Webinars on March 15 and 22 to examine Pa.’s new gas-well impact fee
live.psu.edu/story/58352#nw69
The webinars are aimed at two different audiences. The March 15 session is a broad overview for the public; the March 22 session is intended for local municipal officials.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Two Web-based, evening seminars presented by Penn State Extension, on March 15 and 22, will provide a detailed examination of the shale-gas impact fee legislation recently passed by the General Assembly and signed into law by the governor.
The free webinars, both beginning at 7 p.m. and running 90 minutes, are aimed at two different audiences. The March 15 session, “What the Public Needs to Know about the New Shale Gas Impact Fee: Act 13,” will offer a broad overview, while the March 22 session targets local municipal officials in areas where Marcellus gas-well drilling is prevalent. The March 22 webinar will focus on the local control and planning aspects of the act.
Presenting in the March 15 webinar will be Timothy Kelsey, professor of agricultural economics in the College of Agricultural Sciences, and Stanford Lembeck, professor emeritus of agricultural economics and rural sociology and director of the Pennsylvania Municipal Planning Education Institute. They will briefly discuss background about “The Unconventional Gas Well Impact Fee Act,” including the scale of gas development so far in Pennsylvania, and the impacts on local governments and communities.
“We also will cover how Pennsylvania’s primary local taxes — the real property tax and the earned income tax — miss much of the economic growth occurring from Marcellus,” Kelsey said.
“We then will talk about the impact fee components of the act, including the fee schedule, the decision facing counties — and municipalities, if the counties don’t act — how the dollars will be allocated, and how local governments can use them.”
Kelsey noted that an introduction to the environmental setbacks and local-control components of the act will be provided in the March 15 webinar, including how the act relates to the Municipalities Planning Code.
“We will address what this means for local decision-making and influence about where Marcellus-related activity occurs within a jurisdiction,” Kelsey said. “We also will talk about the Public Utility Commission’s new roles under the act.”
In the March 22 webinar, “What Local Officials Need to Know about the New Shale Gas Impact Fee: Act 13,” presenters will be Ross Pifer, clinical professor and director of the Agricultural Law Resource and Reference Center in Penn State’s Dickinson Law School, and Jerry Walls, AICP, professional planner and retired executive director of the Lycoming County Planning Commission. They will discuss possible impacts of Act 13 on municipalities and suggest aspects of the new law to consider.
They will evaluate the local control components of the act, digging deeper into the specific details about local ordinances and what is allowed and not allowed. Their presentation will be more technical in nature, breaking down the act for planning commission members, elected officials and others who create, update and implement ordinances.
“I will offer perspectives on how to frame policy questions and draft ordinance wording for Public Utility Commission review,” Walls said. “Also, I will explain how the Natural Resource provisions of the Pennsylvania Municipalities Planning Code and the Comprehensive Plan are important as the policy framework within which to write ordinance provisions.”
Questions will be taken and answered as time allows after both webinars. The URL to take part in the webinar is https://meeting.psu.edu/naturalgaswebinars/. For more information, contact Carol Loveland at 570-433-3040 or by email at cal24@psu.edu.
EPA’s Dimock tests divisive
www.timesleader.com/news/EPA_rsquo_s_Dimock_tests_divisive_03-06-2012.html
Mar 6, 2012
Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. and its supporters are at odds with the federal agency.
DIMOCK — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s testing of scores of water wells will give residents of this small Suquehanna County village a snapshot of the aquifer they rely on for drinking, cooking and bathing.
The first EPA test results, expected this week, are certain to provide fodder for both sides of a raging 3-year-old debate over unconventional natural gas drilling and its impacts on Dimock, a rural crossroads that starred in the Emmy Award-winning documentary “Gasland.”
A handful of residents are suing Cabot Oil & Gas Corp., saying the Houston-based driller contaminated their wells with potentially explosive methane gas and with drilling chemicals. Many other residents of Dimock assert the water is clean, and that the plaintiffs are exaggerating problems with their wells to help their lawsuit.
