PA Commision to be Proactive with Inspections of Hydrofracking Sites
Controversy surrounding drilling in the Marcellus Shale formation in the American Northeast is heating up again. On Wednesday, PoconoNews.net reported that the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission (PFBC) will intensify their inspections of natural gas drilling sites. Rather than just responding to incidents such as the pollution of waterways and wetlands, they will inspect natural gas wells in an effort to prevent those incidents. According to Dr. Douglas Austen, the PFBC executive director, “we are now taking a proactive approach to identify possible problems at a drilling site and to work with the company to ensure necessary measures are in place to minimize the possibility of damaging nearby waterways.”
The concern over damaging waterways and wetlands comes from the way in which natural gas is extracted from the Marcellus Shale gas wells. The process is called hydrofracking, an extraction method in which a cocktail of chemicals are used to break up the rocks and release the natural gas. According to HeatingOil.com, the chemicals used in hydrofracking are known to infiltrate water supplies and have been implicated in killing livestock.
via Penn. Ups Inspections of Marcellus Shale Drilling Sites | HeatingOil.com.
Agency Wants to Keep Watch Over Waterways & Drilling
Dead fish float in a once-pristine stream. Algae thrives. Lovers of the outdoors are heartsick, and everyone wants to know what happened.
The scenario is playing itself out this autumn on the Pennsylvania-West Virginia border, and a Harrisburg-based agency wants to be ready in case the same scenario unfolds in its jurisdiction.
The Susquehanna River Basin Commission wants to put 30 real-time, water-quality monitoring stations on streams and creeks across the part of the Susquehanna Basin where natural gas companies are drilling into the Marcellus Shale formation.
via Agency wants to keep watch over waterways | Penn State News | Local – Centre Daily Times.
Marcellus Shale Wastewater Treatment in Pennsylvania
Gas drilling companies will try to convince you that using up to 6-million gallons of water for fracing one gas well doesn’t amount to a massive amount of water. Even if they are successful in making that argument with you, the next topic becomes flowback or brine. What do you do with the crap that comes back out of the ground?
Somewhere between 30% and 70% of the water used for hydro-fracing a gas well returns to the surface as flowback. In addition to the frac fluids added by the gas drilling companies, this water picks up other contaminants from deep in the Earth (~ 7,000 feet deep) with one of the most notable being salt.
These fluids contain sodium and calcium salts, barium, oil, strontium, iron, numerous heavy metals, soap, radiation and other components. This fluid combination becomes brine wastewater, and tanker trucks hauling it are labeled with a RESIDUAL WASTE placard. Treated brine is also sold for deicing and other applications that utilize calcium chloride, often being applied to roadways.
RESIDUAL WASTE placard
Brine wastewater is difficult and expensive to treat, one of the same reasons we aren’t using much ocean water for agriculture and residential applications. The saltiness of this wastewater creates a high level of TDS (total dissoved solids). Incomplete processing of this brine wastewater, especially when dumped into rivers used for drinking water, creates a high TDS situation that causes drinking water treatment plants problems, like Trihalomehtanes. High TDS water reacts with chlorine when it is processed.
In other parts of the United States, gas drilling operations dispose of their wastewater deep in the ground, by using deep injection wells. However, the geology around Marcellus Shale doesn’t lend itself as well to accepting deep injections, so the wastewater gets dumped back into Pennsylvania watersheds. Early on in Marcellus drilling, many municipal treatment plants were accepting this briny wastewater that weren’t equipped to process it. Add that situation to low river levels due to drought and you begin to have real problems.
via Marcellus Shale Wastewater Treatment in Pennsylvania – Flowback and brine processing from fracking.
Slideshow of drilling in Allegheny National Forest
Oil and gas drilling within Allegheny National Forest
Sportsmen Release Oil & Gas Recommendations
Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development released its Recommendations for Responsible Oil and Gas Development Monday July 21st.
The recommendations are based on a May 2008 symposium which featured expert land managers, scientists, and planners who met in Wyoming to develop a framework for implementing responsible energy development across the West. This report is the product of that unprecedented event and outlines sportsmen’s recommendations for oil and gas development that provide for our energy needs without sacrificing our Western heritage.
Clearly, the system for managing our public lands is broken when the agency entrusted with oversight of fi sh, wildlife and multiple-use planning baldly states, “Wildlife habitat would generally only be protected if a mineral commodity is not present for extraction.”5 Sportsmen are right to be concerned that a recent Bureau of Land Management (BLM) planning document states that fi sh and wildlife protection is contingent on the absence of minerals on public lands. From land-use and project planning to lease issuance and permit approval, the status quo fails to strike a balance between energy development and fi sh, wildlife and water resources.
