Public interest (free) webinar to protect the public health (click to expand)

Following the presentations, Dr. Ned Ketyer, Medical Advisor for the Environmental Health Project (EHP), will moderate a discussion.

Webinar ~ PFAS & Health Impacts — Wednesday, October 19th, 7:00 to 8:30 PM EDT

For more information and to register for this webinar go here ~

https://www.environmentalhealthproject.org/event-details/pfas-and-health-impacts-what-frontline-communities-need-to-know

#######+++++++#######+++++++#######

See where toxic PFAS have been used in Pennsylvania fracking wells

From an Article by Kristina Marusic, Environmental Health News, October 13, 2022

PITTSBURGH — Toxic “forever chemicals”, also known as PFAS, have been used in at least eight oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania, but the exact location of those wells has never been publicly disclosed — until now.

Experts say it’s possible that communities where PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) have been used by the oil and gas industry could face contamination of soil, groundwater and drinking water — and that contamination could be widespread.

The chemicals don’t break down naturally, so they linger in the environment and human bodies. Exposure is linked to health problems including kidney and testicular cancer, liver and thyroid problems, reproductive problems, lowered vaccine efficacy in children and increased risk of birth defects, among others.

Last year, a report by the environmental health advocacy group Physicians for Social Responsibility revealed that PFAS have been used in hydraulic fracturing and other types of oil and gas extraction across the U.S. for at least a decade, and an EHN investigation published in August documented PFAS contamination in one Pennsylvania fracking community resident’s drinking water.

A 2021 op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer revealed that the chemicals were used in at least eight wells in Pennsylvania, but did not disclose the location of the wells. Physicians for Social Responsibility recently published a new report on the use of PFAS in Ohio oil and gas wells. In a footnote, that report listed the location for all eight Pennsylvania wells where well operators reported using PFAS in public fracking chemical disclosures.

The Pennsylvania wells where PFAS have been used are located in the following communities:

>> Chippewa Township, Beaver County (population 7,953)
>> Donegal Township, Washington County (population 2,192)
>> Independence Township, Washington County (two wells) (population 1,515)
>> Pulaski Township, Lawrence County (three wells) (population 3,102)
>>West Finley Township, Washington County (population 813)

The operators for all eight wells reported using polytetrafluoroethylene, or PTFE, which is a type of PFAS marketed as Teflon, in fracking fluid. PFAS may also be used during other phases of oil and gas extraction that don’t require any kind of public disclosure. It’s likely that the chemicals have been used in additional Pennsylvania oil and gas wells, but a lack of transparency makes it impossible to know.

PFAS are likely being used in oil and gas wells throughout the country, but little research exists on how widespread the practice is and whether it’s causing drinking water contamination. Most existing research on PFAS has focused on other sources of the chemicals, like firefighting foam used at airports and military bases and industrial emissions. Investigations have found drinking water contamination in communities across the country.

“It’s critical for state regulators to start looking for these contaminants in people’s drinking water near these oil and gas sites,” Dusty Horwitt, a co-author of Physicians for Social Responsibility’s reports on PFAS, told EHN.

Jamar Thrasher — press secretary for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, which is responsible for overseeing the oil and gas industry — told EHN the agency investigates spills and releases at well sites and documents its investigations, but “absent a spill or release on the surface or below surface, there is no reason to conclude that well site fluids (whether including PFAS compounds or not) would have reached nearby soils or drinking water.”

PFAS use at oil and gas wells nationwide ~ At the national level, Physicians for Social Responsibility has reported that PFAS or substances that could break down into PFAS have been used in more than 1,200 fracking wells in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas and Wyoming, and that this number likely represents only a fraction of potentially contaminated sites.

The organization’s recent report on the use of PFAS in Ohio oil and gas wells found that the chemicals have been used in at least 101 fracking wells in eight counties in the state since 2013.

That number might represent just a fraction of the actual wells where the chemicals were used, according to the report, because oil and gas companies withheld the identity of at least one trade secret chemical in more than 2,100 oil and gas wells during the same period.

“We’ve seen a similar phenomenon in other states, but this is a huge number of trade secret chemicals and surfactants being used in Ohio,” Horwitt said. “That means use of PFAS and other dangerous chemicals in Ohio may be much greater than what’s been publicly reported.”

The organization published a similar report on Colorado in January, which found that PFAS were used in nearly 300 oil and gas wells in the state between 2011 and 2021. That report was influential in state regulators’ decision to ban the use of PFAS in oil and gas wells.

“It’s impossible to know how widespread PFAS contamination from oil and gas wells might be at this point,” Horwitt said. “We need more transparency before we can begin to address this issue.”

A dangerous waste stream ~ Waste from the Pennsylvania drill sites, including fracking fluid, drill cuttings and soil, may also have been contaminated by PTFE. Waste from each well site was sent to various secondary locations for disposal or reuse including other fracking wells, injection wells, sewage treatment facilities and landfills.

“These chemicals are very persistent, so it’s entirely possible that those disposal sites could also be contaminated with PFAS,” Horwitt said.

And because Pennsylvania doesn’t require complete public disclosure of all the chemicals used by the oil and gas industry, these eight wells and the locations where waste from them was disposed could represent just a fraction of the oil and gas wells throughout the state where PFAS have been used or disposed of.

