Range Resources
Encyclopedia
Range Resources is a Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

-based natural gas
Natural gas
Natural gas is a naturally occurring gas mixture consisting primarily of methane, typically with 0–20% higher hydrocarbons . It is found associated with other hydrocarbon fuel, in coal beds, as methane clathrates, and is an important fuel source and a major feedstock for fertilizers.Most natural...

 company mainly engaged in the fracking and well drilling
Well drilling
Well drilling is the process of drilling a hole in the ground for the extraction of a natural resource such as ground water, natural gas, or petroleum...

 of shale gas
Shale gas
Shale gas is natural gas produced from shale. Shale gas has become an increasingly important source of natural gas in the United States over the past decade, and interest has spread to potential gas shales in the rest of the world...

 contained in the Marcellus Formation
Marcellus Formation
The Marcellus Formation is a unit of marine sedimentary rock found in eastern North America...

 in the Eastern United States
Eastern United States
The Eastern United States, the American East, or simply the East is traditionally defined as the states east of the Mississippi River. The first two tiers of states west of the Mississippi have traditionally been considered part of the West, but can be included in the East today; usually in...

. The company was first to devise techniques for extracting gas from the Marcellus Shale, through the use of test wells in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania
Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania
Mount Pleasant is a borough in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, in the United States. It stands 45 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. Population in 1900, 4,745 people; in 1910, 5,812 people; and in 1940, 5,824 people...

. Because much of the Marcellus Shale lies under rural but significantly-populated areas, the company routinely purchases leases from small homeowners for the rights to drill on their land. They have over $1 billion USD invested in southwestern Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

, while it also has operations in the Southwestern United States
Southwestern United States
The Southwestern United States is a region defined in different ways by different sources. Broad definitions include nearly a quarter of the United States, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah...

. Founded in 1976 and headquartered at Fort Worth, Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

, its current CEO
Chief executive officer
A chief executive officer , managing director , Executive Director for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization...

 is John Pinkerton and its current COO
Chief operating officer
A Chief Operating Officer or Director of Operations can be one of the highest-ranking executives in an organization and comprises part of the "C-Suite"...

 and president is Jeffrey Ventura.

History

Range Resources traces its roots to Lomak Petroleum, which was based in Hartville, Ohio
Hartville, Ohio
Hartville is a village in Stark County, Ohio, United States. The population was 2,174 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Canton–Massillon Metropolitan Statistical Area....

 in 1976, and drilled wells in eastern Ohio
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...

. In 1992, it moved its headquarters to Fort Worth and merged in 1998 with Domain Energy Corp. to become its present form. It also participated in a joint venture with FirstEnergy
FirstEnergy
FirstEnergy Corp. , is a diversified energy company headquartered in Akron, Ohio. Its subsidiaries and affiliates are involved in the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity, as well as energy management and other energy-related services...

 called Great Lakes Energy Partners LLC which it bought out in 2004 to form the subsidiary Range Resources Appalachia LLC.

Before its major expansion into the Marcellus Shale, Range Resources only held a small position in the Texas Barnett Shale
Barnett Shale
The Barnett Shale is a geological formation located in the Bend Arch-Fort Worth Basin. It consists of sedimentary rocks of Mississippian age in Texas...

 and 9000 "worn-out gas wells across the Appalachian basin that had been producing for 25 years". However, geologist William Zagorski, who worked for the company, used the knowledge of fracking gained working in the Barnett Shale (pioneered in the region by Mitchell Energy) to attempt fracking in Appalachia
Appalachia
Appalachia is a term used to describe a cultural region in the eastern United States that stretches from the Southern Tier of New York state to northern Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. While the Appalachian Mountains stretch from Belle Isle in Canada to Cheaha Mountain in the U.S...

, where according Ventura, "it worked on the first try". The first test used a vertical drill, but Range Resources built three horizontal test wells in 2005 (in Mount Pleasant) and bought $200 million USD worth of land in 2007. The company had spent less than $1000 per acre on average to acquire land suitable for drilling, compared to larger traditional oil and gas players who joined the exploration rush late in the game who had "recent deals primed at $14,000 an acre".

