Vigilance vital as gas boom envelops region

http://thetimes-tribune.com/opinion/editorials-columns/guest-columnists/vigilance-vital-as-gas-boom-envelops-region-1.843336

Vigilance vital as gas boom envelops region

Published: June 13, 2010

Natural gas will soon be the new anthracite coal for our region. Significant drilling is taking place in Bradford, Susquehanna and Wyoming counties, exploratory drilling has begun in Wayne County, several wells are planned for Luzerne County, and northern Lackawanna County probably won’t be far behind.

We’ve done – and will continue to do – a lot of reporting on the pros and cons of the natural gas industry. We will continue to advocate for tougher environmental standards and for a severance tax on the gas extracted.

We also feel that it’s important to get the gas industry’s perspective, and to get a better understanding of the drilling process. So we visited with officials of Chesapeake Energy in Bradford County and toured one of its active drilling rigs.

Matt Sheppard, Chesapeake’s senior director of corporate development and government affairs, and Brian Grove, director of corporate development, met us in Towanda and presented an overview of the development and production process for a natural gas well site.

The presentation reinforced that the industry will be a fixture here for decades. Conservative estimates call  for a successful gas well to produce for 30 years. Some wells elsewhere continue to produce for decades more.

The drill sites are substantial. The well pad is 300 by 400 feet with a tower over 90 feet tall. The pad and supporting equipment, tanks and trailers cover about three acres initially. The tower, I was surprised to discover, has little to do with the actual drilling. It is 90-feet high because the drilling pipe is added in 90-foot increments, so the tower basically acts as a crane to raise the pipe into place over the well.

During the drilling period, which typically lasts 25 to 35 days, drilling is continuous , with a five-man crew and a supervisor always on site.

The safety and groundwater protection systems are impressive. No manmade system is perfect, but according to Mr. Sheppard and Mr. Grove, Chesapeake is doing its best to come close, and it exceeds industry and state Department of Environmental Protection standards.

Each well is equipped with a blowout preventer – a device made famous in the tragic BP accident that continues to unfold in the Gulf of Mexico. Mr. Sheppard and Mr. Grove are quick to point out that gas drilling is different from oil drilling – particularly off-shore drilling. Oil rigs have the same type of blowout preventer as natural gas rigs with one major difference: for a natural gas well, the blowout preventer is at ground level, 30 feet beneath the main rig platform; BP’s rig had a blowout preventer on the seafloor nearly a mile below. When the BP blowout preventer failed, there was no easy way to access the area.

On land wells, to protect groundwater, there are three rings of steel casing, with two rings of high-grade cement between them, surrounding the drill bore. This is to prevent any breach of the well where groundwater may be found.

The most controversial part of well-drilling is the hydraulic fracturing – or “fracking” – process. The gas is contained within the shale rock itself, so the rock must be fractured to release the gas. For this process, water is mixed with sand and pumped into the well under high pressure. The sand acts as tiny wedges to hold open the small fissures created in the rock to release the gas. Water and sand make up 99.5 percent of the fracking mixture. The other 0.5 percent is a mixture of 12 other chemicals, which are listed on Chesapeake’s website (see www.chk.com/media/pages/mediaresources.aspx and click on “Hydraulic Fracturing Fact Sheet”).

During the fracking period, which can last for several days, Chesapeake uses 5.6 million gallons of water per day. So, while 0.5 percent seems like a small amount, it’s actually 28,000 gallons of chemicals per day. At issue is how much of each of the 12 chemicals is actually used (specific chemical mixtures are considered proprietary and not disclosed) and what compounds do the combinations of these chemicals create. Compounds created by the combination of chemicals would have different properties and therefore a different effect on the environment if leaked.

Most of the fracking mixture (about 4.9 million of the 5.6 million gallons) remains in the porous Marcellus shale. The remaining 700,000 gallons returns to the surface in a “closed loop” system that then recycles the water and separates the chemicals for disposal.

Once the well is producing gas, the rig and most equipment are removed, and the gas goes directly into a pipeline system for sale to market. The well site is reduced from 3 to 1.5 acres.

Anthracite coal defined our region for generations. It’s the primary reason many of our ancestors came to this area. It left us with a powerful industrial history and beautiful architecture built on the wealth generated by coal, but it also left us with significant scars and environmental damage that we still deal with today, 50 years after most coal mining ended.

How can we ensure that our area benefits from the gas industry without being left years from now with environmental (and therefore economic) fallout? Any industrial process will create byproducts, some of which may be harmful. The key to protecting our environment isn’t eliminating the process, but ensuring oversight and accountability.

Natural gas will bring enormous amounts of money and jobs into our region. In coming years, despite the best safety systems that will be put in place, accidents will happen and the environment and groundwater will be put at risk. Hopefully, federal, state and local governments will have the laws and resources in place to deal with them effectively and protect our natural resources.

GEORGE LYNETT is publisher of The Times-Tribune. E-mail: publisher@timesshamrock.com.