Thrasher said there is no plan at this time to test any additional oil and gas wastewater disposal sites, but added “PFAS is an emerging issue and we will continue to explore the prevalence of PFAS in our environment. Our focus at this time remains on our efforts on the rulemaking to establish enforceable PFAS standards in drinking water.”

PFAS are a subset of many substances associated with health problems that are generated by the oil and gas industry.

How PA’s fracking communities can protect themselves from PFAS ~ On Wednesday, Oct. 19, the Environmental Health Project, an environmental health advocacy nonprofit, will host a free webinar about PFAS and health specifically for fracking communities.

Tasha Stoiber, a senior scientist with the Environmental Working Group, a research and advocacy organization that has spent years mapping PFAS contamination across the U.S., will speak at the event.

“In communities where we know there’s significant PFAS contamination either from a specific industry or point source, drinking water is a primary concern,” Stoiber told EHN. “Reverse osmosis and activated carbon filters are both effective at reducing PFAS in drinking water at home.”

Stoiber and Horwitt both said that regulatory agencies like the Pennsylvania DEP should test soil, groundwater and drinking water for PFAS in communities where we know the chemicals have been used in oil and gas extraction.

In Pennsylvania, that would mean specifically testing for PTFE and its breakdown products. Residents of these communities can contact the DEP to report potential PFAS contamination and request testing.

Stoiber said Pennsylvania residents should also ask their elected officials to consider phasing out the use of PFAS by the oil and gas industry.

Essentially all abandoned wells are conventional vertical not horizontal ones

From an Article by Mike Tony, Charleston Gazette, Charleston, WV, October 8, 2022

Landowners in Harrison, Nicholas, Preston and Wetzel counties has filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia in July against Diversified Energy and Pittsburgh-based EQT Corp. A 2018 agreement between the company and the WV DEP requires Diversified to summarize the actions taken to plug oil and gas wells or place them into production during the past year.

Diversified Energy, the largest owner of gas wells in the country, says it doesn’t have to plug wells that West Virginia landowners allege in federal court pose health and environmental hazards, arguing that state regulators relieved them of that responsibility. Diversified Energy Company says an agreement it made with the state Department of Environmental Protection to plug or place into production a set number of gas and oil wells annually shields it from the duty to plug and abandon the wells.

The company says the federal lawsuit from eight landowners in four West Virginia counties would “usurp” the authority of the Office of Oil and Gas, the DEP’s well-plugging and reclamation regulatory unit that state officials have acknowledged is understaffed. Diversified argues it has no duty to plug wells unless it identifies them as candidates for plugging in annual reports it is required to file with the Office of Oil and Gas through 2034.

The lawsuit alleges the two companies struck transfer deals in recent years for many more wells than Diversified can afford to plug and decommission. Industry experts have made similar observations, saying the company’s business model is based on acquiring a high number of low-producing wells that yield short-term dividends but present long-term liabilities mounting as the company puts off well decommissioning obligations.

The DEP estimates older wells that have been poorly maintained will likely total more than $100,000 in plugging costs. New wells that have been properly maintained cost a few tens of thousands of dollars, per the agency. Plugging typically entails using cement to seal wells that are no longer productive to keep toxic chemicals from polluting the air and aquifers.

The landowners’ lawsuit asks the court to make EQT liable for plugging and decommissioning the wells that Diversified took responsibility for in 2018 and 2020, contending that those transfers were fraudulent. The lawsuit petitions the court to award plaintiffs and class members damages from Diversified to compensate them for the cost of plugging, remediation of the abandoned wells.

Most of Diversified’s roughly 70,000 wells are in Appalachia, acquired since 2018 from EQT and Canonsburg, Pennsylvania-based CNX Resources. Diversified acquired more than 12,000 gas wells from EQT in deals in 2018 and 2020 for roughly $700 million. In a response it filed last week to the landowners’ lawsuit, Diversified highlighted a passage of its 2018 agreement with the Office of Oil and Gas stating that the company “requires sufficient time to identify” which wells have a “bona fide future use” that merits them being placed back into production. “For the duration of that process, Diversified has no duty to plug its wells unless it identifies them as a plugging candidate in its reports, and then only on a set schedule,” Diversified’s response contends.

The DEP did not respond to a request for comment on Diversified’s filing. Per the agreement, Diversified must either place into production or plug at least 50 oil and gas wells for which no production was reported in 2017 every year from 2020 through 2034, of which at least 20 must be plugged each year. Diversified has similar consent agreements in Kentucky, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Combined, the company’s agreements in those states plus West Virginia commit the company to plugging at least 80 wells annually out of its tens of thousands of wells there.

The landowners’ lawsuit called those consent agreements a “smoke-screen” that doesn’t impact “private civil liberties that Diversified [and EQT] have to private citizens over private property rights.” The DEP has contracted with a Diversified subsidiary to plug wells. The agency has paid Diversified subsidiary Next LVL Energy LLC over $150,000 since October 2021 for well-plugging, according to West Virginia State Auditor’s Office data.

