Methane emissions cause ozone pollution (near term) & climate change (long term)

From an Article by Michael Booth, Colorado Sun, July 25, 2022

DCP Operating Company LP settles with federal and state officials over allegations of failing to detect gases contributing to Front Range ozone. This Colorado natural gas processor will pay a $3.25 million fine in a settlement with federal and state air pollution officials, after allegations the company failed to detect and repair leaks that contributed to worsening ozone problems on the northern Front Range.

DCP Operating Company LP and five related subsidiaries will pay the fines and make repairs, in a consent decree announced by the regional Environmental Protection Agency office in Denver after allegations of leaks and failure to repair at gas processing locations in Greeley, Platteville and other Weld County locations. Weld County is part of the EPA’s northern Front Range nonattainment area for ongoing ozone violations, and state and local governments must come up with plans to cut emissions that contribute to the health-harming gas.

The decree says DCP does not admit to liability for the allegations, but will have to pay the fine and also invest millions of dollars in equipment and systems to prevent new leaks. The decree was negotiated with EPA, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the Colorado Air Pollution Control Division, part of the state health department.

“Enforcement actions like this are critical to improving air quality, particularly in places facing air quality challenges like Weld County,” Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division said in a statement. Soon after the fine announcement, the state health department issued another Ozone Action Day Alert for the Front Range, one of many so far this summer, warning vulnerable residents to avoid too much outdoor activity for 24 hours.

“EPA continues to deliver cleaner air through the rigorous enforcement of the Clean Air Act,” EPA Regional Administrator KC Becker said in a statement. “This settlement will reduce emissions of over 288 tons of volatile organic compounds and 1,300 tons of methane from production areas near northern Colorado communities, a majority of which are disproportionately impacted by pollution.”

Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment Executive Director Jill Hunsaker Ryan credited state inspectors and enforcement personnel from the air division’s leak detection and repair program. She said the settlement will go to the state’s Community Impact Fund, which helps pay for local environmental justice projects.

DCP will now have to bolster leak detection and repair at facilities in the Greeley, Kersey/Mewbourne, Platteville, Roggen, Spindle, O’Connor and Lucerne processing plants, and the future Bighorn plant. The requirements include new equipment that leaks less, tightening compliance with rules, repairing leaks faster, and staff training. The decree says the company will also use optical imaging technology to find and repair leaks faster.

One repair on two turbines at the Kersey/Mewbourne plant will cost $1.15 million, and is expected to reduce VOCs there by 26 tons a year, and methane by 375 tons a year, according to the agreement. Natural gas processing facilities separate impurities and liquids from the gas. Methane also contributes to global warming, multiplying greenhouse gases by dozens of times the rate of carbon dioxide emissions.

Ground-level ozone causes respiratory illness, aggravates asthma, and can worsen existing heart disease.

A related company, DCP Midstream, was fined $5.3 million by New Mexico regulators in 2020 for alleged repeated violations of state air pollution emissions rules.

EPA and state officials say they are focusing tightly on northern Front Range oil and gas operations. The EPA last year reached a $1 million settlement with Noble Energy over alleged violations from oil tank batteries in Weld County floodplains.

DCP said in an email statement that the company started working on some of the fixes in the decree as early as 2019. “The settlement agreement resolves an administrative enforcement matter with the EPA and the State of Colorado and is also in line with our commitment to responsible environmental management and sustainability,” said DCP manager of public affairs Jeanette Alberg. The agreement “is consistent with our ongoing efforts to reduce emissions within our company footprint and is a positive outcome for all of our stakeholders,” she said. DCP is also upgrading Colorado facilities not mentioned in the settlement, the company said.

Environmental groups responded with skepticism, noting a recent hearing in front of the Air Quality Control Commission where northern Front Range cities said their own studies showed emissions are not down.

“This just continues to underscore the oil and gas industry’s rampant noncompliance with clean air laws and the terrible toll that continues to be taken on air quality along the Front Range,” said Jeremy Nichols of WildEarth Guardians. “Studies have basically confirmed that oil and gas industry emissions have not decreased over the years. It’s good that regulators are pressing DCP, Nichols said, “but it doesn’t seem like industry is truly changing its ways and doing everything it can and should to comply.”

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CLEAN AIR COUNCIL Recommendation ~

Tell the EPA to finalize the strongest air pollution regulations possible. This includes a ban on gas flaring or venting unless in absolute emergencies, consistent methane monitoring at all oil and gas facilities (including smaller, leak-prone wells), and requiring “no-bleed” pneumatic controllers and pumps at all gas wells and compressor stations.

Drilling, fracking and production operations involve methane emissions

From an Article by Kristina Marusic, Environmental Health News, April 23, 2020

Methane emissions are vastly undercounted at the state and national level because we’re missing accidental leaks from oil and gas wells, according to a new study.

Methane is a greenhouse gas that, when initially released, is about 87 times more potent than carbon dioxide at driving global warming (it doesn’t last as long in the atmosphere, however, so when averaged over a century methane is about 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide at driving global warming). Methane causes about 25 percent of human-driven climate change according to the Environmental Defense Fund, and the oil and gas industry is the leading emitter of methane. Last year, global atmospheric methane reached a 20-year high.

The new study, conducted by researchers at Cornell University and published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, looked at 589,175 operator reports on methane leaks from both fracking and conventional oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania from 2014-2018. The researchers found that methane emissions in the state are at least 15 percent higher than previously thought—and they believe a similar under-counting is happening at the national level.

