Stone Energy’s Howell Pad — 16 acres of disturbance

Fracking Flyover Part II

By  David Manthos, SkyTruth, December 12, 2012

Last week I posted Part I of our LightHawk flight over West Virginia’s most active unconventional gas field in Wetzel County. Part I highlighted what an actual hydraulic fracturing job looks like and illustrated a chronic issue in rugged terrain—frequent “slips” which are effectively small landslides. Part II points out several more issues that were readily visible from an aerial perspective—infrastructure, habitat fragmentation and proximity to homes.

Highlight #3: Infrastructure

While not discussed nearly as much as water contamination, buildout of natural gas infrastructure is a certain impact of unconventional shale gas development. Gas separator units and condensate tanks remain on the wellpad for the productive life of the well, pipeline networks crisscross the fields and forests to connect all of the wells to market, compressor stations will run as long as there is gas moving through the pipelines and large petrochemical facilities set up shop in traditionally rural areas. These facilities have a big footprint on the land, and contribute to air, noise and light pollution in largely rural areas.

One facility that stood out in particular is the new Mark West Compressor Station near Mobely, West Virginia. Because of the lack of flat ground in these hills, with the exception of floodplains, any major installation is going to have a larger than usual footprint, and this one in particular appears to have completely rearranged the natural profile of the ridge top:

Highlight #4: Habitat Fragmentation

Add miles of access roads and pipeline right-of-ways to the footprint of development and the total area impacted increases considerably. In mixed land-use areas this may not be a major issue, but in contiguous forests and state game lands fragmentation has serious ecological consequences. The U.S. Geological Survey recently published a paper on habitat fragmentation in Washington and Bradford County, Pennsylvania, using aerial image analysis and GIS like we do at SkyTruth. They concluded that change was occurring in the these counties, but was not yet very significant due to the high quantity of pre-existing fragmentation of those areas. The paper explains the concepts of fragmentation very well but we need to see similar studies conducted with a narrower focus, such as the Loyalsock State Forest in Pennsylvania.

However, infrastructure, fragmentation and air, noise and light pollution may seem to be insignificant if human residents aren’t directly impacted by it. Biodiversity loss aside (a topic for a whole different post), in Wetzel County and across the nation, residents are experiencing a growing number of well pads, compressor stations and other facilities moving in close to home, bringing us to the final point for this post.

Highlight #5: Residential Proximity

West Virginia law, House Bill 401 to be specific, has restrictions on how close drilling activity can be from occupied dwellings, streams, water wells, etc. According to the law, “The center of well pads may not be located within six hundred twenty-five feet of an occupied dwelling structure.” There are several issues with the way this law is worded, but the main problem is that the distance restriction is on the center of the well pad, not the boundary. Therefore, the edge of an active industrial site could quite easily overreach the already limited buffer zone.

Conclusion: There are many more observations to make about hydraulic fracturing and unconventional shale gas development, and many more ways we want to look at it from the sky. These are just the most obvious issues illustrated by this round of images. Even developed as responsibly as possible, it is undeniable that unconventional shale gas extraction will change the landscape of West Virginia for decades to come.

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Photos in article by David Manthos, SkyTruth and Facilitated by LightHawk:

1. First photo shows ridge that has been lowered at least 100 feet. It is apparent that the terrain has been heavily modified.
2.  Second photo shows two pipeline right-of-ways visible in the center and to the right, in the background of the Mark West Facility.  These are just examples of the miles of pipelines and service roads that will disect the forests of active gas fields for the lifetime of well-production.
3. The third photo shows the proximity of houses and farms to industrial activity which is an issue across the entire Marcellus Shale play. Here in southwest Pennsylvania, several homes are immediately downhill of a large pad and the service road for two well pads goes through the bottom center of the image.
4. Fourth photo shows Stone Energy’s Weekly pad (orange tanks in the center of the image) is surrounded by private homes, in Wetzel county. The green structures on the pad are separators and condensate tanks which remove and store ethane, butane, propane and other gas “liquids” from the natural gas produced by the well. These units run constantly and at times emit fumes that cause headaches and respiratory irritation.
5. Fifth photo shows Stone Energy’s Howell Pad with 16 acres of surface disturbance.