The DEP awarded Next LVL Energy two contracts to plug and reclaim orphaned gas and oil wells under the federally funded Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed by Congress last year. Next LVL Energy was the low bidder on the two DEP contracts, bidding a combined $10.2 million. The DEP is requiring contractors to identify, inspect and prioritize what documented or undocumented wells to plug, in addition to plugging them and reclaiming the well sites. Under the terms of state-posted contracts, contractors will have the exclusive right to plugging orphaned, abandoned wells within the contract region.

Diversified acquired Next LVL Energy, a Pittsburgh area-based well-plugging company, in February.

Diversified also argued in its response to the lawsuit that their claims are time-barred under a two-year state statute of limitations for trespass, nuisance and negligence claims, citing past statute of limitations-focused judicial decisions. The company contends the two years the landowners had to file claims began when the wells on their properties stopped producing gas in a two-year window from 2017 through 2019.

The landowners allege that Diversified’s acquisition of thousands of wells from EQT was completed with intent to defraud creditors, including the plaintiffs, in a business model designed to push off decommissioning liabilities for decades. They say Diversified has left them with unplugged, abandoned wells that pose health risks, degrade the environment and hurt their property values.

Much of the lawsuit is based on a report published in April by the Ohio River Valley Institute, a Johnstown, Pennsylvania-based pro-renewable energy nonprofit think tank. That report predicted it was highly unlikely that Diversified will have enough money to plug and abandon all its wells. The lawsuit cites the report to allege that if Diversified had used industry norms to calculate its plugging and decommissioning obligations, then its liabilities would exceed $2 billion instead of the company’s self-reported figure of roughly $520 million, making Diversified insolvent. The report cited Diversified company data and federal projections for natural gas prices. The Ohio River Valley Institute report found that Diversified has used unusual assumptions like implausibly long economic lives of wells though 2095 and an excessively long ramp-up timeline to start plugging and abandoning most of its wells to calculate the value of its asset retirement obligations, liabilities for well plugging and abandoning costs.

In 2020, Greg Rogers, a senior advisor to Carbon Tracker, a London-based think tank researching climate change impacts on financial markets, called Diversified’s business model “a legal Ponzi scheme” in a conference call with the Capitol Forum, a corporate news analysis service. “[I]t only works as long as there’s growth and the perception of profitability,” Rogers said. States mandate that wells no longer producing gas or oil are plugged and abandoned, and that well owners secure a bond or other financial assurance that helps cover the expense of closing wells that aren’t productive anymore.

But Diversified’s critics say its business model could leave West Virginia taxpayers footing the bill for remediating many of the company’s wells. “[I]t is clear Diversified Energy’s economic model is built to fail and could leave residents of West Virginia with billions of dollars in clean up costs,” Ohio River Valley Institute senior researcher Ted Boettner said in an email.

The Office of Oil and Gas, whose authority Diversified emphasized in its lawsuit, has been beset by low inspector staff numbers. The state’s well inspection staff dwindling from 17 to nine in the past two years on the Legislature’s watch has concerned not just environmentalists but royalty owner advocates. The office has faced a $1.3 million shortfall, with officials attributing the budget crunch to permit fees having dried up amid oil and gas industry struggles. Bills that would have restored office staffing levels to what they were before they were slashed in 2020 through annual $100 oversight fees on unplugged wells failed in the Legislature amid opposition from the Gas and Oil Association of West Virginia. The industry group said the fees would be too onerous for operators.

A recent study found that low-production well sites like those dominating Diversified’s portfolio are a disproportionately large source of methane emissions. The April report published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature Communications found roughly half of all well site methane emissions nationwide come from low-production well sites like Diversified’s, which emit six to 12 times as much methane as the average rate for all U.S. well sites. Methane has a 100-year global warming potential 28 to 36 times that of carbon dioxide, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, making Diversified’s deepening well footprint across Appalachia a climate concern.

Regions of heavy oil & gas activity in the USA

From the Announcement by Matt Kelso, FracTracker Alliance, May 24, 2022

FracTracker is proud to join Earthworks and a coalition of concerned health, environmental, and social justice organizations in launching the Oil & Gas Threat Map — a mapping tool to help you visualize the pollution the oil and gas industry is trying to hide.

This new mapping tool shows who is living in the threat radius – and gives the EPA 17.3 million reasons why it must use its full authority to cut methane from oil and gas wells.

Infrared footage included in the map makes invisible pollution from oil & gas facilities visible — and you might be shocked by what you see.

The Threat Map shows 17.3 million people in the US living within 1/2 mile of oil and gas facilities that cause severe health impacts. There are also 12,445 primary and secondary schools within this threat radius.

Frontline communities deserve a swift response to this public health crisis. Take action to curb this pollution: call on the Biden administration to release the strongest rules possible to protect our communities from oil and gas pollution.

Matt Kelso, FracTracker Manager of Data & Technology, worked with Earthworks and partners to create this tool. If you have questions about the data included in the Threat Map, feel free to reach out to Matt at kelso@fractracker.org.

GO TO THE OIL AND GAS THREAT MAP

>>> FracTracker Alliance, 216 Franklin St, Ste 400, Johnstown, PA 15901

See Also: www.fractracker.org

Bootleg Fire in Oregon is too large and hot to contain

From an Article by Sarah Kaplan, Washington Post, July 1, 2021

Heat waves have toppled temperature records across the nation, and firefighters are actively battling 48 large blazes that have consumed more than half a million acres in 12 states. But land management agencies are carrying out fire mitigation measures at a fraction of the pace required, and the funds needed to make communities more resilient are one-seventh of what the government has supplied.

