Group: Gas Drilling Polluting Chesapeake Bay Area
Associated Press
30 November 2011
BALTIMORE -- An environmental group said Wednesday that infrared
video shows air pollution streaming from natural gas sites that
have been sprouting up across the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation said it sent the videos to the
federal Environmental Protection Agency along with a letter saying
they show emissions are not being adequately controlled. The video
"establishes that the industry is not sufficiently limiting the
amount of leaks from drilling and processing operations and the
full extent of those leaks" has not been adequately considered in
the EPA's proposed regulations, the letter said.
A boom in drilling using a technique known as hydraulic fracturing
prompted environmentalists to sue the EPA last year over
regulation. The agency proposed new rules in July to control air
pollution at oil and gas wells for the first time. The video and
letter were filed on the last day of the public comment period for
the proposed regulations, said Harry Campbell, a senior scientist
at the foundation's Pennsylvania office.
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation said it hired a videographer to
record video at 15 sites in Pennsylvania, Maryland and West
Virginia and found otherwise invisible emissions at 11.
Campbell said the video "adds another line of evidence that there
are issues that need to be addressed."
The foundation said in its letter that increased shale gas
production may prove beneficial because natural gas is cleaner
than oil and coal, but "the alarming rate at which extraction
activities have increased in the bay watershed gives us great
pause as we attempt to understand the full implications."
The EPA did not immediately respond to requests for comment
Wednesday by The Associated Press.
Hydraulic fracturing is a horizontal drilling technique in which
water, sand and chemicals are pumped into the mile-deep shale to
crack the rock and free the gas.
Critics have expressed concerns about the effect of the chemicals
on groundwater, and the EPA is studying the issue. Maryland has
imposed a moratorium on so-called "fracking" while environmental
implications are studied, but drilling is being conducted in West
Virginia and Pennsylvania.
Corky DeMarco, executive director of the West Virginia Oil and
Natural Gas Association, said there are necessarily some emissions
from diesel engines that run drilling rigs and pumping trucks. But
DeMarco said past studies done in Texas and Pennsylvania
determined "these are mobile sources, they're temporary sources,
and they are not causing accumulated effects."
Bob Howarth, a Cornell University professor who analyzed the video
for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, said the camera is tuned to
detect emissions of methane, the main component of natural gas and
a key greenhouse gas.
Howarth said the images provide more evidence that the EPA should
conduct a more comprehensive study of the impact of hydraulic
fracturing on human health and the environment.
Reid Porter, a spokesman for The American Petroleum Institute, the
main lobbying arm of the industry, said Howarth's findings have
been questioned in the past by other researchers. Porter said the
institute is on the record as saying "any conclusions that start
with Howarth's preconceived premise are questionable at best."
Methane is 20 times more effective at trapping heat in the
atmosphere than carbon dioxide over a 100-year span, according to
the EPA, which says natural gas systems are the largest sources of
methane emissions in the United States.
Natural gas drilling, meanwhile, has already been blamed for
affecting air quality.
Drilling in the Upper Green River Basin in western Wyoming, for
example, triggered levels of surface ozone worse than in Los
Angeles, one of the nation's smoggiest cities.