EPA Fines XTO Energy for Lycoming County Frack Water Spills ? ?The Environmental Protection Agency has fined XTO Energy, a subsidiary of Exxon Mobil, $100,000 for violating the federal Clean Water Act. The company?s drilling operations discharged between 6,300 and 57,373 gallons of waste water into the Susquehanna river system in Penn Township, Lycoming County. The waste water contained high levels of strontium, chloride, bromide, barium, and total dissolved solids and flowed continually for more than two months in the fall of 2010, according to the EPA. An employee with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection discovered an open valve at a waste water storage tank during an inspection. The settlement, announced on Wednesday, also requires XTO to spend an estimated $20 million to improve its waste water disposal process. ?Today?s settlement holds XTO accountable for a previous violation of the Clean Water Act and requires operational changes and improved management practices to help ensure the safe and responsible handling of wastewater produced during natural gas exploration and production activities,? said Robert G. Dreher, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department?s Environment and Natural Resources Division in a release. ?The Justice Department is committed to ensuring that our natural resources are developed in an environmentally responsible manner.? As part of the settlement, XTO will now be required to recycle at least 50 percent of its wastewater, meaning that water will be used to frack other wells. Waste water pits or open tanks are prohibited, the company must install remote monitoring systems and establish a 24-hour emergency phone number. Although XTO is not one of the top ten drillers in the state, it is?one of the top ten violators, with nearly one violation per well. The most recent data available shows the company with 212 active wells, and a staggering 179 violations incurred by just 25 wells. The top offender is the?Marquardt 8537H well, in Penn Township,?which seems to be the site of this discharge. Penn Township, Lycoming County, which covers about?26 square miles and is home to about 1000 people, has endured one of the highest numbers of drilling violations than any other municipality in the state. With 109 active wells, environmental regulators have issued 165 violations by both XTO Energy and EXCO Resources.?? (StateImpact PA)
DOE Study: Fracking Chemicals Didn't Taint Water ? ?PITTSBURGH (AP) ? A landmark federal study on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, shows no evidence that chemicals from the natural gas drilling process moved up to contaminate drinking water aquifers at a western Pennsylvania drilling site, the Department of Energy told The Associated Press. After a year of monitoring, the researchers found that the chemical-laced fluids used to free gas trapped deep below the surface stayed thousands of feet below the shallower areas that supply drinking water, geologist Richard Hammack said. Although the results are preliminary ? the study is still ongoing ? they are a boost to a natural gas industry that has fought complaints from environmental groups and property owners who call fracking dangerous. Drilling fluids tagged with unique markers were injected more than 8,000 feet below the surface but were not detected in a monitoring zone 3,000 feet higher. That means the potentially dangerous substances stayed about a mile away from drinking water supplies. "This is good news," said Duke University scientist Rob Jackson, who was not involved with the study. He called it a "useful and important approach" to monitoring fracking, but he cautioned that the single study doesn't prove that fracking can't pollute, since geology and industry practices vary widely in Pennsylvania and across the nation. The boom in gas drilling has led to tens of thousands of new wells being drilled in recent years, many in the Marcellus Shale formation that lies under parts of Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and West Virginia. That's led to major economic benefits but also fears that the chemicals used in the drilling process could spread to water supplies. The mix of chemicals varies by company and region, and while some are openly listed the industry has complained that disclosing special formulas could violate trade secrets. Some of the chemicals are toxic and could cause health problems in significant doses, so the lack of full transparency has worried landowners and public health experts. The study done by the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Pittsburgh marked the first time that a drilling company let government scientists inject special tracers into the fracking fluid and then continue regular monitoring to see whether it spread toward drinking water sources. The research is being done at a drilling site in Greene County, which is southwest of Pittsburgh and adjacent to West Virginia. Eight Marcellus Shale wells were monitored seismically and one was injected with four different man-made tracers at different stages of the fracking process, which involves setting off small explosions to break the rock apart. The scientists also monitored a separate series of older gas wells that are about 3,000 feet above the Marcellus to see if the fracking fluid reached up to them. The industry and many state and federal regulators have long contended that fracking itself won't contaminate surface drinking water because of the extreme depth of the gas wells. Most are more than a mile underground, while drinking water aquifers are usually within 500 to 1000 feet of the surface. Kathryn Klaber, CEO of the industry-led Marcellus Shale Coalition, called the study "great news." "It's important that we continue to seek partnerships that can study these issues and inform the public of the findings," Klaber said. While the lack of contamination is encouraging, Jackson said he wondered whether the unidentified drilling company might have consciously or unconsciously taken extra care with the research site, since it was being watched. He also noted that other aspects of the drilling process can cause pollution, such as poor well construction, surface spills of chemicals and wastewater. Jackson and his colleagues at Duke have done numerous studies over the last few years that looked at whether gas drilling is contaminating