New Federal Energy Subcommittee to Review Fracking; Group Includes Former Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection Chief Kathleen McGinty
This post was written by Jennifer Smokelin.
Following through on President Obama’s request to look at shale gas drilling safety, Steven Chu, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy Secretary, expanded a panel of experts and ordered recommendations. After the Secretary’s Energy Advisory Board created a three-member Natural Gas Subcommittee in January, it expanded to seven members last week. It was also given the mandate to make recommendations within 90 days about how to make drilling safer, particularly hydraulic fracturing. Within six months, the group is to offer advice to other agencies on how they could better protect the environment from shale gas drilling. The four new members are former Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection chief Kathleen McGinty, Stephen Holditch, chairman of the Department of Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M University, Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp, and Stanford University geophysics professor Mark Zoback.
