Gas drop slowing drilling
www.timesleader.com/news/Gas_drop_slowing_drilling_02-13-2012.html
Posted:Feb. 13, 2012
Several companies have announced plans to cut gas production around the nation.
As natural gas prices continue to drop, the recent nationwide boom in drilling is slowing. Drillers don’t make money if prices go too low — and drilling wells isn’t cheap.
“It is safe to say that there will be fewer natural gas wells drilled in 2012,” said Kathryn Klaber, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry group based in Pennsylvania.
In recent weeks, several companies have announced plans to cut gas production around the nation, but experts say the low prices are also opening up new markets.
When the shale drilling boom was starting in 2008 the average price for a unit of gas was about $8. Two years ago it was down to $5.50, and now it’s dropped to about $2.50. Part of the reason is that the shale gas formations became productive more rapidly than expected, as thousands of new wells have been drilled nationwide.
Industry reports note that the national count of active new gas drilling rigs fell to 775 in early February, down from about 1,500 in 2008.
Yet Klaber said that the low prices create opportunities for more people and industries to use the product. For example, some drilling companies are focusing more on the so-called “wet gas” that sells for a higher price because it can be transformed by refineries into consumer products such as plastics and fertilizer.
Last month, Chesapeake Energy of Oklahoma City said it is reducing the number of new dry gas drilling rigs from 47 to 24 this year. In addition, it immediately cut existing production by about 500 million cubic feet per day, adding that if low prices persist, it may double the cut, to 1 billion cubic feet per day.
The company said that about 85 percent of its nationwide drilling expenditures this year will be toward the more profitable wet gas.
A spokesman for Chesapeake didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Experts say the companies have ways to cushion the low prices. It’s called hedging, and business people have used such tools for hundreds if not thousands of years, said Sara Moeller, a professor of business at the University of Pittsburgh.
“When you put a hedge on, you’re locking in one of your prices, because you’re happy with that price,” said Moeller, who has also worked as a commodities trader.
For example, Houston-based Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. said last month that it received $5.17 per thousand cubic feet of natural gas on some hedged deliveries in the final quarter of 2011. Yet the market price at the time was $3.18 per thousand cubic feet.
Moeller said such deals are possible because large consumers of commodities also want to reduce price swings, such as utility companies. Locking in prices limits their exposure to sudden jumps.
It’s done by a simple, registered trade on stock exchanges. People essentially buy and sell the hedges, setting varying prices for different points in the future.
NEPA counties to raise millions or nothing under gas impact fee
citizensvoice.com/news/nepa-counties-to-raise-millions-or-nothing-under-gas-impact-fee-1.1270948#axzz1mH3yTlIS
By Laura Legere (Staff Writer)
Published: February 13, 2012
Northeastern Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale boom counties stand to raise millions of dollars this year through an impact fee on the deep gas wells.
Other regional counties with a handful of wells may get little or nothing.
Once Gov. Tom Corbett signs natural gas legislation that passed the House and Senate last week, counties will have 60 days to adopt an ordinance to levy the optional fee.
Counties with active drilling that pass the ordinance will share with the state and their municipalities an estimated $180.5 million this year on the 3,850 vertical and horizontal shale wells that were drilled through 2011, according to state estimates. But only horizontal or producing vertical gas wells can be levied the fee.
Vertical exploratory wells that have never been hydraulically fractured and do not produce gas, like the two drilled in Lackawanna County and the eight drilled in Wayne County, will not be eligible for the fee.
“Our concern was that truly exploratory wells do not pay the impact fee,” said Drew Crompton, chief of staff for Senate President Pro Tempore Joseph Scarnati, R-Jefferson County. He added that the local impact of such wells is relatively minor and “quite frankly, we don’t want to discourage exploratory wells.”
On the other hand, the bill presumes that horizontal wells are not exploratory so even those not producing gas are eligible for the fee, he said.
That means Luzerne County’s two test wells, both of which are horizontal, will be subject to the $50,000 per well fee if the county adopts it, despite the fact that both were plugged after they showed little prospect of producing economic amounts of gas.