More at: Sportsmen Release Responsible Oil and Gas Recommendations | Our Public Lands.
Short-term gains from drilling hurt PA public lands
The budget deal that legislators and the governor are debating puts at risk one of Pennsylvania’s greatest natural assets — our state forest system — and undermines economic development efforts that stand to benefit hundreds of rural communities.
One of the measures that’s on the table to help close the budget gap is leasing large amounts of state forest land for drilling to extract gas from the Marcellus shale deposits that underlie most of northern and western Pennsylvania.
via Short-term gains from gas drilling hurt state in long run | Our Views & Yours – PennLive.com -.
Coalition Lists Drilling-threatened Hunting & Fishing Sites
Poorly planned energy projects could irreparably harm 10 cherished hunting and fishing destinations on Western public lands, according to a report released by a coalition of 500 sportsmen, businesses and organizations.
The report, “Hunting and Fishing Imperiled,” from Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development, focuses on the impacts oil and natural gas extraction could have on irreplaceable landscapes vital to fish and wildlife and prized by hunters and anglers. The 10 threatened places – overseen by the Bureau of Land Management or U.S. Forest Service – are in Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
via HuntingLife.com » Coalition Releases List of Imperiled Public Hunting and Fishing Destinations.
Allegheny Forest Watch organizes against drilling in National Forest
Unfortunately private companies have plans to develop “The Ridge” into an oil and gas field with a grid of roads, tank batteries, generators, and well pads with pump jacks spaced every 450 feet across the entire northeastern portion of the ANF.
Hydraulic fracturing wastewater and Pets
During a fall drought and subsequent period of low water flow in Pittsburgh rivers during the fall of 2008, the drinking water taken from local rivers by water plants began to change. A combination of low water levels and high TDS (total dissolved solids) created undesirable conditions, as the water began to taste bad…
Salt-loving algae kill fish in Appalachian stream
A salt-loving alga that killed tens of millions of fish in Texas has struck for the first time in an Appalachian stream that flows along the border of Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Prymnesium parvum or “golden algae” caused the sudden death of thousands of fish, mussels, and salamanders in early September along some 30 miles of Dunkard Creek. University and government scientists fear the disaster could presage further kills in the region. Streams at risk due to high concentrations of total dissolved solids (TDS) include portions of the northern branch of the Potomac River and 20 other streams in West Virginia, according to state scientists. Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky also have many vulnerable rivers and streams, according to U.S. EPA scientists.
Oil and gas impacts on livestock health?
A 2000 study looked at possible associations between oil and gas operations and cattle reproduction and mortality, and found an increased risk of stillbirths linked to exposure to flaring of sour gas (gas with high levels of hydrogen sulfide).[1] A 1991 study reviewed seven cases of suspected poisoning of livestock related to oil and gas materials in Oklahoma, cases described as routine in oil and gas producing areas of the state.[2] We should be concerned about all of these reports; we need more science on this topic. Livestock incidents may be an indicator of contamination of air and water that can impact humans as well as animals. In addition, there may be risk to humans who eat or drink products from these animals.
via Switchboard, from NRDC :: Amy Mall’s Blog :: Oil and gas impacts on livestock health?.
Conservation Groups Intervene to protect Allegheny National Forest
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 2, 2009
Contact: Ryan Talbott, Allegheny Defense Project: (814) 221-1408
David Sublette, Sierra Club Pennsylvania Chapter: (814) 397- 4121
Conservation Groups Intervene in Oil and Gas Drilling Lawsuit on Allegheny National Forest
ERIE, PA (7/2/09) – A federal judge has permitted two conservation groups to intervene in a lawsuit filed against the U.S. Forest Service by Catalyst Energy, a Cranberry Township based oil and gas company. Catalyst Energy sued the Forest Service in March claiming that it does not need the federal agency’s authorization to build roads and drill oil and gas wells on the Allegheny National Forest. The Sierra Club and Allegheny Defense Project intervened in the case to defend the Forest Service’s authority to regulate drilling and protect wildlife habitat and watersheds on Pennsylvania’s only national forest.
PA Marcellus Shale drilling permits up 300% in 2009
Nearly 1,600 Marcellus Shale gas well drilling permits have been issued by the state so far this year, more than triple the number issued in all of 2008.
The statistics, compiled by the state Department of Environmental Protection, show that about one-third of the permitting activity this year has occurred in three northern tier counties, Susquehanna, Tioga, and Bradford.
