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DEP zeros in on gas
tainting water
Tests show source is a formation tapped for energy
By Tom Wilber January 30, 2009
Natural gas invading at least nine water wells in
Dimock Township has been tracked to the Marcellus
Shale or a similar formation being tapped by
drilling crews working in the area.
In an effort to fix the problem, regulators from the
state Department of Environmental Protection have
asked Cabot Oil & Gas to vent its natural gas
production wells around the Carter Road area, just
south of Montrose, said Mark Carmon, a spokesman for
the agency. The intention is to give the gas seeping
in the ground and collecting in water supplies a
means to escape.
. . . . .
Cabot has taken water supplies of four homes off
line and provided water tanks. State officials have
advised residents of other homes in the area to vent
their wells to reduce the chances of an explosion.
. . . . .
Tests show gas found in water is "production gas,"
Carmon said, meaning it escaped from the kind of
geological formation commonly tapped for energy. The
state has ruled out the possibility it was a product
of organic conditions in shallow ground that
sometimes affect water wells.
Carmon stopped short of blaming Cabot, adding more
lab work is needed to pinpoint exactly how the gas
migrated from thousands of feet below the earth.
Cabot, of Houston, is drilling dozens of wells into
the Marcellus Shale, a massive natural gas reserve
running a mile or more under the Southern Tier and
Pennsylvania countryside. Agency scientists are
conducting more tests expected to determine whether
the gas came from the Marcellus, Carmon said.
Geologists were at a loss to explain how gas trapped
in bedrock thousands of feet down could migrate into
shallow aquifers without the drilling.
"This whole thing is very perplexing," said Gary
Lash, a geology professor at SUNY-Fredonia. "It will
be interesting to see what they find."
Wells tested, cause of explosion sought in gas
exploration in Susquehanna County
By Tom Wilber
twilber@gannett.com January 14, 2009
Natural gas
has mixed with at least three private water
supplies near drilling rigs in Susquehanna
County, according to information from Cabot Oil
& Gas.
Regulators
from the state Department of Environmental
Protection and Cabot officials are collecting
samples and analyzing the geology in Dimock
Township to see whether nearby drilling
operations into the gas-rich Marcellus Shale are
to blame.
"We're
looking at this as a serious situation, and we
want to find out why it happened," said DEP
spokesman Mark Carmon.
The tests
come in the wake of a Jan. 1 explosion that
shattered an 8-foot wide cement slab at Norma
Fiorento's house on Route 2024.
photo: Butch
Comegys / Times-Tribune
Investigators from the state and Cabot tested
basements and water wells of at least six homes
near drilling rigs. No gas was detected in
basements, although it was found in the Fiorento
well and two others, according to Kenneth
Kamorowski, a spokesman for Cabot Oil & Gas.
Officials,
concerned about residents' safety, said they
will track the gas to its source. While the gas,
found in trace amounts, does not pose a threat
for drinking, officials want to find out whether
it is a sign of a larger problem, Kamorowski
said.
"We don't
have an answer," he said. "We've checked our
pipelines and equipment, and they are not
leaking."
As testing
continued this week, samples were sent to labs,
which may take another week or more to produce
results, Carmon said.
Cabot, of
Houston, is in the middle of an intensive effort
to develop the Marcellus in the rural township
just south of Montrose, with more than 15 wells
completed or under way and more than 60 wells
expected by the end of this year. The Marcellus,
a mile or so deep, runs under the Southern Tier,
Pennsylvania and the Appalachian basin.
Intensive
drilling into the Marcellus is an obvious
suspect of the gas problem in Dimock, but not
the only one.
Natural
gas, or methane, is produced by decomposing
organic material. It can move through shallow
layers of earth and collect on its own in
enclosed spaces of unvented wells.
More
detailed analysis of air samples from the
Fiorento well will be able to determine whether
gas escaped from the Marcellus or other deep
geological formations penetrated by drilling
rigs, or came from another source, Carmon said.
While
there were no injuries associated with the
explosion, it left frayed nerves, including
those of Pat Farnelli, who lives with her six
children and husband between drilling rigs on
Carter Road.
They were
getting used to the sporadic bangs, booms and
thumps reverberating over the Dimock countryside
from drilling operations all hours of the day
and night, she said.
"We're all
real jumpy now," she said Tuesday, shortly after
state environmental regulators knocked on her
door and asked if they could test her water for
natural gas hazards.
Dimock
residents, meanwhile, are learning what it's
like to live over the middle of a developing
natural gas field. While welcoming the prospects
of royalty payments that will flow their way as
dozens of wells come on line this year, they
hadn't expected the other consequences.
This is
the third investigation the DEP is conducting
involving environmental issues related to
drilling in Dimock.
Contractors are cleaning the remnants from a
diesel fuel spill at a drilling site last
spring. Work crews are evaluating the extent of
contamination in the ground after emergency
responders contained and vacuumed what they
could from the surface.
Additionally, DEP is holding Cabot responsible
for polluting a private water well on Carter
Road. After testing the water and finding it
unfit to drink, Cabot installed a filtration
system and began bringing in water from a
tanker...
Drilling
operations into another formation, called the
Herkimer, have kept Chenango County emergency
responders busy in Smyrna. On the same day the
Fiorento well exploded, firefighters responded
to a conflagration at a Norse Energy drilling
rig in the Town of Smyrna. The fire started
after a rock hit a fluorescent bulb and ignited
natural gas fumes and hydraulic fluid, said
Douglas Shattuck, first deputy fire coordinator.
It was
contained and extinguished without injuries
after crews diverted natural gas fumes from the
blaze with a compressor, he said.
Full article
here
Fort Worth deals with shale environmental issues
By
Drew Pierson • dpierson@gannett.com • November 30,
2008 2:00 am
Pipelines are one
of the things Fort Worth residents say they never
anticipated when the Barnett Shale play began.
Another is truck traffic.
"There has
been an exponential increase in traffic; it's just
much, much heavier than it used to be," said Ted
Reynolds, mayor of Cleburne, Texas, about an hour
south of Fort Worth. "Not only the city, but the
county and state have been very challenged with the
increase in commercial traffic. ... It's reflected
in more accidents and serious damage to the
roadways."
A pad site,
where a well is drilled, can be built on as little
as 1.5 acres, and the average well only takes 20
days to install. But one pad site can host
multiple wells. At a site in Crowley, on the
outskirts of Fort Worth, Chesapeake had drilled four
wells at its pad site, meaning drilling crews had
been working there for more than a year, with an
average of 10 trucks coming in and out per day.
Trucks come to
haul away "drilling sludge," a combination of mud
and drilling fluid that comes up with the natural
gas. A 2008 study by the University of Colorado of
natural gas wells in Garfield County, Colo., found
the mud contained potentially dangerous chemicals.
"Drilling
sludge brought to the surface can contain fracking
fluid, drilling mud, radioactive material from the
subsurface land formation, hydrocarbons, metals, and
volatile organic compounds," the researchers wrote.
"Sludge is often left to dry on the surface in waste
pits, potentially contaminating air, water and
soil."
Full article
here.
Gas venting out of control at
GarCo well
Some Silt-area residents
notified they may have to evacuate homes
By Dennis Webb
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
SILT — Natural
gas continued to shoot from an out-of-control well
Tuesday evening southwest of Silt, but area
residents who had been put on evacuation notice
earlier in the day hadn’t been asked to leave their
homes.
Two of those
residents are Nanci and Paul Limbach, who were
moving back into their home Tuesday, a year and a
half after being forced out by another incident
related to oil and gas development. Nanci Limbach
also runs a nonprofit wildlife rehabilitation center
near the well.
Workers lost
control of the Antero Resources well at about 12:10
p.m., said Kevin Kilstrom, vice president of
production for the Denver-based company.