The bill allows fees to be collected for three years on horizontal wells with no production. After that, the fee is suspended for any well producing less than 90,000 cubic feet per day.
Crompton said the state recommends that counties with any shale gas wells pass the fee ordinance.
State lawmakers crafting the legislation broadened the fee eligibility from only counties with wells producing gas in an earlier draft of the bill to all those with unconventional gas wells that have been “spud” – the industry term for the start of drilling.
It is not entirely clear whether counties with “spud” wells that cannot be levied a fee, like Lackawanna and Wayne, will be allowed to share the money collected from the impact fee statewide.
Counties’ eligibility for the fee will be subject to a final determination by state environmental regulators, the governor’s office or the Public Utility Commission, Crompton said.
“Whether it covers everyone or not, we’ll have to see,” he said. “I think it will be interpreted that they should go ahead and vote on the resolution and hopefully make themselves eligible to receive, not a big part of the impact fee, but maybe some of it.”
Luzerne County will consider adopting the fee ordinance even if it stands to raise little from it, interim County Manager Tom Pribula said.
“All counties are basically revenue starved,” he said, “so if we have the ability to generate additional revenues it would be wise to do something.”
The county and its municipalities will share less about $51,000 of the $100,000 raised from the two wells – after the state’s share and distributions to other programs, like the Department of Environmental Protection, natural gas vehicle incentives and low-income housing support, are taken out.
In Wyoming County, where gas drilling has increased rapidly in the last year, commissioners are just beginning to review the impact fee bill, chief clerk William Gaylord said.
“There are a lot of questions to be answered,” he said. He did not indicate if the commissioners are inclined to adopt the fee ordinance.
“This has been talked about for years,” he said, “and they have never come out for or against it.”
If Wyoming County adopts the fee, its wells could raise $4.5 million this year. The county and its municipalities would share about $2.3 million of it, according to calculations based on state spud data.
Local and county governments in Susquehanna County, which ranks among the top gas producers in the state, are eligible for about $11 million of the $20.3 million its wells will raise this year if the county passes the ordinance.
Efforts to reach the Susquehanna County commissioners on Friday were unsuccessful.
llegere@timesshamrock.com
Driller fined for Northern Tier releases
citizensvoice.com/news/driller-fined-for-northern-tier-releases-1.1269832#axzz1ltij0snT
By Laura Legere (Staff Writer)
Published: February 10, 2012
State environmental regulators have fined Chesapeake Appalachia $565,000 for three incidents at Northern Tier natural gas well sites, including an April 2011 wellhead failure in Bradford County that released thousands of gallons of wastewater into a nearby stream.
The company paid $190,000 for the failure during hydraulic fracturing of the Atgas well in Leroy Township as part of an agreement with the Department of Environmental Protection announced Thursday.
The April incident took six days to fully control and caused the company to suspend its Pennsylvania fracking operations for three weeks, regulators said. It drew national attention and raised concerns about the safety of the gas extraction process.
“The governor and I expect the highest standards to be met and when they are not, we take strong enforcement action,” DEP Secretary Michael Krancer said in a statement. “We will continue to be vigilant on that front. The protection of the state’s water is paramount.”
Environmental regulators found elevated levels of salts and barium at the confluence of a nearby stream and Towanda Creek on the day after the Bradford County spill but saw the contaminants decline to background levels over several days, DEP said.
Chesapeake continues to perform groundwater monitoring at the site. Sampling over four months showed results consistent with groundwater quality in the region, according to regulators. The company said the incident caused no lasting environmental impact.
The penalties announced Thursday also include $160,000 in fines for building a North Towanda Township well pad with “extremely high, steep slopes” in a wetland without permission, DEP said. Heavy rains in October 2010 caused part of the pad’s slope to fail, sending sediment into Sugar Creek and other small streams and wetlands.
Chesapeake removed the fill from the wetland and must build about three acres of replacement wetlands as part of its agreement with DEP.
Chesapeake also paid $215,000 for a March 2011 incident in Potter County, where sediment from an access road and well site ran off into a high-quality stream during heavy rain. The sediment clogged the water-treatment filters at the Galeton Borough water supply plant downstream, requiring $190,000 in repairs and upgrades that were paid for by Chesapeake, DEP said.
