WV Residents Concerned About Pipelines --- www.pipelineupdate.org

From: Rick Webb, Nelson County, VA
Sent: August 22, 2016
To: Pipeline Contacts and Affected Persons
Subject: Guidance for Monitoring Water Supplies Threatened by Pipeline Development

The Allegheny-Blue Ridge Alliance (ABRA) has released a report for landowners and water providers concerned about the potential impacts of pipeline development on water supplies:
GUIDANCE FOR MONITORING EFFECTS OF GAS PIPELINE DEVELOPMENT ON SURFACE WATER AND GROUNDWATER SUPPLIES

The report was prepared by Downstream Strategies, a West Virginia-based environmental consulting firm. Funding was provided by ABRA member groups and individual contributors.

Although the developers of the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) and Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) indicate that they will monitor the quality and quantity of water supply springs and wells, the information they have provided about monitoring plans and acceptance of responsibility for water supply damage is incomplete.

The new report provides information concerning:
• Risks, potential impacts, and other water supply issues related to pipeline development;
• Collection of the data that will be needed to hold pipeline developers responsible for harm to water supplies;
• Methods for establishing baseline information on water quantity and quality and for long-term monitoring to detect change; and
• Laboratories and consultants that can conduct monitoring and analysis.

For landowners, the guide describes a tiered approach to water supply monitoring that incorporates collection of defensible data by water resource professionals and landowner collection of screening or early-detection data.

For water providers, a primary benefit of the guide is to document likely contaminants and the potential impacts to source water from pipeline development that may affect their treatment processes or finished (post-treatment) drinking water distributed to customers.
Although some of the information in this report is specific to the MVP and ACP pipelines, the guidelines for monitoring water resources is applicable to any landowners and water providers who may be impacted by pipeline development.

ABRA is a coalition of 50 organizations concerned about the natural gas pipeline that Dominion Resources and its partner companies have proposed to build through portions of West Virginia and Virginia.
Organizational contributors to the water supply monitoring guidance project include:  Dominion Pipeline Monitoring Coalition, Cowpasture River Preservation Association, Friends of Nelson, Greenbrier River Watershed Association, Highlanders for Responsible Development, West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, and West Virginia Rivers Coalition.

Rick Webb, Coordinator
Dominion Pipeline Monitoring Coalition
rwebb.dpmc@gmail.com
540-468-2881 h, 540-290-0913 c

Aircraft Instrumented for Research

Another study points to climate harm from gas drilling

From an Article by Ken Ward, Charleston Gazette, May 9, 2014

Another study has found that global warming pollution from natural gas drilling and production is likely far greater than estimated by current government emissions inventories.

During two days of intensive airborne measurements, oil and gas operations in Colorado’s Front Range leaked nearly three times as much heat-trapping methane as predicted by current inventory estimates, according to the new study from the University of Colorado-Boulder.

The measurements also found that benzene emissions were seven times higher than existing inventories, and that emissions of other chemicals that contribute to smog were twice as high as estimates.

“These discrepancies are substantial,” said lead author Gabrielle Petron, an atmospheric scientist with the university’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.

“Emission estimates or ‘inventories’ are the primary tool that policymakers and regulators use to evaluate air quality and climate impacts of various sources, including oil and gas sources,” Petron said. “If they’re off, it’s important to know.”

The new study, published last week in the American Geophysical Union’s Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmosphere, provides confirmation of findings from research performed from 2008 to 2010 by Petron and her colleagues on the magnitude of air pollutant emissions from oil and gas activities in northeastern Colorado.

For years, the conventional wisdom was that natural gas was a good alternative to coal, producing half the carbon dioxide emissions per unit of energy when burned in a power plant. However, natural gas itself is mostly methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, and the conventional thinking didn’t take into account methane emissions during the process of drilling for, producing and transporting natural gas.

Three years ago, the issue gained much more attention with the publication of a study by a team of Cornell University researchers, led by ecology professor Robert Howarth. That study reported that natural gas could be just as bad — or worse — than coal for global warming, especially if the issue is examined on the short time frame in which scientists believe action is needed to curb global warming.

Since then, industry officials have harshly criticized Howarth’s study, and there’s been a lively debate in scientific journals about his results and about the many variables used to estimate methane emissions from the shale-gas boom across the country.

The natural gas boom in West Virginia and across the nation has brought climate-change benefits. Fuel-switching by utilities from coal to natural gas has — along with dramatic increases in renewable power generation — has helped reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the U.S. electricity sector to their lowest levels since 1994.

West Virginia political leaders tout natural gas as the state’s energy and economic future. They say the jobs will keep coming, and that spin-off businesses from natural gas production will eventually revitalize the state’s chemical-making industry.