Full article
here.
Natural Gas pipeline explodes
Pressure testing breaches pipeline in wetland
By Tom Kane
November 27, 2008
MILFORD, PA -
A natural gas pipeline exploded near the
intersection of Route 2 and I-84 near Milford, PA,
throwing up a geyser that witnesses said looked like
Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park....
The
60-year-old pipeline, which is owned by the Columbia
Gas Transmission Company, was being tested by the
company and exploded on Wednesday, November 5 at
2:00 p.m. A large section of the 14-inch pipe was
hurled about 400 feet from the point of the
explosion...
“The explosion
occurred in the Sawkill River watershed and did not
do any real damage as far as we can see,” Beecher
said. “The U.S. Department of Transportation, which
has jurisdiction on pipelines, sent a forensic team
to the site and is monitoring the repairs. The site
is a muddy mess because of the heavy equipment that
is needed to repair the breech.”
Beecher said
that the pipeline travels through residential
districts, which adds to the concern about future
explosions. “Luckily, this was in an isolated area,”
she said.
“The event was
not an explosion but a rupture,” said Kelly Merritt,
Columbia spokesman. “What witnesses saw was not
smoke from a fire. There was no fire but the rupture
threw a lot of gas, soil and water into the air.
Evidently, there was a weakness in the pipeline that
was not detected by our monitoring system.”
Full article
here.
Sigit Pamungkas/Reuters
New York Times story 12/19/08
The 2,000 gallon
temporary holding tank for nonpotable water that DEP
had Seneca Resources install above the Gibbs Hill
resident's home.
Gibbs Hill homeowners lose water supply after
fracking
By Heidi
Zemach August 11, 2008
Steve Hilyer
retired for bed at 3 a.m., Wednesday July 30. But
before doing so, he took a drink of water. His water
came from a natural artesian spring system that ran
from his springhouse on the steep hill on the
property above his Gibbs Hill home. The week before,
he had begun hearing the oil workers contracted by
Seneca Resources Inc, fracking new gas wells on that
same hill every morning from 4-8 a.m. Two months
earlier, Scott Pruder, a Seneca Resources contractor
and landsman had come to the door and informed him
that the company was going to drill another well on
the hill. He wanted to learn the location of
Hilyer’s spring system. Hilyer showed the contractor
the spring on his map, and warned him that the 750
foot-800 foot well proposed was too close to the
spring, and that it would likely destroy his spring
if placed there.
Hilyer awoke at 6
a.m. to his Gibbs Hill neighbor Clint Yates at the
door saying something was wrong with their water.
Yates had taken a sip of water only to have it burn
his mouth. Hilyer also took a sip felt the burning,
and later developed an immediate headache, he said.
They called Seneca Resources and the Pennsylvania
DEP, and that day, a local DEP agent came and tested
the water, which seemed to have a heavy briny taste
and smelled like natural gas, according to Hilyer
and his neighbors. The agent informed the homeowners
not to use the water.
That day cases of bottled drinking water were
delivered, and on Friday, DEP installed a 2,000
gallon tank of non-potable to use temporarily to
wash, or to flush the toilet with. That delivery
system has ceased running two or three times since,
and had to be refilled, and or repaired.
Hilyer is furious that despite his warnings, a well
was drilled so close to his own water supply, and
that the fracking may have destroyed a pristine,
cold, and beautiful spring that had been there for
hundreds of years. Hilyer fears that a permanent
loss of the spring-fed system will devalue his
property, and that in the future he will have to pay
for the additional electricity costs of pumping a
well, a costly treatment system, and for the
system’s ongoing maintenance.
“A pristine, beautiful cold spring is now totally
destroyed,” Hilyer said. “Now I have a tank of junk
water, and I’m living off creek water and boiled
water.”
Next door... right after showering Wednesday
morning, Donna Burger felt burning in her lungs and
had immediate difficulty with her sinuses, which
lasted several days, Burger said. As many as six
days after the incident occurred, symptoms
persisted, she said. Burger termed Seneca’s
continuing efforts to get the tank of non-potable
water running a not-so-amusing “comedy of errors.”
Burger also fears that the drilling operations may
have contaminated their spring forever. Visiting the
remote hillside site, Burger said she found the
usually plentiful holding tank lined with silt and
its level lower than usual.
DEP public relations officer Frieda Tarbell said
that her agency is “closely monitoring the
situation” on Gibbs Hill. But, it’s still far too
early in the investigation to tell whether or not
the spring was permanently contaminated, or whether
Seneca will be required to drill a permanent well
for the homeowners, Tarbell said. The water sample
analysis process generally takes 2-3 weeks to yield
results, she said. DEP has taken several samples of
the spring water, and it seemed to be running
slightly better in the later samples, but until DEP
completes its investigation, there remains the
possibility that the spring still could be restored,
Tarbell said.
According to the Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Act,
companies that drill within 1,000 feet of a water
supply have “presumptive liability” for damages if
that private water supply is impacted. That means
that the company is legally obligated to restore, or
replace the residents’ water supply, Tarbell said.
“Our goal is for them to have water until we can
get a better handle on whether it is a temporary
situation. If the spring cannot be restored, we
could have the company drill a well,” Tarbell said.
In the meantime, DEP has ordered Seneca Resources to
provide the homeowners with bottled water to drink,
and with a temporary supply of non-drinkable water.
“The company is continuing to look into the
situation to determine what happened, and to monitor
the water quality,” said National Fuel spokesperson
Julie Cox, speaking on behalf of her company’s
subsidiary, Seneca Resources Inc. “Based on past
practice with drilling operations, it’s expected
(the spring) will return to the level it was before
this incident,” Cox added.
“I think what we’ve shown is that when we find out
there is a problem, we’ve offered a remedy for the
landowners.” Meanwhile, “it’s not a forgone
conclusion that Seneca’s drilling is what caused the
problem,” Cox said. “That still has to be
determined.” About Hilyer’s concerns that his
warnings weren’t heeded, Cox responded: “Obviously
as a general rule we try hard to work with
landowners to come up with the best possible plan
when we’re working to access our mineral rights.”
James Hughes, who lives a little more than a mile
away on Gibbs Hill, suffered similar problems when,
in June, 2006, drilling operations polluted his pond
and dried up his private water supply, and that of
his neighbor, Leonard K. Nelson, who owns a hunting
camp. Hughes has filed a civil lawsuit against
Seneca Resources Inc, claiming $50,000 in damages
stemming the water problems and from having four
well sites operating on his farm. Seneca Resources
provided Hughes bottled, and nonpotable water, and
45 days later dug him a permanent well. The test
well they initially dug caught fire, sending flames
high into the air, and had to be capped off. The new
well had to burn off natural gas for several months
before it could be used, Hughes said. The civil
trial is expected to take place next May.
DEP’s office in Meadville has been setting new
records every year for the number of permits applied
for, and issued, Tarbell said. In June alone in
McKean County DEP issued permits for 58 oil wells,
10 combination oil and gas wells, and 9 gas wells,
according to the OGM SPUD report on DEP’s website.
From 2000-2007, 3,248 new wells were drilled in
McKean County, making it the county with the highest
rate of drilling activity in the state, Tarbell
said.
Complete story
here
"Mud Volcano" in Indonesia Caused by Gas
Exploration, Study Says
January
25, 2007
Gas drilling on the
Indonesian island of Java has triggered a
"mud volcano" that has killed 13 people and may
render four square miles (ten square kilometers)
of countryside uninhabitable for years.
In a
report released on January 23, a team of British
researchers says the deadly upwelling began when
an exploratory gas well punched through a layer
of rock 9,300 feet (2,800 meters) below the
surface, allowing hot, high-pressure water to
escape.
(Related:
"Coal Mining Causing Earthquakes, Study Says"
[January 3, 2007].)
