Drillers hold on to drinking-water quality data; major Marcellus firm fined for ruining water wells

The gas drilling industry claims Duke University research linking drilling to methane contamination in water has no validity because it lacks baseline information for comparison, but such data does exist. "It just wasn't available to the Duke researchers, or to the public," reports Abrahm Lustgarten of ProPublica, whose reporting has helped focus attention on the issue.

"The industry is sitting on hundreds of thousands of pre- and post-drilling data sets," said Robert Jackson, one of the Duke researchers, told Lustgarten. " I asked them for the data and they wouldn't share it." The industry has been collecting pre-drilling water samples from private wells since late 2008, when drilling in Dimock, Pa., was linked to water contamination for two reasons, Lustgarten reports: "To get to the bottom of water contamination problems" and "to protect itself when people complain that drilling harmed their drinking water."

Chesapeake Energy, which has tested thousands of private water supplies in the Marcellus Shale, right, "says its findings demonstrate that much of the water was contaminated before drilling began," Lustgarten reports. It remains unclear if Pennsylvania environmental officials have access to the industry data, which leaves the validity and usefulness of industry data uncertain. (Read more, subscription required)

The state today fined Chesapeake more than $1 million "for contaminating private water supplies with methane in Bradford County. Officials called it the single largest state fine ever for an oil or gas operator in the state," The Associated Press reports.