“Another 15 percent of methane going into the atmosphere that we didn’t know about is very significant for climate change in the short term,” Tony Ingraffea, professor emeritus of engineering at Cornell and the study’s lead author, told EHN.

Ingraffea also authored a groundbreaking study in 2011 that determined methane emissions from fracking accelerate global warming more than carbon dioxide emissions from either coal or conventional oil and gas. Pennsylvania is the second largest producer of natural gas in the country after Texas. Ingraffea’s study comes on the heels of a study published this week by Harvard researchers that found methane emissions in the Permian basin in Texas and New Mexico are more than two times higher than federal estimates.

Methane exposure is rarely a threat to human health except under extreme circumstances, but “as a climate change exacerbator,” Ingraffea said, “it affects the health of every human on the planet.”

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PA DEP) has required all oil and gas well operators in the state to measure the amount of methane leaking from producing wells once per quarter since 2014. Fracking wells are required to submit quarterly reports on their findings, while conventional wells must submit reports at least once a year. No other state has such extensive methane leak monitoring, and this study, which took three years to complete, marks the first time the data has ever been analyzed.

While other studies have estimated methane leaks from oil and gas, such as flying over gas wells in aircrafts with methane detection equipment, this is the first to use data that’s been self-reported by oil and gas well operators.

“This is a profoundly important database,” Ingraffea said. “There’s nothing comparable happening in any other part of America.”

Ingraffea and his colleagues found that the Pennsylvania oil and gas wells that reported methane leaks over the five year period emitted an average of about 56 gigagrams (or 56 billion grams) of methane into the atmosphere every year. These emissions are not currently included in the state’s methane emissions inventory.

PA DEP director of communications Neil Shader told EHN the agency is still reviewing the study’s findings and can’t yet speculate about what actions it may take in response.

A series of studies conducted by the Environmental Defense Fund previously estimated that around 10 teragrams (or 10 trillion grams) of methane are leaking from the oil and gas sector across the country each year. “The amount of methane coming from leaks in Pennsylvania is a relatively small subset of that,” Ingraffea said. “But if we take a wild guess and extrapolate what we’re seeing in Pennsylvania to all of America, we’re looking at three million wells and 20 times the methane emissions we saw in the Pennsylvania data.”

Meanwhile, the Trump Administration has proposed rolling back existing methane regulations at the federal level through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA’s rule, which is not yet finalized, aims to lift rules from the Obama Administration that required companies to detect and fix methane leaks. In a statement, EPA Administrator said the revisions would remove “unnecessary and duplicative regulatory burdens from the oil and gas industry.”

“EPA is moving in the wrong direction,” Ingraffea said, adding that a major part of the problem is a failure to accurately measure our current methane emissions.

“Missing 10 to 15 percent of methane emissions would be like saying we’re off about carbon dioxide emissions by factor of two,” he added. “No one would accept that. Everyone would be saying, ‘We’re in big trouble.’ Being off this much in our methane accounting is just as important.”

Unreliable reporting has been the norm

Marcellus Shale rig and gas well operation in Jackson Township, Pennsylvania. (Credit: WCN 24/7/flickr)

Ingraffea noted that their calculations are likely on the low end of true methane emissions from oil and gas well leaks in Pennsylvania.

There are around 132,000 operating oil and gas wells in the state, but fewer than half of those reported data on methane leaks to the PA DEP as required. Of the some 60,000 wells that submitted reports, about half of those didn’t actually include any data, citing various reasons they couldn’t take measurements on methane leaks (like inability to access the well site). The study also only looked at data from wells that are actively producing—it didn’t account for methane leaks from abandoned wells or wells that were still being actively drilled or fracked (and not yet producing).

Shader said that the wells missing data are conventional wells, not fracking wells, and include things like home-use wells and wells from small operators. “DEP often receives data from these operators on paper, and it must be entered manually, which can cause delays in making the data available electronically,” he said, “however, DEP has and will continue to take enforcement actions against operators that do not comply with the reporting requirements.”

The Pennsylvania Independent Oil & Gas Association (PIOGA) declined to comment on whether the industry is working to resolve these issues with reporting.

The researchers also noted some major issues with the reliability of the data. For example, some wells that reported large quantities of methane leaks for several years in a row would suddenly report none after being purchased by a different operator the following year. One likely reason for this is a lack of consistency in testing techniques, Ingraffea said. Operators aren’t all required to use the same testing equipment or methods.

“Not only is much of the data unreliable,” he said, “but I will go on record as saying that some of the data being reported to the state is downright fraudulent.”

There’s also no minimum reporting requirement, so some operators would note that the emissions were too low to report, but the researchers have no way of knowing what threshold they used to determine that. All of these factors likely mean the reported emissions the researchers analyzed are underestimates.

Ingraffea said there should be a requirement to measure and report on methane leaks in a consistent manner and “super emitters” should be targeted and required to fix leaking equipment.

“Most wells aren’t leaking,” he said. “If they’re operating correctly, they shouldn’t leak. Maybe just 10 percent of all unconventional wells are leaking, for example, but they’re not all leaking the same amount, either. Some leak just a little, and some, the super emitters, leak like sieves. DEP should require those to be fixed.”

Many of those super emitters are coalbed methane wells, most of which are located in the Southwestern part of the state where a majority of the state’s fracking also occurs.

