“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.

Many Risks to WV Farms

The WV Commissioner of Agriculture would not answer this letter.

In early April, I sent this letter to Commissioner Walt Helmick:

Dear Commissioner Helmick:

Two or three weeks ago two acquaintances, April Keating and Diane Gooding, hand carried a letter I had written you. In essence it outlines the matter of the effect of a Marcellus drilling pad on my farm. I will recap that letter and ask you to reply to this one.

I live two miles East of the I-79 interchange at Jane Lew. Our principal product is Red Angus Certified feeder calves and includes timber and paid hunting. The farm is about 515 acres, half in timber.

Because of the location with respect to Interstate 79 and the fact we have over a mile of wide strip, it would be a prime spot to locate one, perhaps two well pads. The strip has the Jane Lew Soil Series, so is limey, and I have fed there for 30 years, so it is quite productive, as well as easy to get over. Some years ago the farm was chosen by the Soil Conservation District for an award.

The first well pad would take about 20 acres, since the strip is nearly half mile from the only feasible entry. As you are certainly aware, it could be tied up for 15 to 30 years and rocked beyond recovery for decades beyond that. Connecting lines would be cut through the woodland, which would tie it up for the life of the project, plus 70 years for merchantable timber to grow anew.

New fences would have to be built along both sides of the half mile on the hill and around the well pads. Today that road has cattle stops in it. Do you think a bunch of Texans would build a good fence for WV? What about supplying the electricity at some distance from the house? Pasture and hay would be dusted irregularly for the life of the project. Cattle would be affected by the noise, light and chemicals in the air.

At this point, loss of value and loss of production for my heirs would amount to [six figures]* A second pad would be an additional penalty of two thirds as much. That is a minimum. The worst would be contamination of the aquifer. It is a “dry” farm – I have to use water from our five wells almost every summer. If the aquifer is lost it would be reduced to a tree farm.

The oil and gas was leased by my predecessor-in-title some two “generations” back, in 1934. I have no problem with taking the gas out – and the other guy’s family getting the money. But the deal I am getting, in the “right to take it out,” certainly isn’t what the predecessor bargained for. I was born in ’34 and remember what it was like when I was 6 or 7 years old. Steel tubing derricks, one lung gas engines, fracking was nitroglycerin, trucks had six wheels, etc.

Commissioner, those of us in production agriculture are getting nailed to the wall with this thing! And even if we don’t make any difference, production is lost and future producing capacity is lost to society.

What I want to know is: Where is the agriculture establishment in this? Are those of you responsible for setting policy unaware? Surely some of you could pry yourselves away from Charleston and tour drilling sites, pipelines and compressor stations. In the “hot spots” these things are all over the landscape! It seems to me a phenomenon lasting two or three decades that will affect agriculture and timber for a century or two might be worth some public discussion. Of the 23,000+ farms and farm families of West Virginia, a very significant number will be affected.

We have a long history of extractive industry in West Virginia damaging soil and water, and leaving the state depressed. Looks like we are in it again!  I think those of us who are farmers should get an answer!

Most Sincerely, S. Thomas Bond, Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV

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* The figure amounts to about one third of the property value for loss of value and production and extra expenses over 20 to 30 years.

I have understood for many years that there are at least two kinds of truth. The first is objective truth, which can be verified by observation, experiment, mathematics and reasoning. It is the stuff of science, and bookkeeping before accounting estimates and government rules are applied. It governs material things and honest people.

The second is called “truth” because it is promulgated by some Authority. Let’s call it “social truth.” People act on it because, if they don’t, the society around them is not kind to them. Unfortunately, this is the world of managing people using political power, legal actions, agency rules,  financial manipulations, etc. Eminent domain is one tool now in use.

Commissioner Helmick is caught. He knows what the answers is, the objective truth. But he doesn’t have the strength to say it. Politics is very much a social construction and he simply can’t say it.

Such is the nature of big bucks in our society today. It will affect thousands, and amount to billions as subsidy to drillers and their investors, with great value taken from farmers and those other local rural residents not doing farming.

