More injection wells proposed for Pa. sites
citizensvoice.com/news/more-injection-wells-proposed-for-pa-sites-1.1258379#axzz1jdK8S8y1
By Kent Jackson (Staff Writer)
Published: January 17, 2012
Pennsylvania has only six injection wells like the one thought to have triggered earthquakes in Youngstown, Ohio, which is why gas companies from Pennsylvania sent drilling liquid to the Youngstown well for disposal.
Citizens respond to speakers during a community forum to discuss recent seismic activity related to deep wastewater injection wells, in Youngstown, Ohio, on Jan. 11. In Ohio, injection wells have been blamed for an increased in seismic activity. Pennsylvania has six such wells with two more proposed for Warren County.
Ohio has more than 175 injection wells. Two more wells are proposed in Pennsylvania’s Warren County, said Kevin Sunday, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection.
Injection wells are used to store waste deep underground, well below water tables, and generally have a good track record around the nation. Some states, including oil producers Texas and Oklahoma, have hundreds of them. In Pennsylvania, the site of history’s first oil well, injection wells never gained popularity, partly because one malfunctioned. Paper mill waste pumped into an injection well in Erie County in the 1970s returned to the surface.
Now earthquakes are the unintended occurrence at one of Ohio’s wells. Since the well was drilled on Dec. 23, 2010, near Youngstown, 11 earthquakes have occurred in the vicinity. After studying readings from seismic monitors placed near the well in November, Columbia University professor John Armbruster said the most recent earthquake on Dec. 31 occurred at the same depth as the well. Armbruster said the well probably caused that quake, the largest so far, which registered magnitude 4.
Afterward, Ohio Gov. John Kasich halted injection drilling near the well.
In March 2011, Arkansas stopped developing new injection wells in a small area of the state after a series of earthquakes, the largest of which reached magnitude 4.7.
Well operators plugged four wells due to the order, whereas more than 700 wells remain in use in the state, Lawrence Bengal, director of the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission, said in an email.
Since the moratorium, some seismic activity has continued in Arkansas, but the number and magnitude of the events has decreased, Bengal said.
In Ohio, the earthquakes have not been powerful enough to damage property.
Moreover, nothing indicates that drilling natural gas wells in Pennsylvania has triggered earthquakes.
Gas wells generally are shallower than injection wells and receive lower volumes of liquid. The liquid pumped into gas wells flows back to the surface, whereas it remains underground in injection wells.
In Pennsylvania, companies drilling gas wells seek to reduce the amount of flowback water that they have to put in injection wells or other disposal sites.
Right now, companies recycle more than 70 percent of the fluid flowing back to the surface after drilling and hydraulically fracturing wells for natural gas, said Travis Windle, a spokesman for the Marcellus Shale Coalition.
“Many operators are near a 100 percent recycle rate,” Windle said.
Recycling is better for the environment and for the budgets of gas companies. By reusing water, companies save on disposal costs and reduce the number of trucks hauling water to wells and carting away waste liquid.
The waste contains water that collects salt and from underground sources, plus sand and chemicals used in the fracturing or fracking process.
Even as technology improvements allow gas companies to recycle a higher percentage of the fluid, some fraction of the liquid still remains as waste to discard.
DEP rules forbid gas companies from treating wastewater and disposing it in streams or rivers, which means injection wells will continue to fill a need.
Lack of planning for wastewater disposal and seismic activity at injection wells in Ohio and Arkansas was the first reason that watershed and wilderness groups cited when recommending revisions to New York’s draft statement on the environmental impact of gas drilling.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulates injection wells, but has no rules against locating wells near faults.
“Other than using common sense when siting these wells, I am not sure that additional regulation would help,” Terry Engelder, professor of geosciences at Penn State University, said in an email.
Engelder said the earthquakes in Youngstown are so small that the faults involved might be invisible to seismic imaging equipment used to examine underground formations.
Before gas companies drill a gas well, Windle said, technicians bounce transmissions of underground rocks to understand the rock’s depth, thickness and potential for holding natural gas.
Fault lines would discourage drillers because earthquakes could damage wells and pipelines.
“It’s not in the company’s interest to produce in a high-risk area near fault lines,” Windle said.
Engelder said fracking a well in the Marcellus Shale touches off thousands of tiny tremors.
“None are felt because they are very, very small,” he said.
Human activity, however, caused more substantial earthquakes, for example, in the 1960s at South African gold mines. The U.S. Army stopped using an injection well at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Commerce City, Colo., in 1966 because of worries that the well caused earthquakes.