For Susquehanna County Commissioner MaryAnn Warren, the Marcellus Shale natural gas exploration boom is great and worrisome at the same time. As permitting and drilling have increased, her county has seen a massive influx of well drilling-related equipment and manpower. The county, she said, is inundated with drilling and hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” activity, water trucks, residual waste trucks, and more and more companies looking to make money off the natural gas trapped in the shale thousands of feet below the county.
“I think it is a good thing,” she said. “But I am worried about our natural resources.”
Drilling in Colorado Meets Resistance
A last-minute leasing push by the Bush administration put extensive federal lands in Utah and Colorado into the hands of oil and gas companies, including 36,000 acres of the Roan Plateau. The Obama administration has inherited the touchy question of what to do with those leases.
As one of his first decisions, Ken Salazar, the Coloradan who is President Obama’s interior secretary, scrapped a series of disputed leases in Utah. Last week, he announced that he would seek an investigation into other leases that granted favorable terms and low royalty rates for experimental projects to extract oil from shale.
via A Plan to Drill Roan Plateau in Colorado Meets Resistance – NYTimes.com.
PA Group wants responsible development
The rush to develop natural gas resources in the Marcellus Shale could threaten Lycoming County’s greatest assets, including its pristine waterways, wooded landscapes and fresh air, according to a local organization dedicated to promoting responsible drilling.
Discuss: to sign a lease or not?
In an effort to provide a community forum where divergent and frequently noisy views can be aired, Breathing has solicited articles from property owners who are considering signing natural gas leases or who, after months of deliberation, have completed the signing. There have been difficulties and I had to decide whether or not to publish an anonymous post. In the end, I decided a wide-ranging discussion of the issues facing our communities is more critical than identifying our author who fears for her job if her name is released. I hope her obvious concern for the land and our cultures is sufficient to set minds at ease. She’s known to me. She’s not a figment. She’s not greedy and she’s not oblivious to the dangers posed by drilling – and cited to regularly by Breathing. Hers is an important voice that sheds light — whether or not you agree with her conclusions.
via Natural Gas Leases/Hydraulic Fracturing: One Property Owner’s View « Breathing is Political.
Meshoppen Creek proposed as dumping site for frac fluids (video)
DC Koviack reported on a hearing and meeting held Tuesday at the Tunkhannock Middle School in regard to a proposed water treatment plant that would discharge treated frac water (from natural gas wells) into Meshoppen Creek. Wyoming Somerset Regional Water Resources Corporation has applied for a permit to locate this plant in Lemon Township (Wyoming County, PA).
Chesapeake’s Delaware River Proposal withdrawn
It’s amazing what a little public debate can do. An energy giant has backed away from scooping a million gallons of water per day from the pristine West Branch of the Upper Delaware River after months of public debate turned into increasingly sharp opposition.
“We have to realize that we have a lot of power as a public,” commented Tracy Carluccio of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, responding to the news. “It’s very big… even though Marcellus Shale drilling still threatens the watershed, we have to take a moment to celebrate. This is a testimony to the power of the public.”
Range Resources leak poses security questions
Range Resources, a major natural gas developer in the Appalachian region, suspects vandals loosened bolts securing pipeline coupling causing hydraulic fracturing wastewater to leak into a farmers drainage ditch. A Range spokesman said the pipe had passed a pressure test and physical inspection. Pennsylvania state environmental regulators are investigating.
The wastewater subsequently found a path to a tributary of Cross Creek Lake in Washington County. Salamanders, crayfish and insects were killed in the May 26 spill.
Where was their security? A fracturing job typically has thirty plus operators, not including company men, water and sand haulers, rolling in all hours of the day or night, a wire-line crew, such as Halliburton, and sundry support personal adding to the number of eyes on site.
Range Resources had a simple choice, step up to plate and accept responsibility. They choose front-line finger pointing at mysterious vandals and a wait-and-see stance instead.
“We have a 60-year track record on our side,” said Chris Tucker, spokesman for Energy in Depth, a Washington, D.C. based industry lobby group, in response to the recent push by legislators to repeal the Energy Policy Act of 2005, (see ‘Halliburton Loophole’ post)
Tucker went on to say, “Why in 60 years that fracing has been used, why now? Why is everyone pissed off now?”
My answer to Tucker is accountability!
via The Eleanor Project.
Trout Unlimited angles on gas impacts
“It’s changed the region where I live in Colorado entirely within a decade,” said Frank Smethurst, on the topic of natural gas extraction. Host of Trout Unlimited’s (TU) “On the Rise,” a nationally broadcast television show that airs on the Sportsman Channel, Smethurst spent three days along the Upper Delaware River last week, casting in the clear waters and filming for a future segment to be broadcast next April.
