EPA Takes New Look at Gas Drilling, Water Issues
Charleston Gazette
20 July 2010
By The Associated Press
HARRISBURG, Pa. -- So vast is the wealth of natural gas locked into
dense rock deep beneath Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia and Ohio
that some geologists estimate it's enough to supply the entire East
Coast for 50 years.
But freeing it requires a powerful drilling process called hydraulic
fracturing or "fracking," using millions of gallons of water brewed
with toxic chemicals, that some fear could pollute water above and
below ground and deplete aquifers.
As gas drillers swarm to this lucrative Marcellus Shale region and
blast into other shale reserves around the country, the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency is taking a new look at the
controversial fracking technique, currently exempt from federal
regulation. The $1.9 million study comes as the nation reels from the
Deepwater Horizon environmental and economic disaster playing out in
the Gulf of Mexico.
The oil and gas industry steadfastly defends the process as having been
proven safe over many years as well as necessary to keep the nation on
a path to energy independence.
Studies have "consistently shown that the risks are managed, it's safe,
it's a technology that's essential ... it's also a technology that's
well-regulated," said Lee Fuller, director of the industry coalition
Energy In Depth.
"A fair study," Fuller added, "will show that the procedures that are
there now are highly effective and do not need to be altered -- the
federal government does not need to be there."
But because of the oil disaster, conservation groups say the drilling
industry has lost it credibility and the rapid expansion of shale
drilling needs to be scrutinized.
"People no longer trust the oil and gas industry to say, 'Trust us,
we're not cutting corners,' " said Cathy Carlson, a policy adviser for
Earthworks, which supports federal regulation and a moratorium on
fracking in the Marcellus Shale.
Just six years ago, an EPA study declared the fracking process posed
"little or no threat to underground sources of drinking water" and with
that blessing, Congress a year later exempted hydraulic fracturing from
federal regulation.
Now the agency, prodded by Congress even before the Gulf disaster and
stung by criticism that its 2004 study was scientifically flawed and
maybe politically tainted, will bring the issues to the heart of the
land lease rush in the Marcellus Shale: Canonsburg, Pa., on Thursday
and Binghamton, N.Y., on August 12.
EPA hearings earlier this month in Fort Worth, Texas and Denver focused
on issues including drilling in the Barnett Shale of Texas, and in
Colorado and Wyoming, which have experienced similar natural gas booms.
Natural gas is also being recovered from the Haynesville Shale in north
Louisiana, the Fayetteville Shale in northern Arkansas and Woodford
Shale in southern Oklahoma.
In Texas, where drillers have sunk more than 13,000 wells into the
Barnett Shale in the past decade, fear of the cancer-causing chemical
benzene in the air above gas fields from processing plants and
equipment has spurred tests by environmental regulators and criticism
of the state's safeguards. In Colorado, numerous residents contend gas
drilling has spoiled their water wells.
Advancements in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technology
in the late 1990s significantly increased the yield and economic
viability of tapping shale gas wells and led to the current natural gas
boom, starting in Texas with the Barnett Shale. Fracking is now
considered the key to unlocking huge, untapped natural gas reserves
across the United States at a time when natural gas is emerging as a
greener energy alternative to coal or oil.
The Marcellus Shale is 10 times the size of the Barnett, spanning
50,000 square miles compared with the 5,000-square-mile Barnett. It is
also three times thicker than the Barnett at up to 900 feet, and is
estimated to have a potential yield of 10 times as much gas (500
trillion cubic feet versus 50 trillion cubic feet).
At stake in the debate over how best to manage and regulate this
enormous new natural resource is not just the safety of water supplies
but also thousands of jobs, profits for the gas drilling and delivery
industry and a bonanza of royalties for landowners.
"We've got to get it right," said Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., a sponsor of
the so-called FRAC Act, which would repeal the 2005 exemption and
require regulation of fracking by the EPA under the federal Safe
Drinking Water Act.
