Political Quotes

“I thank my good friend from Pennsylvania. I do want to get into the process. I have a chart here today on the floor of the House to kind of go over exactly what we are talking about when it comes to this--I thank my colleague for joining us this evening--to talk about what we are dealing with here, this process of tapping into the shale formations, and in particular Marcellus shale formation. Really what we are talking about is kind of the combination of the existing technologies of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. That's kind of the game-changing combination of existing technologies that have been joined together to in an innovative way come up with a way to tap these deep, large natural gas reserves in an environmentally safe way that will allow this gas to be recovered in an economically viable way. So with that being said, I have got a chart here. And as many people know, there is the old traditional vertical well drilling which is represented, before we go into the horizontal role here, as straight down. The old vertical well is to punch a hole in the ground, as you said, 37 feet with a wooden bit, to one of the original finds in your district. That's what we're talking about. But the horizontal drilling, the change in the horizontal drilling techniques that we're talking about is the ability to go down very deep into the Earth's crust. We are talking that this formation in Marcellus shale is about 6,000 to 8,000 feet below the surface.…”