“We’re burning up, we’re choking up, we aren’t just heating up,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) told President Biden at a meeting with Cabinet officials and Western governors Wednesday. “Across the board we have to disabuse ourselves of the old timelines and the old frames of engagement. … We can’t just double down.”

Yet fire experts say the escalation of wildfires, fueled by climate change, demands an equally dramatic transformation in the nation’s response — from revamping the federal firefighting workforce to the management of public lands to the siting and construction of homes.

“As our seasons are getting worse and worse … it feels like we’ve reached a tipping point,” said Kelly Martin, a wildfire veteran and president of the advocacy group Grassroots Wildland Firefighters. “We need a new approach.”

The West’s hot, dry start to summer has already been devastating, to people as well as trees.

On Thursday, authorities across the Pacific Northwest and western Canada said they were investigating at least 500 suspected deaths from heat illness that occurred amid the week’s record-shattering temperatures.

Thousands of residents had to be rapidly evacuated from the sprawling Lava Fire, south of the Oregon-California border, when extreme heat and strong winds caused the blaze to explode.

Many people are still missing after a fast-moving wildfire overwhelmed the tiny mountain village of Lytton, British Columbia, on Wednesday — just a day after it notched Canada’s highest-ever temperature of 121 degrees Fahrenheit.

“This is becoming a regular cycle, and we know it’s getting worse,” Biden said Wednesday. “In fact, the threat of Western wildfires this year is as severe as it’s ever been.”

‘Always doing more with less’

When Martin started her career with the U.S. Forest Service more than three decades ago, the agency had a “warlike” approach to handling wildfires. Crews used bulldozers and other equipment to cut through vegetation and create barriers that could contain an approaching front. Helicopters and big air tankers dropped retardant from high above the flames. Although land managers knew fire was an important part of most Western ecosystems, they were also under pressure to stop blazes before they reached the area’s growing population centers.

“And we were very successful at it,” Martin said. To this day, more than 95 percent of fires are suppressed before they reach communities.

But by the time Martin retired as chief of fire and aviation at Yosemite National Park last year, climate change had fundamentally altered the nature of wildfire, making the blazes that did escape containment increasingly costly and dangerous to fight.

In most forest types, the proportion of fires that are “high severity” (killing the majority of vegetation) has at least doubled in recent decades. Firefighters are seeing more and more “extreme fire behavior” — whirling “fire tornadoes,” crown fires that spew embers into the wind and blazes that move so fast and burn so hot they create their own weather.

In 2018, a veteran Redding, Calif., firefighter was killed when a vortex the size of several football fields swept down upon him as he evacuated residents ahead of the catastrophic Carr Fire.

“Watching what the current wildland firefighters are faced with, last year and this year, it is exponentially greater in terms of risk and trauma,” Martin said.

The U.S. government is the nation’s biggest employer of what are known as “wildland” firefighters. Most are temporary workers, their salaries as low as $13.45 per hour for a starting forestry technician. They spend summers traveling the country, working 16-hour days, 12 days at a time, often relying on overtime and hazard pay to make ends meet.

For decades, they’ve relied on a months-long offseason to rest and recover.

But now there is no offseason; one fire year simply bleeds into the next, as winter rain and snow is delayed and diminished by climate change. About 100 families had to be evacuated from the Santa Cruz mountains in January — usually California’s wettest month — when winds re-ignited the embers of a fire that started last August.

Atmospheric methane content increasing rapidly

From an Article by Jeff Berardelli, CBS News, April 25, 2020

Oil and gas operations in the Permian Basin, the largest oil-producing area in the United States, are spewing more than twice the amount of methane emissions into the atmosphere than previously thought — enough wasted energy to power 7 million households in Texas for a year. That’s the result of a new study by researchers at Harvard University and the Environmental Defense Fund.

The Permian Basin stretches across a 250-mile by 250-mile area of West Texas and southeastern New Mexico, and accounts for over a third of the crude oil and 10% of the natural gas in the U.S.

The study, published this week in the journal Science Advances, also found that the rate of leakage of methane gas makes up 3.7% of all the gas extracted in the basin, which is about 60% higher than the national average leakage rate. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and since the Permian Basin is so large, this excess waste is a significant contribution to our already warming climate.

“These are the highest emissions ever measured from a major U.S. oil and gas basin,” said study co-author Dr. Steven Hamburg, chief scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).

To map the methane emissions, the team employed a space-borne sensor on a European Space Agency satellite called the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) from May 2018 to March 2019.

Satellite images show methane concentrations

While some see the leaked methane gas as a big waste of natural resources, others are focused on the danger posed by methane. Methane is an extremely powerful heat-trapping greenhouse gas, much more potent than its more well-known counterpart, carbon dioxide (CO2).

There is 225 times less methane in the atmosphere than there is CO2, but because of its powerful heat-trapping qualities, methane is contributing about 25% of the current rate of global warming.

Since the Industrial Revolution, global methane concentrations have doubled due mostly to human activities like livestock farming, decay from landfills, and from burning fossil fuels.