See also:  WV Host Farms Program

SkyTruth FrackaThon Project Activities

It’s Better Together – Host a FrackFinder Event to Help Map Fracking

Article from SkyTruth Projects, March 22, 2014

As you may know, we’ve been working on Project FrackFinder–a multi-phase effort to map drilling and hydraulic fracturing using collaborative image analysis by citizen scientists like you.

Not sure you want to sort through FrackFinder tasks on your own? Enlist some friends and host a FrackFinder-A-Thon! On February 28th, the Shepherd University Environmental Organization participated in the first ever FrackFinder-A-Thon. They threw a pizza party and in only 2.5 hours, 15 people powered through 10,000 tasks!

The following week, a group of University of San Francisco students were visiting Appalachia on a spring break immersion trip. These Bay area students spent the day with us, FrackFinding and learning about skytruthing mining, drilling and other extractive industries. Take a listen to this WV Public Radio piece to learn more about their experience.

We need your help to finish the last 14% of tasks for Project Dart Frog. The sooner we do, the sooner Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School can start crunching numbers on their study of public health as it relates to fracking. Over 200 folks have contributed to the FrackFinder project so far, but we still need your help to keep things moving.

Need help in figuring out how to host your own FrackFinder-A-Thon at your school or in your community? Let us know– kristy@skytruth.org! We’d love to help you set one up.

Once Project Dart Frog concludes, we’ll embark on a new phase of group image analysis based upon YOUR findings.

Submitted by Duane Nichols, www.FrackCheckWV.net

Two Reports are Late; Third Due in July; Quality vs. Speed

From the Article by Pam Kasey for the State Journal, February 21, 2013

Presentations of the status of two studies on horizontal drilling the Legislature expected from the WV Department of Environmental Protection about two months ago were made on February 21^st and offered little substance while promising to deliver much, soon.

When the Legislature passed the Natural Gas Horizontal Well Control Act in December 2011 for regulating the production of natural gas from horizontally drilled wells, lawmakers mandated follow-up studies in case further regulation was needed. One study was to investigate the safety of pits and impoundments and evaluate whether a special regulatory provision is needed for radioactivity or other toxins. Another was to explore whether the act’s setback distance — the center of a wellpad may not be located within 625 feet of an occupied dwelling — is sufficient given the noise, light, dust and volatile organic compounds generated by the drilling of horizontal wells.

A finding that existing regulations are inadequate would trigger the development and proposal of new rules by the DEP.

Those two studies were due at the end of 2012 and are not yet done; a third is due July 1. Huffman defended the lateness in the hearing in the House of Delegates chamber. “We have taken a lot of time with these studies to try to be as scientific and comprehensive as we could,” Huffman said.

“I know that pushes us well into the legislative session,” he said, acknowledging that the point of the deadlines was to allow time for legislators to consider emergency action that might be needed in this session. “But there are over 40 pages of rules being considered by the Legislature that may not be directly as a result of the studies we are working on but are a result of the comprehensive knowledge base we’ve accumulated over the past couple of years.”

In updating lawmakers on the status of the studies, two DEP presenters emphasized the challenging logistics of accomplishing in the one-year time frame everything that had to be done: agreeing with contractors at West Virginia University on what data needed to be gathered, assembling teams, identifying active well sites that met certain criteria, coordinating with operators and landowners, hauling equipment from site to site, gathering the data and compiling worthwhile reports.

Pits and impoundments

For the study on the safety of pits and impoundments, the contractors looked at the three large pits that were constructed after the new rule was in place. Because the sample was small, they added 12 more pits and impoundments from prior to the new rule, according to Mike Dorsey, chief of DEP’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Response.

The good news: None of them was in danger of failing, Dorsey said, including the worst structure DEP was aware of. The bad news: Much improvement is needed.