The water
carried mud to the surface, where it has spread
across a region 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) in
diameter in the eight months since the eruption
began.
The mud
volcano is similar to a gusher or blowout, which
occur in oil drilling when oil or gas squirt to
the surface, the team says. This upwelling,
however, spews out a volume of mud equivalent to
a dozen Olympic swimming pools each day.
Although
the eruption isn't as violent as a conventional
volcano, more than a dozen people died when a
natural gas pipeline ruptured.
The
research team, who published their findings in
the February issue of GSA Today, also
estimate that the volcano, called Lusi, will
leave more than 11,000 people permanently
displaced.
Full
article
here.
Conscientious Objectors
Public
employees and their allies on the outside
fight against ... war on science
by Laura
Paskus December
20, 2004
One autumn
morning seven years ago near Rifle, Colo., Wendell
Goad walked out of his house to find his driveway
flooded with mucky water. Turning toward his garage,
he saw a 15-foot-tall geyser shooting out of his
drinking water well.
Goad and his wife, Kay, soon learned the cause:
Natural gas drillers working about a mile from the
house had been using a technique called hydraulic
fracturing, which involves pumping water, sand and
chemicals into underground coal beds to release
methane gas. The night before the flood, sometime
between 11 and midnight, the drillers, who worked
for Williams Production Company, lost control of a
gas well, causing a "blowout" in an underground
fissure.
"The pressure found a fracture somewhere and
found our water well," says Kay Goad. "And it needed
to erupt someplace."
That eruption continued for a day and a half; the
Goads had to evacuate their home for three days
because it was filled with dangerous levels of
methane. For months afterward, they kept fans in the
crawlspace to clear the house of the odorless,
colorless gas that seeped from the well. For more
than two years, Kay says, she could hold a match to
the pipe that vents the well and spark a blue flame.
The couple still has a methane detector in their
bedroom, and despite the efforts of three different
water-treatment specialists, their well water
remains too contaminated to drink. Williams
Production has responded by drilling the Goads a new
well; the company is still trying to clean the old
one of cancer-causing benzene.
Hydraulic fracturing, or "frac’ing," (pronounced
FRACK-ing) is on the rise around Rifle and elsewhere
in the West, but the Goads and citizens like them
are powerless to stop future blowouts. "Seven years
ago, no one listened to us," says Kay. "I just don’t
understand how they can continue to do this, and
continue to contaminate water that they can’t clean
up."
In fact, for most of a decade, community activists
have been fighting to get the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency to regulate frac’ing. Drillers
inject the earth with chemicals such as diesel fuel,
benzene, formaldehyde, toluene, ethylbenzene and
zylene (HCN, 10/27/03: Gas industry gets cracking).
Those chemicals and gelling agents, when mixed with
sand and water, create new fissures and hold them
open so that oil or gas can better reach the well
head. But critics argue that too little is known
about where the chemicals eventually end up, or what
impacts they might have on underground aquifers
pumped for drinking water and irrigation. Inside the
EPA, there are longtime civil servants who agree and
say that the agency’s own science backs them up.
But to this day, no federal agencies regulate
hydraulic fracturing, which is used primarily by
three companies worldwide — Halliburton,
Schlumberger and BJ Services Company. Energy
companies don’t even need a permit to use the
process. And, this January, Congress may vote to
permanently exempt frac’ing from any future
regulation under the federal Safe Drinking Water
Act.
Leading the push to exempt energy companies from
federal laws that protect the environment and public
health are officials at the highest levels of the
Bush administration, supported by the efforts of
politically appointed regulators willing to ignore
the findings of their own scientists, or even
rewrite those scientists’ opinions. And this is just
one example of the challenges facing not only agency
scientists, but all federal employees, as they come
under pressure to subvert the very laws they are
supposed to uphold and enforce. Field biologists,
park superintendents, land managers and
environmental regulators are all feeling the pinch
of politics.
Full article
here
Firefighters from the Ventura County, California,
Fire Department battled for seven days to control a
fire in an oil company gas well facility near
Fillmore, California., in September 1988.
-
http://www.firehouse.com
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Will There Be Blood?
The Battle Over New York's
Marcellus Shale
By ADAM FEDERMAN
April 14, 2009
Last summer, when oil was fetching
$140 a barrel and the price of
natural gas reached record highs
hundreds of landmen descended on the
Catskills and Poconos in New York
and Pennsylvania. They crisscrossed
the Delaware basin holding meetings
with local residents in an attempt
to persuade them to lease their
land. They want what’s underneath
that land—trillions of cubic feet of
natural gas trapped in the Marcellus
Shale, a formation that stretches
from Ohio to New York and runs
through West Virginia and
Pennsylvania. There were tales of
deception, of fraud, and of large
sums promised. The frenzy has been
described as a modern day gold rush.
In New York, even though the
drilling hasn’t begun, the battle
lines have been drawn. Environmental
organizations have been forced to
play catch up; to educate the public
about a drilling process that has
not been widely used in this part of
the country; and to argue against
drilling, at a time of unparalleled
economic distress and budget
shortfalls, in what may be the
largest natural gas reservoir in the
nation. And they’re also up against
the oil and gas companies.
. . . . .
As the landmen made their rounds,
the New York State legislature
passed a bill (A10526), at the
eleventh hour on the final day of
the legislative session, that made
it easier to issue permits for
horizontal drilling by establishing
uniform standards for well spacing
and effectively streamlining the
process. The Governor, in a press
release, said that the new
legislation would “lead to greater
administrative efficiency, result in
more effective recovery of oil and
natural gas, and reduce unnecessary
land disturbance.” Previously,
public hearings for each well and a
more cumbersome permitting process
would have been required for
horizontal drilling, significantly
slowing down the potential number of
wells that could be exploited.
According to a summary of the bill,
“The vast majority of proposals
that are expected for oil wells and
horizontal wells would not conform
to current statewide spacing sizes,
and would therefore require notice,
public comment and possibly a
hearing on an individual well basis.
With hundreds of such wells
likely to be proposed in the near
future, the potential burden on the
DEC and the industry would be
substantial, with no
commensurate benefit in ensuring
that the policy objectives of ECL
S23-0301 are met.” [italics
added]
The environmental community and even
some legislators were caught off
guard. “We in the environmental
community didn’t wake up until very
close to the vote,” says Kate
Sinding a Senior Attorney with the
Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
Many had been told that the bill
would not pass, that it needed work,
and that there was nothing to worry
about. About a month before the bill
passed, State Assembly Member Aileen
Gunther (who voted against the
measure), in a letter to one of her
constituents said that, “My
understanding from Mr. Parment [the
bill’s sponsor] is that the bill is
not in its final form and will, in
all likelihood, not be voted on this
session.”
Queens assemblywoman Toby Ann
Stavisky told WNYC Radio that she
and most of her colleagues learned
of the DEC sponsored bill just hours
before they were asked to vote on
it.
“Why didn’t I have more information
was my first reaction because it’s
very detailed scientific language.
What’s going to happen to the
environment, to the air quality,
noise pollution, what about
pipelines?”
Information it seems has been in
short supply. Horizontal drilling
and hydraulic fracturing have not
exactly been the subject of dinner
table conversations until very
recently (on the East Coast anyway).
And the industry would like to keep
it that way.
. . . . .
Catskill Mountain Keeper, an
environmental organization in
Youngsville, NY, and seven other
groups, national and local, drafted
a letter to Governor Paterson
calling on him to “institute a
moratorium on all new gas drilling
permits” until an environmental
impact statement is completed. They
met soon after with the Governor’s
office and the DEC and, groups that
until then had been working largely
on their own, started to come
together.
