New databases improve access to state gas drilling records
republicanherald.com/news/new-databases-improve-access-to-state-gas-drilling-records-1.1263776
By laura Legere (Staff Writer llegere@timesshamrock.com)
Published: January 28, 2012
A redesigned website for the state’s Office of Oil and Gas Management features new data tools that simplify the public’s access to permit records, drilling dates, inspections and enforcement actions for the state’s multiplying natural gas wells.
The site debuted two weeks ago for the Department of Environmental Protection’s high-profile office, which has come under recent criticism for inconsistency in its public data about Marcellus Shale gas wells.
At the heart of the new site are several data tools that will be updated automatically and nearly immediately rather than manually by a DEP staff member every month or so. For the first time, visitors to the new compliance database will find details for every inspection, not just those that uncover a violation at a well site.
The compliance database, which takes the place of what DEP spokesman Kevin Sunday called a “cumbersome” but “workable Marcellus Shale Excel spreadsheet,” also presents years of enforcement information in one place.
“You can check out an operator and get a look at how they’ve performed over the last few years, how much they’ve paid in penalties, what the violations were,” he said. “This is one standard format that definitely improves our transparency and our communication.”
Sunday was unsparing in his assessment of the old website, which has been replaced with a cleaner, better organized design complete with a logo pairing a green leaf with a blue gas flame.
“It was a hodgepodge of links,” he said. “Once you knew where everything was you kind of ignored the mess, but there was a lot of mess there.”
The new site, in comparison, is “very neat, very orderly and organized with specific audiences in mind.”
The agency has admittedly struggled with the massive amount of data generated by the gas industry to comply with state reporting rules, but Sunday said the problem had more to do with the consistent presentation of data across several online reports rather than missing or omitted information.
“It’s not that we’re lacking the data,” he said. “It’s that the public reports weren’t quite communicating well with our internal databases.”
The new site should help that. Now more automated, the public databases will show when a new well is drilled or a site is inspected as soon as it is entered into the department’s internal database, limiting the opportunity for error.
As new industry-reported data comes online – as a huge amount of it will in February when six-month oil and gas waste and production reports are posted – the goal is to “tether” the databases together to present more uniform, accurate information, he said.
Matt Kelso, data manager for FracTracker.org, a natural gas drilling database and mapping tool, draws heavily from the state’s data to analyze industry trends.
He said the new Office of Oil and Gas Management site is better organized and easier to navigate, especially across years of records, although he found the data to be largely the same.
“It’s an improvement,” he said. “I think it’s an overdue improvement, but I’m happy that they made those changes.”
www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt?tbb=dep and oil and gas
pa.gov/portal/server.pt/community/oil_and_gas/6003