Frack fluid spill, Buckeye Creek, Doddridge County, West Virginia
In late August the pit holding fracture flowback “water” for natural gas well 47-017-05815 was breached near Sherwood in Doddridge County (the north central part of the state). The pit was constructed within feet of Buckeye Creek (the state has no requirement for a minimum distance between ground or surface water for pits — see our Pits post) so the “water,” at least 2500 gallons any fish and okay to be in” — kids swim and play in the Creek. Already, before the spill, a decline in fish and mussels had been noted by residents and some of the fish had raised nodules on the skin.
A history lesson | Penn State News | Sports – Centre Daily Times
It is amazing and sad to realize what $1 million in lobbying effort will buy in Pennsylvania. Our state budget is still not settled. The state is strapped for revenue, so it seems that it would be a no-brainer to tax the billions of dollars of natural gas that will be extracted from the very-deep Marcellus Shale formation in Pennsylvania. A proposed 5 percent tax was expected to generate $90 million in this fiscal year alone.
via A history lesson | Penn State News | Sports – Centre Daily Times.
Spills Raise Worries on Water Safety in NY Gas Drilling
Scobie says the potential creation of jobs from natural gas drilling using fracking has to be balanced with a concern for possible threats to health and the environment. Others ask why the focus is on fossil fuels when the emphasis should be on the transition to non-carbon-producing, sustainable energy sources.
via Public News Service.
Blogs @ The Charleston Gazette – » More on Dunkard Creek fish kill
…complete job of pointing out the significance of this particular stream, the size and severity of the fish kill, and the various potential sources being examined by water quality and wildlife investigators.
via Blogs @ The Charleston Gazette – » More on Dunkard Creek fish kill.
WNEP video: Drilling Halted After Leaks at Well
All drilling has now stopped at a natural gas well in Susquehanna County after three chemical spills in a week. …
via Drilling Halted After Leaks at Well – WNEP.
Trucks are coming and going, but Cabot Oil and Gas Company said the drilling process has stopped at one of its natural gas wells near Dimock. The move comes after three chemical spills in a week. The latest one was on Tuesday…
Rozanski and her husband live just down Troy Road from the well and the spill.
Now, they’re keeping an eye on Stevens Creek behind their home. The DEP said some fish died upstream because the chemical seeped into the water.
“The DEP has been here, the Fish Commission has been here and the County Commissioners have been here so it’s serious,” added Holly Rozanski.
A truckload of the chemical LGC-35 still sits at the drill site even though drilling has been halted.
via Drilling Halted After Leaks at Well – WNEP.
DEP ISSUES VIOLATION NOTICE TO CABOT OIL AND GAS
“DEP is very concerned about spills at Cabot sites and will require Cabot to take all necessary actions to prevent them from recurring,” DEP Northcentral Regional Director Robert Yowell said.
The notice of violation cites Cabot for an unpermitted discharge of polluting substances, an unpermitted discharge of residual waste, two unpermitted encroachments on Stevens Creek, not containing polluting substances at the well site, and an unpermitted discharge of industrial waste.
via DEP News Releases.
Dimock in the first person: “none of us knew how much razing of our woods & fields would be involved…”
I agree with eliminating coal as a power source, but before everyone starts patting each other on the back for switching to “clean” gas, they should check its source, including my back yard. None of us knew how much razing of our woods and fields would be involved. We were told that the disturbance to our property, trees, etc. would be minimal, and that the landscrape would be returned to its original appearance. They did not say that at each drilling site, a large piece of property would have all of its trees completely removed, to the roots, and that all of the native plants would be destroyed, including wild columbines, laurels, rhododendrons, dogtooth violets, ferns and trilliums, and that all of the soil would be scraped away and replaced with gravel and sand. They did not say that the pad would resemble a cut-off volcano or flat-topped pyramid, surrounded with blaze orange plastic, or that the acreage would be full of heavy equipment on wheels, including numerous, leaky tanks. Most importantly, they described the fracking water as “sea water”, not mentioning toxic or carcinogenic water pollutants. If you have any advice for those of us on the front lines here, or know who can do the right water tests, please let us know.
Environmental, Sportsmen’s Groups Want Stricter Regulation of Natural Gas Projects – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette – 28 November 2008
Thirteen environmental and sportsmen’s organizations have asked the state to do a better job regulating water use and disposal by deep natural gas well drillers that are rushing to tap into the potentially lucrative Marcellus Shales geologic formation.