In 2010, Forbes
Forbes
Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...

 called Range Resources "King of the Marcellus Shale" with an enterprise value of $8 billion USD, suggesting that its position should attract energy investors scared by offshore drilling's unlimited liabilities, as shown by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill
Deepwater Horizon oil spill
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico which flowed unabated for three months in 2010, and continues to leak fresh oil. It is the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry...

. It suggested that after factoring Range's profitable use of land acquisitions, a true value could be closer to $20 billion USD.

Environmental record

However, Forbes also suggested Range may suffer if public "paranoia" against fracking activities eventually "takes hold".

In June 2010 a Range Resources well being drilled by EOG Resources
EOG Resources
EOG Resources is a Fortune 500 company with its headquarters in the Heritage Plaza building in downtown Houston, Texas. The company is one of the largest independent oil and natural gas companies in the United States with proven reserves in the United States, Canada, Trinidad and Tobago, the United...

 suffered a blowout
Blowout (well drilling)
A blowout is the uncontrolled release of crude oil and/or natural gas from an oil well or gas well after pressure control systems have failed....

 that took a day to control; a West Virginia Range Resources well (being drilled by Chief Oil & Gas) suffered a seven-day fire and an explosion that injured seven workers. Pennsylvania temporarily banned EOG from drilling and fracking, and ordered the plugging of three boreholes in the Marcellus shale after complaints about water well pollution from gas and fracking fluids.

Investigative reports
Investigative journalism
Investigative journalism is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest, often involving crime, political corruption, or corporate wrongdoing. An investigative journalist may spend months or years researching and preparing a report. Investigative journalism...

 by This American Life
This American Life
This American Life is a weekly hour-long radio program produced by WBEZ and hosted by Ira Glass. It is distributed by Public Radio International on PRI affiliate stations and is also available as a free weekly podcast. Primarily a journalistic non-fiction program, it has also featured essays,...

 and New York Times investigated the company, using operations in Amwell Township and Mount Pleasant as case studies. Journalists Eliza Griswold
Eliza Griswold
Eliza Griswold is an award-winning American journalist and poet. She is a fellow at the New America Foundation and won a 2010 Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters....

 and Sarah Koenig found water pollution
Water pollution
Water pollution is the contamination of water bodies . Water pollution occurs when pollutants are discharged directly or indirectly into water bodies without adequate treatment to remove harmful compounds....

 and air pollution
Air pollution
Air pollution is the introduction of chemicals, particulate matter, or biological materials that cause harm or discomfort to humans or other living organisms, or cause damage to the natural environment or built environment, into the atmosphere....

 of lease-held land to be an endemic problem. Problems included residents complaining of black running water that corroded faucets and household machinery, showers smelling of "rotten eggs" (hydrogen sulfide
Hydrogen sulfide
Hydrogen sulfide is the chemical compound with the formula . It is a colorless, very poisonous, flammable gas with the characteristic foul odor of expired eggs perceptible at concentrations as low as 0.00047 parts per million...

) and diarrhea
Diarrhea
Diarrhea , also spelled diarrhoea, is the condition of having three or more loose or liquid bowel movements per day. It is a common cause of death in developing countries and the second most common cause of infant deaths worldwide. The loss of fluids through diarrhea can cause dehydration and...

, "mysterious stomach pains", extreme fatigue or anemia
Anemia
Anemia is a decrease in number of red blood cells or less than the normal quantity of hemoglobin in the blood. However, it can include decreased oxygen-binding ability of each hemoglobin molecule due to deformity or lack in numerical development as in some other types of hemoglobin...