 

Heat Intensity, Wetzel County, WV

By David Manthos, SkyTruth, December 4^th with some of the photos “here.”

For all that we do working on satellite and aerial images, it’s extremely refreshing to actually get a chance to go up in the air ourselves. Last month we had the opportunity when we were asked by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) if we could put together an aerial tour of active gas fields. Enabled by our partners at LightHawk, we arranged a flyover of one of the most heavily drilled regions in West Virginia—Wetzel County.

This heat map from the West Virginia Dept. of Environmental Protection-Office of Oil and Gas shows density of Marcellus Shale drilling activity. Due to the profitability of the liquids-rich gas found in NW West Virginia and an energy market flooded with cheap natural gas, this area has become one of the most heavily developed parts of the state.

If Wetzel County sounds familiar, that is because we have posted about drilling in this area before in a guest post by Jim Sheehan, a remote sensing and GIS specialist pursuing his Ph.D. at West Virginia University. We are very interested in areas like Wetzel County because the U.S. is only at the beginning of a resource extraction boom that is promising thousands of wells to be drilled. If this occurs, areas that are now “hot-spots” could become the new norm.

On November 15, John Amos and I headed up to Pittsburgh to guide EDF and representatives from their partner foundations on an aerial tour of active natural gas fields. Since SkyTruth doesn’t have our own plane, we coordinated with LightHawk, a volunteer pilot organization that connects pilots with non-profits to promote environmental conservation. They arranged for two single-engine aircraft to fly us on a 160-mile round trip over southwest Pennsylvania, into Wetzel County and back, via the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia.

Our flight-plan, from the Allegheny County Airport (KAGC) in the north, down to Wetzel County, over the Lewis Wetzel Wildlife Management area (in green) and through an area of intense activity know as the Victory Field (in red). (See the main article.)

Here are just a few highlights observed during our flyover of one of the most active unconventional gas fields in the region:

Highlight #1: Fracking

There is no need to belabor familiar talking points about fracking, but there is something commonly misrepresented I would like to clear up. Google image search the word “fracking” and you are more likely to see a generic drill rig than an actual hydraulic fracture job underway. Between incorrectly labeled pictures of drill rigs and a wide variety of diagrams, you have to sift through dozens of pictures before you actually find an image of an actual frack. Back in October, I posted about visually assessing well sites from aerial survey photos to determine disclosure compliance, and included a detailed breakdown of what a frack-job looks like “in-progress.” On the flight, I took some high-resolution photos of a frack underway at Stone Energy Pad #2 in the Lewis Wetzel Wildlife area, a state gameland.

Stone Energy Pad #2, Lewis Wetzel Wildlife Management Area, Wetzel County, WV. All chemicals and water appear to be stored in portable red tanks (instead of open pits) and are mixed with a proppant (usually fine silica sand) and forced down the wellbore by the blue, truck-mounted compressor engines. The Centers for Disease Control and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health have issued a warning about the risk of silicosis from this process, but local activists across the Devonian Shale region frequently report that workers rarely use any kind of mask or respirator.

Highlight #2: Slips and Landslides

Many of the drill rig crews working in the Marcellus are not from West Virginia or even Appalachia, but from much flatter Oklahoma, Texas, North Dakota, etc. Whether unfamiliarity with steep terrain is the cause or not, Wetzel County has experienced a significant number of “slips,” where wellpads, containment ponds and/or roads have become unstable and “slid” downhill. This has resulted in a number of wastewater ponds failing and leaking their toxic contents, blocking roads (even blocking emergency services from responding to a medical emergency).

We flew over numerous sites that have had issues with this public safety hazard, but none stood out as much as the Ray Baker pad in Marshall County.

Citing “imminent danger” to people, the WV DEP shut down this site in December 2011, but the pad has still not been able to resume work. The hillside has continued to slide, shutting down a public road for weeks and forcing a downhill neighbor to relocate due to danger to his home.

Chesapeake Energy has been working since 2011 to stabilize the site after being cited by the Army Corps of Engineers for “discharging pollutants into an adjacent stream.” Operators were hoping to be approved to restart work last month, but the most recent slips have left the site’s operations suspended indefinitely.