“The horizontal drilling, the Marcellus business in general is a huge change for people who work for our agency. There’s not been a bigger change in what we do since solid waste laws were changed in the late ’80s, early ’90s,” Dorsey said. He referred to problems discovered during the study with compaction, pit liners, seepage and other aspects.

DEP already put new training in place last fall for inspectors and for the industry, he said, and developed a standardized inspection checklist. The statute also asked DEP to look at radiation. Scant data has been gathered, Dorsey said, from Marcellus drill cuttings and from fluid that has returned from the formation.

Early data range from 0.01 millirem/hour, a measure of exposure, to 0.06 mrem/hour — levels he said would not expose people to the health-based standard of 5 rem/year. Asked by Delegate Tim Manchin, D-Marion, who chaired the hearing, whether regulation on radiation is going to be needed, Dorsey said, “I think the answer is probably going to be no, at least in the short term.”

The pits and impoundments study is in two parts. An engineering aspect was complete in December; the water study is in hand. Dorsey hopes to submit a complete report in two weeks.

Well setbacks and air quality

The study determining whether 625 feet from the center of a wellpad to an occupied dwelling is sufficient given the noise, light, dust and volatile organic compounds that are generated, due December 31, includes a literature review of best practices and a data gathering effort, explained Renu Chakrabarty, an engineer and air toxics coordinator for DEP’s Division of Air Quality.

The field work covered seven wellpads in three counties with three different operators, Chakrabarty said.

Samples for this study and for an air quality study due July 1 were taken by WVU air monitors that ringed the wellpads and by a Department of Energy mobile monitoring trailer, and they were taken at distinct stages of the process: wellpad construction, vertical drilling, horizontal drilling, hydraulic fracturing and well completion. She hopes the noise, light, dust and VOC study will be submitted by the end of March. The air study is not due until July 1.

The importance of timing

Paul Ziemkiewicz, director of the WVU Water Research Institute that has gathered some of the data, took a moment to make a point about the dataset. “What we’ve got is a body of data that’s unprecedented in this country on the air, the water and waste streams, and the impoundment security and safety,” Ziemkiewicz said. “We’ve got a very powerful body of work here.”

Delegate Mike Manypenny, D-Taylor, wanted to make an opposing point on the time it has taken. On the issue of volatile organic compounds — think gasoline or natural gas in the air, which can explode — Manypenny asked Huffman whether DEP rules could prevent accidents like the February 15 incident in which an employee of Central Environmental Services was killed in an explosion that appears to have been related to volatile organic compounds at the well site.

State Hiring Regulations Are Problematic Regarding Experience and Pay Rates

Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) said it’s on pace to hire more gas well inspectors following the passage of the Natural Gas Horizontal Well Control Act. But two hiring obstacles still remain: Low pay and an experience prerequisite. Higher permitting fees in the new legislation, DEP spokesman Tom Aluise said, were intended to generate money to hire 14 new Office of Oil and Gas (OOG) staffers — including four inspectors. So far, two inspector positions have been filled, with five left — which includes some previous vacancies. DEP expects to fill them within the next six months. “We knew it was going to take a while,” Aluise said.

They expected it to take about a year, though it might run a bit longer based on the six-month projection. When all the spots are filled, Aluise said, DEP will have 21 inspectors and two supervisors. The OOG staff list now shows 14 inspectors. Inspectors work certain areas — a single county or group of counties. A new hire is working the Brooke-Hancock-Ohio county region of the Northern Panhandle, while another is working Marshall County. Openings remain for Dodd, Tyler, Mingo-Wayne-Cabell, Lewis and Braxton counties. Inspectors have to meet certain qualifications and pass a test, Aluise said. Despite the new legislation intended to increase the candidate pool, “the application numbers haven’t been great,” Aluise said. The current applicant list has 12 qualified people.