“DEP is also concerned with these ‘super emitters,’ Shader said, “and is exploring ways to identify them, as well as being interested in suggestions for identifying them.”

He added that DEP is aware that methane leaks are also a problem at abandoned wells (which were not looked at as part of the Cornell study), but that the agency “has very few resources to devote to plugging,” and hopes initiatives like Governor Wolf’s Restore PA initiative, which would provide funding for critical state infrastructure including plugging abandoned wells, will help address the leaks.

Lack of regulations, lack of accounting

In December, Pennsylvania’s Environmental Quality Board voted in favor of a new set of regulations aimed at reducing emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOC) like benzene, toluene, and other chemicals linked to cancer and other health effects from fracking sites. The rule is slated to be enacted following a 60-day public comment period, which the PA DEP said is expected to occur sometime this year, “likely next month.”

Governor Tom Wolf’s office, which drafted the regulations, claimed the new rule would also indirectly reduce methane emissions by more than 75,000 tons (about 68 gigagrams) per year, but environmental advocates expressed frustration that the rule doesn’t directly address methane leaks.

“We have known for years that PA DEP’s emissions inventory, which relies on industry-reported data, significantly understates the actual emissions coming from the Pennsylvania oil and gas sector,” Joseph Otis Minott, executive director and chief counsel for Philadelphia-based advocacy group Clean Air Council, told EHN. “We are encouraged to see that DEP estimates its proposed existing source rule will reduce over 75,600 [tons per year] of methane emissions and would respectfully urge the Department to open a public comment period on the proposal as soon as possible.”

Ingraffea said there have been “hundreds of reports and papers looking at methane emissions published since my first paper came out in 2011…and the scientific consensus is that what EPA is reporting to all of us, and to Congress, and to the President significantly underestimates the actual methane emissions from the oil and gas industry.”

Prof. Ingraffea: Methane gas is increasing rapidly

From an Article by Sharon Kelly, DeSmog Blog, April 11, 2018

In 2011, a Cornell University research team first made the groundbreaking discovery that leaking methane from the shale gas fracking boom could make burning fracked gas worse for the climate than coal.

In a sobering lecture released this month, a member of that team, Dr. Anthony Ingraffea, Professor of Engineering Emeritus at Cornell University, outlined more precisely the role U.S. fracking is playing in changing the world’s climate.

The most recent climate data suggests that the world is on track to cross the two degrees of warming threshold set in the Paris accord in just 10 to 15 years, says Ingraffea in a 13-minute lecture titled “Shale Gas: The Technological Gamble That Should Not Have Been Taken,” which was posted online on April 4.

That’s if American energy policy follows the track predicted by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which expects 1 million natural gas wells will be producing gas in the U.S. in 2050, up from roughly 100,000 today.

The Difference of a Half Degree

An average global temperature increase of 2° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit) will bring catastrophic changes — even as compared against a change of 1.5° C (2.7° F). “Heat waves would last around a third longer, rain storms would be about a third more intense, the increase in sea level would be approximately that much higher and the percentage of tropical coral reefs at risk of severe degradation would be roughly that much greater,” with just that half-degree difference, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory explained in a 2016 post about climate change.

A draft report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was leaked this January, concludes that it’s “extremely unlikely” that the world will keep to a 1.5° change, estimating that the world will cross that threshold in roughly 20 years, somewhat slower than Ingraffea’s presentation concludes.

Earlier models, like an often-cited 2012 paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Science, dramatically underestimated the rise in temperatures, when its projections are compared against more than a half-decade of additional temperature recordings, Ingraffea says. “Every one of these scenarios under-predicted actual global warming,” he points out as he describes the models presented in that landmark 2012 study.

“Whereas the worst-case scenario brought us to 1.5 degrees Centigrade in 2040,” he adds, “we’re almost there today.”

A Different Energy Future, if Not for Fracking? So what happened?

Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, U.S. natural gas production was flat or falling. If that trend had continued along the same track it was following from 2006-2008, then wind, solar, and other renewable energy sources might have had a chance to displace both natural gas and coal as major energy sources in America, according to Ingraffea.

Instead, the shale gas rush, propelled by hydraulic fracturing (fracking), swept across the U.S., with drillers snapping up land to drill for previously inaccessible fossil fuels locked in geologic formations of shale rock from coast to coast.

If the shale gas rush hadn’t disrupted trends around that time, Ingraffea estimates that the wind energy sector alone could have produced roughly triple the amount of energy expected by the end of this coming decade, a difference of roughly 400 gigawatts.

“We can easily see there is a loss of potential — large amounts of wind energy — because of the injection of shale gas into our energy economy,” Ingraffea explains in the lecture.

While the shale gas industry promised benefits like jobs and American energy security, Ingraffea notes, those benefits would have been almost exclusively aimed at just 5 percent of the world’s population, North Americans. But the harms will affect the remaining 95 percent of the world as well.

It’s an alarming message — even though the shale rush has stumbled somewhat as gas prices collapsed and many drillers went bankrupt, the cumulative impact of American fracking appears to have set the entire world on a collision course with climate change’s most extreme effects.

The climate is changing faster and more dramatically than it might have otherwise, and — far from serving as a bridge fuel — fracking huge amounts of natural gas has already played a significant role in pushing the world toward a vastly more difficult future.

