Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation (COG)

[was builder]

Bad press sure picking up. Hope COG survives this lawsuit.

Dark Side of a Natural Gas Boom

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/business/energy-environment/08fracking.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&partner=yahoofinance

In September, the Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation, a Houston energy company, was required to suspend its fracturing operations for three weeks after causing three spills in the course of nine days. Cabot, which was fined $56,650 by the state, said the spills consisted mainly of water, with only 0.5 percent chemicals. This month, Cabot was fined an additional $120,000 by Pennsylvania for the contamination of homeowners’ wells. It must now submit strict drilling plans to the state.

A company spokesman, Kenneth S. Komoroski, said it was too early to blame hydraulic fracturing — the technology at the heart of the boom — for pollution of water wells. He said Cabot was still investigating the causes of last January’s contamination incidents.

“None of the issues in Dimock have anything to do with hydraulic fracturing,” he said.

The fines were little consolation to Ms. Switzer, the woman who can no longer draw drinking water from her well.

After moving here in 2005, she sold drilling rights on her property for a mere $180 after, as she recalled it, a gas company representative convinced her only one well might be drilled. In fact, no well was drilled, but three were on surrounding properties. Her well was contaminated at the beginning of the year after gas leaked from a well drilled by Cabot.

Her family now uses bottled water supplied by Cabot every week. She fears that if she tried to sell her home, which sits in the middle of a drilling zone, no one would buy it.

“Can you imagine the ad? ‘Beautiful new home. Bring your own water,’ ” Ms. Switzer said. “We’re like a dead zone here.”