President Obama is targeting greenhouse emissions from coal-fired power plants as part of his plan to combat climate change. But the administration has warmly embraced the natural gas boom, citing the switch from coal to gas for electricity generation as one way to combat climate change.

The new Colorado study is the latest to find that current emissions inventories for the oil and gas industry’s methane emissions likely underestimate those emissions.

“Accurate estimates of emissions from oil and natural gas operations at the regional and national level are still needed to quantify (and minimize) their impacts on climate forcing and air quality,” the study said.

Last month, a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences likewise reported methane emissions greater than existing estimates based on examination of natural gas wells in Pennsylvania.

“These regional scale findings and a recent national study indicate that overall site leak rates can be higher than current inventory estimates,” that paper said. “Additionally, a recent comprehensive study of measured natural gas emission rates versus ‘official’ inventory estimates found that the inventories consistently underestimated measured emissions and hypothesized that one explanation for this discrepancy could be a small number of high-emitting wells or components.

“These high leak rates illustrate the urgent need to identify and mitigate these leaks as shale gas production continues to increase nationally.”

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

Questions on Gas Industry – EDF Methane Leakage Study

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Note: David Allen et al. of the University of Texas have a paper in the most recent Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences entitled “Measurements of methane emissions at natural gas production sites in the United States.” Professor Howarth, along with R. Santoro and A. Ingraffea had published “Methane and the greenhouse gas footprint of natural gas from shale formation” in Climate Change at 106:679-690 back in 2011.  

This excerpt of the Press Release from Professor Howarth is as follows:

A major call from our April 2011 paper was for direct measurements of methane emissions by independent scientists. Amazingly, few such studies had been conducted over the preceding decades, and most of the extremely-limited available information was coming from industry sources, usually unverified and undocumented. I am delighted to report that many scientists have taken up the challenge of measuring methane emissions in the short time since our paper came out 29 months ago.

The EDF and industry-funded study by David Allen and colleagues is one of these new studies. So far, I have only seen the preprint of their paper to be published soon, and I have not had access to any of the supporting on-line documents. But with that qualifier, I believe Allen et al. have done a fine job of characterizing emissions in the sites they have studied. Their conclusion is that upstream emissions are low, 0.42% of natural gas production (lower than we estimated for shale gas back in our April 2011 paper, and towards the low end of what we estimated for conventional natural gas).

This is good news. It suggests that the oil and gas industry – when sufficiently motivated – can produce natural gas with modestly low emissions. There are a couple of caveats, however.

First, this study is based only on evaluation of sites and times chosen by industry. The Environmental Defense Fund over the past year has repeatedly stated that only by working with industry could they and the Allen et al. team have access necessary to make their measurements. So this study must be viewed as a best-case scenario. Perhaps when industry is motivated, methane emissions can be kept to this relatively low level.

Second, many other scientists have proven over the past 2 years that you can measure methane emissions from gas development without industry cooperation, for instance by using aircraft to fly over operations. Many studies have now been published, and many more presented at national scientific meetings, on methane emissions using techniques which capture the emissions at regional scales and do not require industry permission to sample. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) laboratory in Boulder, CO, has been a very important player in this work, but other labs including many academic institutions have also been pursuing this line of research. All of these studies are reporting upstream emission estimates that are 10- to 20-fold higher than those reported in this new paper by the Allen and colleagues. Most of these other estimates from NOAA and independent non-industry funded academics are in fact at the upper end of what we estimated in our April 2011 paper, or far higher. This should be truly alarming to anyone concerned about global climate change.

How can we explain this huge discrepancy? My take at the moment – again without access to the data sources and analysis behind the Allen et al. paper – is that the gas industry can produce gas with relatively low emissions, but they very often do not do so. They do better when they know they are being carefully watched. When measurements are made at sites the industry chooses and at times the industry allows, emissions are lower than the norm. But the norm may well be 10-fold or more higher, based on the other accumulating research by NOAA and other independent researchers.

A critical point: Allen and colleagues reported massive amounts of methane flared at the time right after shale gas wells were fracked.  Flaring means the gas was burned, not vented to the atmosphere as methane.  Were that gas vented as methane without flaring, the total emissions picture would have been far, far greater.  Do the sites studied by Allen et al. with industry cooperation reflect the general practice?  Will EPA rules promulgated over the past year or so to require flaring and not venting in the future be enforceable, given that venting is invisible, and flaring often draws community criticisms because of jet-like noise and flames extending hundreds of feet into the air for days?  Unless society is willing to fund efforts to measure emissions at every well completion, a very expensive proposition, what is to keep less environmentally responsible companies from failing to follow the EPA rules and simply vent this invisible and incredibly climate-destructive methane gas?

Finally, methane emissions from upstream at the well sites is only part of the problem.  Methane is also emitted as gas moves to consumers, and again new studies are indicating these emissions may be even larger than the 1.4 to 3.6% of lifetime well production we estimated in our April 2011 paper.