“I am very concerned about increasing methane emissions,” said Dr. Robert Howarth, a biogeochemist and expert on methane from Cornell University, who was not involved with the study. “Methane is 120 times more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas, compared mass-to-mass for the time both gases are in the atmosphere,” he explains.

According to Hamburg, the methane gas escaping the Permian Basin is so excessive that it has tripled the typical heating impact it would have otherwise had through burning the gas. Evidence of this massive leakage undercuts the case made by proponents of natural gas who tout its cleaner-burning qualities over that of its normally dirtier-burning cousin, coal.

“The most up-to-date thinking is that for comparing coal and natural gas to generate electricity, gas is worse than coal if the methane emission rate is greater than 2.7%,” said Howarth. However, this research found the Permian Basin’s emission rate is higher than that — 3.7% of the gross gas extracted. Therefore, the leakage in the Permian Basin is so high it makes gas and oil emissions more intensive than even coal.

“After staying level for the first decade of the 21st century, methane emissions have been rising quickly over the past decade,” said Howarth, “My research indicates that shale gas development in the U.S. is responsible for at least one-third of the total increase in these emissions globally.”

The Harvard/EDF paper attributes the high methane leakage rate to extensive venting and flaring, resulting from insufficient infrastructure to process and transport natural gas.

On the other hand, the paper concludes, the higher-than-average leakage rate in the Permian Basin implies an opportunity to reduce methane emissions through better design, more effective management, regulation and infrastructure development.

But over the past few years, regulations on fossil fuels have gone in the opposite direction. “Trump’s EPA has proposed to substantially weaken or even eliminate regulations, adopted during the Obama administration, to control methane emissions from oil and gas facilities,” said Romany Webb, a senior fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School.

Webb says the Texas Railroad Commission — the state’s oil and gas regulator — has its own rules controlling venting and flaring. Venting and flaring is permitted up to 10 days after completion of well drilling; after that operators can apply for an exemption from the commission. “Recently, the number of exemptions granted by the commission has increased dramatically, leading to concerns that it is simply acting as a rubber stamp,” said Webb.

“To detect emissions takes sophisticated approaches and highly trained personnel,” Howarth said. “To date, the best any government has done is to come up with regulations that rely on industry self-reporting. I find that rather useless.”

If the world has any hope of meeting the target for reducing emissions outlined in the Paris climate agreement, reducing CO2 cannot accomplish this alone — the climate responds far more quickly to methane, explains Howarth. To keep the level of warming below the international goal of 2 degrees Celsius and prevent the most catastrophic impacts of climate change, controlling methane leakage is essential. Without it, humanity is bound to fall short.

Pipeline pressures up to about 1200 pounds per square inch are common

How Oil & Gas Industry Could Cut Methane Pollution in Half

From an Article by Cole Mellino, EcoWatch.com, November 20, 2014

Leading environmental groups—Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, Earthjustice, Environmental Defense Fund, and Clean Air Task Force—released a summary report today to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) laying out how the agency can cut methane pollution in half with low-cost technologies and practices. The report, Waste Not: Common Sense Measures to Reduce Methane Emissions from the Oil and Natural Gas Industry, shows how the U.S. EPA must meet its obligations under the Clean Air Act by requiring the oil and gas industries to halt methane emissions. The full report will be available later this fall.

One of the simple solutions highlighted in the report shows that “most of the industry’s methane pollution comes from leaks and intentional venting that can be identified and curbed with existing, low-cost technology and better maintenance practices.” Mark Brownstein, associate vice president for U.S. Climate and Energy at the Environmental Defense Fund, agrees. “Methane leaks are simply a waste of a valuable national energy resource. The good news is that there are simple technologies and practices that the oil industry can use to substantially reduce this waste, creating new opportunities for American companies and new jobs for American workers.”

The big takeaway from this report is that these standards would cut up to 10 times more methane and up to four times more smog-forming pollutants than other proposals because these standards would apply to oil and gas infrastructure across the country, not just to equipment located in certain areas.

Why care about methane when there is so much carbon dioxide in our atmosphere? Because “methane warms the climate at least 80 times more than an equal amount of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period … its impact on the climate [is] huge. About 25 percent of the warming we are experiencing today is attributable to methane emissions. Taking steps to address methane, in addition to carbon pollution, is critical to combating climate change,” said Earthjusticeattorney Tim Ballo.

Deb Nardone, director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Natural Gas campaign, believes the best thing for the climate would be to keep all dirty fossil fuels in the ground because “fracking threatens to transform our most beautiful wild places, our communities and our backyards into dirty fuel industrial sites, so in the short term the EPA must work quickly to control methane from existing fracking operations, close the exemptions that allow the oil and gas industries to benefit at the cost of our health, prevent future leasing of our public lands and advance truly clean energy like wind, solar and energy efficiency.”