The company blamed a “pre-existing, poorly maintained logging road” for most of the sediment.
In a statement, Brian Grove, Chesapeake’s senior director of corporate development for the region, said the company “worked proactively with all appropriate regulatory agencies throughout the response and analysis of these incidents to achieve compliance, identify and implement operational improvements and ensure proper resolution.”
The company has enhanced its operations because of the incidents, he said.
llegere@timesshamrock.com
DEP secretary answers questions on Marcellus Shale drilling
republicanherald.com/news/dep-secretary-answers-questions-on-marcellus-shale-drilling-1.1269964
by mark gilger jr. (staff writer mgilgerjr@republicanherald.com)
Published: February 10, 2012
ORWIGSBURG – State Sen. David Argall, R-29, and the Schuylkill County Chamber of Commerce co-hosted a lunch meeting Thursday with state Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Michael Krancer.
The controversial subject of Marcellus Shale drilling was the topic of discussion as Krancer answered questions from chamber members concerning the bill passed Wednesday by the House of Representatives that established a county-option drilling impact fee and the state review of local drilling ordinances.
“At the end of the day, my job is to make good choices – which I think we are – to obtain this resource and use it in a safe and effective manner,” Krancer said Thursday at the meeting at Madeline’s restaurant.
Gov. Tom Corbett is expected to sign the bill, which received a vote of 101-90 in the House. The Senate approved the same bill Tuesday.
“The House made the right call. The Senate made the right call. We thank them for that and all of Pennsylvania should thank them,” Krancer said.
The danger of water contamination has been one of the harshest criticisms raised against the drilling and was addressed Thursday by Krancer.
“There is a culture of half-truth and misinformation and that is where I try to help out by providing information,” Krancer said. “I think it was Mark Twain that said, ‘A lie makes it halfway around the world by the time the truth gets its boots on.’ Well, I’ve seen that a lot in the last few years.”
The latest legislation extends drilling to 500 feet from existing buildings or water wells, 1,000 feet from water used by a supplier, and 300 feet from any body of water greater than one acre.
Drillers can also be held responsible for pollution of waterways within 2,500 feet of a well for up to one year after completion. Previously, responsibility lasted only six months after completion of a well within 1,000 feet of a body of water. Maximum penalties for violations were also increased from $300 to $1,000.
“We have county commissioners and conservation districts on board saying let’s go for it, and in light of that I really have to say that the folks that are decrying the legislation are really out on the fringe,” Krancer said. “The House and the Senate did absolutely the right thing and it’s a huge step forward to be able to responsibly harness this great resource that is under our feet.”
The law allows counties with active wells to collect impact fees from drillers. Wells producing less than 90,000 cubic feet of gas per day will be exempt from the fee, which can be enacted by a county 60 days after the law is put into effect and can be retroactive for 2011. The bill also gives municipalities the ability to pursue an impact fee if not put into place by the county.
The fees will be collected by the Public Utility Commission and 60 percent will go to municipalities with the ordinance and 40 percent will be used for state environmental projects.
“I think the number-one priority of this administration is to get Pennsylvanians working again,” Krancer said.
While answering a question, Krancer said the bill also addresses concerns of municipalities losing their zoning privileges. He said the bill is simply a way to create uniformity of environmental standards and municipalities will retain zoning ordinances.
“It’s about private property and allowing those who want to use their private property the way they want to use it,” Krancer said.
Another question asked Thursday concerned the possibility of creating a level playing field for the booming Marcellus Shale industry in the Northeast.
“We are not going to live in a world where a state does not compete with another state,” Krancer said. “Capital competes, even within its own company. Capital is mobile and it will go. Economics is amoral.”
PennEnvironment Research and Policy Center has voiced its disapproval of the law based on an argument that it will strip control from local governments and will set one of the lowest impact fee rates in the nation.
“We have opposed the bill since it lacked any kind of local provisions,” Erika Staaf, clean water advocate for PennEnvironment, said Thursday. “If legislators were looking to pass a proposal that will allow more gas drilling near people’s homes, and the parks, playgrounds and schools where our children play and spend their days, then mission accomplished. Prior to the bill, drilling was kept to where it was wanted. At this point, any company can just drill in a commercial district.”
