E.P.A. Considers Risks of Gas Extraction
New York Times
23 July 2010
By Tom Zeller Jr.
CANONSBURG, Pa. — The streams of people came to the public meeting here
armed with stories of yellowed and foul-smelling well water, deformed
livestock, poisoned fish and itchy skin. One resident invoked the 1968
zombie thriller “Night of the Living Dead,” which, as it happens, was
filmed just an hour away from this southwestern corner of Pennsylvania.
The culprit, these people argued, was hydraulic fracturing, a method of
extracting natural gas that involves blasting underground rock with a
cocktail of water, sand and chemicals.
Gas companies countered that the horror stories described in
Pennsylvania and at other meetings held recently in Texas and Colorado
are either fictions or not the companies’ fault. More regulation, the
industry warned, would kill jobs and stifle production of gas, which
the companies consider a clean-burning fuel the nation desperately
needs.
Just as the Gulf of Mexico is the battleground for the future of
offshore oil drilling, Pennsylvania is at the center of the battle over
hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which promises to open up huge
swaths of land for natural gas extraction, but whose environmental
risks are still uncertain. Natural gas accounts for roughly a quarter
of all energy used in the United States, and that fraction is expected
to grow as the nation weans itself from dirtier sources like coal and
oil.
The Environmental Protection Agency has been on a listening tour,
soliciting advice from all sides on how to shape a forthcoming $1.9
million study of hydraulic fracturing’s effect on groundwater.
With the steep environmental costs of fossil fuel extraction apparent
on beaches from Texas to Florida — and revelations that industry
shortcuts and regulatory negligence may have contributed to the BP
catastrophe in the gulf — gas prospectors are finding a cold reception
for their assertions that their drilling practices are safe.
“The industry has argued there are no documented cases of hydraulic
fracturing contaminating groundwater,” said Dencil Backus, a resident
of nearby Mt. Pleasant Township, at Thursday night’s hearing. “Our
experience in southwestern Pennsylvania suggests that this cannot
possibly be true.”
Matt Pitzarella, a spokesman for Range Resources, a Texas-based natural
gas producer, acknowledged that the gulf spill had increased public
concern about any sort of drilling activity. “However, when people can
review the facts, void of the strong emotions the gulf elicits, they
can see the stark contrast between high-risk, deep offshore oil
drilling and much safer, much lower risk onshore natural gas
development,” he said by e-mail.
In this part of the country, the potentially enormous natural gas play
of the Marcellus Shale has many residents lining up to lease their land
to gas prospectors. Estimates vary on the precise size of the Marcellus
Shale, which stretches from West Virginia across much of Pennsylvania
and eastern Ohio and into the Southern Tier of New York. But by any
estimate, the gas deposit is huge — perhaps as much as 500 trillion
cubic feet. (New York State uses a little over 1.1 trillion cubic feet
of natural gas each year.)
An industry-financed study published this week suggested that as much
as $6 billion in government revenue and up to 280,000 jobs could be at
stake in the Marcellus Shale region.
Fracking has been around for decades, and it is an increasingly
prominent tool in the effort to unlock previously unreachable gas
reserves. The oil and gas industry estimates that 90 percent of the
more than 450,000 operating gas wells in the United States rely on
hydraulic fracturing.
Roughly 99.5 percent of the fluids typically used in fracking, the
industry says, are just water and sand, with trace amounts of chemical
thickeners, lubricants and other compounds added to help the process
along. The cocktail is injected thousands of feet below the water table
and, the industry argues, can’t possibly be responsible for growing
complaints of spoiled streams and wells. But critics say that the
relationship between fracking fluids and groundwater contamination has
never been thoroughly studied — and that proving a link has been made
more difficult by oil and gas companies that have jealously guarded as
trade secrets the exact chemical ingredients used at each well.
Several other concerns linger over fracking, as well as other aspects
of gas drilling — including the design and integrity of well casings
and the transport and potential spilling of chemicals and the millions
of gallons of water required for just one fracking job.
The recent string of accidents in the oil and gas industries —
including the gulf spill and a blowout last month at a gas field in
Clearfield County, Pa., that spewed gas and wastewater for 16 hours —
has unnerved residents and regulators.
“There is extraordinary economic potential associated with the
development of Marcellus Shale resources,” said Representative Joe
Sestak, Democrat of Pennsylvania, in a statement Friday announcing $1
million for a federal study of water use impacts in the Delaware Water
Basin. However, “there is also great risk.” He said, “One way to ensure
proper development is to understand the potential impacts.”
Amy Mall, a senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense
Council, said the scrutiny was long overdue. “I think it’s all helping
to shine a spotlight on this entire industry,” she said. “Corners are
sometimes cut, and regulations simply aren’t strong enough.”
Fears of fracking’s impact on water supplies prompted regulators
overseeing the Delaware Water Basin to curtail gas exploration until
the effects could be more closely studied. New York State lawmakers are
contemplating a moratorium.
At the national level, in addition to the E.P.A. study, a Congressional
investigation of gas drilling and fracturing, led by House Energy and
Commerce Committee, intensified last week with demands sent to several
companies for details on their operations — particularly how they
handled the slurry of water and chemicals that flowed back from deep
within a well.
A renewed, if unlikely, push is also under way to pass federal
legislation that would undo an exemption introduced under the Bush
administration that critics say freed hydraulic fracturing from
regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Last month, Wyoming introduced some of the nation’s toughest rules
governing fracturing, including provisions that require companies to
disclose the ingredients in their fracturing fluids to state regulators
— though specifically not to the public.
Gas drillers, responding to the increased scrutiny and eyeing the
expansive and lucrative new gas plays in Appalachia, are redoubling
their efforts to stave off federal oversight, in some cases by
softening their rigid positions on fracking-fluid disclosure. Last
week, Range Resources went so far as to announce its intent to disclose
the contents of its fracking fluids to Pennsylvania regulators and to
publish them on the company’s Web site.
“We should have done this a long time ago,” said Mr. Pitzarella, the
Range spokesman. “There are probably no health risks with the
concentrations that we’re utilizing. But if someone has that concern,
then it’s real and you have to address it.”
Environmental groups welcomed that, but said that clear and broad
federal jurisdiction would still be needed.
“Any one accident might not be on the scale of the Deepwater Horizon
disaster,” said Ms. Mall. “But accidents are happening all the time,
and there’s no regime in place that broadly protects the health of
communities and the surrounding environment where drilling is being
done.”
That was a common theme at the meeting Thursday night.
“I can take you right now to my neighbors who have lost their water
supplies,” Mr. Backus said to the handful of E.P.A. regulators on hand.
“I can take you also to places where spills have killed fish and other
aquatic life.”
“Corporations have no conscience,” he added. “The E.P.A. must give them
that conscience.”