NOTE: A Marcellus gas well flare has been burning for about a week near Mt. Morris, Pennsylvania.  It lights up the night sky. But, flares do not achieve complete combustion of the natural gases so there is air pollution in addition to the carbon dioxide produced. This is in Greene County, just north of the Mason Dixon Line, between Morgantown, WV and Waynesburg, PA off I-79.  P.S. Another big problem is the diesel emissions from all the trucks and heavy equipment, known to be extremely dangerous to the workers and residents near to drilling operations.  DGN

Axiall Plant needs Brine from Salt Wells

‘Near-catastrophic’ blowout leaves chem firm wary

From an Article by Ken Ward, Charleston Gazette, October 22, 2014

As the Tomblin administration considers a plan to allow natural gas drilling under the Ohio River, a major chemical maker in Marshall County has been fighting a proposal for hydraulic fracturing near its plant, citing a “near-catastrophic” gas-well incident last year that might be linked to geologic conditions beneath the river.

Atlanta-based Axiall Corp. has been waging a legal battle to stop Gastar Exploration from fracking natural gas wells that Gastar had drilled on Axiall property under leases Gastar obtained from PPG Industries, the former owner of Axiall’s chlorine and caustic soda plant at Natrium, located along the Ohio near the Marshall-Wetzel county line.

Axiall says it is concerned about a repeat of an August-September 2013 incident it blames on high-pressure fracking fluids being used by another company, Triad Hunter, to release natural gas from the Marcellus Shale at a well site on the other side of the river.

In court documents, Axiall lawyers say increased underground pressure from the fracking at Triad Hunter traveled under the river and somehow made contact with brine wells Axiall uses to obtain saltwater, one of the key materials used in its manufacturing process. Axiall says those pressures led to a blowout in which one of its brine wells at its plant “began spewing flammable natural gas.”

No injuries were reported, but parts of Axiall’s brine production were closed for more than six months for repairs and the company had to set up several large flares to burn off excess natural gas. Axiall was “fortunate to have been able to limit the environmental impact of the Triad Hunter incident and avoid bodily injury or loss of life due to a natural gas explosion or other disaster,” the company says in court records.

In a lawsuit filed in Pennsylvania, Axiall lawyers asked that Gastar be forced to conduct far more extensive underground investigations to determine if its gas operations pose a threat of a similar incident, and that it be required to submit more detailed plans for avoiding any damage to the Axiall facility.

“Gastar’s plan to blindly stimulate these wells by injecting fluid at extremely high pressure in order to ‘rubble-ize’ the Marcellus Shale is careless, dangerous, shortsighted and in breach of the lease agreement that permits Gastar to explore for and extract oil and gas in that area,” lawyers for Axiall subsidiary Eagle Natrium LLC argued in court filings.

Axiall lawyers said the company “supports the responsible development of natural gas” but that “extra care must be taken” when operating in the vicinity of its saltwater wells, which “are essential to the continued operation of a billion-dollar chemical plant that employs 500 people.”

Lawyers for Gastar responded that the company had “carefully studied and planned its drilling and fracturing operations in the Marcellus Shale” and that “potential” or “possible” risks were not enough to warrant the “sweeping, mandatory injunction” that Axiall sought.

On Tuesday, Allegheny County Judge Christine Ward issued a two-page order that denied Axiall’s motion for a preliminary injunction to stop Houston-based Gastar from fracking wells at the Natrium site. The order said a more detailed court opinion would be filed later.

Mike McCown, chief operating officer for Gastar, said his company is pleased with the decision “as we have continually believed the allegations were without merit.” Axiall officials would not comment on the decision or on whether the company plans to appeal.

The legal battle between Axiall and Gastar comes amid continued citizen concerns about the effects on the environment and on small, rural communities of the Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling and production boom in Northern West Virginia.

In recent weeks, critics of the boom have focused their attention on Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin’s proposal to lease rights for private companies to drill and produce natural gas from state-owned reserves under portions of the Ohio River.

One of three areas targeted by the administration for potential lease runs along Marshall County, about two miles upriver from the Axiall facility. A second of the areas targeted for potential leasing is just south of the plant and includes about a half-mile of area that Axiall has identified as being within its “area of concern” about drilling, said Deputy Commerce Secretary Joshua Jarrell. Jarrell said another area of the river, located just alongside the plant, was initially being considered for lease but was withdrawn from consideration — at least for now — until the issues being raised by Axiall are resolved.

Jarrell said officials from his agency met with the state Department of Environmental Protection and with Axiall to discuss the company’s concerns.

“We certainly took them seriously, and under advisement,” Jarrell said Wednesday. “We certainly want to see anything with regards to development done safely and reasonably.”

Jarrell said any agreements the state makes for leasing under the river would require drilling companies to obtain permits from the DEP, and that the state would consider additional language that specifically requires the issues raised by Axiall to be resolved to the DEP’s satisfaction.

“[The] DEP is the agency that is going to evaluate the safety of the process, and we would certainly defer any of those questions to them,” Jarrell said.

James Martin, chief of the DEP’s Office of Oil and Gas, said Wednesday that Gastar had obtained three permits in the area of the Natrium plant before the blowout incident. Gastar also has other permit applications pending at the facility and was identified by the state as the high bidder on the river section Axiall is most concerned about, state officials said.

Martin said his agency is looking at its options for adding some conditions to the three existing permits to require additional safety precautions by Gastar.

“We’re looking at that, and we’re considering whether or not some measures need to be taken to minimize the likelihood of something like that happening,” he said. “At this point, our expectation is that there would be no operations take place until we get done what we need to do with the conditions or an order.”

