Pa. seeks stronger look at drilling near water
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9OBFMKG0.htm
By MARC LEVY
HARRISBURG, Pa.
Pennsylvania environmental regulators have agreed to take more precautions before they approve certain permits for oil and natural-gas drilling sites where well construction poses a pollution threat to some of the state’s highest-quality waterways.
The state Department of Environmental Protection agreed to the measures to settle a complaint by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation first filed in 2009 that also asserted the agency had approved three deficient permit applications.
The settlement, dated Wednesday, essentially reverses some steps the department took two years ago to speed up the permitting process for Pennsylvania’s booming natural gas industry. The foundation argued the speedup was illegal.
Primarily, the agreement will impact drilling-related activity — land clearing, production, processing, treatment and pipeline construction — in northern Pennsylvania, where the state’s “high quality” and “exceptional value” waterways are predominantly found, said foundation scientist Harry Campbell.
“The heart of the matter is that those water bodies overlay, almost to a T, where predominantly the drilling activity is occurring,” Campbell said. The settlement contains “very significant sea changes in the way we are permitting those facilities within those watersheds that house the very special water.”
The settlement was approved by an Environmental Hearing Board judge and included subsidiaries of Houston-based Ultra Petroleum Corp. and Calgary-based Talisman Energy Inc. The resulting stricter review process could take up to 60 days. Currently, those permits can get approved in a matter of two weeks.
“It’s important to give the DEP more time to look at everything,” foundation lawyer Amy McDonnell said.
The DEP said in a statement that the revisions would make the permit review process “more robust.”
“This proposed settlement is an important step forward in our continued commitment to oversee this industry in an environmentally and economically conscious manner,” the statement said.
The agency must still take public comment for 60 days on the proposed change.
Under it, the department will require the stricter review if drilling-related activity poses the potential to pollute a high-quality waterway, or if a well pad is on a flood plain.
The DEP will have to decide how close a project has to be to warrant more scrutiny, McDonnell said. Current state law dictates that no well may be prepared or drilled within 100 feet of any waterway, though a number of lawmakers, as well as the DEP, have proposed expanding that buffer.
Amid industry complaints about a slow and bureaucratic permitting process, the DEP in 2009 took steps to speed up reviews of permits for well-related construction. However, the foundation complained that, without a technical review, fast-tracking the permit reviews of erosion, sediment and stormwater control plans was illegal.
The DEP was only reviewing the applications administratively to ensure they were complete, and relied on the word of a professional engineer that the application complied with the law.
The foundation began reviewing some of the permits the department had issued and found, for instance, that one failed to mention that a pipeline would be crossing a high-value wetland or they lacked stormwater preparations, foundation officials said.
As a result, the DEP revoked permits issued to Ultra and Talisman, both in northern Pennsylvania, and then reissued them after the problems were fixed.
The foundation has not carried out a more recent review to see whether the DEP has continued to approve error-riddled permit applications. But Campbell said the department since then has made strides to get more inspectors in the field to enforce compliance.
Major drilling companies began descending on Pennsylvania in earnest in 2008 to exploit the Marcellus Shale formation, regarded as the nation’s largest-known natural gas reservoir.
It lies primarily beneath Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia and Ohio. Pennsylvania is the center of activity, with more than 3,000 wells drilled in the past three years and thousands more planned in the coming years as thick shale emerges as an affordable, plentiful and profitable source of natural gas.
For decades, energy companies have drilled shallow oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania. But the use of high-volume hydraulic fracturing, which involves the underground injection of chemicals and produces millions of gallons of often-toxic wastewater, in the Marcellus Shale formation has sparked fresh environmental concerns about the protection of public waterways that provide drinking water to millions of people.