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Prof. Ingraffea’s lecture, part of the Spring Creek Project’s Bedrock Lectures on Human Rights and Climate Change series, can be viewed below:

“Shale Gas: The Technological Gamble That Should Not Have Been Taken” by Anthony Ingraffea, published on YouTube.

“Groves Pad” well site in Marshall County fire with flames up to 6 feet tall

From an Article by Reid Frazier, NPR StateImpact PA, December 1, 2017

Some Somerset County residents were evacuated Thursday morning after firefighters responded to a fire on a natural gas well pad.

There were no injuries. Flames and odors of gas were first reported to authorities shortly before 9 a.m., according to a Somerset County 911 incident report.

The Tribune Review cited emergency dispatchers who said several residences were evacuated as a precaution.

Personnel from Xtreme Energy, which owns the well, arrived and put out the fire, according to the report.

Investigators from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection inspected the scene at the Menhorn #2 well, and determined the wellhead itself–where gas comes out of the ground–never caught fire.

“DEP concluded that the equipment associated with the well failed and caught fire, but the wellhead was not on fire,” said Lauren Fraley, a DEP spokeswoman, in an email. Gas flowing out of the well was turned off. The cause of the fire is unknown, Fraley said. The DEP has requested that Xtreme Energy send it an explanation for the cause of the fire.

Calls to the company’s offices were not returned.

The well pad was at 2596 East Mud Pike, in Brothersvalley Township, a few miles from the town of Berlin. The well was a Marcellus shale gas well, first drilled in 2009, Fraley said.

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Fire at Marshall County EQT Well Under Investigation in West Virginia

From an Article by Casey Junkins, Wheeling Intelligencer, November 30, 2017

CAMERON, WV — EQT Corp. officials will work to determine the cause of a Wednesday blaze at the Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling pad near the Williams Energy Fort Beeler plant, just north of Cameron.

Marshall County Emergency Management Director Tom Hart called the fire the first “significant” accident officials have seen with the drilling and fracking industry for some time. This is a change from the years of 2010-2013, during which Marshall County responders dealt with a well fire that burned for several days after a blast, along with leaks and a “dust cloud” that caused residents to evacuate, in addition to a fire at a large processing plant.

“It’s never going to be an incident-free industry, but the companies are working with us to improve the situation,” Hart said. “This wasn’t anything like what we’ve experienced before. Everyone was very fortunate.”

Reports indicate the fire began around 11 a.m. Wednesday at Pittsburgh-based EQT’s “Grove Pad.” Hart said contractors working for EQT soon responded to the scene to “shut in” the well, a procedure which stops the mixture of methane, propane, butane, ethane and other forms of natural gas from exiting the ground. He said once officials stopped the stream, the fire — with flames reaching heights up to 6 feet — ended. Firefighters from several local volunteer departments, including Cameron, Limestone and Fork Ridge, then entered the pad to spray water on the equipment that had been burning.

“We didn’t have to evacuate any residents,” Hart said. “Williams did evacuate the Fort Beeler plant as a precautionary measure.”

Lee Dawson, maintenance supervisor at the Williams plant, said the facility evacuated in an “abundance of caution.”

West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection records list the Grove site under the ownership of Trans Energy. However, EQT acquired Trans Energy late last year.

“The only well on the pad has been in production since 2011,” EQT spokeswoman Linda Robertson said. “This is not considered a well fire, as the fire began in the gas production unit: a contained unit that sits quite a bit away from the well head.”

When the natural gas stream exits a well, drillers often perform certain processing or separation activities onsite. For instance, some companies remove the material known as condensate at the well site.

The nearby Fort Beeler plant is one of three large Williams natural gas processing facilities in Marshall County, with the Oak Grove plant and the Moundsville fractionator being the others.

“The pad has been secured and the well has been shut in — the gas inlet and outlet have been closed — as a precaution,” Robertson said. “The cause is under investigation, and the well will remain shut in, pending the investigation.”

West Virginia DEP spokesman Jake Glance provided a report his agency prepared on the situation. The report lists the material involved as “hazardous or toxic,” but states there is no evidence of a stream impact or a fish kill.

Pipelines disturb neighborhoods, families, farms & forests

Residents look to township codes to block Sunoco pipeline

Photo: Workers install 20-inch epoxy-coated pipes on the Mariner East 2 pipeline in the rolling hills of Washington County, Pa., February 16, 2017. They can lay 2,000 to 3,000 feet per day.

DPMC at http://pipelineupdate.org

Roanoke Times Op-Ed: Governor’s Role in Pipeline Review

David Sligh says Virginia’s governor can and must protect us from bad pipeline projects

From the Opinion-Editorial by David Sligh, Roanoke Times, February 23, 2017

David Sligh is conservation director for Wild Virginia, an investigator for the Dominion Pipeline Monitoring Coalition, an environmental attorney, and a former senior engineer at the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. He lives in Charlottesville.

Contrary to assertions in a February 13th Roanoke Times editorial (“Showmanship”), Virginia’s governor will play a decisive role in determining whether major interstate natural gas pipelines can be built across our state. To play that role correctly, the governor must do two things: make certain the regulatory process for state environmental review is complete and open to the public and empower environmental regulators to reject the projects unless they can ensure full protection of Virginia’s waters. The evidence currently in the public record makes approval impossible for both pipelines.