Drillers cited for 3,300 environmental violations in 4 years
citizensvoice.com/news/drilling/drillers-cited-for-3-300-environmental-violations-in-4-years-1.1269336#axzz1ltij0snT
By Laura Legere (Staff Writer)
Published: February 9, 2012
Marcellus Shale drillers in Pennsylvania were cited for more than 3,300 violations of state environmental laws in the last four years, according to a tally released Wednesday by the environmental organization PennEnvironment.
The data, compiled from state records, revealed a wide array of violations committed by 64 different companies.
More than two-thirds of the violations were for problems likely to have an environmental impact while less than a third were related to paperwork or permitting, according to PennEnvironment’s sorting of the codes the state uses to designate violations.
The organization removed duplicate violation data and looked to descriptions or legal citations in violation reports to interpret violations classified under non-specific codes by state regulators, PennEnvironment spokeswoman Erika Staaf said.
Erosion and sedimentation problems were the most common source of environmental violations, with 625 citations, followed by faulty pollution prevention controls (550), improper waste management (340), and pollution discharges (307).
PennEnvironment found that Cabot Oil and Gas Corp. had the most violations with 412, including 161 in 2011 – the most violations by a Marcellus Shale driller last year.
Chesapeake Appalachia, Chief Oil and Gas, and Talisman Energy USA all had more than 300 violations during the four-year study period, although Talisman cut its violations from 154 in 2010 to just 30 in 2011, according to the report.
Of drillers with more than 10 Marcellus wells in the state, XTO Energy, an ExxonMobil subsidiary, had the highest rate of violations, with an average of three violations for every well it drilled.
Staaf said the study “demonstrates that Marcellus Shale gas drilling companies are either unable or unwilling to comply with basic environmental laws that have been put in place to protect the health and environment of Pennsylvanians.”
The organization called on state leaders to halt shale gas drilling until companies prove it can be done safely.
The Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry group, said PennEnvironment lost all credibility when it circulated a photo of a flooded drilling rig from Pakistan last fall and mistakenly described it as a Marcellus Shale operation.
“Natural gas development, which supports nearly 229,000 jobs in the Commonwealth, is aggressively and tightly regulated,” coalition spokesman Steve Forde said. “Suggesting otherwise may grab a headline or two, but such claims are simply not supported by the facts.”
llegere@timesshamrock.com
Pennsylvania House Votes “Sweetheart” Deal for Big Oil and Gas
www.marketwatch.com/story/pennsylvania-house-votes-sweetheart-deal-for-big-oil-and-gas-2012-02-08
Feb. 8, 2012 (Press Release)
HARRISBURG, Pa., Feb 08, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future (PennFuture) condemned the passage of the so-called “compromise” drilling bill, House Bill 1950, in the Pennsylvania House today, which passed by a 101 to 90 vote. PennFuture said the bill was fast tracked to near warp speed, moving through the process from a secretly negotiated deal to passage in both houses in just days.
“This bill proves the adage, ‘money talks,’ as the governor and the General Assembly adopted everything the deep pocketed drilling interests wanted, to the detriment of the citizens, their public health, local representation, the environment, and nearly every sector of our economy except drilling,” said Jan Jarrett, president and CEO of PennFuture. “Big campaign contributions and full court press lobbying won the day against the rights and liberty of Pennsylvanians.
“The bill adopts one of the nation’s lowest extraction fees, contains weak environmental protections over drinking water and our streams and wetlands, confers special stature on the drillers over other businesses in Pennsylvania, and destroys local rights to use zoning ordinances to manage drilling and withholds funds from any municipality that attempts to use those rights,” said Jarrett. “Pennsylvania citizens will get little in return.
“Some accepted this deal for the little environmental funding proposed, but no sound thinking person would accept 30 pieces of silver for this awful deal,” continued Jarrett. “We will live with the damage caused by drilling for decades, just as we still live with the damage from abandoned coal mines and shallow oil and gas wells across the Commonwealth. And once again, the citizens of Pennsylvania will be stuck with the tab for cleaning up the mess.
