What happens when the fox builds the hen house?

The drilling industry helped get some of the most influential lawmakers elected with lavish donations to their campaigns. It paid millions to lobbyists to influence legislation, and it has hired many of the experienced regulators away from public service.

Now the industry will pay to train the people who set policy and enforce it.

ExxonMobil and GE will be investing $1 million each to establish new training programs at three universities, including Penn State, “to ensure that regulators and policymakers have access to the latest technological and operational expertise to assist in their oversight of shale development,” according to a Penn State press release issued Thursday.

The other schools are the University of Texas at Austin and the Colorado School of Mines.

With money from the drilling industry, Penn State's Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research will offer a new "Shale Gas Regulators Training Program" to provide "best-practices training" to people who oversee the drilling industry.

The center’s co-director, Tom Murphy, said in a press release the program will “offer new regulators the chance to learn the latest science-based concepts related to geology, petroleum technology and environmental quality.”

Until now, Murphy had maintained that the Marcellus Center operated free and clear of industry funding.

Murphy did not return a message left on his cell phone Thursday afternoon.

Nor did the Penn State office of communications return a call seeking comment.

GE CEO Jeff Immelt said in the release he thought “smart regulation” was a key “to America leading the world in shale-gas development.”

According to the release, GE produces nearly 40 technologies for the shale-gas sector in areas such as mobile and fixed water filtration, flare-gas capture and reuse, cleaner on-site power generation, and “demand-side solutions that create liquefied or compressed natural gas for use in truck fleets and other areas.”

Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, the world’s largest non-government-owned energy company, said, “Americans rightly want to know that these resources are being produced safely and responsibly.”

State regulators are skeptical.

Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Kevin Sunday said the agency would have to evaluate the proposed curriculum to determine “if enforcement personnel would benefit from the training.”

He said the DEP has “a very knowledgeable, well-trained staff, but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t make the program stronger.”

Public Utility Commission spokeswoman Jennifer Kocher said that agency would also scrutinize whether or not the industry-sponsored training would be appropriate.

It would not, she said, replace the federally-mandated Oklahoma City safety training required of PUC regulators.

UPDATE:

Tom Murphy, co-director of Penn State University’s Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research, said Thursday evening that the center remains independent of industry funding.

The university press release said, “As part of the initiative, the Penn State Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research has added the Shale Gas Regulators Training Program.”

Murphy acknowledged that program was sponsored with industry cash, but insisted the Marcellus Center “is definitely not funded by industry.”

He suggested there was simply confusion “because I helped broker the deal.”

When asked if the university press release was inaccurate, Murphy responded, “Yeah, I guess... Maybe I need to review that verbiage... Maybe there’s a tweaking on our side.”

The new program, he said, is a “stand alone” program.