alleman, a senior environmental manager with the consulting firm All Consulting LLC, said at the Marcellus Shale Gas Environmental Summit in Pittsburgh last Tuesday.

That message is quite different from the macro-level debate between states and the federal government, or the micro-level debate about regulation at the local level, but Alleman said industry often underestimates the importance of tracking regulations and often passes off the responsibility to advocacy groups that may not have expertise.

“In many cases, agencies really want to get industry comments,” Alleman said, either because those agencies need “technical rebuttals” to combat political additions or “technical feedback” for proposed regulations. “Typically, these agency personnel are not active oil and gas employees. They may not have extensive experience in the industry. Any comment you can give them can be really helpful to that regulatory process.”

That idea could mean that while Pennsylvania and New York often snipe at each other, operators in the more southerly state should pay attention to its northern neighbor. While New York chose to delay permitting until it changed its regulatory structure to anticipate the changes required by shale, Pennsylvania chose to use its existing regulatory structure to reflect those changes, experts from both states said (see related story and NGI, Oct. 10; Oct. 3).

The Pennsylvania method allows companies to drill where they can’t in New York, but those frequent changes create problems for companies as well, Alleman said. “Recently, states all across the U.S. have revised their regulations. We’ve had Pennsylvania, West Virgina, Ohio, Texas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Colorado, all these states that have been revising their regulations. It seems to have become an ongoing process,” he said. “They revise regulations, and before the ink is dry, there are new changes being proposed.”

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