“It’s clear why the governor and the Republican leadership needed to ram this bill through,” said Jarrett. “It violates the rights of the citizens, and the wishes of more than three-quarters of the voters.
“We had the opportunity to do this right, but the General Assembly squandered that opportunity,” concluded Jarrett.
PennFuture is a statewide public interest membership organization that advances policies to protect and improve the state’s environment and economy. With offices in Harrisburg, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Wilkes-Barre, PennFuture’s activities include litigating cases before regulatory bodies and in local, state, and federal courts, advocating and advancing legislative action on a state and federal level, public education, and assisting citizens in public advocacy. The PennFuture website is www.pennfuture.org and the blog is located at http://pennfuture.blogspot.com .
SOURCE: Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future
Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future
Jeanne K. Clark, 412-258-6683 / 412-736-6092
info@pennfuture.org
www.pennfuture.org
Webinar to examine Marcellus development impacts on transportation
live.psu.edu/story/57591#nw69
Friday, February 3, 2012
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A Web-based seminar sponsored by Penn State Extension will
Thousands of trips made by water trucks, seismic trucks, drilling rigs and construction equipment to and from the Marcellus fields are having a serious impact on transportation patterns and road maintenance.
examine how Marcellus shale natural-gas development in Pennsylvania is affecting transportation patterns in the state.
The 75-minute webinar will begin at 1 p.m. on Feb. 16. Presenters include Scott Christy, deputy secretary for highway administration with PennDOT, and Mark Murawski, Lycoming County planning and community development director and longtime transportation planner.
Christy will discuss the statewide ramifications of the Marcellus play on commonwealth roads and highways. Thousands of trips made by water trucks, seismic trucks, drilling rigs and construction equipment to and from the Marcellus fields are having a serious impact on transportation patterns and road maintenance.
Murawski will provide information regarding transportation effects on the locally owned road and bridge system in Lycoming County. He also will highlight the changes to commercial and general aviation service at the Williamsport Regional Airport and to rail freight service that have resulted from Marcellus Shale gas-exploration activity.
“In addition, I want to inform webinar participants on a major initiative to develop a regional compressed-natural-gas fueling facility in the Williamsport area that will benefit River Valley Transit operations,” Murawski said. “It will spur other vehicle-fleet conversions from diesel to natural-gas fuels to fully utilize this local energy resource beneath our feet.”
The webinar is part of a monthly series of online workshops that provide education about the opportunities and challenges related to the state’s Marcellus Shale gas boom. Information about how to register for the session is available on the webinar page of Penn State Extension’s natural-gas website at http://extension.psu.edu/naturalgas/webinars.
The next webinar in the series, at 1 p.m. on March 15, will focus on municipalities’ roles related to water use and protection.
Previous webinars, publications and information also are available on the Penn State Extension natural-gas website (http://extension.psu.edu/naturalgas), covering topics such as seismic testing, air pollution from gas development; the gas boom’s effect on landfills; water use and quality; zoning; gas-leasing considerations for landowners; implications for local communities; gas pipelines and right-of-way issues; legal issues surrounding gas development; and the impact of Marcellus gas development on forestland.
For more information, contact John Turack, extension educator based in Westmoreland County, at 724-837-1402 or by email at jdt15@psu.edu.
Pa. GOP to seek vote on drill bill
www.timesleader.com/news/Pa__GOP_to_seek_vote_on_drill_bill_02-06-2012.html
February 6, 2012
Party has notified lawmakers that it hopes to hold votes on impact fee, regs this week.
HARRISBURG — A final framework is at hand on sweeping legislation to impose an impact fee and update safety regulations on Pennsylvania’s booming natural gas industry, top Republican state lawmakers say.
Republicans notified rank-and-file lawmakers Saturday night that they hope to hold votes this week on a framework reached by negotiators from the House, Senate and Gov. Tom Corbett’s office during closed-door negotiations over the past six weeks.