"We allowed coal over many, many decades to be an industry that was so
unregulated that it was allowed to do virtually whatever it wanted, and
now we have numerous environmentally adverse impacts," he said.
Though the drilling rush into Pennsylvania is barely two years old,
more than 3,500 permits have been issued and about 1,500 wells drilled,
with thousands more expected. Environmental problems are already
bubbling up: methane leaks contaminating private water wells, major
spillage of diesel and fracking chemicals above ground, and fish kill
in a creek.
A well blowout in north central Pennsylvania last month spewed natural
gas and toxic fracking water out of control for 16 hours. State
regulators found EOG Resources Inc. of Houston had failed to install a
proper blowout prevention system -- taking cost shortcuts. The state
fined EOG Resources and a contractor more than $400,000.
A wary New York state has had a virtual moratorium on drilling permits
for the Marcellus Shale region for two years while it completes an
environmental review.
Fear of water pollution is so high that a sweet spot of the Marcellus
Shale -- the Delaware River watershed in southern New York and
northeastern Pennsylvania that provides drinking water for 17 million
people from Philadelphia to New York City -- is virtually off-limits to
drilling for now.
The industry says there is no evidence that fracking chemicals -- some
of them suspected human carcinogens -- contaminate drinking water,
wells or aquifers once blasted deep underground.
EPA summarized numerous reports of "water quality incidents" in
residential wells, homes, or streams in Alabama, Colorado, Montana, New
Mexico, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming but said there was
inconclusive evidence linking the incidents to fracking.
Hydraulic fracturing, first used commercially in 1949 by petroleum
services giant Halliburton Co. of Houston, was developed to eke gas and
oil from impermeable rock. Water mixed with chemicals and sand is
injected at high pressure to fracture shale, the sand holding fractures
open so gas can flow up the well.
Each frack job uses an average of 4 million gallons of water, delivered
to a well site by hundreds of tanker trucks. Some of the "produced"
wastewater remains in the well -- estimates range from 20 percent to 90
percent. What comes back up the well -- briny, chemical-laden and
possibly radioactive from exposure to naturally existing radon
underground -- is usually stored in open pits until it's trucked to
treatment plants or underground injection wells.
In the northeastern Pennsylvania town of Dimock, state regulators have
repeatedly penalized Houston-based Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. for
contaminating the drinking water wells of 14 homes with leaking methane
and for numerous spills of diesel and chemical drilling additives,
including one that contaminated a wetland and killed fish.
Even as Pennsylvania officials work to improve their regulation of
drilling, the state's environmental protection secretary does not want
to cede authority.
"I'm not ready to turn Pennsylvania's resources over to the federal
government," said John Hanger. "Right now, Pennsylvania has just about
the very best drilling oversight in the country and we continue to keep
working at it every day."
Hanger is quick to criticize the regulatory debacle of the federal
Minerals Management Service and its cozy relationship with oil and gas
corporations before the Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20.
"That agency was captured by the drilling industry," he said.
The industry says it believes state oversight is sufficient and worries
the new EPA study will lead to new and costly safety and environmental
rules that would rob them of decades of profits.
In West Virginia, however, state officials concede they're overwhelmed
trying to regulate the Marcellus juggernaut that has added hundreds of
Marcellus wells to tens of thousands of traditional, shallow gas wells.
If passed, the FRAC Act would remove what's widely known as the
"Halliburton loophole" -- which exempted fracking from the Safe
Drinking Water Act when the 2005 energy bill was passed.
The EPA, in a statement to The Associated Press, did not criticize its
previous study. But given the rapid expansion of the industry and
"serious concerns" about the impact of hydraulic fracturing, the agency
said it concluded it was necessary to conduct a peer-reviewed study
that draws upon best available science, independent experts and the
public.
EPA's hydraulic fracturing website: http://www.epa.gov/safewater/uic/wells_hydrofrac.html