Drillers seeking to tap sources of geothermal energy also have caused earthquakes in Basel, Switzerland and Landau, Germany, Philadelphia author Reese Palley writes in “The Answer: Why Only Mini Nuclear Power Plants Can Save the World.”
kjackson@standardspeaker.com, 570-455-3636
Jan. 19 webinar to look at seismic testing with Marcellus gas play
live.psu.edu/story/57147#nw69
Thursday, January 12, 2012
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A Web-based seminar sponsored by Penn State Extension will examine seismic testing associated with Marcellus gas development in Pennsylvania.
A seismic testing -- or thumper -- truck is now a common sight in Pennsylvania.
Titled “Seismic Testing: What’s It All About?”, the 75-minute webinar will begin at 1 p.m. on Jan. 19. Presenters will be Kenneth Hall, of Kenneth Hall Consulting Services of Snow Shoe, Pa., and Dennis Langlois, of Houston, Appalachian region sales and marketing manager for CGG Veritas.
Hall is a retired financial adviser who has been involved in natural-gas leasing and investment for more than 15 years. He manages more than 30,000 acres of gas rights in northern Centre County and has negotiated gas leases on more than 40,000 acres.
Langlois has been in the seismic business for 32 years, the past 24 years with CGG Veritas Land Surveys. He started working on field crews in an entry-level position and worked his way up to his current job.
During the Jan. 19 webinar, Hall will discuss the potential problems that may be encountered with seismic testing and conditions property owners should require prior to approving the testing.
“Attaching conditions to the approval will minimize any potential conflicts,” he said, noting that he has been assisting property owners and mineral owners with their conflicts for many years.
“I have seen seismic testing from all sides: surface owners who do not own their mineral rights, leaseholders, gas companies and seismic companies. My experience with the potential conflicts of each party gives me unique insight into seismic-testing issues.”
Langlois will offer a slide presentation, giving a brief summary of events that take place in acquiring a 3-D seismic survey, from the initial contact with the landowners until his company has acquired the data and left the area.
“The slide presentation will show maps with surface abstracts and the recording grid needed to image the subsurface,” he said. “There also will be pictures showing the different operations and the equipment that will be used to acquire this data.”
Langlois hopes webinar participants will ask questions about the process because he is hoping to dispel misconceptions and clarify misinformation about seismic-testing operations.
The webinar is part of a monthly series of online workshops addressing 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.
< http://extension.psu.edu/naturalgas/webinars >
Future webinars will focus on transportation patterns and impacts from Marcellus development, and 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 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.
Penn State Extension – Natural Gas
Natural Gas < http://extension.psu.edu/naturalgas >
Marcellus shale has the potential to affect many parts of Pennsylvania. Since 2001, we have been actively helping citizens, landowners, businesses, local governments, and others understand the opportunities and challenges arising from Marcellus shale. Let us help you, too.
Webinars < http://extension.psu.edu/naturalgas/webinars/ >
This series includes the upcoming webinar schedule, and the recorded webinars and related materials.
Old gas wells bring risks of chemicals
www.timesleader.com/news/Old_gas_wells_bring_risks_of_chemicals_01-17-2012.html
TIMOTHY PUKO Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
January 17, 2012
PITTSBURGH — Almost all of the 20 homeowners in Belmar pay to run a water chlorination system to replace what was free well water from an Allegheny River aquifer. In the 1980s, an oil driller polluted the water, in part, they believe, by dumping waste brine into abandoned oil wells that could date to the 1800s, when Edwin L. Drake set off the boom by tapping his famous well in Titusville.
Today the latest gas-drilling rush in the Marcellus Shale may bring an opportunity to plug many of those old wells, but it also brings the risk that old wells could create a path for gas and chemicals to migrate into soil and water.
“The whole area up here is like Swiss cheese,” said Howard Weltner, 80, secretary-treasurer of Belmar Association Inc., which operates the treatment system. “It just has holes through all the different strata in the ground, so there’s an awful lot of opportunities for contamination of the groundwater. And I think a lot of people are concerned about it, and a lot more communities are getting a public system” to replace water wells.
Most of the state’s abandoned wells are in western Pennsylvania. They arc though McKean, Venango and Butler counties and, in smaller clusters, around the Pittsburgh area.
