ABSTRACT
Since 2007, there have been over 2,300 natural gas wells drilled in Pennsylvania. The effects of the drilling manifest themselves in many ways: increased diesel truck traffic, packed motels and rental houses, “man camps” scattered throughout the countryside, miles of insulated wire rolled out for seismic testing, and an influx of temporary offices, water storage tanks, and out-of-state license plates. This activity takes place above the Marcellus Shale, a band of natural gas-laden shale that stretches from West Virginia through eastern Ohio, western and north-central Pennsylvania, and into upstate New York. In 2008, Terry Engelder, a geoscience professor at Penn State, and Gary Lash, a geology professor at SUNY-Fredonia, estimated that the shale contained 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, about ten percent of which is recoverable. According to https://Geology.com, that volume of gas is “enough to supply the entire United States for about two years.” Although the number has been disputed, notably by the USGS, there is enough gas in the Marcellus to attract many energy companies, including Shell, Exxon/XTO, Range Resources, and Chesapeake Energy. This gas rush is accompanied by a large, ongoing, multimedia conversation involving the industry, government officials, lobbyists, environmental groups, and the people who live over the shale. These agents’ rhetoric shapes the perceptions of the Marcellus Shale region through numerous acts involving websites, press releases, TV, radio, and print advertisements, letters, contracts, phone messages, billboards and signs, news coverage, blogs, art (quilts, photography, pottery, and pastel landscapes, to name a few), bumper stickers, protests, books, bills, policy statements, scientific research, Google Groups, and public meetings. This ongoing conversation constitutes a corner of Burke’s Barnyard par excellence. For this chapter, I drill into the rhetoric of the Marcellus Shale development, particularly in north-central Pennsylvania, where I live, although the conversation resonates nationally and globally. Because I live in the midst of an extractive process, I am most interested in the ways in which the industry and the locals who live here shape attitudes toward north-central Pennsylvania and how their rhetorical acts incline people to see this place. 1