A compromise was reached and when
the governor signed the bill he also
required the DEC to issue a Scope
Generic Environmental Impact
Statement (SGEIS) that responds to
concerns of citizens and
environmental organizations (the
document will likely be released
this summer). It was an important
reprieve and, combined with a steep
drop in the price of natural gas and
oil and evidence of contaminated
wells in nearby Pennsylvania, there
is hope that the rush to drill has
been tempered at least for now.
“One thing that’s happened,” says
Wes Gillingham, Program Director of
Catskill Mountain Keeper, “is that
this whole issue has awakened people
to the complexity of hydro fracking
and the whole issue of regulatory
oversight and whether it’s adequate
or not. And to the basic question of
whether it can be done safely at
all.”
. . . . .
In the end, when the state begins to
issue permits the choice will
largely be up to individual
landowners. It is not clear exactly
how many leases have been singed
thus far but some estimates are as
high as 100,000. In the town of
Hancock (“the gateway to the
Delaware river”) over 20,000 acres
have been leased. And even though
gas prices have plummeted, landmen
are still canvassing the region.
“Given the industries druthers,”
Gillingham says, “they’d have a
checkerboard across the whole
landscape, which would industrialize
the whole area.” Gillingham learned
of the Marcellus Shale just over a
year ago when a geologist told him
to google “Marcellus Shale Play.” At
that time it was only industry
insiders and speculators who were
talking about the issue. Google it
today and you’ll still turn up sites
trumpeting the “Next Great Gas Play”
or the “hottest natural gas play in
North America.” The industry is on
the march. But the environmental
community is ready to meet them head
on.
Adam Federman can
be reached at:
adamfederman@gmail.com
This article originally ran on Earth
Island's
EnvironmentaList blog.
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Oriskany & Marcellus
DRBC backs away, critics cry foul
By Fritz Mayer
March 12, 2009
OREGON TOWNSHIP, PA — The Marcellus
Shale has been much in the news
lately, but another formation called
the Oriskany Sandstone is now
getting attention in the river
valley. Getting gas out of this
formation is reportedly somewhat
easier than the Marcellus formation,
and wells in the Oriskany do not
require nearly as much water for
fracking.
Just as important from an
environmental viewpoint, drillers
targeting the Oriskany are not
required to complete a Marcellus
Addendum when applying to the
Department of Environmental
Protection (DEP) for permits to
drill. That means that matters such
as the use of fracking fluid and the
disposal of waste water will receive
much less scrutiny than would be the
case with a Marcellus well.
Moreover, because the well targets
the Oriskany, the Delaware River
Basin Commission (DRBC) has
determined that it will not review
the application.
The location of the Robson Well in
Oregon Township, about four miles
north of Honesdale, sits above both
the Marcellus and the Oriskany. The
drilling company, Chesapeake
Appalachia, has received a permit
from the DEP to create the drilling
pad, but the permit to drill has not
yet been issued. Some environmental
organizations accuse the DRBC of
shirking its responsibility by
pulling out of the permit-approval
process in this case.
In a lengthy letter to the DRBC, the
Delaware Riverkeeper Network (DRN)
said that the organization is very
concerned about this development for
numerous reasons.
The letter explains that although
the Marecllus is not the target at
this time, the drilling will go
through the Marcellus and the well
might later be adapted to exploit
Marcellus gas. Even if the company
re-applies to the DEP for a new
permit, much of the infrastructure
regarding the well, such as “the
well pad, access roads, feeder
pipelines and holding pits,” will
already be in place, and will not
have been constructed to DRBC
standards and may contribute to
pollution of the watershed.
Also, the letter says that fracking
fluids will be used in the Oriskany
well, though in much less quantity
than with a Marcellus well. However,
with the Oriskany, there is no
mechanism in place for tracking the
fluids nor the identification of the
chemicals in them as there would be
with a Marcellus well. The letter
reads, “DEP’s Marcellus shale
addendum and the DRBC require the
disclosure of all hydraulic
fracturing chemicals. This
information is not available for the
Robson well.”
Then, too, there is the matter of
the wastewater that will be produced
from the well. If it were a
Marcellus well, the disposal of the
wastewater would be carefully
tracked. Though the Oriskany well
will also likely produce
contaminated wastewater, its
disposal will not be tracked.
The letter presents evidence that
natural gas companies are working
the two types of wells together in
Pennsylvania using fracking
techniques.
The DRN asked the DRBC to “adopt a
policy to require submittal to and
approval by the commission for all
natural gas wells in the Delaware
River Basin.”
The DRN is not the only group
concerned about the DRBC’s stand.
The advocacy group Damascus Citizens
for Sustainability is going so far
as to promise legal action against
the DRBC to compel the commission
to, in the view of the group,
fulfill its mission.
Pat Carullo, a founder of the group,
said, “It is the responsibility of
the commission to address issues of
water quality and quantity anywhere
in the watershed.” He said the group
will take action in federal and
state courts to force DRBC to act,
and may even engage in “peaceful
civil disobedience” in attempting to
prevent the well from going forward.
Clark Rupert, communications manager
for the DRBC, said that the agency
is not seeking to review
applications for the Oriskany
because the amount of water involved
is much less than in a Marcellus
well, and the operation is
considered a traditional well by the
DEP.
He quoted DEP information saying
that some 350,000 gas wells have
been drilled in Pennsylvania in the
last 150 years, and the DRBC became
involved in reviewing wells only in
the past year because of the concern
over the vast amounts of water
involved in the Marcellus wells.
He added that the commission
continues to hold talks with the
various member states and partners
and is working through the issues
involved.
Chesapeake did not respond to
questions regarding this story.
Complete story
here
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State concerned about waste
water from new gas wells
By Don Hopey December
21, 2008
Keith Srakocic/Associated
Press
Gas well drillers tapping
into the deep Marcellus
Shales add up to 54
substances, some of them
toxic, to the water they use
to fracture that rock and
release the gas.
And the state Department of
Environmental Protection
doesn't know what chemicals,
metals and possibly
radioactive elements are in
the waste water that is
pushed out of the wells. It
is discharged into the
state's waterways including
the Monongahela River, from
which 350,000 people get
their drinking water.
"That's the bigger issue.
They don't have an analysis
of what's in the waste water
they're pulling out," said
Dr. Conrad Dan Volz,
assistant professor in the
Graduate School of Public
Health at the University of
Pittsburgh. "What they're
putting into the wells can
chemically change and be
added to underground, and no
one is saying how much
arsenic, manganese, cobalt,
chromium and lead is in the
stuff. Depending on the
concentration, it could be a
hazardous waste."
Each well drilled into the
Marcellus Shales, which lie
at least a mile deep beneath
parts of Pennsylvania, New
York, West Virginia and
Ohio, uses up to 4 million
gallons of water to fracture
the rock and release natural
gas. The chemicals are added
to the "frac" water that is
pumped into the wells under
high pressure to reduce
friction in the pipe and
allow the water to flow more
freely into the rock layers.
Among the chemical additives
are formaldehyde, a human
carcinogen; various acids; a
variety of petroleum
compounds and several
pesticides that are toxic to
fish and other aquatic life.
Many of the chemicals,
depending on their
concentrations, can also
cause human skin, eye and
nose irritations, and damage
kidney, heart, liver and
lung function.
Much of that frac water --
about 40 percent of the
total used -- is pushed back
to the surface by the gas
released from the shale, and
it must be disposed of.
"Yes, we're concerned," said
Mark Hartle, chief of
aquatic resources for the
Pennsylvania Fish and Boat
Commission. "And we're more
concerned with the recovered
fluids from the wells than
with the water they use to
do the fracing initially.
The problem is, we're not
sure what they're ending up
with so we don't know the
constituents of the
discharges."
...Tom Rathbun, a DEP
spokesman, said the
department also is doing a
chemical analysis of the
waste water, a study that
should be done by the first
of the year.