nearby drinking water, with mixed results. None has found chemical contamination but they did find evidence that natural gas escaped from some wells near the surface and polluted drinking water in northeastern Pennsylvania. Scott Anderson, a drilling expert with the Environment Defense Fund, said the results sound very interesting. "Very few people think that fracking at significant depths routinely leads to water contamination. But the jury is still out on what the odds are that this might happen in special situations," Anderson said. One finding surprised the researchers: Seismic monitoring determined one hydraulic fracture traveled 1,800 feet out from the well bore; most traveled just a few hundred feet. That's significant because some environmental groups have questioned whether the fractures could go all the way to the surface. The researchers believe that fracture may have hit naturally occurring faults, and that's something both industry and regulators don't want. "We would like to be able to predict those areas" with natural faults and avoid them, Hammack said. Jackson said the 1,800-foot fracture was interesting but noted it is still a mile from the surface. The DOE team will start to publish full results of the tests over the next few months, said Hammack, who called the large amount of field data from the study "the real deal." "People probably will be looking at the data for years to come," he said. On Friday, DOE spokesman David Anna added that while nothing of concern has been found thus far, "the results are far too preliminary to make any firm claims."? (Associated Press)
This Is What Fracking Really Looks Like ? ?Photographer?Nina Berman?had just started focusing on climate and environmental issues when she read an article about fracking and its connection to the possible contamination of New York City?s drinking water. Berman resides in New York and knew very little about how the controversial process of drilling for natural gas via hydraulic fracturing worked and decided to head to Pennsylvania for Gov. Thomas Corbett?s inauguration in 2011. ?I knew there would be demonstrators (opposed to his support of natural gas drilling), and I wanted to learn what they were screaming about,? Berman said. After researching the issues, she then had to figure out how to document them in a visual way. ?It?s a very hard subject to photograph,? Berman explained. ?You see a drill, and you don?t know what that means, and then it disappears. What does that mean? It took me a while to figure out how to approach it.? To do that, she spent time in part of Pennsylvania?s Marcellus Shale region, a hotbed of fracking controversy, producing a series titled ?Fractured: The Shale Play.? Berman began calling activists, hoping to get a sense of the communities and knowing the people who feel they have been violated are those ?interested in having their story told.? ?What struck me very personally as an outsider was how any kind of industrial activity feels like an enormous intrusion, almost like a creature from outer space; these drills at night are almost supernatural,? Berman said. ?I looked for points where the industrial activity impacted these quiet rural landscapes, and I found at night was when things came alive, so I combined those pictures with more conventional documentary [style of ]subject-driven photography about people who were having serious health impacts.? Fracking?s health impact, specifically its impact on water, is one of many controversies surrounding the process of drilling into rock in order to release gas. ?While some argue it is an alternative to dependence on oil, the methods of drilling involving water, sand, and chemicals to break up the rock has also been argued as the culprit for contaminated water. ?Those of us who are used to clean water have no concept of what that feels like when your water coming from your well on your land is destroyed and you can?t do anything about it,? Berman said. Part of the way Berman is sharing her experience is through the??Marcellus Shale Documentary Project.??Started in November 2011, Berman and five other photographers documented how communities in the Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale region have been affected by natural gas drilling. With a nod to the Farm Security Administration?s program assigning photographers to document communities during the Great Depression or the?Documerica project?during the 1970s that looked at how environmental concerns were impacting Americans, the ?Marcellus Shale Documentary Project? ?focused on the impact of fracking on the lives of Pennsylvanians. The exhibition is currently on view at the?Center for Photography at Woodstock?in New York through Aug. 18. Berman said for now she has done as much as possible in Pennsylvania but would be interested in documenting areas around the country that have also been affected by fracking. Until then, she has been exhibiting and touring with the ?Marcellus Shale Documentary Project? and feels the impact has been positive. ?That is how I like to work in many ways, to be a part of bigger things,? she said.?? (Slate Magazine)
House GOP bill would thwart Interior?s ?fracking? regs ? ?House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) and other GOP lawmakers are pushing legislation to block looming Interior Department regulations that govern the oil-and-gas ?fracking? on public lands. The bill is highly unlikely to become law but it signals ongoing GOP political pushback against the rules, which critics say are not needed and will create costly red tape. The measure introduced Thursday by Rep. Bill Flores (R-Texas), Hastings and three others will be the subject of a July 25 House Natural Resources Committee hearing. It?s called the ?Protecting States? Rights to Promote American Energy Security Act.? It would prevent Interior from enforcing regulations on hydraulic fracturing, or ?fracking,? in states that that already have their own rules or permit requirements. The bill explicitly says Interior must defer to state rules even if they are less restrictive than federal mandates. GOP lawmakers and oil-and-gas industry groups say that state-level oversight of fracking ? the method enabling the U.S. oil-and-gas production boom ? protects the environment and public health. But Interior officials, noting that some states have tougher oversight than others,?say baseline federal standards are needed?to oversee fracking in order to protect groundwater and other resources. The federal rules, which are not yet final, would require disclosure of chemicals used in the fracking process, and also create standards around well integrity and management of so-called flowback water. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, at a House hearing Wednesday, said Interior?s rule defers to states that have equal or more stringent oversight than the federal standards.?? (The Hill)
