TULSA, Okla. – If unconventional exploration is the new frontier for oil and gas, state regulators are the marshals watching over it. And they are under the gun.

“For regulators in the various states where wells are being drilled, we’re being asked to deal with things in ways that we’ve never been asked to deal with before,” said Dana L. Murphy, commissioner with the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, at Hart Energy’s DUG Midcontinent conference on March 3 in Tulsa, Okla. “I have to tell you, it’s a really hard job now – very challenging.”

Oklahoma is certainly no newcomer to the energy biz. Its first oil well was drilled in 1859, almost a half-century before the territory became a state. And while the find was accidental (the Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association of Oklahoma website describes it as a failed attempt to find saltwater), the event would eventually trigger a flurry of drilling around the turn of the 20th century.

It was, however, vertical drilling that would define the state’s oil industry for more than a century.

“I hear a lot of people trying to compare Oklahoma with North Dakota and some of these other states [with new shale plays],” Murphy said. “The reality is that in North Dakota they don’t have all these vertical wells and they did not have a regulatory scheme that was actually designed predominantly for vertical wells.

“What we are trying to do in Oklahoma is take a regulatory environment that was designed for vertical or non-horizontal wells and actually adjust and move it to a plan for horizontal wells.”

The tide turned in 2012, when permits for horizontal drilling surpassed permits for vertical drilling for the first time. Data for the first eight months of 2013 show 1,286 permits for horizontal wells compared with 465 for non-horizontals. “It’s almost like the new normal is dealing with horizontal wells,” she said.

Unconventional exploration and production engages new technologies that require new approaches. Hydraulic fracturing, for example, is water-intensive.

“It used to be that when commissioners were looking at disposal wells, we were talking about areas that were probably an acre, maybe a couple acres,” Murphy said. “You now have some of these facilities that just on the surface area alone are 15 to 20 acres or more. So, the challenge is letting local officials, like county commissioners and other officials, and the public know what is being done. The notice issue has gotten to be a much bigger issue.”

That’s because technological advances are not restricted to the production process itself. The complexity ripples through the regulatory structure of various state and federal agencies.

Seismicity, or the frequency of earthquakes in a region, is just one factor that regulators watch in Oklahoma. “The issue for us is how do we work with the (U.S.) Geological Survey, how do we work with other researchers and institutions,” Murphy said. “We are actually now working with USC and also Stanford. Every time there is an event, we enter it into a database that goes into a map.”

That map becomes the easily accessible resource used when a disposal well permit application is reviewed. It is also used in communication with authorities in an emergency.

The new regulations, Murphy said, were necessarily to keep up the new technology employed in the oil patch. And regulators, she said, were not the only ones who need to keep up.

“We’ve had more small producers come in and participate in these technical conferences who don’t even understand the existing rules, let alone the changes that we’re making,” she said. “There is going to have to be more collaboration.”

The industry needs to move past its annoyance with regulators and regulations because the agencies represent a public that is progressively more interested in the safety of its environment, particularly the water supply.

“It is not about the regulators needing to obtain the information,” Murphy insisted. “We’ve been able to get some of this data for a long time, but that’s not the issue. This is about the public’s demand to know. And now, as I think the industry has become aware, the public’s demand to know the details of what you are doing has become more and more important.”

Oklahoma is a proud oil-friendly state, so the marshals tasked with keeping an eye on the industry within its borders are intent on keeping everyone on the same page.

“As this technology moves and changes, the regulators have to try to adjust,” Murphy said, “and at the same time not impede your development, but make sure we’re looking out for the things we need to look at.”