"We have a general idea but
want to know for sure," Mr.
Rathbun said. "If it's
different, we will make the
necessary adjustments.
"I don't think they've been
doing enough Marcellus
Shales drilling so far to
make a difference," Mr.
Rathbun said. "But the gas
industry needs to come up
with a way to deal with
this. A couple of companies
want to do on-site water
treatment, and others are
looking at different
recycling technologies."
He said there are now only
about 20 active Marcellus
Shales gas wells. But there
has been drilling activity
at more than 300 in
Pennsylvania, and another
250 have been issued state
permits.
The drilling and water
discharges have attracted
the attention of the U.S.
Environmental Protection
Agency.
"It is an issue that's been
on our radar for a while and
currently a matter we're
looking into," said Dave
McGuigan, associate director
of EPA's regional office of
permits and enforcement.
"The question is what is in
[well waste water] and what
are the treatment facilities
doing with it."
Some of the waste water is
taken to DEP-approved
municipal sewer authorities
that dilute it with their
regular effluent before
discharging it into a river
or stream. Some is trucked
to one of the state's six
industrial water treatment
facilities, where metals,
oils and some dissolved
solids are removed but where
waste salts are a disposal
problem exacerbated by the
volume of the waste water.
"The salts are the biggest
issue right now and the most
expensive thing to remove
from the highly concentrated
brines," said Paul Hart,
president of Pennsylvania
Brine Treatment Inc., who
owns three of the state's
six industrial treatment
facilities and wants to
build six more.
Mr. Hart criticized the DEP
for slow action on permit
applications for new
treatment facilities, for
regulating the well water as
waste, which limits the
ability of drillers and
treatment facilities to
recycle it, and for failing
to determine the composition
of the waste water.
"The Marcellus has wide
variations in the amount of
iron, barium and salt, and
we need to know the high and
low marks so we can treat it
and we're still determining
that," he said. "Right now
we don't know as much as
we'd like to know."
The drilling companies
provide the DEP with lists
of chemicals they add to the
water but not the amounts of
specific mixtures, claiming
that is proprietary
information.
Four of the chemical
compounds are complex
pesticides that scientific
assessments have determined
are "very toxic to fish."
One,
2.2-Dibromo-3-nitrilopropionamide,
retards fetal development in
rabbits.
The pesticides are added to
the drill water to stop the
growth of algae in temporary
holding ponds and tanks
built next to the drilling
pads. Algae and other "biofilms"
can foul pumps used to push
the water underground and
into the shale.
None of those chemicals
should be discharged
directly into surface water
such as the Monongahela
River, said Dr. Volz, who is
studying the effects of
pollutants in the rivers.
"If there's enough biocide
to kill algae, by the looks
of this bromated compound
there's enough to do damage
to fish," Dr. Volz said.
"Throwing it in the water is
just crazy."
He said formaldehyde, which
is a human carcinogen, "is
always a concern," but any
risk is impossible to assess
without knowing its
concentration.
In addition to the
pesticides, the chemicals
added to the well "fracing"
water include acids to
dissolve cement around the
pipe casings and open
perforations in the pipe for
the water to flow through
and into the shale
formation; friction reducers
to make pumping easier; and
additives to keep clay from
reducing the flow of the
released gas.
Different pumping companies
use different frac-fluid
recipes and formulas and
different combinations and
amounts of those chemicals.
A report on the chemical
additives requested by DEP's
Bureau of Oil & Gas
Management and prepared for
the Independent Oil & Gas
Association of Pennsylvania
states that care and
controls are used to prevent
the frac chemicals and
chemical water solutions
from contaminating surface
and ground water near the
wells. The report also notes
that water in the Marcellus
Shales contains high
concentrations of dissolved
solids, making it unsuitable
as a drinking, agricultural
or industrial water supply.
The DEP and public water
suppliers have said the high
TDS levels are not a health
concern. But David Dzombeck,
an environmental engineering
professor at Carnegie Mellon
University, said without
knowing the chemical
composition of the dissolved
solids, that's hard to
confirm.
Full article
here
|
Drilling process causes water supply
alarm
By Abrahm Lustgarten - ProPublica
November 17, 2008
. . . . .
Much
of what is known about the makeup of
drilling fluids comes from the personal
investigations of Theo Colborn, an
independent Colorado-based scientist who
specializes in low-dose effects of
chemicals on human health.
Among Colborn's list of nearly 300
chemicals is a clear, odorless
surfactant called 2-BE, used in foaming
agents to lubricate the flow of fracking
fluids. Colborn told Congress in 2007
that it can cause adrenal tumors.
Laura Amos, who suffered from such a
tumor, pressed the drilling firm EnCana
on whether the compound had been used to
fracture the well near her house near
Dry Hollow. Her family's drinking well
had exploded like a geyser April 30,
2001. For months, the company denied
2-BE had been used. But Amos persisted.
In January 2005, her lawyers obtained
documents from EnCana showing that 2-BE
had, in fact, been used in at least one
adjacent well.
In 2006, Amos accepted a reported
multimillion-dollar settlement from
EnCana. The company was fined $266,000
for "failure to protect water-bearing
formations." Yet investigators also
concluded, without further explanation,
that hydraulic fracturing was not to
blame.
In the past 12 months, a flurry of
documented incidents have become hard to
dismiss.
Colorado Dept of Natural Resources
In February, a frozen 200-foot waterfall
was discovered on the side of a massive
cliff near Parachute. According to the
state, 1.6 million gallons of
fracturing fluids had leaked from a
waste pit and been transported by
groundwater, where it seeped out of
the cliff.
In a separate incident nearby in June,
benzene was discovered in a place called
Rock Spring. Three weeks later, a
rancher was hospitalized after he drank
well water out of his own tap.
Colorado state records show more than
1,500 spills since 2003, in which time
the rate of drilling increased 50
percent. In 2008 alone, records show
more than 206 spills, 48 relating to
water contamination.
Full article
here
|
Buried Secrets: Is Natural Gas Drilling Endangering
U.S. Water Supplies?
by
Abrahm Lustgarten -
November 13, 2008
In July, a
hydrologist dropped a plastic sampling pipe 300 feet
down a water well in rural Sublette County, Wyo.,
and pulled up a load of brown oily water with a foul
smell. Tests showed it contained benzene, a chemical
believed to cause aplastic anemia and leukemia, in a
concentration 1,500 times the level safe for people.
The results
sent shockwaves through the energy industry and
state and federal regulatory agencies.
Photo
A.Lustgarten
Cathy
Behr, the emergency-room nurse who nearly died from
at-work exposure to drilling chemicals .
... An investigation by ProPublica, which visited
Sublette County and six other contamination sites,
found that water contamination in drilling areas
around the country is far more prevalent than the
EPA asserts. Our investigation also found that the
2004 EPA study was not as conclusive as it claimed
to be. A close review shows that the body of the
study contains damaging information that wasn't
mentioned in the conclusion. In fact, the study
foreshadowed many of the problems now being reported
across the country.
Full article
here.
|
New York’s Gas Rush Poses Environmental Threat
by
Abrahm Lustgarten - July 22, 2008 1:42 pm
EST
Tags: Drilling, Marcellus Shale, Natural Gas
On May 29 New
York state's top environmental officials assured
state lawmakers that plans to drill for natural gas
near the watershed that supplies New York City's
drinking water posed little danger.
A survey of
other states had found "not
one instance of drinking water contamination"
from the water-intensive, horizontal drilling that
would take place across New York's southern tier,
the officials told lawmakers in Albany.
Reassured, the legislature quickly approved a bill
to speed up the permitting process for a huge influx
of wells...
But a joint
investigation by ProPublica and New York City public
radio station
WNYC found that this type of drilling has caused
significant environmental harm in other states and
could affect the watershed that supplies New York
City's drinking water.
