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EPA Launches National Study of Hydraulic Fracturing
by Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica – March 18, 2010 3:38 pm EDT

Responding to reports of environmental contamination [1] in gas drilling areas across the country, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will conduct a nationwide scientific study [2] to determine if the problems are caused by the practice of injecting chemicals and water underground [3] to fracture the gas-bearing rock.

The study, announced Thursday but hinted at for months, will revisit research the agency published in 2004 [4], which concluded that the process of hydraulic fracturing [5] did not pose a threat to drinking water. The 2004 report has been widely criticized, in part because the agency didn’t conduct any water tests in reaching that conclusion.

“The use of hydraulic fracturing has significantly increased well beyond the scope of the 2004 study,” EPA spokeswoman Enesta Jones wrote in response to questions from ProPublica. The old study, she said, did not address drilling in shale, which is common today. It also didn’t take into account the relatively new practice of drilling and hydraulically fracturing horizontally for up to a mile underground, which requires about five times more chemical-laden fluids than vertical drilling. “This study is the agency’s response to public concern about this practice and Congressional request.”

The 2004 report was used by the Bush administration and Congress to justify legislation exempting hydraulic fracturing from oversight under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The exemption came to be known in some quarters as the “Halliburton loophole” and has inhibited federal regulators ever since.

The fracturing technology, in which a mixture of chemicals and water is injected underground with sand at high pressure to crack the earth and release natural gas, made it possible for energy companies to open vast domestic energy reserves across the country and fueled a nationwide boom in drilling activity.

“EPA needs to finish what it started,” said Gwen Lachelt, director of the Oil and Gas Accountability Project, a Colorado-based advocacy group that represents landowners with contaminated water. “We need comprehensive studies of the entire exploration and production process, but this is an important place to start.”

The American Petroleum Institute released a statement saying it expects the study “to confirm what 60 years of experience and investigation have already demonstrated: that hydraulic fracturing is a safe and well understood technology for producing oil and natural gas.”

Lee Fuller, vice president of government affairs for the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said hydraulic fracturing is one of the industry’s “crowning achievements.”

“Adding another study to the impressive list of those that have already been conducted [6] and completed is a welcome exercise,” he said.

A series of investigations by ProPublica [4] found that fracturing is the common thread in more than 1,000 cases of water contamination across seven states [1]. In some cases fracturing may have caused dozens of well failures where [7] the concrete or steel meant to protect aquifers from the gas and drilling fluids cracked under high pressure, allowing contaminants to seep into the water. In hundreds of other cases the waste and chemicals generated by hydraulic fracturing have been spilled or seeped into surface and groundwater supplies.

Fuller said that Congress’ efforts to allow the EPA to regulate [8] the process “should come to a standstill until this study is completed.”

More than 50 members of the House of Representatives have co-sponsored the Frack Act [9], a bill that would reverse the drilling industry’s exemption from the Safe Drinking Water Act and allow the EPA to regulate fracturing if it chose to do so. The Frack Act also would require companies to disclose the chemicals pumped underground in the process — information that is usually protected as trade secrets. The House Energy and Commerce Committee is also conducting a separate investigation [10] of hydraulic fracturing’s impact on water resources.

The EPA has yet to say exactly how the new study will be conducted or when it will begin, but sources within the agency told ProPublica that it will likely involve a number of EPA regional offices in Colorado, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, and could build off two related investigations [11] the EPA is undertaking in Wyoming gas fields.

In its announcement [2] Thursday, the agency said it will spend nearly $2 million on the research this year and is asking for more money for next year. It promised a transparent, peer-reviewed process that includes stakeholder input. The EPA is seeking input from its Science Advisory Board on exactly how the study should proceed.

Japanese firm to invest $1.4 billion in Marcellus operation from the River Reporter.

Mitsui & Co., Ltd has announced it will invest $1.4 billion in the development and production of Marcellus Shale natural gas projects in Pennsylvania through Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, the Houston, TX global energy firm that has interests in seven PA counties and is the largest leaseholder in PA state forests. The Wall Street Journal reported the Tokyo company is expected to spend between $3 billion and $4 billion over the next decade to develop its portion of the Marcellus Shale. Anadarko has leased 715,000 acres with Marcellus Shale reserves concentrated in Centre, Clinton, Lycoming, Sullivan, Bradford, Tioga, and Potter counties. Anadarko chief executive Jim Hackett said the company anticipates drilling more than 4,500 wells.

In Bradford County, PA the 26 wells were drilled in the following townships by the corresponding companies in February:

• Armenia: 7 (Talisman)

• Canton: 6 (Talisman)

• Columbia: 6 (Talisman)

• Troy: 3 (Talisman)

• Albany: 1 (Chesapeake)

• Springfield: 1 (EOG)

• Towanda: 1 (Chesapeake)

• Tuscarora: 1 (Chesapeake)

February incidents and fines

Several incidents and fines related to natural gas activity, including notable a spate of arrests stemming from overweight and oversize trucks, were reported in February:

• On Feb. 2, DEP fined Talisman Energy $3,500 for violations at its “Cease” well pad in Troy Township discovered during inspections in 2009. A February 2009 inspection revealed that the company had not publicly posted the permit number and other required information at the entrance of the well pad. During a follow-up inspection in June 2009, a DEP statement explains, “flow-back fluids — or the fluids that are used to break up underground rock and then return to the surface — were found discharging into a drainage ditch, an adjacent sediment basin, and eventually through a vegetated area into an unnamed tributary of the south branch of Sugar Creek.”

• On Feb. 3, Pennsylvania State Police arrested and jailed four drivers employed by TK Stanley, a rig moving company headquartered in Waynesboro, Miss., for driving a convoy of oversized trucks through North Towanda Township on U.S. Route 6.

• On Feb. 6, state police cited three men employed by T.A.W. Inc. of Wysox for driving trucks with weight, size and permit violations.

• On Feb. 7, Arthur H. Dawes of Blossburg, Pa., was arrested and jailed after his overweight and oversized truck was involved in three separate accidents as he traveled through Bradford County. Dawes and his employer, Todd Berguson Trucking, received over $15,000 in citations as a result of the incident.

• On Feb. 8, James Matusek of Shavertown, Pa., and his employer, Latona Trucking, were fined over $31,300 after state police discovered a truck driven by Matusek to be 49.7 tons overweight.

• On Feb. 23, Arron Waddy, an driver for MARMC Transportation of Caspar, Wyo., was cited with $24,089 in fines after state police stopped his vehicle on U.S. Route 220 in Albany Township and discovered it was 71,707 pounds overweight.

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Here is his email address – please drop him a line and let him know how you feel about this. gpataki@chadbourne.com

Just another example of chummy corporate/government relations threatening our environment – and our lives.

From frackno.com