The Axiall plant’s operations date back to the 1940s, when the facility was opened to tap into a huge salt deposit located far beneath the surface. The plant uses salt mined from these subsurface deposits to produce chlorine, caustic soda and hydrogen, as well as hydrochloric acid and calcium hyperchloride.

In February 2011, then-plant owner PPG issued a news release announcing that it had reached agreement with Gastar on a lease that would eventually involve more than 30 natural gas wells on the Natrium property. Gastar would hire additional employees for the work, and PPG estimated the deal would generate for it about $50 million over 30 years, including an initial payment of $10 million.

“When developed responsibly, Marcellus Shale resources represent a fantastic opportunity in our region to promote jobs and secure an abundant source of U.S.-based energy for our homes and our businesses,” Michael McGarry, PPG’s senior vice president, said in the release. “We are pleased to be working with Gastar Exploration on this exciting project and believe that this development continues to demonstrate PPG’s commitment to the long-term sustainability of our Natrium plant.”

Axiall purchased the Natrium facility from PPG in January 2013, and plans for the natural gas drilling continued — until the blowout incident.

New research indicates that wastewater disposal wells—and sometimes fracking itself—can induce earthquakes

From Sharon Wilson, EARTHWORKS’ Oil and Gas Accountability Project, May 3, 2014
 
Ohio regulators did something last month that had never been done before: they drew a tentative link between shale gas fracking and an increase in local earthquakes. As fracking has grown in the U.S., so have the number of earthquakes—there were more than 100 recorded quakes of magnitude 3.0 or larger each year between 2010 and 2013, compared to an average of 21 per year over the preceding three decades. That includes a sudden increase in seismic activity in usually calm states like Kansas, Oklahoma and Ohio—states that have also seen a rapid increase in oil and gas development. Shale gas and oil development is still growing rapidly—more than eightfold between 2007 and 2012—but if fracking and drilling can lead to dangerous quakes, America’s homegrown energy revolution might be in for an early end.

But seismologists are only now beginning to grapple with the connection between oil and gas development and earthquakes. New research being presented at the annual meeting of the Seismological Society of America this week shows that wastewater disposal wells—deep holes drilled to hold hundreds of millions of gallons of fluid produced by oil and gas wells—may be changing the stress on existing faults, inducing earthquakes that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. Those quakes can occur tens of miles away from the wells themselves, further than scientists had previously believed. And they can be large as well—researchers have now linked two quakes in 2011 with a magnitude greater than 5.0 to wastewater wells.

“This demonstrates there is a significant hazard,” said Justin Rubinstein, a research geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey. “We need to address ongoing seismicity.”

Rubinstein was speaking on a teleconference call with three other seismologists who have been researching how oil and gas development might be able to induce quakes. All of them noted that the vast majority of wastewater disposal sites and oil and gas wells weren’t connected to increased quake activity—which is a good thing, since there are more than 30,000 disposal wells alone scattered around the country. But scientists are still trying to figure out which wells might be capable of inducing strong quakes, though the sheer volume of fluid injected into the ground seems to be the driving factor (that’s one reason why hydraulic fracturing itself rarely seems to induce quakes—around 5 million gallons, or 18.9 million L, of fluid is used in fracking, far less than the amount of fluid that ends up in a disposal well).

“There are so many injection operations throughout much of the U.S. now that even though a small fraction might induce quakes, those quakes have contributed dramatically to the seismic hazard, especially east of the Rockies,” said Arthur McGarr, a USGS scientist working on the subject.

What scientists need to do is understand that seismic hazard—especially if oil and gas development in one area might be capable of inducing quakes that could overwhelm structures that were built for a lower quake risk. That’s especially important given that fracking is taking place in many parts of the country—like Oklahoma or Ohio—that haven’t had much experience with earthquakes, and where both buildings and people likely have a low tolerance to temblors. Right now there’s very little regulation regarding how oil and gas development activities should be adjusted to reduce quake risk—and too little data on the danger altogether.

“There’s a very large gap on policy here,” says Gail Atkinson, a seismologist at the University of Western Ontario. “We need extensive databases on the wells that induce seismicity and the ones that don’t.”

So far the quakes that seem to have been induced by oil and gas activity have shaken up people who live near wells, but haven’t yet caused a lot of damage. But that could change if fracking and drilling move to a part of the country that already has clear existing seismic risks—like California, which has an estimated 15 billion barrels of oil in the Monterey Shale formation that could only be accessed through fracking (limited fracking has been done in California, but only in the lightly populated center of the state). Environmentalists who seek to block shale oil development in the Golden State have seized on fears of fracking-induced quakes, and a bill in the state legislature would establish a moratorium on fracking until research shows it can be done safely.

Regulation is slowly beginning to catch up. In Ohio, officials this month established new guidelines that would allow regulators to halt active hydraulic fracturing if seismic monitors detect a quake with a magnitude of 1.0 or higher. But it will ultimately be up to the oil and gas industry to figure out a way to carry out development without making the earth shake.

“I am confident that it is only a matter of time before we figure out how to exercise these technologies in a way that avoids significant quakes,” says Atkinson. Otherwise the fracking revolution may turn out to be short-lived.
 