In New Mexico,
oil and gas drilling that uses waste pits comparable
to those planned for New York has already caused
toxic chemicals to leach into the water table at
some 800 sites. Colorado has reported more than 300
spills affecting its ground water.
DEC officials
told ProPublica and WNYC they were not aware of
those incidents, even though some of the information
could have been found through a rudimentary Internet
search. The officials couldn't say for sure how New
York would dispose of the millions of gallons of
hazardous fluids that are byproducts of this type of
drilling, and they learned only recently that the
new drilling techniques would pump trace amounts of
toxic chemicals into the ground. Four days after one
interview, the DEC drafted a
letter to the drilling companies, asking for
detailed information about the type and amount of
chemicals they will use....
The challenges New
York faces in controlling drilling's effect on its
water are illustrated by what is happening at
Tamarac Swamp, a state-protected ecological area.
The swamp sits
on a quiet rural road brimming with oaks and maples,
outside Oxford, N.Y., about a 45-minute drive from
Binghamton. Last year, Oklahoma City-based
Chesapeake Energy, the nation's third largest gas
producer, approached the sprawling wetland's owners
with an offer to lease drilling rights for $75 an
acre, a bargain compared to today's asking prices of
$2,500.
The Zunno
family declined Chesapeake's offer, intending to
preserve the wetland instead. But last month the
family spotted a tanker truck from another drilling
company. Its long septic hose was draped over the
side of the public roadway, draining water from the
Zunno's culvert. Lori Zunno said a well had been
built on a neighbor's land and its operator had sent
contractors in search of water for the drilling.
"We can't even
build within 100 feet of [the swamp] so I don't
understand why they can take septic trucks and pump
it out," Zunno said.
Zunno filed a
complaint with the DEC, but she said no one seemed
to know who was responsible for protecting her land,
or what, if anything, the tanker company had done
wrong. "They don't even know their own rules --
what's regulated and what's not," she said. "There
was such a lack of knowledge on their part about
what could be done. There is no clear cut 'you
cannot take water from this spot.’'"
It turns out
that the withdrawals from the Zunnos' property
should be regulated by the Susquehanna River Basin
Commission. But Zunno didn't know that. And neither
did three DEC officials, who didn't mention the
Susquehanna commission before they declined to
comment on the Zunnos' complaint.
The
Susquehanna commission and the neighboring Delaware
River Basin Commission both require permits for
regular or large water withdrawals, but New York
does not regulate surface water extraction in other
parts of the state. Anyone can take water from, say,
the Hudson River, according to DEC's regional
captain for law enforcement in the Zunnos' part of
the state. When it comes to smaller water resources
such as the Tamarac swamp, state law says only that
wetlands cannot be drained.
Scientists and
local land owners fear thousands of small water
sources such as the Tamarac will be tapped to
support the drilling industry, legally or illegally.
The concern is that lots of small withdrawals will
have a large impact.
Full article
here.
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Drilling the West
National Geographic
By John G. Mitchell
photo by Joel
Sartore: Roan Plateau, 1 well per 20 acres
National Geographic
photographer video essay
here.
...But there's
another kind of gravy in Powder River country. It is
the sludge that can come out of a homeowner's tap
when CBM drillers de-water the aquifer feeding that
homeowner's well and cistern. Consider the case of
Allison and Richard Cole, who believed they had
found their American dream in a comfortable
five-bedroom house on high, open, rolling prairie
ten miles north of Sheridan. "The wild, wonderful
West just opened up to us," said Allison Cole. But
soon their home and those of five other families
were sitting within a horseshoe of two dozen CBM
wells pumping methane and water from a formation
known as the Anderson coal seam.
"We lost our water in April 2003," Allison Cole told
me. "By August 2004, five other houses here had lost
their water too. The drilling company, J.M. Huber
Corporation, told us, 'The reason you have no water
is that your well pump burned out.' And I said,
'Yeah? And the reason the pump burned out is because
it had no water.'"
"It takes away the joy of living out here on the
prairie," said Richard Cole. "We'd just like to get
out of here now." And Allison added: "But we can't
even put the house on the market. Who wants to buy a
house without running water?"
A Huber spokesman said there is "no evidence" that
the well failures have been caused by drilling
activities. He cited other possible factors such as
the region's lengthy drought and increasing
residential development in the area. As part of what
it calls its "Good Neighbor" policy, Huber refills
the Coles' and other cisterns weekly with trucked-in
water, and it has proposed constructing a
replacement water supply system for all the affected
landowners.
Full article
here:
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Reluctant Activist Sees Fruits of Her Labor In
Drilling Moratorium
February 04, 2008
"I used to
work at a travel publisher, but it never really
synched up with my desire to be an
environmentalist," says Ellen Cavalli, editor of
the
Rio Grande Sierran since February
2006.
Cavalli
and her husband Scott, pictured above with son
Benjamin, moved to New Mexico in the late 1990s
from New York City. "We'd been wanting to buy
some land and build a straw bale house," Cavalli
says. "We took a road trip through here in 1997,
saw how beautiful it was, and that did it. We
got back to Brooklyn, looked at our little
garden, and within a month we'd moved."
After two years near Santa Fe, the couple
relocated to the San Francisco area when
Cavalli's employer merged with another company
there. But the Southwest was in their blood, and
in 2005 they quit their jobs and headed back to
New Mexico, where they bought a home in the
Galisteo Basin near Santa Fe. They have since
moved to a small village in an agrigultural
valley further north where they now do their own
organic farming.
"I love
Dixon, where we live now," Cavalli says. "It's a
real community, horse country, a little
anarchist, lots of back-to-the-landers—an old
farm and art town. It's the type of place we've
always wanted to live."
Still,
Cavalli wanted her work to align more closely
with her beliefs, so she started focusing her
freelance editorial business on promoting
sustainable living and renewable energy. Even
after taking up the editorial reins of the
Sierran, however, she considered herself a
reluctant activist. "I was a facilitator and a
consensus-builder," she says, "but I wasn't the
one originating the ideas and putting myself on
the line as a leader."
That began
to change in March 2007 when Cavalli learned
that an oil and gas exploration company was
preparing to reenter a 20-year-old oil well on
the banks of the Galisteo River south of Santa
Fe, near the property the couple had held onto
when they moved to Dixon.
"I sent
out an e-mail to connect people and ask if they
were interested in writing an article," says
Cavalli, who was pregnant at the time with her
first child. She ran a couple of articles in the
Sierran on the drilling threat, but
remained on the periphery of the growing
movement.
Then came
a phone call in August from their tenant, Cindy:
"It looks like they're going to drill next to
your land!" Cindy had just come from a community
meeting where a neighbor whose ranch in Texas
had been destroyed by gas drilling just a year
earlier displayed maps of proposed exploratory
wells. And one well was smack next to the Ellen
and Scott's property.
"I
couldn't bury my head in the sand any longer,"
says Cavalli, who gave birth to Benjamin at the
end of July. She joined a local grassroots
organization,
Drilling Santa Fe, educated herself about
oil and gas drilling, and began speaking out.
"I'm not a public speaker—there's a reason why
I'm an editor, working behind the scenes—but
I've found ways to push beyond my comfort zone."
She
attended strategy meetings, signed petitions,
sent letters to local papers, and helped others
write their own. She and Scott wrote, designed,
and distributed flyers, educational materials,
and ads comparing Santa Fe with other areas in
New Mexico that had been drilled. She wrote
letters to county commissioners and state
representatives, cajoled friends into writing,
and helped coordinate Drilling Santa Fe's
efforts. "Benjamin has attended more activist
events in his first six months of life than I
had in my first 35 years," she laughs.
