Uploaded April 2014 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago
Chautauqua County Legislature heard from five speakers on high-volume hydraulic horizontal fracking. Mike Hogan maintains that the NY DEC learned from the mistakes of Pennsylvania and elsewhere, that the new giant rigs walk themselves to the next drill site, are self-contained in a closed-loop system, that the high-tech operation can be run remotely, and that the gas and oil industry improves rural road so as to get their thousands of trucks of water and cement and steel pipe and chemicals and machinery to the frack pads. Hogan notes that the mean wage in the industry is about $84 k per year. The last speaker in the series was attorney Mary Hajdu, representing a landowners group, who says that the changes horizontal fracking makes in a community is, "... sort of like a Walmart coming to your town, without all the petty larceny." Hajdu says that if the New York moratorium is lifted, NY's "compulsory integration" will require only 60% of the owners in a HVHF 'spacing unit' for the frack process to go forward. And only those landowners who have signed up with with a landowners group stand a chance to be properly represented. Both Hogan and Hajdu speak of high-tech "draining" of the methane (etc) from the Utica plays.
Chautauqua County Legislature heard from five speakers on high-volume hydraulic horizontal fracking. Mike Hogan maintains that the NY DEC learned from the mistakes of Pennsylvania and elsewhere, that the new giant rigs walk themselves to the next drill site, are self-contained in a closed-loop system, that the high-tech operation can be run remotely, and that the gas and oil industry improves rural road so as to get their thousands of trucks of water and cement and steel pipe and chemicals and machinery to the frack pads. Hogan notes that the mean wage in the industry is about $84 k per year. The last speaker in the series was attorney Mary Hajdu, representing a landowners group, who says that the changes horizontal fracking makes in a community is, "... sort of like a Walmart coming to your town, without all the petty larceny." Hajdu says that if the New York moratorium is lifted, NY's "compulsory integration" will require only 60% of the owners in a HVHF 'spacing unit' for the frack process to go forward. And only those landowners who have signed up with with a landowners group stand a chance to be properly represented. Both Hogan and Hajdu speak of high-tech "draining" of the methane (etc) from the Utica plays.