An overriding problem with the Times’ editorial is the assertion that “[t]he agency that will determine whether the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and Mountain Valley Pipeline go forward is a federal one, not a state one.” This claim, in that it denies Virginia’s authority to reject these pipelines and the governor’s legitimate role, is patently false. Congress explicitly reserved states’ authorities to veto federally-permitted projects, to protect state waters. That authority comes from section 401 of the Clean Water Act, which empowers states to grant or deny a “water quality certification” and forbids federal approval without that certification.

The editorial implied that “environmentalists” are naive or ignorant in being “convinced an anti-pipeline governor could still thwart the pipelines by directing the Department of Environmental Quality to withhold certain permits by find[sic] the pipelines violate the Clean Water Act.” I am neither naive nor ignorant about these matters, having worked on them for more than 30 years, as a VA-DEQ regulator and an attorney working with citizens in 10 states and the District of Columbia.

I do not expect and would never propose that a governor “direct” the VA-DEQ to do anything that’s not supported by science and law but the governor cannot be divorced from the regulatory process. The governor leads the executive branch and is responsible for the soundness of state agency decisions.

The Times’ editorial implied that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo improperly ordered environmental regulators to reject a 401 certification for a pipeline. The evidence does not support that implication nor are pipeline company claims that the decision was “arbitrary and capricious” supportable.

In reviewing the New York Department of Environmental Conservation’s decision denying 401 approval for the Constitution pipeline, one finds that the agency cited many areas where the applicant failed or refused to provide the necessary data and analyses or prove water quality standards would be upheld. Many other cases exist where states rejected 401 certifications, for a wide variety of federally-licensed projects. One example pertinent here is Connecticut’s denial of a 401 certification for the Islander East Pipeline, which the federal appeals court upheld.

It is important to note that many of the deficiencies in information and water quality problems cited by the New York DEC apply for both the ACP and MVP. The Virginia DEQ’s own comments on the draft environmental impact statement for the MVP contain dozens of areas in which the company has failed to provide necessary data and where valid impact analyses are missing. Likewise, the U.S. EPA, the Forest Service, and citizens have identified a large body of missing or inaccurate information for MVP.

Citizens have, for many months, sought assurances from Governor Terry McAuliffe and his top officials that the state would conduct a full and open regulatory review for each of these pipelines. We have yet to obtain those assurances. The state must conduct individual section 401 reviews, with public involvement, for each pipeline but VA-DEQ staff indicated this may not happen.

Instead, agency employees said these pipelines might be covered under blanket approvals issued for a category of small projects with minimal impacts. Such an approach would be illegal and we will not accept it. Neither should the governor. VA-DEQ’s requests for sufficient information and adequate protections for MVP cannot remain mere suggestions or requests for proper regulation by FERC. They must become legal mandates from the VA-DEQ.

I again call on Governor McAuliffe to commit to full, public reviews for both ACP and MVP. I make the same call to all those asking to be Virginia’s next governor, because the timeline for decision may well extend into the next administration. I urge all other public officials, all concerned citizens, and The Roanoke Times editorial board to join in this call. I thank Tom Perriello for supporting a fair and open process and for recognizing the enormous harms these pipelines would impose on Virginia’s environment and its people.

Look also for more Pipeline Update information.

Plenty of spills also in West Virginia

Fracking Caused 6,648 Spills in Four States Alone, Duke Study Finds

From an Article by Lorraine Chow, EcoWatch.com, February 21, 2017

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has long been tied to environmental risks such as spills. The frequency of spills, however, has long been murky since states do not release standardized data. Estimates from the U.S. Environment Protection Agency (EPA) vary wildly.

“The number of spills nationally could range from approximately 100 to 3,700 spills annually, assuming 25,000 to 30,000 new wells are fractured per year,” the agency said in a June 2015 report. Also, the EPA reported only 457 spills related to fracking in 11 states between 2006 and 2012.

But now, a new study suggests that fracking-related spills occur at a much higher rate.  The analysis, published February 21st in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, revealed 6,648 spills in four states alone—Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota and Pennsylvania—in 10 years.

The researchers determined that up to 16 percent of fracked oil and gas wells spill hydrocarbons, chemically laden water, fracking fluids and other substances.

For the study, the researchers examined state-level spill data to characterize spills associated with unconventional oil and gas development at 31,481 fracked wells in the four states between 2005 and 2014.

“On average, that’s equivalent to 55 spills per 1,000 wells in any given year,” lead author Lauren Patterson, a policy associate at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, told ResearchGate.

North Dakota reported the highest spill rate, with 4,453 incidents. Pennsylvania reported 1,293, Colorado reported 476 and New Mexico reported 426. The researchers created an interactive map of spill sites in the four states.

Although North Dakota is rich in oil, the state’s higher spill rate can be explained by varying state reporting requirements. North Dakota is required to report any spill larger than 42 gallons whereas requirement in Colorado and New Mexico is 210 gallons.

Patterson points out that the different reporting requirements are a problem.

“Our study concludes that making state spill data more uniform and accessible could provide stakeholders with important information on where to target efforts for locating and preventing future spills,” she told ResearchGate. “States would benefit from setting reporting requirements that generate actionable information—that is, information regulators and industry can use to identify and respond to risk ‘hot spots.’ It would also be beneficial to standardize how spills are reported. This would improve accuracy and make the data usable to understand spill risks.”

The reason why the researchers’ numbers vastly exceeded the 457 spills estimated by the EPA is because the agency only accounted for spills during the hydraulic fracturing stage itself, rather than the entire process of unconventional oil and gas production.