. Medical tests of residents complaining of headache
Headache
A headache or cephalalgia is pain anywhere in the region of the head or neck. It can be a symptom of a number of different conditions of the head and neck. The brain tissue itself is not sensitive to pain because it lacks pain receptors. Rather, the pain is caused by disturbance of the...

s, nosebleed
Nosebleed
Epistaxis or a nosebleed is the relatively common occurrence of hemorrhage from the nose, usually noticed when the blood drains out through the nostrils...

s and the inability to concentrate showed elevated blood levels of industrial organic solvent
Solvent
A solvent is a liquid, solid, or gas that dissolves another solid, liquid, or gaseous solute, resulting in a solution that is soluble in a certain volume of solvent at a specified temperature...

s and heavy metals such as toluene
Toluene
Toluene, formerly known as toluol, is a clear, water-insoluble liquid with the typical smell of paint thinners. It is a mono-substituted benzene derivative, i.e., one in which a single hydrogen atom from the benzene molecule has been replaced by a univalent group, in this case CH3.It is an aromatic...

 and arsenic
Arsenic
Arsenic is a chemical element with the symbol As, atomic number 33 and relative atomic mass 74.92. Arsenic occurs in many minerals, usually in conjunction with sulfur and metals, and also as a pure elemental crystal. It was first documented by Albertus Magnus in 1250.Arsenic is a metalloid...

. When presented with such complaints, Range Resources generally would not find anything wrong with residents' drinking water, arguing their labs' test results show that residents' complaints of illness and dying animals may have causes other than poisoning or pollution. CEO Pinkerton nevertheless remains convinced about the safety of fracking: "You just have to be careful when drilling through layers with water."

One resident in Amwell was riding her horse behind Range Resources' chemical pond for holding fracking flowback when she encountered "a hissing and bubbling sound in the stream" and a "red foamy oil slick" that caused the stream to exhibit "rainbow water". Range maintained that it was likely caused by "decayed vegetation that gave off gas", having attributed previous complaints of malodor to harmless anaerobic bacteria that grew near their fluid compressor stations. However chemical tests of the area later "revealed the presence of acetone
Acetone
Acetone is the organic compound with the formula 2CO, a colorless, mobile, flammable liquid, the simplest example of the ketones.Acetone is miscible with water and serves as an important solvent in its own right, typically as the solvent of choice for cleaning purposes in the laboratory...

, toluene, benzene
Benzene
Benzene is an organic chemical compound. It is composed of 6 carbon atoms in a ring, with 1 hydrogen atom attached to each carbon atom, with the molecular formula C6H6....

, phenol, arsenic, barium
Barium
Barium is a chemical element with the symbol Ba and atomic number 56. It is the fifth element in Group 2, a soft silvery metallic alkaline earth metal. Barium is never found in nature in its pure form due to its reactivity with air. Its oxide is historically known as baryta but it reacts with...

, heavy metals and methane".

Sanctions

Range Resources has paid $219,875 in fines to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as of May 2010. The bulk was $141,175 levied for a fracking fluid spill that killed aquatic life in Washington County
Washington County, Pennsylvania
-Government and politics:As of November 2008, there are 152,534 registered voters in Washington County .* Democratic: 89,027 * Republican: 49,025 * Other Parties: 14,482...

's Brush Creek — protected by the state as a "high-quality waterway") — according to the Pittsburgh Business Times. However, Ray Walker, vice president, said that Range Resources has "made a lot of adjustments since then". The fluid spill was due to a "faulty elbow pipe"; according to Walker, Range has since "gone to a completely different pipe manufacturer and a completely different pipe design". Firings
Termination of employment
-Involuntary termination:Involuntary termination is the employee's departure at the hands of the employer. There are two basic types of involuntary termination, known often as being "fired" and "laid off." To be fired, as opposed to being laid off, is generally thought of to be the employee's...

 and changed procedures also followed the incident.

Public relations

Range Resources has sponsored public relations campaigns supporting permitted use zoning
Zoning
Zoning is a device of land use planning used by local governments in most developed countries. The word is derived from the practice of designating permitted uses of land based on mapped zones which separate one set of land uses from another...

 regulations rather than conditional use regulations, which could permit citizen review of Range's activities near their land or neighbourhoods. According to NPR, the campaigns sometimes are thinly-veiled coercion. "Mount Pleasant and its three citizen supervisors were ridiculously outmanned...in [an ensuing] full-scale PR war" with Range Resources when the supervisors decided to follow conditional use zoning policy used in other states such as Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

, Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...

 and Wyoming
Wyoming
Wyoming is a state in the mountain region of the Western United States. The western two thirds of the state is covered mostly with the mountain ranges and rangelands in the foothills of the Eastern Rocky Mountains, while the eastern third of the state is high elevation prairie known as the High...