In a Tuesday letter to the state Department of Environmental Protection, the groups said that if the deep well drilling boom continues without adequate regulation, permitting and enforcement it could “irreparably and unnecessarily harm habitat and water resources. … in some of the most pristine parts of the state.”
Gas well drilling is expanding dramatically in Pennsylvania, driven by higher gas prices and new horizontal well drilling technology that makes it possible to tap the 5,000- to 8,000-foot-deep Marcellus Shales.
The 200- to 400-foot-thick geological formation of black rock under much of Pennsylvania, and parts of New York, West Virginia and Ohio, could contain up to 516 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and be the biggest gas “play” in the nation.
But the deep horizontal drilling rigs now operating in the state require large amounts of water — up to 4 million gallons per well — to fracture or “frac” the shale and release the gas. More than 550 wells have already been permitted by the DEP and natural gas companies are leasing mineral rights across the state so they can drill many hundreds more.
Myron Arnowitt, Clean Water Action state director, said the letter follows up on a meeting several of the groups had with DEP Acting Secretary John Hanger Monday in Harrisburg where the groups told him that well drillers shouldn’t be allowed to drain streams and discharges must be treated and not just diluted.
The groups were reacting to reports that drillers had, according to the DEP, “pumped dry” Sugarcamp Run and depleted the flow in Cross Creek “down to the rocks on the bed of the stream.” Both streams are in Washington County.
And although the gas industry denies it, the DEP has said that discharges of thousand of gallons of untreated well drilling water has significantly contributed to the high Total Dissolved Solids readings in the Monongahela River. Those elevated TDS levels have worried some industrial water users and caused some public water supply customers concern about taste, smell and glassware spotting.
The brine water from the well drilling operations contains lots of salt — up to a pound per gallon — plus arsenic, a known carcinogen, and other heavy metals. The sewage plants, which have been allowed to dilute and discharge the drill water, are not equipped to remove the dissolved solids.
Satellite Office for Natural Gas Drilling to Open – News, events, information, PA | Muncy Luminary
With up to 250 gas wells expected to be drilled in the county by this summer, the state’s Bureau of Oil and Gas Management plans to open a satellite office here, according to Robert Yowell, regional director of the northcentral regional office of the state Department of Environmental Protection.
Yowell was among those on a recent Lycoming College panel who took up environmental issues surrounding drilling into the Marcellus Shale to extract natural gas.
The bureau is under the DEP umbrella and is charged with issuing drilling permits and inspecting sites to make sure they comply with agency regulations, Yowell said. It has had offices previously only in Pittsburgh and Meadville.
By this summer, there should be 17 staff members in the office, as well as another 20 staff in the western Pennsylvania offices, he said.
via Satellite Office for Natural Gas Drilling to Open – News, events, information, PA | Muncy Luminary.
LancasterOnline.com: A rush to drill?
Given: The Pennsylvania Game Commission is being crippled by a revenue shortage.
Given: The agency could make a lot of money by allowing drilling for Marcellus shale natural gas, extraction of coal and ridgeline wind turbines on much of its 1.4 million acres spread across 287 game lands.
Question: Are we about to see these precious repositories of wildlife and open space wantonly scratched open, laced with bulldozed roads, pocked with drilling rigs and topped by whirring giant blades?
Drill for Natural Gas, Pollute Water: Scientific American
Drill for Natural Gas, Pollute Water
The natural gas industry refuses to reveal what is in the mixture of chemicals used to drill for the fossil fuel
By Abrahm Lustgarten and ProPublica
Natural gas may be the cleanest-burning fossil fuel but drilling for it is causing an environmental headache.
In July a hydrologist dropped a plastic sampling pipe 300 feet down a water well in rural Sublette County, Wy. and pulled up a load of brown oily water with a foul smell. Tests showed it contained benzene, a chemical believed to cause aplastic anemia and leukemia, in a concentration 1,500 times the level safe for people.
The results sent shockwaves through the energy industry and state and federal regulatory agencies.
Sublette County is the home of one of the nation’s largest natural gas fields, and many of its 6,000 wells have undergone a process pioneered by Halliburton called hydraulic fracturing, which shoots vast amounts of water, sand and chemicals several miles underground to break apart rock and release the gas. The process has been considered safe since a 2004 study by the Environmental Protection Agency found that it posed no risk to drinking water. After that study, Congress even exempted hydraulic fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act. Today fracturing is used in 9 out of 10 natural gas wells in the United States.
Over the last few years, however, a series of contamination incidents have raised questions about that EPA study and ignited a debate over whether the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing may threaten the nation’s increasingly precious drinking water supply.
via Drill for Natural Gas, Pollute Water: Scientific American.
leave a comment