— As energy companies move to drill in densely populated areas from Pennsylvania to Texas, battles are breaking out over who will have the final say in managing the shale gas boom.
Real estate experts said the chances for conflicts between leases and mortgages were growing as drilling increased in more populated areas.
"It is possible to drill wells in densely populated areas, but we don't think that is necessary," said Gary Haywood, the chief executive of Ineos UK.
To successfully exploit promising shale formations, for instance, energy firms must insert many wells, since each fracking operation can only extend several hundred feet in any direction, requiring the establishment of noisy, polluting, and potentially hazardous drilling operations in well-populated rural and suburban areas.
Drilling for shale gas in densely populated, wealthy West European countries like Britain is a hard sell.
But in recent years the industry has been drilling new wells and reviving old ones in populated areas.
Another concern is that the shale gas industry, which requires drilling many wells, is not suited to the densely populated landscapes that characterize much of Western Europe.
The debate is becoming more urgent as gas companies move closer to more populated areas, especially in the Northeast, where millions of people are likely to find themselves living near drilling operations in coming years.
No-dig technology, which includes microtunneling (for boring holes up to 36 inches in diameter) and horizontal directional drilling (for holes around 15 inches or less), was developed 20 years ago to install utility lines under densely populated cities.
The mud erupted here during exploratory drilling for natural gas, and it has grown to be one of the largest mud volcanoes ever to have affected a populated area.