“These discussions have progressed rapidly over the course of the last two weeks,” House Speaker Sam Smith and House Majority Leader Mike Turzai said in a letter to lawmakers. “In fact, staff have been working throughout the weekend and will be working (Sunday) in order to have a proposal that we can consider as early as this week.”
Pennsylvania is the only major gas-producing state that doesn’t tax natural gas production, and Democrats have not been part of the negotiations after trying unsuccessfully for three years to win enough Republican votes to impose a severance tax on the industry. Because Corbett opposes a tax on the industry, Republicans, who control the Legislature, have instead pursued an “impact fee” that he views as being fundamentally different than a tax. But House and Senate Republicans have clashed over the size of the fee, while Democrats and environmental groups view their proposals as too low and members of the industry have been split over paying any levy.
The 15-year impact fee would rise and fall with the price of natural gas and inflation. Currently, the price of natural gas is about $2.30 per million British thermal units — a measurement used at major pipeline hubs. If the price is between $3 and $5, the total per-well fee would be $310,000 over 15 years, not counting inflation, according to a summary distributed to senators.
At the current price of gas, the 15-year fee total would be $240,000 per well, not counting inflation, according to a summary distributed to House Democrats. The maximum per-well fee a company would pay is $355,000, if gas stays above $6, while the minimum would be $190,000, if gas stays below $2.25, again not including inflation.
But the fee at any price would be well below the average lifetime per-well tax paid in other natural gas states, including $993,700 in West Virginia, $878,500 in Texas and $555,700 in Arkansas, according to the Harrisburg-based Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center, a liberal think tank.
Counties that host the drilling would have the option of whether to impose the fee — a key element sought by Corbett and disliked by senators — but a critical mass of municipalities would have 60 days to override a county’s refusal. Counties and municipalities that refuse the fee would not get a share of the money.
Money from the impact fee and state forest drilling royalties would be distributed to a wide range of purposes, including bridge repairs, open space, water and sewer plant improvements, statewide environmental cleanup programs and purchases of natural-gas fleet vehicles. Local governments that are home to drilling would get 60 percent of the money from an impact fee, with 40 percent going to state programs or agencies, according to the summaries, even though Corbett had opposed using impact fee money for state programs.
The bill would increase the required distance between drilling and public water sources such as reservoirs, but not to the extent sought by Democrats and environmental groups, and it would require the state to develop regulations for transporting drilling wastewater and enforce qualifications of treatment plant operators.
The legislation also would address a top priority of the natural gas industry and set limits to prevent municipal officials from imposing zoning ordinances that effectively prevent drilling there. A drilling operator could ask state utility regulators to review a local ordinance to determine whether it allows for “the reasonable development of oil and gas.” If the Public Utility Commission or a state court decides that a local ordinance fails, the municipality would be unable to receive impact-fee money until it changes it, according to the summaries.
Pennsylvania lawmakers have talked about whether to tax the natural gas industry since it arrived in earnest in 2008 to tap into the Marcellus Shale natural gas formation, considered the nation’s largest-known natural gas reservoir. The drilling has drawn opponents who fear it is polluting the water supply.
Landfill proposes to mill Marcellus waste
citizensvoice.com/news/landfill-proposes-to-mill-marcellus-waste-1.1267758#axzz1lW6h1Lkv
By Laura Legere (Staff Writer)
Published: February 6, 2012
Keystone Sanitary Landfill plans to process rock waste from natural gas drilling at its properties in Throop and Dunmore in a switch from its years-old practice of accepting already processed waste from the region’s Marcellus Shale well sites.
The first-of-its-kind facility in the state, proposed in a permit application to the Department of Environmental Protection in December, has raised concerns in Throop, where community leaders oppose Keystone taking the waste at all.
“Bad enough bringing the stuff here,” Throop council President Thomas Lukasewicz said, “but treating it here is almost like adding insult to injury.”
Keystone proposes to import the rock waste, called cuttings, in “unprocessed or unsolidified form” then mix it in a custom-designed mill with lime-based material to solidify it for disposal or as a replacement for soil to cover the working face of the landfill at the end of each day.
The landfill has been accepting cuttings for years from Marcellus Shale drillers who mix it with lime or sawdust at their well sites. The cuttings are displaced as the drillers bore to and through the gas-bearing rock about a mile underground.