Photo by Tony
Bonanno
The group
organized protest marches in downtown Santa Fe,
above, turned out large numbers of citizens for
public meetings held by the county, below,
participated in a televised debate in
Albuquerque with the New Mexico Oil and Gas
Association, and got several hundred people to
show up and protest the oil company's "horse and
pony shows" to demonstrate how environmentally
responsible they were and get the public to buy
into their plan.
Photo by Tony
Bonanno
"We're
incessant—we make a lot of noise," Cavalli says.
"One of our main organizers, David Bacon, says
this anti-drilling campaign is the biggest
movement he's seen in Santa Fe County. And it's
just a critical mass of regular people like me."
The
groundswell of public outcry is having an
effect. In early January, Congressman Tom Udall
and Senator Jeff Bingaman announced that oil and
gas exploration needed to slow down, and on
January 11 Governor Bill Richardson announced a
6-month moratorium on drilling in Santa Fe
County. Two weeks later, he issued an
executive order imposing that moratorium.
"Sometimes
I look back at my pre-baby/pre-activist days,"
Cavalli writes in the
latest issue of the Rio Grande Sierran.
"The Old Me certainly got more sleep, but she
didn't have my newfound sense of purpose. When I
found my voice, I found my power, and I wouldn't
go back. Inasmuch as motherhood has changed my
life forever, so too has activism."
Among
Cavalli's goals is to help make Santa Fe
County a model of sustainability and renewable
energy. "It feels like we've started something
that we want to take to the whole state, the
whole Rocky Mountain region. It's about
renewable energy, but it's also about the public
taking back its power. For too long our rights
and our will have been trampled by
corporations—this is a fight for democracy. It's
not going to stop in the Galisteo Basin."
Complete
story
here
Drilling Task Force makes report
By Dan Hust
February 20, 2009
MONTICELLO — Sullivan County Planning
Commissioner Bill Pammer presented the findings of
the Sullivan County Gas Drilling Task Force to
legislators Thursday.
Along with the 84-page report came 21
recommendations that legislators will consider and
possibly act on at the next Planning, Environmental
Management and Real Property Committee meeting,
currently scheduled for Thursday, March 12 at 9:15
a.m. in the Government Center in Monticello. The
meeting is open to the public.
. . . . .
[The task force] discovered that many municipalities
haven’t required bond amounts sufficient to cover
damage to roadways inflicted by the heavy truck
traffic resulting from gas drilling.
The full report is expected to be made available
soon on the county’s website at
www.scgnet.us. For copies, contact the Division
of Planning at 807-0527.
Next up for the task force, said Pammer, is working
closely with the townships along the Delaware River
to create a more specific assessment of impacts and
mitigations regarding gas drilling.
The report recommends:
• Continuing to monitor and address all issues with
gas development, both in terms of economic
opportunities and potential impacts
• Continuing to follow and participate in the
state’s update of gas drilling regulations
• Responding promptly to the state’s updates and
fostering public education and participation
• Helping local municipalities establish a
disciplined road regime system to ensure gas
drilling activities do not result in excess costs to
taxpayers
• Exploring potential laws that ensure the same for
county roads, including designating truck routes,
computing the mileage and costs-per-mile of those
routes, and creating a uniform method of assessing
such costs
• Urging the state to create a methodology to
concretely quantify the costs to maintain roadways
so as to eliminate the guesswork and ad hoc
negotiations between municipalities and gas
companies over estimating damages and setting
bonding requirements
• Conveying to the state the need to create
mechanisms to notify municipalities of drilling
permit applications and to require gas companies to
notify municipalities of permit approvals
• Reviewing the issues surrounding property rights
and the potential nuisance related to seismic (i.e.,
thumper truck) testing and considering the
parameters for drafting an ordinance that regulates
such testing on county roads
• Requiring driveway permit applications for the
well pad(s) include a site plan as a pre-requisite
(a 911 address will be issued as part of any
driveway permit)
• Obtaining a list of telephone numbers and e-mail
addresses of management contacts for each well site,
especially in cases of emergency
• Interfacing with the NY-Alert online warning
system – and encouraging the public to use it – to
ensure timely and thorough notification of chemical
spills or contamination incidents
• Ensuring review by emergency responders of storage
and transportation methods regarding wastewater and
fracking fluids, along with the use of blow-out
preventers, flow lines and flaring procedures on
wells
• Mandating that emergency responders and local
emergency rooms be given the exact contents of
fracking fluids to ensure proper treatment in
contamination situations
• Working with the state to remove ambiguity in
state law regarding the scope of local municipal
authority as it pertains to gas drilling
• Reviewing and adopting proper cost-recovery
measures (i.e., changing the way well sites can be
taxed) so that revenue generation is maximized and
taxpayers aren’t unduly burdened
• Urging the state to amend the Real Property Tax
Law to give municipalities a clearer enforcement
authority when gas companies do not pay their
property taxes in a timely or proper manner.
(Several recommendations have been consolidated in
this article; thus the number of bulleted points
will not add up to the report’s total of 21
recommendations.)
Complete story
here
Water expert: public health is top drilling issue
By Sandy Long
- December 18, 2008
UPPER DELAWARE
REGION — While acknowledging the environmental and
economic impacts of natural gas drilling, Albert
Appleton, the designer of the New York City
watershed protection program and New York City
Commissioner of Environmental Protection from 1990
to 1993, has identified the most pressing drilling
issue to be a matter of public health: “Risks to
drinking water are not just environmental issues;
first and foremost, they are public health issues.”
In his
statement to New York State Department of
Environmental Conservation (DEC) regulators on
Marcellus Shale gas drilling, Appleton wrote, “The
standard for assessing public health risk is not the
environmental standard of balancing environmental
risks against economic benefits.”
Commenting on
this statement, he added, “We don’t balance public
health risk. The standard is no risk.”
Appleton
recently testified to the potential harms of natural
gas drilling within the city’s Catskill watershed
during a public hearing held by NYC councilman James
Gennaro and New York City Council’s Environmental
Protection Committee on December 12.
...Earlier
this year, Governor Patterson called for a
Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement
(SGEIS) on drilling. Appleton has questioned the
ability for adequate enforcement of the SGEIS, given
the DEC’s limited staffing resources and current
fiscal crisis. Calling the dimensions of such
enforcement “staggering,” Appleton noted, “If just
20 percent of the 12 million acres of the Marcellus
Shale was developed at an extremely low density of
one well pad every 100 acres—one every 25 acres is
common—New York would have to oversee 25,000 well
pads.”
Such oversight
would require the addition of more permit
administrators, field inspectors, emergency
responders, groundwater hydrologists, drilling
technology experts, public health specialists,
testing-lab workers, hearing officers, lawyers,
accountants, environmental law enforcement
professionals, land use planners and administrative
support personnel, according to Appleton.
Speaking from
experience, he noted, “When New York City staffed up
its Catskill watershed protection program, it hired
400 new staff to do a less complicated task in an
area only 10 percent of the size of the Marcellus.”
Appleton
described the dangers of moving forward without such
measures in place as “regulatory and landscape
disaster,” and has called for a new system of annual
permit fees, in addition to increased staff, before
the EIS is completed and permits are issued.
...Appleton
places responsibility on the gas drilling industry
for meeting the challenge of cleaning up the “dirty
and damaging” process of natural gas extraction and
constructively embracing an effective regulatory
program to prove that shale drilling presents no
risk to drinking water. “The process, from cradle to
grave, must be sustainable,” he said. “You don’t
solve one problem by creating two more.”
Full article
here.
Natural gas
company may pump wastewater into ground
By
Tom Wilber
December 3, 2008
Company officials are testing a process
to pump wastewater back into the ground
at the site of an unproductive well near
the northern border of Tioga and Chemung
counties, said Mark Scheuerman, manager
of media relations. The plan calls for
injecting waste from another well, which
is tapping a gas reserve in the Trenton
Black River formation...