. Through letters to citizens, Range threatened to cut off funding to the township if the township refused to support permitted use zoning for Range. Other opposing townships have also been sued by Range Resources over zoning policies.

On November 8 2011, CNBC
CNBC
CNBC is a satellite and cable television business news channel in the U.S., owned and operated by NBCUniversal. The network and its international spinoffs cover business headlines and provide live coverage of financial markets. The combined reach of CNBC and its siblings is 390 million viewers...

 reported on a conference which Range Resources attended, in which those in the energy industry were advised to "download the US Army / Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual, because we are dealing with an insurgency".

In the conference, Range Resources spokesman Matt Pitzarella also said that Range had "several former psy ops
Psychological warfare
Psychological warfare , or the basic aspects of modern psychological operations , have been known by many other names or terms, including Psy Ops, Political Warfare, “Hearts and Minds,” and Propaganda...

 folks...[who are] very comfortable in dealing with localized issues and local governments. Really all they do is spend most of their time helping folks develop local ordinances and things like that. But very much having that understanding of psy ops in the Army and in the Middle East has applied very helpfully here for us in Pennsylvania." Pitzarella later clarified that he meant to refer to "one employee of the firm", whose psy ops background made him adept at handling emotionally-charged township meetings. However, Sharon Wilson, the recorder of the remarks, said "the comments reveal what the fracking industry thinks about people in the communities that are impacted by the industry."

"My Range Resources"

As part of an effort to reassure the public of its activities, Range Resources has started a campaign, "My Range Resources" which depict "ordinary people... who have benefited from allowing drilling on their land". The ad campaign includes, in the words of one Centre Daily Times
Centre Daily Times
The Centre Daily Times is a daily newspaper located in State College, Pennsylvania in the United States. It is the hometown newspaper for the Pennsylvania State University, one of the most well-known and largest universities in the country with more than 40,000 students attending the main...

 journalist Bob Myers, "real Pennsylvanians talking earnestly about the wonderful experiences they’ve had with Range Resources".

According to Elwin Green of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, also known simply as the "PG," is the largest daily newspaper serving metropolitan Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.-Early history:...

, Range Resources stands out because most gas companies generally prefer to keep a low profile, preferring to "tout their successes to Wall Street
Wall Street
Wall Street refers to the financial district of New York City, named after and centered on the eight-block-long street running from Broadway to South Street on the East River in Lower Manhattan. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, or...

, but not to Main Street
Main Street
Main Street is the metonym for a generic street name of the primary retail street of a village, town, or small city in many parts of the world...

". In contrast, Range Resources' campaign uses testimonials such as, "Natural gas has been ... a godsend to this area," from farmers or "In the last two years, probably 60 percent of our business is natural gas," from local business owners. Vice president Ray Walker was quoted as saying, "A lot of people don't know much about our industry or about Range Resources...we're committed to being the very best that we can be. We want to be accountable, transparent and accessible to people." Videos produced by public relations firms Big Picture Communications and Downtown's Animal Inc. used "unscripted video and purposely avoided using company spokespeople". Blake Lewis, CEO of Lewis Public Relations in Dallas and a board member of the Public Relations Society of America
Public Relations Society of America
The ' , based in New York City, is the world's largest organization for public relations professionals. The organization has more than 21,000 members, including professionals from public relations agencies, corporations, government, health care institutions, military, professional services firms,...

 gave Range Resources' website "high marks".

However, journalists' reactions been skeptical or mixed. According to Myers, "a quick review of the state Department of Environmental Protection records suggests that the truth is more complicated than the ads suggest...the folks at Range define good stewardship in a slightly different manner than is customary." Reg Henry of the Nashua Telegraph thought "the whole promotion was skin crawling... but now I read MyRangeResources and I think: How cute is that for a gas drilling company? It makes me think of my daughter’s My Little Pony
My Little Pony
My Little Pony is a brand of toy ponies marketed primarily to girls produced by the toy manufacturer Hasbro. These ponies can be identified by their colorful bodies and manes and a unique symbol on one or both sides of their flanks...

when she was a mite".
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