In a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, a pro-drilling group called Enough is Enough contends the agency’s “rogue” Philadelphia field office has allowed itself to be a pawn of trial lawyers seeking a big payout from Cabot. More than 300 people signed it. “Dimock Proud” signs dot lawns throughout the village in Susquehanna County, one of the most intensively drilled regions of the Marcellus Shale gas field.
The same group recently launched a website aimed at dispelling what it contends is the myth that Dimock’s aquifer is contaminated.
Residents who have been clamoring for federal intervention say the attacks on the EPA — which have come not only from their neighbors but from Cabot and Pennsylvania’s environmental chief — are groundless.
“Since the EPA’s investigation began, Cabot and (state regulators) have undertaken a shameless public campaign against the EPA’s attempt to rescue the victims who are now without potable water and prevent their exposure to hazardous constituents now present in the aquifer,” one of their lawyers, Tate Kunkle, wrote recently.
Cabot spokesman George Stark said the company opposed the EPA testing because it creates a false impression about Dimock.
“It’s the notion that there must be something wrong there in order for the EPA to either do testing or to deliver water. I think it causes more concern, more mistrust, more misinformation about the industry overall,” he said.
In addition to testing scores of water wells, the EPA is paying to deliver fresh water to four homes where the agency cited worrisome levels of manganese, sodium and cancer-causing arsenic.
Brian Oram, an independent geologist and water consultant from Northeastern Pennsylvania, said he is puzzled by the agency’s rationale for being in Dimock, since the substances that EPA said it’s most concerned about are naturally occurring and commonly found in the regional groundwater.
Nevertheless, Oram supports the EPA testing because it will provide water quality data the parties can trust, and against which future drilling can be measured.
Cabot asserts the high methane levels that its own testing has consistently found in the Dimock water wells are naturally occurring and easily remediated.
But state regulators have cited “overwhelming evidence,” including chemical fingerprinting, that linked the methane in Dimock’s water supply to improperly cemented gas wells drilled by Cabot.
Webinar examines Marcellus gas development and local water decisions
live.psu.edu/story/58188#nw69
The uses and values of water in Pennsylvania are changing because of Marcellus Shale gas development.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A Web-based seminar sponsored by Penn State Extension will examine municipalities’ roles related to water use and protection in the face of burgeoning Marcellus Shale gas development in Pennsylvania.
The 75-minute webinar will begin at 1 p.m. on March 15. Presenters are Charles Abdalla, professor of agricultural and environmental economics in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences, and Peter Wulfhorst, extension educator based in Pike County, who specializes in economic and community development.
The uses and values of water are changing in Pennsylvania as a result of the rapid development of the Marcellus Shale gas industry, according to Abdalla. These changes are affecting municipal governments’ roles and activities and local outcomes and impacts.
“For example, there has been a significant increase in the demand for water needed in the hydraulic fracturing of shale gas wells,” he said. “Public water suppliers, including municipally owned systems, are meeting this demand and at the same time generating sizable revenues through water sales.
“Also, some municipalities have generated new revenues by leasing their mineral rights to watershed lands that supply water to their reservoirs and customers.”
Abdalla noted that the webinar will address three topics: water sales, leasing of municipally owned watershed lands and municipalities’ potential role in regulating land use to protect water.
“My webinar presentation will provide an overview of what we know — and don’t know — about these municipal activities, and existing and potential future issues.”
Wulfhorst will discuss the environmental safeguards that may be available under Pennsylvania law to help municipalities protect water.
“Specifically, I will cover the notification changes for both host municipality and adjacent municipality and landowners, and the requirement of a water-management plan not to adversely affect the quantity and quality of water resources,” he said.
“Also, I will review the increase in well-location restrictions for existing buildings, water wells, wetlands, public water supplies and streams, and I will discuss rules under which gas operators will be presumed to be responsible for water-supply pollution.”
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.
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 Marcellus gas development’s impact on transportation systems; seismic testing; air pollution from gas development; the gas boom’s effect on landfills; Marcellus gas 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.