Wastewater intended for the site is
being separated from gas flowing from a
productive well, Scheuerman said. The
company is testing to see whether the
proposed disposal well, called the
Mallula1 well on Rumsey Hill Road in Van
Etten, is suited to handle the volume
and pressure from the process...
Drilling waste can contain metals, brine
and sometimes elements that pick up
traces of radioactivity after passing
through certain kinds of rock
formations. Scheuerman said wastewater
proposed for the Mallulal well contains
brine and certain minerals and metals,
but no radioactive material.
Unproductive wells similar to the
Mallulal also could be used as
repositories for other kinds of drilling
waste, said Maureen Wren, a spokeswoman
for the DEC. That could include water
treated with chemicals used to fracture
bedrock and release gas. The process is
known as hydro-fracturing, or fracking.
“It's only prudent to investigate all
potential disposal methods,” Wren said.
Injection wells would require special
permits approved by the agency.
Fracking has been a sore spot with
advocates who fear too little is known
about the process and too few safeguards
are in place to prevent disasters.
Energy companies are exempt from federal
laws requiring them to disclose the
chemicals used in the process.
“I've heard that it (the waste) doesn't
always stay where they think,” said Ann
Ellis, a landowner in Apalachin who
plans to attend tonight's meeting. A
representative of state Sen. George H.
Winner also will be there, said Phil
Palmesano, a spokesman for the senator.
Plans for the injection well come as
energy companies begin exploring the
Marcellus Shale, a formation extending
under the Southern Tier and throughout
Pennsylvania and the Appalachian basin.
The Marcellus, one of the largest
natural gas formations in the country,
would require horizontal drilling that
would produce millions of gallons of
waste, including fracking fluid.
Full article
here
County sending recommendations
to DEC
By Dan Hust - November 28, 2008
MONTICELLO — After tweaking the resolution,
legislators unanimously agreed on Thursday to draft
a letter to the NYS Department of Environmental
Conservation (DEC) as part of its update of gas
drilling regulations...
The recommendations are as follows:
• Assess the impacts of pipelines, transmission
lines, compressor stations and accidental
spills/emissions related to gas drilling
• Evaluate sound environmental practices of storage
and transportation of fracking fluids, particularly
within 100-year and 500-year floodplains
• Assess the cumulative impacts of truck traffic on
roads and bridges
• Assess a way for the DEC to notify municipalities
of new drilling applications (rather than waiting
until the application has been approved)
• Determine how to require drilling companies to
notify municipalities of a permit approval and
coordinate on local permitting
• Evaluate methods to include, within drilling
applications, statements from affected
municipalities regarding potential impacts and ways
to address those impacts
• Assess impacts on aquifers and wells
• Assess the social, public health and economic
impacts during and after drilling
• Assess impacts on municipal services due to
activities ancillary to drilling operations.
Full article
here.
Companies keep drilling for natural gas in East
Drilling goes on in newly tapped natural gas
reservoir in East even as land rush slows
November 28,
2008: 08:32 AM EST
NEW YORK
(Associated Press) - Illuminated drilling rigs
glow for miles from atop flattened hills when
night falls in this rolling farm and coal
country in southwestern Pennsylvania.
Tanker
trucks back up traffic on two-lane roads, and
Texans wearing heavy coats and muddy boots fill
Shelley's Pike Diner at lunch as land owners
hope royalty checks will make them rich...
Practically everybody John Dunn knows who was
approached has signed a lease, and the
80-year-old keeps waiting for a royalty check
from the wells Range Resources drilled on his
corn and hay fields.
He didn't
complain about his torn-up fields, pipeline
digging and truck traffic _ but he is losing
patience with company officials who, he said,
have promised him a check several times already.
"If I ever
get a check, it'll be great," Dunn said.
Range
Resources spokesman Matt Pitzarella said the
wells on Dunn's property are probably not
completed yet. However, the newly operating
processing station will allow Range Resources to
deliver its first major royalty checks in
December_ including several worth hundreds of
thousands of dollars, he said.
For some,
there will be no payoff.
Houston's
council president, Charles Fife, said his tiny
borough of 1,300 will get plenty of truck
traffic through town but is unlikely to see any
revenue since the drilling is happening in
neighboring municipalities.
Land
agents inquired about the five acres where Nancy
McBane and her husband, Carl, both 72, live in a
handsome, two-story house. But they don't own
the mineral rights.
They have
laid awake at night, listening to the roar of
drilling a couple of hundred yards down their
narrow country road. And they feel their house
tremble as the tanker trucks that deliver water
to drilling sites drive by, seemingly oblivious
to the small bridge that is posted with a 3-ton
limit.
"Somebody's making money," said Carl McBane,
"but it isn't us."
Full
article
here.
Gas industry threatens to pull out of
PA -
GOP panel presses for streamlined regs
By Laurie
Stuart - November 27, 2008
DALLAS, PA
- Some called it smoke and mirrors. Others
thought that it was an accurate reflection of
the consequences facing the Pennsylvania
Legislature and its regulatory bodies as they
regulate activities in the Marcellus Shale play.
“The play”
is how the natural gas industry describes the
geological formation of shale that lies under
most of Pennsylvania and the southern tier of
New York State. And if industry representatives
are to be taken at their word, that shale might
not be developed if Pennsylvania does not make
it easier and quicker for the industry to “ramp
up” its harvesting activities.
Everyone admitted that there were no solutions
as to what to do with the cumulative billions of
gallons of wastewater that would be created in
the hydrofracturing process, containing a
variety of added chemicals, plus heavy metals
and salts that occur naturally in this deep
underground drilling procedure. Texas is
currently injecting the fluid into deep wells,
but according to Hanger, due to Pennsylvania’s
geology, injections had not been favored up to
this point.
And
despite the early testimony from Will Brackett,
editor-in-chief of the Powell Barnett Shale
Newsletter, that the North Texas economy is
booming because of a 7.5 percent oil production
or severance tax, gas industry representatives
cautioned the panel that, due to Pennsylvania’s
high corporate income tax, any new taxes would
stymie Marcellus development and ruin the
traditional natural gas industry in
Pennsylvania.
The DEP,
SRBC and DRBC testified that they recover about
10 percent of their costs related to natural gas
through application fees.
Visit
www.senatorbaker.com
for copies of the written testimony and a full
video recording of the hearing.
Full
article
here.
Dispute has industry, mineral owners
nervous
BY John-Laurent Tronche July 07,
2008
One
name above all others strikes fear into the
hearts of Texas oil and gas operators:
Garza, or more specifically, the Supreme
Court of Texas case No. 05-0466, Coastal Oil
& Gas Corp. and Coastal Oil & Gas USA LP v.
Garza Energy Trust, et al.
The
lawsuit stems from a 2005 Hidalgo County
dispute in which Garza Energy Trust was
granted $14 million for the court’s findings
that the trust had been the victim of
subsurface trespass due to hydraulic
fracturing.
Hydraulic fracturing is a process in which a
sand-water mixture is pumped down the
well-bore, thousands of feet down to crack
and split the shale, providing access to the
natural gas stored within the formation.
Without hydraulic fracturing, little gas can
be retrieved.
The
problem is, however, that fracture
stimulation isn’t a precise science, and
doesn’t always crack the shale in equal
portions. In some ways, cracking the shale
evenly could be thought of as trying to
hammer a dinner plate into equal pieces –
it’s not easy.
“You may plan a fracture that will go 1,000
feet, and it might go 2,000 feet or 400
feet,” said John S. Lowe, a professor of
energy law at Southern Methodist
University’s Dedman School of Law.
...knowing what has happened thousands of
feet below isn’t easy.
Contact Tronche at
jtronche@bizpress.net
Full
article
here.
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