Two City Council members would like to hear more from those involved in oil and gas drilling.

Prior to a vote during last week’s City Council meeting approving non-surface oil and gas drilling from industrially zoned property near the Days Inn to reserves located underneath Betts Park, both Wendy McCain and Danielle Flasher said they would be interested in bringing speakers on the topic to speak to council members in the future.

“Would we ever consider bringing somebody in to talk about the safety aspect, how we can assure when we’re lateral horizontal drilling under a protected area to talk about the safety aspect and explain all of this from both sides?” McCain asked. I know some of this, as I sit here, it sounds like, ‘Yeah, there’s no problem with this. It’s safe.’ But I know outside of this area not everybody believes that and there are people that do have concerns, so I’d like to have that assurance or have a better understanding of drilling since we’re in such a big oil area.”

It’s entirely possible the discussion over oil and gas drilling isn’t going away. According to the state Department of Environmental Protection, Warren County has seen the most conventional oil and gas wells drilled in the state since Jan. 1, 2024 with 117. The state as a whole only had 189 new conventional wells drilled. Even adding unconventional wells, Warren County still has the most wells in the state since the start of 2024.

There have been 16 DEP permits issued for Warren County so far this year, fifth in the state behind Washington County (34), Greene County (20), Bradford County (19) and Armstrong County (18).

McCain’s primary concern over drilling on properties in the city are operations near protected areas like streams and rivers or parks. Mike Holtz, city manager, said the first horizontal drilling project in Warren was approved to go under the C.A.R. pool 12 years ago.

“We talked about safety,” Holtz said. “The CAR pool has been safe, we haven’t seen anything.”

That prompted Councilman Maurice Cashman to share his perspective after working for National Forge at a time when the company had 280 working wells in operation.

“There were no oil spills,” Cashman said. “Period. There were no leaks both for gas and the oil side of it.”

Flasher said she heard a presentation by Jon Stewart of Cameron Energy while she was part of Leadership Warren. She wondered if Stewart would be willing to lead a similar presentation for council members.

“I think he did a very very informative presentation and, to Mrs. McCain’s point, extending an invitation to him to see if he would come speak at a meeting, I think, would be wonderful because he is very informative and speaks a lot on the environmental impact, safety, their practices, that type of thing, and the whole global impact of the site drilling,” Flasher said. “I really enjoyed that conversation. I don’t know if that’s even possible but I would recommend it.”