Unplugged wells pose risks of illegal dumping, water pollution, cave-ins, gas seepage and even explosions, but the state can afford to plug only about 130 a year. At that rate, it could take the state more than 61 years to plug the 8,262 remaining wells that officials know about, and more than 1,350 years to plug the rest — if crews could find them.
In the past, drillers abandoned wells because there was no rule that said they couldn’t. Companies that no longer exist cannot be held liable.
The rejuvenation of the fuel-drilling industry in Pennsylvania could provide a chance to deal with abandoned wells, officials say. With the backing of Gov. Tom Corbett, the Senate and House in November passed preliminary bills that would establish “impact fees” on the industry, and some of that money would be put toward plugging old wells.
Drillers pay a surcharge when they obtain permits, which amounts to about $1.5 million annually that the state uses to plug wells, according to DEP figures. The cost of plugging can vary. DEP contracts since 2009 have ranged from as little as $3,027 per well to as much as $194,082, an agency spokesman said.
The Senate’s bill, which proposes higher well fees than the House measure, would generate an additional $25 million annually for statewide environmental projects that would include well plugging, mine drainage cleanup, parks and water quality monitoring.
“We’re trying to tie in ancient environmental problems with new development, which is fantastic,” said David Strong, a Jefferson County environmental scientist who sits on several of DEP’s citizen advisory boards. “We can find new money to fight these old problems.”
It’s in the industry’s interest to help solve those problems, said Strong and several others, including industry officials. One of the biggest problems is finding most of the abandoned wells. If a company unwittingly drills a well near an abandoned well, it can create a path for gas to flow uncontrolled to the surface or into groundwater, costing profits and causing a safety hazard.
Even if an old and new well don’t cross, gas migrating from deep wells can reach abandoned ones and cause contamination through natural fissures, or if man-made seals don’t hold, Smith said.
“Drilling through the rocks that have previously sealed in the formation … a lot depends on the efficiency of those borehole seals in preventing any leakage,” Smith said.
“If there’s any leakage from a Marcellus well, there’s potential for it to make contact with an old, abandoned oil and gas well.”
The issue could become problematic for drillers as they explore the edges of the Marcellus shale play where the oil industry once operated, such as Butler and Venango counties and the northwestern part of the state, industry officials said.
It is not an issue right now for Royal Dutch Shell plc, which operates in western Butler County, but company officials know it could be if they move into “natural expansion” areas such as Venango County, said Bill Langin, who leads Shell’s Appalachian exploration.
Firing of Pa. conservation panel official criticized
www.timesleader.com/news/Firing_of_Pa__conservation_panel_official_criticized_01-17-2012.html
January 17, 2012
PITTSBURGH — The longtime head of a citizens advisory committee on Pennsylvania’s parks and forests has been fired, an action that fellow members and environmentalists say could reduce public oversight over gas drilling in state forests.
Kurt Leitholf, who has been executive director of the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources Citizens Advisory Council since 1996, was told last week by the Corbett administration that his position was being eliminated, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said. Leitholf told the paper that he was disappointed by the decision, which took effect Friday.
Department spokeswoman Christina Novak said officials determined that funding a full-time executive director was “not cost-effective.” She said departmental legislative liaison Joe Graci will perform Leitholf’s duties in addition to his own.
Eric Martin, one of two remaining original council members, accused the administration of trying to pre-empt public oversight of the department amid Marcellus Shale gas drilling on forest land.
“Aside from what we the council feel was an illegal firing, this is a clear message from the executive suite regarding citizen involvement and transparency,” he told the paper in an e-mail. “Funny that one of our hot topics is Marcellus Shale.”
Pennsylvania has leased one-third of its 2.1 million-acre forest system for oil and gas drilling, including more than 130,000 acres for Marcellus Shale deep wells. The department has warned that more oil and gas development would damage the ecology and forests.
“As the Corbett administration ignores public opinion and converts more and more of our public lands to gas drilling industrial zones, we need greater oversight, not less,” said Jeff Schmidt, Pennsylvania Sierra Club chapter director.
Report: Pa. data missing nearly 500 gas wells
citizensvoice.com/report-pa-data-missing-nearly-500-gas-wells-1.1255847#axzz1jdK8S8y1
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: January 10, 2012
PITTSBURGH — Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection undercounted the number of wells producing gas from the Marcellus Shale, frustrating industry, environmental groups, and elected officials, according to a newspaper report.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (http://bit.ly/weuty8) reported that an analysis of DEP data found 495 more wells producing gas, or ready to produce gas, than the DEP has recorded as ever being drilled, and that 182 of those wells don’t even show up on the state’s Marcellus Shale permit list.