=== EARTHWORKS:  Protecting Communities and the Environment
 

By S. Tom Bond, Co-Editor FrackCheckWV, Resident Farmer in Lewis County, WV

If you are one of us who likes to know where a well is located right to it’s immediate surroundings, such as which side of the creek it is on, or where along a road it is, exact placement was a difficult thing to do a few years ago. The Global Positioning System (GPS) which exists today allows designating location very accurately. If you own a GPS apparatus, which is not very expensive, and no more than moderately difficult to learn to use, you can designate position or can find a position with it.

Two numbers are needed, one to designate North-South position and one East -West. The accuracy is about one yard. It can also be used for height above sea level, if needed.

Consequently GPS location is used on well permits, to locate spills, etc. More than one system of numbers can be used. The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has chosen to use the system known as Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM).

A typical location looks like this: 39.2470827763945 -80.5985162840238. This is two numbers, the first of which, 39.2470827763945 is North of the equator and the second is west of the prime meridian, which runs through Greenwich, a suburb of London. These particular numbers give you a Marcellus well site in Doddridge County South of Rt. 50 and West of Rt. 18. (Notice: these numbers are roughly analogous to latitude North of the equator and longitude West of the prime meridian. The difference is well beyond the scope of this article, but easy to find on the net.)

It’s easy to track a well down to the exact location. One way to track down the well would be to use location and go out and walk to it with your GPS. That would be quite time and energy intensive, though.

Well locations can be found on the WV-DEP Internet site, and by the two methods which follow.

Well permits which have been newly processed by the DEP are published daily by SkyTruth Alert. Go to:        http://alerts.skytruth.org/

At that time you designate an area of interest by moving the map location and size to get the area you want news from, then submitt your email address. After signup you receive a feed covering permits in your chosen area as they are published by the DEP. It includes such permit data as drilling company, county, farm name, API Number (a unique serial number for wells administered by the American Petroleum Institute) as well as the geographic (GPS) location. This is accompanied by a small map that shows location with respect to roads, but not topography of the landscape.

There are several well types, which you can determine from the type of permit. Also the newsletter includes reported spills. The UTM numbers given are much longer than necessary. Each succeeding decimal place increases accuracy by one-tenth. Five places after the decimal point establishes accuracy to about a yard, the limit of the civilian GPSystem. (The military has a system that is somewhat more accurate.) Information encoded in the extra digits (presuming there is some) remains a mystery to this author. He asked the DEP and got a run-around.

If you don’t want to walk the well site or don’t own a GPS apparatus you can use Google Earth, another computer application. This will locate the well and is almost as accurate as walking use of the GPS with much less effort. You download the application here: http://www.google.com/earth/download/ge/agree.html

First, enter the UTM numbers by copying from the source and pasting in Google Earth. At first the point is marked on a representation of the whole earth. The scale rapidly changes showing states, then counties and then localities. The imagery in the Marcellus area is from the USDA Farm Service Agency flyovers done last summer. This is sufficiently detailed you can see individual trees. Roads have route numbers or names given at magnifications somewhat less than the most detailed, and also there are marks for certain man-made points of reference, such as dams and some churches.

The user can adjust scale, rising above the earth to get a larger area, or going closer to get local detail. You can move sideways, North, East, South or West by clicking on one set of arrows, and you can rotate right or left and tilt, so you can see further out toward the horizon with a second set of arrows. You can move around and see what went on before the flyover last summer too, such things as pipelines intended for connecting wells in the area and compressor stations, and access roads and drilling platforms.

You must keep in mind that new wells since last summer’s flyover will not be shown on Google Earth, nor will other recent “development.” And you don’t see the well, the roads and the pipelines associated with the well, just the unblemished spot where it is going.

Use of Google Earth to find a well location takes only a couple of minutes.

For wells that are already drilled use FrackTracker. For wells are located in West Virginia at present go to: http://maps.fractracker.org/?webmap=c642c5c97cfa4634b7e42d42b32d1d74

Notice the scale in the upper left corner. This lets you go to a larger scale map. If you are interested in another state, go here: http://www.fractracker.org/maps/

And pick the state you are interested in. They even have one for Wisconsin, which has no shale wells, but is the source of sand used as “propant” in the fracking process. They have a controversy and activist groups there too, because of shale drilling.

To find details on a well you are interested in with FrackTrackr, adjust the scale in the upper left corner so your choice is readily identifiable. This is often necessary to get the particular well you are interested in when they overlap. Then click on a particular well and data comes up, including UTM numbers. The data is frequently several panels, and some panels must have the slider moved to see all the data.

If you look around thoroughly, you will find the two UTM numbers for each well clicked. In my experience, FrackTracker location varies by several miles from Google Earth. I trust Google Earth, because when you use the data supplied by SkyTruth wells with new permits for the same farm and well pad, come up adjacent to each other.

All three sites, FrackTracker, Google Earth and SkyTruth are user friendly and very rich sources for location and administrative detail. In general, FrackTracker shows the accumulated impact, SkyTruth the new drilling permitted, and Google Earth the location right down to the local roads and trees. We are fortunate to have this help.

All three sites have much more information than indicated here, and deserve browsing time for other information.

P.S. >>> An excellent new source for Pennsylvania wells has become known to the author since the above article was written. It is MarcellusGas.Org. There are two levels of membership, one free and the other is very inexpensive. <<<