Keystone accepts 600 tons of cuttings daily, the landfill said last spring in an application to increase its total daily waste capacity, which is pending. It wants to increase its daily intake of cuttings to at least 1,000 tons – the processing capacity of the mill.
The cuttings will be captured in water-tight containers placed at drill sites, trucked to the landfill and processed six days a week, according to the application.
Efforts to reach Keystone site manager Joseph Dexter were unsuccessful.
Penn State Cooperative Extension associate David Yoxtheimer, a member of the university’s Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research, said it makes sense for the landfill to want to process the rock waste itself so the finished product used for daily cover is uniform.
“It would ensure they would get a more consistent material that meets their needs,” he said, “rather than get 10 different companies giving them the material which would probably vary in composition and texture.”
It might also be appealing to gas drillers, whose space at a well site is limited and whose costs might be higher with the current practice of processing containers of waste on site, one by one, he said.
Although Keystone refers to the lime-based material – either quick lime or lime kiln dust – as a “bulking” or “drying” agent for the sometimes-saturated cuttings, it is also used to counteract the potential for the rock to produce acidic runoff.
The gas-rich layers of the Marcellus Shale coveted by drillers also contain pyrite, which, when exposed to oxygen and water, can produce acidic, metals-laden fluid similar to the acid mine drainage associated with the region’s abandoned mines.
“If you mix it with enough lime it might counteract those properties,” Yoxtheimer said.
Keystone does not expect the cuttings to change the chemistry of the landfill’s wastewater, called leachate, which is treated then discharged through sewer lines to the Scranton Sewer Authority, according to its application. But it is not entirely sure what might concentrate in the rain and wash water that runs off the mill site into its treatment system.
“Given that this process is the first of its kind in Pennsylvania, there is not data on the exact makeup of the wash water that will be collected, stored and disposed of as a result of Keystone’s drill cuttings processing facility,” the landfill wrote in its application.
Such unknowns have alarmed Throop officials, who petitioned the DEP to consider the mill proposal a “major,” not “minor,” modification of the landfill’s permit – a classification that would trigger a more thorough public vetting of the project.
“Throop Council feels there is enough information confirming the need for a change in the approved leachate collection and treatment method, change in the groundwater monitoring plan, and the submission of a radiation protection action plan,” all items that should trigger a major permit review, council solicitor Louis A. Cimini wrote in a Jan. 11 letter.
DEP continues to consider the proposal a minor permit modification, a spokeswoman said.
Marcellus cuttings can contain elevated levels of naturally occurring metals and radioactive material, including radium-226, which is a key concern for Throop officials.
Recent DEP tests of the cuttings at Keystone found radium-226 “slightly elevated” above the background levels found in the region’s soil, but at a level that “does not present any worker exposure, public health, safety and welfare or environmental concerns,” the agency wrote.
The radiation monitor that screens all incoming waste loads at the landfill was triggered at least 19 times between July and November, but none of those incidents involved drill cuttings, a DEP spokeswoman said.
Throop has hired a contractor to do its own testing and plans to sample loads it suspects might have elevated levels of radioactivity.
Adding to Throop’s concerns is Keystone’s proposal to speed up the approvals necessary for it to accept cuttings from new gas well pads. Instead of having a laboratory analyze and submit the chemical makeup of the waste from each pad, as required by state regulations, the landfill wants to receive a full analysis for a gas operator’s first eight well sites then a summary of that data and an “abbreviated review” for the next 20 sites.
Past data indicated only small variations between the makeup of the drill cuttings from across the region, Keystone argued. The landfill will require drillers to sign a certification form indicating they used the same drilling process and materials for new wells as for past wells.
A full analysis will be submitted to the state and Keystone once a year.
DEP has approved the expedited procedure, a spokeswoman said.
llegere@timesshamrock.com
DEP Investigating Three Spills at Gas Well
http://www.wnep.com/videobeta/3866ad3c-c127-4d9a-988c-f27dd79637bf/News/DEP-Investigating-Three-Spills-at-Gas-Well