Addressing the Social and Community Impacts of Shale Gas Development

摘要

Regulators, legislators, local officials and social scientists have become increasingly concerned about the social and community impacts of shale gas development. Drawing on a long tradition of research about western energy boomtowns, researchers have identified four major categories of community impact: economic volatility, instability and dediversification; rapid (and harmful) industrialization of rural areas; community “corrosion” (uneven costs and benefits); and psycho-social disruption. Many of these impacts involve conflict – among landowners, within communities, between communities and companies. Most of them will be unfamiliar to US oil and gas companies, because they evolved outside of current regulatory frameworks. But they are already shaping policy debates over shale gas development in Pennsylvania, New York and Colorado, as well as the federal government. Mitigating the risk of conflict in shale gas plays would appear to be a high priority for both industry and government. New tools will be needed to avoid or mitigate social conflict, including a detailed understanding of existing social cleavages and mechanisms of solidarity in rural communities. Yet many of these tools have been used in overseas oil and gas operations for at least two decades: in most major capitol projects, for example, companies analyze the baseline socioeconomic conditions that give rise to potential (or existing) conflict. Such assessments provide an essential first step in anticipating and addressing community-level impact. Using case studies from two Marcellus Shale regions, this paper will present a model for analyzing community-level impacts and recommend appropriate measures to avoid or mitigate them.