 Professor Robert Howarth, Ph.D., Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University

See also:  www.FrackCheckWV.net

Big Oil PR Pros, Lobbyists Dominate EDF Fracking Climate Study Steering Committee

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Analysis by Steve Horn, Desmogblog, September 18, 2013

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Alongside releasing its controversial findings on fugitive methane emissions caused by hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) on September 16, University of Texas-Austin also unveiled an industry-stacked Steering Committee roster for the study it conducted in concert with Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).

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Stacked with former and current oil industry lobbyists, policy professionals and business executives, the Steering Committee is proof positive of the conflicts of interest evident in the roster of people and funding behind the “frackademia” study.

Only two out of the 11 members of the Steering Committee besides lead author and UT-Austin Professor David Allen have a science background relevant to onshore fracking. 

The Cornell study concluded fracking is worse for the climate than coal combustion when measured over its entire lifecycle. 

In the case of the EDF study – based on the oddly rosy findings – it seems plausible the industry-stacked Committee drove the report in a direction beneficial to oil industry profits rather than science. That study found fugitive methane emissions at the well pad to be 2%-4% lower than discovered by the non-industry funded groundbreaking April 2011 Cornell University study co-authored by Anthony Ingraffea and Robert Howarth.

Steering Committee: PR Pros, Lobbyists, Policy Wonks

The following is a list of Steering Committee members working for Big Oil. 

1.) Ted Wurfel, Health, Safety, Environment and Operational Integrity Manager for Talisman Energy: Wurfel is one of two Steering Committee members besides lead author Allen with a science degree relevant to onshore drilling, with an engineering academic background, according to LinkedIn. He’s also a registered lobbyist in Pennsylvania - a state located in the heart of the Marcellus Shale basin – and formerly lobbied for Chief Oil and Gas. 

2.) Paul Krishna, Manager of Environmental, Health & Safety Issues at ExxonMobil/XTO Energy: Krishna is the other Steering Committee member with a science degree relevant to onshore drilling, with an undergraduate degree in geology and a masters in geosciences. 

3.) David McBride, Vice President of Environmental and Human Services at Anadarko Petroleum: McBride earned a degree in Marine Biology before going to law school and pursuing his career in the oil industry.

4.) Jeffrey Kupfer works as a non-registered lobbyist for Chevron – officially titled a “Senior Advisor for Government Affairs.” Kupfer sits on the Executive Board of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, the industry’s lobbying arm in Pennsylvania. He sits on Pennsylvania Republican Gov. Tom Corbett’s industry-stacked Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission alongside one of the industry’s first “frackademics,” Terry Engelder of Penn State University. Kupfer also sits on Maryland’s Marcellus Shale Safe Drilling Initiative Advisory Commission.

Prior to working for Chevron, Kupfer passed through the government-industry revolving door and worked as Deputy U.S. Secretary of State for President George W. Bush from 2006-2009 under former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He also spent time as the State Department’s Chief Operating Officer under Rice. Chevron is one of the dues-paying members of the Center for Sustainable Shale Development – described as the “Big Green Fracking Machine” by Public Accountability Initiative – alongside EDF.

5.) Dick Francis serves as Manager of Regulatory Policy for Shell Oil, another dues-paying member of the Center for Sustainable Shale Development.

6.) James Bolander serves as Senior Vice President Resource Development for Southwestern Energy.

7.) Susan Spratlen serves as head of Communications at Pioneer Resources and has an accounting undergraduate academic background.

8.) David Keane is BG Group’s Vice President of Policy and Corporate Affairs and has a business school academic background. Keane testified on behalf of the Alaska Gas Pipeline (now known as the South Central LNG project) - co-owned by Transcanada, ExxonMobil, BP and ConocoPhillips - in front of the Alaska state legislature in February 2008. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Center for Liquefied Natural Gas. 

9.) Jill Cooper serves as Group Lead for the US Division of the Environment for Encana. Her academic background is in environmental law and she also has a masters in business.

Steering Off the Climate Cliff?

EDF’s study has already won praise from the American Petroleum Institute, Energy in Depth, industry-funded propaganda film “FrackNation,” and the right-wing news website founded by Glenn Beck, The Blaze.

Greenpeace USA Executive Director Phil Radford’s worst case scenario has come true.

“At worst, [the study] will be used as PR by the natural gas industry to promote their pollution,” Radford wrote soon after the study’s release.

“In fact, methane is 105 times more powerful than carbon pollution as a global warming pollutant [during its first 20 years in the atmosphere], so figuring out its real climate impacts has very real consequences for us going forward.”

This raises the key question: could the Steering Committee’s agenda steer us all off the climate cliff? 

See also for more on this and related studies: www.FrackCheckWV.net