So What's the Matter With Shale Gas, Anyway? ? ?Sometimes it seems as if the environmental movement has been left behind by the sheer speed of America's shale energy revolution. That may be because a resource?natural gas?that environmental groups once saw as part of the solution has become part of the problem, at least as they see it. Shale gas and oil are widely viewed as one of the biggest forces to hit the U.S. economy in modern history. Total U.S. gas production has rocketed 33% since 2008 and oil 46%, driving down energy costs. The expanding shale industry supported 1.7 million jobs in 2012 and produced $62 billion in state and federal tax revenue, according to IHS/CERA, the energy consultancy. "The new narrative about shale gas is about jobs, economic growth, global competitiveness, and a U.S. manufacturing renaissance," says Dan Yergin, the energy expert and author of "The Quest." The public gets the narrative. A Pew Research poll found 48% of respondents favor increased use of hydraulic fracking of shale; 38% are opposed. Where does this leave the environmental movement? Trying to change the conversation about shale gas. For years, environmental groups saw gas as something of an ally in the cause. Gas has half the carbon footprint of coal. It was the ideal substitute for coal and a "bridge" to greater use of renewable energy such as wind and solar. But as shale gas production soared, the price of natural gas plummeted. Environmental groups now worry that gas is moving in to stay, taking the momentum out of the shift to nonpolluting renewables, slowing conservation, and creating new environmental problems. "To the extent that we're locking in new gas power plants, it's not the best way to build a cleaner society," says Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund. "The pace of development caught everyone by surprise, and environmental groups and our laws and regulators are playing catch-up," says Dan Lashof of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "In a lot of cases, the gas industry has run roughshod over local communities." Gas, adds Michael Brune, head of the Sierra Club, "should be used as little as possible for as short a time as possible." Renewables are the answer. The broader environmental argument now goes like this: There's an under-appreciation of how much methane leaks into the atmosphere when natural gas is fracked, piped and stored. Methane, the chief component of natural gas, is many times more damaging to the environment than carbon. Sloppy production can erase the advantage gas has over coal. (The Environmental Protection Agency, however, recently found that industry pollution controls have reduced production-related gas leaks by 20% from previous estimates, even though more gas is being drilled.) Meanwhile, the cost of energy produced from renewables is falling. States such as California and Colorado are expanding their targets for energy generated by renewable sources, and policy makers should do more to encourage this trend nationally, environmental groups say. Communities, they add, are increasingly bristling over pollution at drilling sites and the chemicals pumped underground to extract the gas. And there's the matter of climate change. Global limits on emissions, environmentalists contend, will inevitably crimp use of fossil fuels. Best to constrain the expanding use of gas now. "The fundamentals of the industry are bad," says the Sierra Club's Mr. Brune. "You have a resource that's becoming less competitive and more controversial over time." That said, "The reality now is that, for better or worse, gas is here," says Mr. Krupp of the EDF. "It's hard to imagine that Texas, Oklahoma, or Pennsylvania is going to stop pumping gas." So his organization has joined with?Chevron,?CVX?+0.72%?Shell,?Consol Energy,CNX?-2.00%?and other environmental groups to construct voluntary best practices for shale development. "There is a big opportunity now for more of the companies to step up and lead," he says. Narratives do change. It may not be wishful thinking for environmental groups to contend that a comprehensive shift to renewable energy is not only necessary but inevitable. But for the moment at least, it's also tough to argue with the transformative power of price.?Dow Chemical?DOW?-0.15%?and other big manufacturers are adding to operations in the U.S. to take advantage of the new low cost of gas energy. That trend is speeding up, not slowing.?? (Wall Street Journal)
U.K. plans big tax breaks for shale gas ??The U.K. government is planning to slash taxes for energy companies in a bid to stimulate a U.S.-style shale gas boom. The Treasury has proposed cutting the tax rate on production income to 30% for the fledgling?shale gas sector, compared to the typical 62% rate that most oil and gas companies pay. "Shale gas is a resource with huge potential to broaden the U.K.'s energy mix," said Chancellor George Osborne. "We want to create the right conditions for industry to explore and unlock that potential." The proposal also outlines other financial incentives for the sector. The government hopes the measures will stimulate ?14 billion ($21 billion) in shale gas investment this year and create thousands of jobs. A handful of energy companies have been granted licenses to look for shale gas opportunities in regions across the U.K. According to a recent report, it shouldn't be too difficult to find those deposits. The British Geological Survey estimates that northern England has as much as 2,281 trillion cubic feet of gas - a monumental amount given that the U.K. uses only 3 trillion cubic feet each year. However, experts say only a fraction of the available shale gas -- between 10% to 30% -- can actually be extracted from the ground, while the remainder is unreachable and uneconomical to pursue.?? (CNN Money)
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