I want to thank two of my friends, Mark and Dana, for each posting this graphic (below) on their Facebook pages last week. Because it got me thinking that I haven’t commented for a while on Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale natural gas boom that has entirely changed the landscape of much of the northern tier of the state, wrapping down along the Allegheny Plateau through southwestern PA and on into West Virginia.
Drilling site in Dimmock, PA, with dozens of portable fractionation tanks lined
up to contain drilling waste water. (photo credit: http://www.theithacajournal.com)
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I also understand what can go wrong in the process. When you have drillers and other subcontractors
coming here to Pennsylvania from out of state to build well pads and wastewater
lagoons and to drill a series of wells over 10,000 feet deep at each well pad,
and when you have gas companies pushing their subcontractors to do more and do
it faster, you are bound to get thousands of violations. Realistically though, these 3,025 violations
are only the ones that inspectors from the Pennsylvania Department of
Environmental Protection actually see evidence of and write up. So, unfortunately, there could be a few
hundred or a few thousand more violations that have taken place but were not
documented.
These
data were compiled by NPR StateImpact, which is a collaboration of
National Public Radio reporters and local reporters who cover the fiscal
and environmental impact of Pennsylvania’s booming energy economy, focusing on
Marcellus Shale drilling. They acquired lists of violations from
the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, the state
agency in charge of regulating natural gas drilling in PA. The article in which these data were first published
explains that these 3,025 violations were documented on 8,982 active gas
wells from January 2009 until June 2012. That’s three and a half years,
with two and one-third violations per day.
Gas companies would quickly point out
that tens of thousands of horizontal wells have been drilled in the Marcellus
Shale in the past five years, so the wells with violations (might) account
for some small percentage of the total wells.
But to me, that's a carpetbagger rationalization for carelessness. No violation is acceptable. The PADEP should hold the gas companies to a higher standard. Pennsylvania is the only natural gas producing state in the country that does not charge gas companies a severance tax based on the value of gas they produce and send to market. If the PA state legislature and Gov. Corbett don't have the backbone to stand up to the gas companies and implement a severance tax like every other gas producing state has in place, Pennsylvania residents should get something in return. And that something could be the most stringent enforcement of environmental regulations in the U.S.
Tanker full of drilling wastewater (frack water) that ran off the road in West Virginia.
(photo credit: West Virginia Sierra Club)
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There is no minimum number of violations that are acceptable. This is not a basketball game where you're allowed five fouls. But maybe it should be. But maybe gas companies with more than five violations should lose their right to continue to produce a gas well. As soon as one gas company fouls out and gets sent back to Texas, maybe the remaining gas companies would take notice and be more careful.
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