The discrepancies with DEP’s Marcellus Shale data have caused headaches for Senate and House staff members who have been trying to make accurate projections about how much revenue an impact fee on wells might generate for local governments, the newspaper reported Sunday.
“There has been a frustration over the last six or seven months that DEP does not have information that is always beyond reproach,” said Drew Crompton, chief of staff to Senate President Pro Tem Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson.
Crompton, who has tried to make sense of DEP’s data as the Senate began crafting an impact fee bill last year, said the information problems are so befuddling that it helped delay approval of the bill. Legislators simply haven’t been able to get accurate projections on the financial impact.
“Every time I think I’ve got something locked down, it changes,” said Crompton, who discovered the same data issues that the Post-Gazette did.
The paper reported that the data problems span both the Ed Rendell and Tom Corbett administrations.
Data collection and reporting errors were “something identified through the transition period in the first few months” of Corbett’s term as governor in early 2011, said DEP spokesman Kevin Sunday. “And it’s one we hope to clear up and get more consistent at.”
“We acknowledge that there are issues in both how the data is presented and how it’s coming in,” Sunday told the paper.
Vast stores of natural gas in the Marcellus Shale formation under Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and West Virginia have set off a rush to grab leases and secure permits to drill using the extraction technique called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
Fracking involves the high-pressure injection of millions of gallons of water, along with sand and chemical additives, to liberate gas from the earth. Environmental advocates have complained about fracking’s effects on drinking water, while the industry insists the practice is safe.
The DEP says that since 2007 there have been about 4,200 wells drilled in Pennsylvania, so the 495 missing wells is about a 12 percent error rate on data that are widely quoted by politicians, environmentalists and the industry.
“That’s a significant error rate,” said Bruce Stauffer, vice president of geographIT, a Lancaster-based company that provides geographic information services to industry and governments.
His company also ran into the same problem with the DEP’s data when last year it began putting together Marcellus monitor, the company’s interactive mapping tool that it sells to companies and governments.
“It’s obvious DEP’s data isn’t clear and accurate,” Stauffer said. “Why? I don’t know. And I don’t think they have the answers.”
Dimock Township residents plan rally, press conference
www.timesleader.com/news/Dimock-Township-residents-plan-rally-press-conference.html
Jan. 11, 2012
Residents of Dimock Township, Susquehanna County, and members of two advocacy groups have scheduled a rally and press conference in Philadelphia in an effort to gain U.S. Environmental Protection Agency action on what they contend is drinking water contamination caused by natural gas drilling.
Two activists groups – Protecting Our Waters and Frack Action – issued the following press release, and included a letter sent to EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, posted here.
Health and Science Professionals Letter to EPA
Dimock Residents, Public Health and Environmental Advocates Urge EPA to Send Water to Dimock:
“These families must not endure another day without access to safe drinking water!”
Who: Residents of Dimock, Protecting Our Waters, Frack Action
What: Morning rally and press conference:
1. Demonstration asking EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to “do the right thing” by delivering clean water to victims of gas industry water contamination
2. Press Conference featuring residents of Dimock, PA, including Craig and Julie Sautner; and public health and environmental advocates
When:
- Friday, January 13, 2012
- 8:30am: Rally
- 9:00am: Press Conference,
- 9:30am: Lisa Jackson speaks at Town Hall (inside)
- Where: outside Academy of Natural Sciences, 1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, PA 19103
Background: Nineteen families in Dimock, Pennsylvania have suffered from contaminated drinking water for over three years. Despite enormous pressure brought to bear on them to sign a legal agreement requiring them to fall silent regarding their drinking water contamination, caused by Cabot Oil and Gas, eleven of the families have not signed a “non-disclosure clause” and therefore have maintained their freedom of speech. In December the EPA received documents showing the intensity and toxicity of these families’ drinking water contamination. The EPA has responded by telling the families, according to Craig Sautner, that “they absolutely don’t want us using our [water] wells at all.”
Yet Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has not only reneged on a promise made by former PA DEP Secretary John Hanger to provide all the affected families with a clean and permanent supply of drinking water, but it has allowed Cabot to cease providing safe clean drinking waters for these families. The families are becoming increasingly desperate, since Cabot’s last delivery was on November 30th.
Last week, several of the Dimock families received phone calls from EPA Region 3, based in Philadelphia, assuring them that EPA would begin delivering safe clean water to them by Friday or Saturday. No delivery has happened and the EPA has, at this time, backed down from that promise.