First sampling completed in national fracking study
citizensvoice.com/news/first-sampling-completed-in-national-fracking-study-1.1278041#axzz1nnFPjLzE
By Laura Legere (Staff Writer)
Published: February 28, 2012
The first round of sampling at five case study sites has been completed in a landmark federal study of the potential impacts of oil and gas extraction on water supplies, the Environmental Protection Agency’s study coordinator said Monday.
Results from those tests, which include drinking water and streams sampled between July and November 2011 in Susquehanna and Bradford counties, will be reported in a draft of the study expected to be released in December.
The multiyear, congressionally mandated study is investigating a possible link between water contamination and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the process of injecting a mixture of water, sand and chemicals into underground rock formations to crack the rock and release the oil or gas trapped there.
The EPA is reviewing the full life cycle of the process, from the moment water for fracking is withdrawn from waterways through the mixing of chemicals and the fracturing of wells to the disposal of the wastewater that returns to the surface.
During an update on the study’s progress on Monday, study coordinator Jeanne Briskin said test results from the five case study sites – including Washington County, Pa., and drilling-heavy areas of Colorado, Texas and North Dakota, as well as Bradford and Susquehanna counties – are being audited for accuracy now and another round of sampling is planned between March and July.
“We don’t assume from the beginning that there is any impact of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water resources,” Briskin said. “We are trying to investigate, where there has been something going on with somebody’s drinking water, what is the cause?”
EPA researchers also have received information from nine randomly selected oil and gas companies about well construction techniques and integrity testing, the chemicals used in fracking their wells and other data.
The agency is reviewing the treatment and disposal of the salt- and metals-laden waste fluid that returns from wells after fracking, including modeling the effects on rivers and downstream drinking water intakes if the wastewater is run through treatment plants that discharge to waterways.
In one subset of the study, the agency is looking at how different forms of wastewater treatment remove, concentrate or leave untouched the chemicals in the gas waste.
The study is expected to be completed in two phases, with the first published draft results released in December of this year and the second at the end of 2014.
llegere@timesshamrock.com
New Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Law
www.jdsupra.com/post/documentViewer.aspx?fid=c23f94ce-c909-4882-86e5-4b10959b1a6f
By: K&L Gates LLP on 2/13/2012
New Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Law Targets Unconventional Gas Operations for Heightened Regulatory Oversight
Introduction
On February 8, 2012, the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed a sweeping reform of the key environmental protection regime that governs natural gas operations. House Bill 1950 (“HB 1950” or “the bill”), awaiting the Governor’s signature, provides a wide-ranging update to and recodification of the Commonwealth’s Oil and Gas Act (the “Act”). In addition to extensive revisions to the Act’s environmental regulatory provisions, HB 1950 also addresses drilling fees and local regulation of the industry, each discussed in companion alerts.
The prior Oil and Gas Act (58 P.S. §§601.101-601.605) is recodified as a new Chapter 32 in title 58 of Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes (Pa.C.S.). While the new law still applies to all oil and gas operations in the state, much of the new language in Chapter 32 targets unconventional (i.e., shale) natural gas drilling operations that utilize hydraulic fracturing. The industry should quickly become familiar with the updates to discern their effect on existing operations and enable meaningful participation in forthcoming regulatory revisions. Some of the most important amendments, detailed more fully below, include:
• Increased setbacks and well siting restrictions
• New chemical disclosure and reporting obligations
• Additional well permitting procedures, plans, and approvals
• New water supply protections
• Increased bonding requirements
• Stricter enforcement mechanisms
The Oil and Gas Act
First enacted in 1984, the Oil and Gas Act has long provided many of the key environmental safeguards that shape the operations of natural gas drillers in the Commonwealth. To implement the Act, the Environmental Quality Board (“EQB”) has adopted oil and gas well regulations at 25 Pa. Code Chapter 78, and those rules govern administration of the regulatory program by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (“DEP”). The Chapter 78 regulations, which were overhauled in February 2011, fill-out the Act’s currently effective requirements. Thus, changes to the Act will necessarily mean changes to the regulations, at least where the regulations are inconsistent with the Act’s new features…
Please see full alert below for more information.
New Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Law
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