“Understanding spills at all stages of well development is important because preparing for hydraulic fracturing requires the transport of more materials to and from well sites and storage of these materials on site,” Patterson explained. “Investigating all stages helps to shed further light on the spills that can occur at all types of wells—not just unconventional ones.”

For instance, the researchers found that 50 percent of spills were related to storage and moving fluids via pipelines. “The causes are quite varied,” Patterson told BBC. “Equipment failure was the greatest factor, the loading and unloading of trucks with material had a lot more human error than other places.”

For the four states studied, most spills occurred in the the first three years of a well’s life, when drilling and hydraulic fracturing occurred and production volumes were highest.

Additionally, a significant portion of spills (26 percent in Colorado, 53 percent in North Dakota) occurred at wells with more than one spill, suggesting that wells where spills have already occurred merit closer attention.

“Analyses like this one are so important, to define and mitigate risk to water supplies and human health,” said Kate Konschnik, director of the Harvard Law School’s Environmental Policy Initiative in a statement. “Writing state reporting rules with these factors in mind is critical, to ensure that the right data are available—and in an accessible format—for industry, states and the research community.”

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Methane and Ethane are in the air

Methane has Increased in Marcellus Shale Region Despite  Dip in Gas Well Installations

Media Contact:  Britt Faulstick, Drexel University, February 10, 2017

Drexel researchers have been studying air pollution in the Marcellus Shale regions of Pennsylvania for several years. 

Despite a slow down in the number of new natural gas wells in the Marcellus Shale region of Northeast Pennsylvania, new research led by Drexel University finds that atmospheric methane levels in the area are still increasing. Measurements of methane and other air pollutants taken three years apart in the rural areas of Pennsylvania that have been the target of natural gas development over the last decade, revealed a substantial increase from 2012 to 2015.

“Methane is increasing globally, but the rate of increase for this region is much more rapid than global increases,” said Peter DeCarlo, PhD, an assistant professor who studies atmospheric chemistry in Drexel’s College of Engineering and College of Arts and Sciences, who led the study. “The rapid increase in methane is likely due to the increased production of natural gas from the region which has increased significantly over the 2012 to 2015 period. With the increased background levels of methane, the relative climate benefit of natural gas over coal for power production is reduced.”

Since the first shale gas wells were drilled in the Marcellus Shale Basin, a region that diagonally bisects the state from the northeast to the southwest, there have been concerns about what unlocking the new stores of fossil fuel by an unconventional method, called hydraulic fracturing, could mean for the environment. Nearly a decade later, researchers are still working to understand just how the chemicals released and the chemicals used to release them are lingering in the water and air.

This study, which was published in the journal Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene, is the latest in a series conducted by DeCarlo and the Drexel Air Resources Research Lab, indicates that levels of atmospheric methane in the region are likely linked to increased natural gas production, rather than the number of new wells drilled in the area. The researchers did not observe this increase for other pollutants, such as carbon monoxide. This suggests that different gas extraction activities — drilling versus production — produce different chemical emissions, according to DeCarlo.

Data from this study was compared to the team’s 2012 findings in the same area, which was the first effort to measure background levels of various atmospheric pollutants associated with shale gas extraction in the Marcellus Shale region of Pennsylvania. The team traversed the area using Drexel’s Mobile Laboratory, a Ford cargo van equipped with all the equipment necessary for measuring concentrations of chemicals and particles in the air at 1-10 second intervals while driving.

This sort of ground-level monitoring is a useful way to collect data because the sample air is the same that residents of the area are exposed to. The team covered a large portion of the northeast region of Pennsylvania that included parts of Bradford, Clinton, Columbia, Luzerne, Lycoming, Potter, Susquehanna and Tioga counties and northeast and north central Pennsylvania.

“Our 2015 field study covered a larger spatial area and was funded to focus on pipeline and pipeline technology,” DeCarlo said. “But we also overlapped with the 2012 study area and were able to cross check the background concentrations of several pollutants and found the methane levels were higher while the carbon monoxide levels were lower in the overlap regions.”

Initial measurements in 2012 showed methane levels at 1960 parts per billion — roughly 50 parts per billion higher than would be expected in a rural area without natural gas development. Three years later that concentration jumped another 100 parts per billion. Atmospheric concentrations without natural gas development rose at 6 parts per billion, so this increase is quite substantial compared to the global increase, according to DeCarlo.   

Overall natural gas production from the Marcellus Shale region has climbed to 16 billion cubic feet per day, which is twice as much as any other unconventional natural gas resource in the country, according to the researchers. Over the last three years alone, production of natural gas from the region more than doubled, despite the fact that there were about half as many new wells drilled in 2015 as there were in 2012, according to Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection figures cited in the paper.

“Though the rate at which new wells are being drilled and completed has slowed down, the overall infrastructure, and production has increased,” DeCarlo said. “That means that the volume of gas moving through pipelines, compressor stations and processing plants is increasing. If the leakage rate of methane is constant per cubic foot of gas, it would not be surprising that the background methane has increased as much as it has while other pollutants like carbon monoxide, which is more associated with drilling and trucking, are showing a decline.”

This finding could also suggest that measures taken by natural gas producers to decrease leakage from well completions, while still necessary, are not sufficient to reduce methane leakage in the Marcellus Shale region. And with the bulk of environmental protection regulations from the PADEP focusing on ground water contamination, it is possible that atmospheric emissions from the natural gas infrastructure could persist until research can more clearly identify the source of the leaks and identify the impact of specific emissions on public health.