“Water is a fundamental human right,” said Alex Allen, Associate Director of Protecting Our Waters.
Biologist, author and cancer survivor Sandra Steingraber wrote a letter signed by 26 physicians and health professionals on Monday, December 9th (attached), which said, “we call on EPA to assure that the families of Dimock do not endure another day without access to safe drinking water.”
A partial list of the contaminants in the drinking water of Dimock is here: http://protectingourwaters.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/protecting-our-waters-goes-to-dimock-whats-in-their-safe-water/ and a list of contaminants specifically in the Sautners’ water is here (scroll down): http://protectingourwaters.wordpress.com/2012/01/10/urgent-comment-by-5-pm-wednesday-11112-on-new-york-state-impact-statement/
Fracking Moratorium Urged as Doctors Call for Health Study
www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-10/fracking-moratorium-urged-as-doctors-call-for-health-study.html
By Alex Wayne
January 10, 2012
The U.S. should declare a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing for natural gas in populated areas until the health effects are better understood, doctors said at a conference on the drilling process.
Gas producers should set up a foundation to finance studies on fracking and independent research is also needed, said Jerome Paulson, a pediatrician at George Washington University School of Medicine in Washington. Top independent producers include Chesapeake Energy Corp. and Devon Energy Corp., both of Oklahoma City, and Encana Corp. of Calgary, according to Bloomberg Industries.
“We’ve got to push the pause button, and maybe we’ve got to push the stop button” on fracking, said Adam Law, an endocrinologist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, in an interview at a conference in Arlington, Virginia that’s the first to examine criteria for studying the process.
Fracking injects water, sand and chemicals into deep shale formations to free trapped natural gas. A boom in production with the method helped increase supplies, cutting prices 32 percent last year. The industry, though, hasn’t disclosed enough information on chemicals used, Paulson said, raising concerns about tainted drinking water supplies and a call for peer- reviewed studies on the effects. The EPA is weighing nationwide regulation.
Longstanding Process
“We need to understand fully all of the chemicals that are shot into the ground, that could impact the water that children drink,” Representative Ed Markey of Massachusetts, a senior Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said in a phone interview. The industry is trying “to block that information from being public,” he said.
The gas industry has used hydraulic fracturing for 65 years in 30 states with a “demonstrable history of safe operations,” said Chris Tucker, a spokesman for Energy In Depth, a Washington-based research and advocacy group financed by oil and gas interests, in an e-mail. Drilling in shale deposits in the eastern U.S. began in 2004.
Gas drillers have to report to the U.S., state and local authorities any chemicals used in fracking that are “considered hazardous in high concentrations” in case of spills or other emergencies, Tucker said. Those reports don’t include amounts or concentrations, he said.
The industry created a public website last April for companies to voluntarily report lists of chemicals used in individual wells, including concentrations. Colorado and Wyoming have passed laws requiring drillers to file reports to the website, Tucker said.
Hazards Unknown
Despite those disclosures, U.S. officials say they don’t know all of the hazards associated with fracking chemicals.
“We don’t know the chemicals that are involved, really; we sort of generally know,” Vikas Kapil, chief medical officer at National Center for Environmental Health, part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at the conference. “We don’t have a great handle on the toxicology of fracking chemicals.”
The government has found anecdotal evidence that drilling can contaminate water supplies. In December, the EPA reported that underground aquifers and drinking wells in Pavillion, Wyoming, contained compounds that probably came from gas drilling, including glycols, alcohols, benzene and methane. The CDC has detected “explosive levels of methane” in two wells near gas sites in Medina, Ohio, Kapil said.
He said he wasn’t authorized to take reporters’ questions after his presentation.
Chemicals Used
Fluids used in hydraulic fracturing contain “potentially hazardous chemical classes,” Kapil’s boss, Christopher Portier, director of The National Center for Environmental Health, said last week. The compounds include petroleum distillates, volatile organic compounds and glycol ethers, he said. Wastewater from the wells can contain salts and radiation, Portier said.
U.S. natural gas production rose to a record 2.5 trillion cubic feet in October, a 15 percent increase from October 2008.
A moratorium on fracking pending more health research “would be reasonable,” said Paulson, who heads the Mid- Atlantic Center for Children’s Health and the Environment in Washington, in an interview. His group is funded in part by the CDC and Environmental Protection Agency, he said, and helped sponsor the conference with Law’s organization, Physicians Scientists and Engineers for Healthy Energy.