The Horizontal Well Control Act raised starting pay to $35,000 for inspectors and $40,000 for supervisors, but it’s still not competitive with industry pay, Aluise said. During the months of negotiations on the Act, industry and DEP officials often said people with the same qualifications can start at $60,000 to $70,000 a year. Inspector qualifications were also subject to intense negotiations. The Act whittled it down from the previous six years’ industry experience to two — with one year credit for those with a bachelor’s degree in science or engineering, an associate degree in petroleum technology or relevant environmental experience.  Even one year of experience is still a hiring hurdle, Aluise said. Someone with a four-year degree can’t get a job. They have discussed asking the Legislature to lift that requirement. “We feel like we could train people,” Aluise said.

The Dominion Post asked OOG Chief Jim Martin if the new hires would be sufficient to monitor all the state’s gas wells — conventional and unconventional. Martin said the new hire numbers are specific to act requirements. Whether it’ll be adequate for the big picture is “something we’ll have to look at down the road.” They need to get them all on board and see how it pans out. “The activity level at the time is a critical component,” he said. 

During Joint Select Committee discussions of the legislation, some said there are too many wells for too few inspectors. Others said that while there are a lot of wells, not all of them need regular, or even annual, monitoring. According to OOG data, 50,586 active gas wells of all types are in the state — 952 of them Marcellus wells. It gets complicated, because not all horizontal wells are controlled by the Act, which covers wells that disturb three acres or more of land and use 210,000 gallons or more of water in a 30-day period.

In 2010, DEP issued 504 vertical well permits and 445 horizontal. In 2011, the numbers were 275 vertical, 542 horizontal.  So far this year, DEP issued 271 permits for horizontal wells covered by the Act — called 6A wells for the portion of the new legislation containing the Act: Section 22 Article 6A.

OOG charts the number 6A permits issued each month. The numbers were 0 in January and February, three each for March and April, 37, May; 56, June; 57, July; 60, August; 55, September. Aluise noted that doesn’t reflect all gas well permitting for the year. For instance, in January and February, DEP issued 32 total vertical permits and 92 total horizontal permits not covered under the Act. Aluise confirmed that the 0 6A permits in January and February stems from an adjustment period following the December 2011 legislation.

Pocahontas County Commissioners traveled to Wetzel County on September 22nd to see firsthand the impacts of Marcellus Shale gas drilling. Commissioners David Fleming, Jamie Walker and Martin Saffer spent more than five hours speaking with landowners, visiting well sites, compressor stations and driving on the county’s back roads. The tour of the Chesapeake Energy gas fields of Wetzel County was lead by Wetzel County Action Group members Rose Baker and Bill Hughes.

Commissioners visited a half dozen of the more than 20 active well pads in eastern Wetzel County and southern Marshall County. Dewey Teal told commissioners he came home one day to find five acres of his land cleared and excavated, without any prior word from Chesapeake or its subcontractors. Those five acres, said Teal, included his family’s garden and access to his woodlot. Drilling of the two wells was completed about a year and a half ago taking six months of round-the-clock work. During that period, the lights and sound of diesel engines and pumps resulted in a lot of sleepless nights for him and his family. They polluted my water and everything else,” Teal said.

Commissioners said they were also surprised to see how much excavation each well pad required. Nearly all of the sites are on ridges. The sites are leveled, and the land is terraced where the ridge slopes away from the well pad. Commissioners saw several instances where the earth on these reworked ridges had slipped and failed, sending tons of earth downhill. Commissioner Martin Saffer said,  “There’s just no other way to paint it. It’s a big-scale, industrial enterprise, which looks to me to be growing in scale and intensity and seriousness.”

Commissioner Jamie Walker said, “The main concern I see with it was the devastation of the stability of the ground once they leveled it off,” Walker said. “I think that’s something that should be worked on.” Commission President David Fleming said he was struck by the noise and scale of what he saw in Wetzel County. “The compressor stations were significantly larger than I thought they would be, and they’re constantly noisy,” he said. “The truck traffic, while down today, was still pretty substantial, noisy and tricky to get by on these narrow roads. The visual presence of the drilling pads was more than I thought it would be. There are visible structures on each pad. In addition to the wellhead, there’s separator machinery, there’s a diesel engine running on every one, so there’s constant noise there.”