The team also used the methodology developed for this study to analyze data from other studies such as the SENEX campaign, undertaken by NOAA researchers from a research aircraft in 2013. The new methodology lays out a roadmap for analysis that can be applied to datasets from other groups and will allow researchers to monitor the background levels of various pollutants in the region as natural gas extraction continues.

“This study is a snapshot from three years development in the Marcellus Shale region,” DeCarlo said. “While it has clearly demonstrated trends in various pollutant emissions and subsequent atmospheric background levels, continued monitoring in these regions in Pennsylvania are required to track the continued impact of natural gas development and production infrastructure on sparsely monitored areas of the state.”

Read the entire study here: https://www.elementascience.org/articles/182/

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People Aren’t The Only Beneficiaries of Power Plant Carbon Standards

From: Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA.    Date: 01/04/2017

When the Environmental Protection Agency finalized the Clean Power Plan in 2015 it exercised its authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions to protect public welfare. The Plan, now the focus of escalating debate, also put the nation on course to meet its goals under the Paris Climate Agreement. Given that other pollutants are emitted from power plants—along with carbon dioxide—research has shown that carbon emission standards for the power sector benefit human health. New research released today shows that they would also benefit crops and trees.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Caring! Morality! Education! Action!

What’s one of the most insidious myths we’ve bought into, when it comes to climate change?

It has nothing to do with the science: It’s the simple idea that we have to be a certain type of person to care about climate change.

If I’m a liberal, if I bike to work and call myself a “tree-hugger,” then of course I care about climate change. But what if I’m conservative, I drive a car or I worry about the economy—does agreeing with the science of climate change mean I have to change who I am?

When I moved to Texas 10 years ago, I didn’t know what to expect. I study climate change, one of the most politicized issues in the entire U.S. If we’re serious about it, we have to wean ourselves off fossil fuels. That’s not a popular message in a state best known for its oil and gas.

But Texas surprised me. It surprised me by how many different kinds of people, from oilfield engineers to Christian college students, want to talk about why climate change matters—to us and to everyone else on this planet. I’ve also been surprised by the questions I get—some about the science, sure; but even more about politics, faith, and other topics near and dear to our hearts.

To answer these questions, I’ve teamed up with our local West Texas PBS station to produce a new PBS Digital Studios web series, Global Weirding: Climate, Politics, and Religion. Every other Wednesday, we roll out a new video exploring climate change and what it means to all of us.

This episode tackles the identity myth, head-on. Climate change is not some distant issue that only matters to the polar bears. It’s affecting our lives right now, in the places that we live. And if we’re a human living on planet Earth, then we already have every value we need to care about a changing climate.

We all depend on this planet for the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat and the places we live. Unless we’ve signed up for the next trip to Mars, this planet is the only one we have. It just makes sense to take care of it: to ensure that it will continue to support us in the years to come. It’s the sensible, fiscally responsible, and most conservative thing to do, in the truest sense of the word.

There’s more to it than pure self-interest, though. When I was nine years old, my family moved to Colombia—not British Columbia, but Colombia, South America. There, I learned an even more important life lesson: that there are plenty of people on this planet far less fortunate than I am, and many of those people cannot count on having clean water to drink, or safe places to live.

This hard truth has always stuck with me and it’s one of the main reasons I’m motivated to study climate science: because it affects all of us, but most of all the poor the world over—those who already lack sufficient food, who are already at risk for diseases that no one should be dying from in the twenty first century, and who—when disaster strikes—have no choice other than to leave behind their homes and flee.

Climate change isn’t a niche issue that only matters to people who think or act or vote a certain way. Each of us, exactly who we are, with exactly the values we already have, already have every reason we need to care.

So what’s our job, as people who care about climate? Our job is this: connect the dots between what some have called the longest distance in the world, from our heads to our hearts.

Tune in to our live chat every other Thursday at 8E/7C on Facebook and Twitter, subscribe to our YouTube channel, and if you like what you hear—please share!

This essay originally appeared at The Equation, a blog of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

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Date:    January 4, 2017

Source:  University of Alabama — Huntsville

Summary:

Globally, 2016 edged out 1998 by +0.02 C to become the warmest year in the 38-year satellite temperature record, according to scientists. Because the margin of error is about 0.10 C, this would technically be a statistical tie, with a higher probability that 2016 was warmer than 1998. The main difference was the extra warmth in the Northern Hemisphere in 2016 compared to 1998.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Installed Price for New Electricity Generation

Global Warming is the Most Serious Environmental Impact of Natural Gas Pipelines

Commentary by S. Tom Bond, Retired Chemistry Professor & Resident Farmer, Jane Lew, Lewis County, WV

Natural gas pipelines encourage fracking, which puts carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, resulting in more global warming. There are many other environmental problems, too, which will be touched on here. The alternative is renewable energy, which is undergoing an exponential expansion, that is a continuing increase, both in technology and acceptance.

The EPA estimates the U. S. greenhouse emissions totaled 6,870,000,000 metric tons in 2014.¹ All but 9 percent of greenhouse gases, is carbon dioxide (hereafter designated CO₂) and methane. The methane is a far worse green house gas than CO₂. Of the sources of greenhouse gas, 9 percent are attributed to agriculture, and the rest to use of carbon compounds for energy.