Tucker called the CDC’s participation in the conference “disappointing,” saying the conference is “a closed-door pep- rally against oil and natural gas development.”
Representatives of Chevron Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp. and the American Petroleum Institute, a trade group, registered to attend the conference.
–With assistance from Katarzyna Klimasinska in Washington. Editors: Adriel Bettelheim, Reg Gale
To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Wayne in Washington at awayne3@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Adriel Bettelheim at abettelheim@bloomberg.net
Pennsylvania Fracking Foes Fault EPA Over Tainted Water Response
www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-10/pennsylvania-fracking-foes-fault-epa-over-tainted-water-response.html
By Jim Snyder and Mark Drajem
January 10, 2012
When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency called to say it would start delivering fresh water to their home, Ron and Jean Carter thought they gained an ally in a long fight with Cabot Oil & Gas Corp.
A retreat by the federal government within two days has left them feeling abandoned yet again in a bid to clean up water they say was turned toxic by Cabot’s use of hydraulic fracturing to hunt for gas in Pennsylvania.
“These agencies were developed to help us, and they don’t,” Jean Carter said in an interview in her home, which is about 326 feet (99 meters) from a Cabot well. Although her reserves of water are sufficient for now, she took it as a snub. “We just keep getting hurt all the way around, as if we weren’t hurt enough.”
The Carters and other families in Dimock — a community of 1,368 and a single, blinking traffic light along Highway 29 in northeast Pennsylvania — have come to symbolize the national debate over the use of fracking, in which water and chemicals are shot into the earth to free gas or oil from rock formations. Their case has taken on a new importance as the EPA says it will test well water in the area, and advised residents not to drink from their wells — reversing an earlier, initial determination that the water was safe.
Dimock residents say their water went bad more than three years ago. Since then more questions have been raised about the safety of fracking.
Read more
DEP: Cabot drilling caused methane in Lenox water wells
citizensvoice.com/news/dep-cabot-drilling-caused-methane-in-lenox-water-wells-1.1255042#axzz1iyajDcbK
By Laura Legere (Staff Writer)
Published: January 9, 2012
Methane in three private water wells in Lenox Township seeped there from a flawed natural gas well drilled by Cabot Oil and Gas Corp., state environmental regulators have found.
An investigation by the Department of Environmental Protection determined that the gas migrated from at least one of three Marcellus Shale wells drilled on the Stalter well pad about half a mile west of Interstate 81 in Susquehanna County.
The gas was found seeping into three water supplies beginning in August 2011. A fourth water well for a hunting cabin is still being evaluated, DEP spokesman Daniel Spadoni said.
Video taken from inside one of Cabot’s gas wells showed that a string of steel casing meant to seal off the aquifer from gas and other contaminants was improperly constructed, according to a notice of violation sent to the company by DEP in September.
Methane was also found between the cemented strings of casing in all three gas wells on the Stalter pad, a sign state regulators view as evidence of flaws in a well’s construction.
The dissolved methane in one nearby water supply jumped from 0.3 milligrams per liter before drilling began to 49 milligrams per liter on Aug. 16 and 57 milligrams per liter on Aug. 18, according to the violation notice.
Cabot installed methane detection alarms in three homes and vented the three affected water wells to keep the methane from accumulating and creating an explosion risk. The company is also delivering replacement drinking water to two of the homes, Spadoni said. The methane in the third water well has decreased so the home does not require an alternate water supply, he said.
Cabot spokesman George Stark said Friday that the company submitted a detailed response to the DEP and is working with regulators on the issue.
“Cabot is committed to safe and responsible operations and takes matters like this very seriously,” he said. “We believe in fact-based, scientific research to guide any necessary corrective actions.”
Department regulators sent Cabot a violation notice on Sept. 19, but neither the department’s public eFACTS compliance database nor its monthly oil and gas violations report noted the inspection or violations until last week, when a Times-Shamrock reporter asked about the status of the investigation.
DEP policy requires the oil and gas program to update the eFACTS database within 10 working days of completing an inspection or mailing a notice of violations.
Spadoni said the missing information was “an oversight.”
State regulators determined in 2009 that faulty Cabot gas wells were also responsible for a prominent case of methane contamination affecting 19 homes in Dimock Township, about 10 miles west of the Lenox site. Cabot has said natural conditions, not its operations, caused the contamination in that case.
llegere@timesshamrock.com