On the other hand, half the new electrical generating capacity in the world last year was renewable. 99% of the new generating capacity in the U. S. for the first quarter of this year was renewable.² One of the most advertised benefits of gas is that it provides jobs. But to increase electrical generating capacity, using renewable creates three jobs, compared too only one for gas providing the same amount of electrical energy. New jobs in solar alone exceeded new jobs in oil and gas extraction for the first time in March 2016³. Jobs go to both men and women. Renewable workers usually sleep at home at night and are not exposed to explosions and dangerous chemicals.

Chemicals are a problem in the unconventional oil and gas industry, often referred to as “fracking.” This practice involving horizontal drilling and an extensive array of chemicals to prevent bacterial growth, prevent corrosion, lubricate the solution to penetrate shale, and other functions. It is sold as proprietary chemicals, based on their claimed function, and no one from the formulator to the driller knows anything about toxicity. Anecdotal claims of damage to health have been with fracking since the beginning, but slippery law has allowed use ignorant of toxicity to continue largely unchecked.

Toxicity studies are expensive, but a body of peer reviewed science is developing. Air, water and skin contact toxicity have been shown to occur. The Yale School of Public Health examined more than 1,000 chemicals that may be released by fracking. 80 percent were not properly researched for toxicity. Of the remaining 119 compounds, 55 were identified as confirmed or possible carcinogens, and 20 of those are linked to increased risk for leukemia or lymphoma⁴.

At about the same time The Pennsylvania Medical Society, with16,000-members, has called for a moratorium on new shale gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing in Pennsylvania. Its 300-member House of Delegates unanimously approved the motion. The past president of the American Public Health Association was the author of the resolution⁵. This move was based on the body of research mentioned in the previous paragraph 6,7,8 and very extensive clinical experience.

Building big pipelines certainly encourages fracking with concomitant contamination of air and water and causes disease, particularly among the young, old and sick.

The politics of pipelines and fracking involve a a pair of interesting financial benefits for the loaning bank: very large loans to one legal entity, so no middleman banks to disperse it to businessmen, farmers and consumers, and a very large and widely dispersed set of final payers – the gas purchasing population. A businessman friend tells me the “plus” for cost-plus utilities is about 14 percent. Interest on their loans is a business expense, and the more their expenses, the more the 14 percent is. They will get their money. Elimination of the middleman bankers makes several percent for the big banks.

Pipelines are being built on the prospect of good money for the banks and utilities in spite of the fact that fracking companies now are having hard times. About half have failed⁹. There is much talk of a “shakeout,” that stronger companies will survive, because there is no alternative to gas. Much electrical generation with gas is now done by coal pants which had a built in provision to use gas to boost maximum output. New electrical generating plants using gas primarily must be built, and several are started, but many facilities using renewables are, too¹⁰. If you read investment news, it is much less sure about the gas future than company and political statements.

Pipelines and fracking have no conscience at all. They go by schools, close to homes and through our little remaining wilderness. The only value they honor is increased income. Their timeline reaches infinity in about seven years, but is only strong for around two years. Personnel in the corporations changes rapidly, and investors can flow in or out in a matter of months. The objective is to “get mine now, the furture can take care of itself.”

Investors and top managers take no health risk or property loss risk. These are put off on the people living in the area and the workers. It is effectively a hue scheme to convert countryside into semi-desert which can be reclaimed for forest, but because of uncertain water and chemical contamination must forever depend on public water for humans and livestock. Selling the long future for a decade or two of a product that is abundant in other parts of the world. The size of reserves is a dicey thing, especially in the U. S., but we have enough experience now to see what it does to land and people.

Pipelines in Appalachia will go over very rough land. If the Stonewall Gathering Pipeline south of Weston is any example, miserable reclamation will result. They can be dug by using a second machine with a cable to the one that is doing the digging to keep it from falling down hill. These men should receive hazardous duty pay. But the machines that are usually used to reclaim the right of way can not go on the steep slopes. If it is to be done with machines, a large number of access roads must be built over very rough and rocky slopes. The ditches used to divert water prevent heavily loaded truck from being towed up and down the slopes like the digging machines. Consequently, reclamation materials, straw and seed, must be carried up by hand and spread by hand. This is simply not done.

Many places on the Stonewall Gathering Pipeline never had any reclamation, although it is a year past due. FERC should sent a light airplane with a photographer, or a drone with camera out to look at it, because this is likely to be true of any pipeline built in Appalachia.

The most important thing: pipelines are bad for the environment because they encourage global warming. This is the defining issue of the times. Humans have caused many other threats to the environment, such as plastic waste on land and in the ocean, development that causes fast runoff and floods, drained wetlands, soil exhaustion, deforestation, and more. We have other threats basically political in nature, such as nuclear war, chemical and biological warfare. And still other threats, such as occurrence of new diseases, like Zika.

But the most sure is global warming. It can not be avoided without serious changes in the way we get energy. The demand for energy increases, particularly in developing nations, and provision of hydrocarbons for burning has become a concentrated power center. Power centers have great political power, and wish to preserve their privilege.

The issue then, is how to prevent warming to such a degree life becomes miserable or impossible. Wasting huge sums of money building facilities to be paid for by the public to protract burning hydrocarbons is foolish. It would better be spent to insulate and develop sources of energy that would not surely cook the planet.

Pipelines encourage the wrong path of energy development.

References  — See the Comments below.