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EPA hearings consider scope, direction of upcoming HF study – but will the agency follow the guidelines provided by Congress?
This week, EPA’s science advisory board (SAB) will host a series of scoping discussions at the St. Regis hotel in Washington looking into the safety and performance of a critical energy technology known as hydraulic fracturing– essential to natural gas exploration in America today, and a critical tool for leveraging enormous U.S. energy resources into jobs, revenue and opportunity for the American people.
The key question is: What will the board learn from this event? And how might those lessons contribute to the recommendations it will make related to the scope and direction of EPA’s upcoming study on hydraulic fracturing – the second such study it has undertaken in the past six years?
Last year, Congress directed EPA to pursue a very specific objective. Specifically, it asked the agency “to carry out a study on the relationship between hydraulic fracturing and drinking water” – language that was included in the Interior appropriations bill for fiscal year 2010. Will EPA abide by this stricture? Or will it seek to use its upcoming fracturing study as a means of targeting aspects of the energy exploration process that fall well outside the defined parameters set before it by Congress?
That, fundamentally, is the question being asked of the SAB today by supporters of responsible natural gas development. Here’s how EID executive director Lee Fuller framed the issue at the hearing:
We believe that the study needs to be framed around a key threshold question – whether the regulatory structures effectively manage the environmental risks of the fracturing process. If these risks are well managed, the other questions are meaningless. If the regulatory structures prevent pathways to drinking water, there is no risk.
Seems like a logical proposition to us. The only problem? In a series of proposed scoping questions released by EPA last month, the agency seemed to go out of its way to include things in its document that have nothing to do with the question at hand – which, remember, is the “relationship between hydraulic fracturing and drinking water.” Take a look at the initial EPA scoping documents yourself. Here are a few of the things that jump out to us:
The potential exposure pathways to be addressed by this study include ingestion, inhalation, dermal exposure through water, air, food, and environmental exposures.
What are the socioeconomic considerations that communities bring to perceptions of environmental impacts?
What is the potential to contribute to the spread of invasive or non-native species associated with HF activity?
What community health and environmental justice issues may be associated with HF activities?
Guess we must have missed the line in Congress’s Interior appropriations bill about “invasive species” and “air exposure.” But kidding aside, the real concern being expressed by natural gas producers in the meeting today is a simple one: If EPA has limited funds for this study, and a timeline of about two years to complete it, isn’t it possible that launching an open-ended fishing expedition might take time and resources away that EPA can and should be using to answer the questions posed to it by Congress? That’s what API senior policy advisor Stephanie Meadows wants to know:
In addition to having the appropriate expertise involved in this study, we believe that this planned study can best achieve its primary objective in a timely manner, by ensuring that the scope of this study is clearly focused on issues directly related to hydraulic fracturing as was put forth in the charge from Congress and does not become sidetracked by trying to examine broader industry issues at the same time.
It’s not only industry that’s asking these basic questions. The Ground Water Protection Council (GWPC), a group of state groundwater regulators that’s considered “one of the nation’s leading groundwater protection organizations,” seems to have similar concerns over the seemingly random course of study openly being contemplated by EPA. Here’s just a snippet from the comments submitted today by GWPC executive director Mike Paque:
With regard to the proposed scope of the study we have concerns about the breadth of the effort. The scoping document appears to cover areas of oil and gas exploration and production activity that are essentially unrelated to the practice of hydraulic fracturing … Consequently, we believe narrowing the scope of the study to field practices directly related to hydraulic fracturing would result in a more focused and, ultimately, more effective study.
Naturally, for those with an ideological aversion to responsible energy development in America, the prospect of an open-ended, EPA-led inquisition of oil and gas production seems to suit them just fine. Heck, some are even using this week’s scoping hearing as an opportunity to sell their wares. These comments were submitted by filmmaker Debra Anderson, who released a documentary in 2009 calling on Congress to pass the anti-energy FRAC Act:
I notice that you are collecting information for [your] Hydraulic Fracturing Review. I am a filmmaker and we have just released a film on the environmental and social effects of natural gas and oil drilling. … Hydraulic Fracturing is a topic that is featured in the film. … For more information about the film go to www.splitestate.com. The committee can contact me at info@splitestate.com if they would like to request a copy for review.
For what it’s worth, part of our job here at EID is to sit through (and even occasionally watch) one-sided, fact-deficient films like Split Estate so you don’t have to. And then issue detailed rebuttals in response (you can find ours here).
It’s also our job to keep you updated on what goes down on at the St. Regis. Toward that end, earlier today, EID live-blogged a portion of the scoping hearing via our Twitter page. We’ll be updating the site as more information comes our way. Until then, happy scoping.
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Sen. Inhofe: “The Obama Administration has it right: there are no documented cases of ground water contamination from hydraulic fracturing”
Despite the long and abundantly clear record of environmental safety that hydraulic fracturing has maintained for more than a half-century, some who oppose the responsible development of traditional, job-creating American energy forms – including clean-burning natural gas – continue to wage all-out war on the technology. That battle continued in earnest today up on Capitol Hill.
These agenda-driven attacks persist even though independent studies have determined that fracking has never contaminated groundwater. Heck, even Carol Browner – energy czar to President Obama and former EPA chief under President Clinton – has come to the same conclusion on fracturing’s environmental safety.
Today, though, a major blow was delivered to those who are working tirelessly to stop responsible shale gas development here at home, as well as the tens of thousands of good-paying jobs and billions in economic activity that this production is generating.
At a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing earlier today, U.S. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) asked senior EPA and USGS officials a pretty simple question:
“Do any one of you know of one case of ground water contamination that has resulted from hydraulic fracturing?”
Crickets. Actually, these folks responded eventually. And what they said may (not) shock you:
Peter Silva (EPA Water Chief): Not that I’m aware of, no.
Sen. Inhofe: Ms. Giles?
Cynthia Giles (EPA Compliance Administrator): I understand there’s some anecdotal evidence, but I don’t know that it’s been firmly established.
Sen. Inhofe: So the answer is no, you don’t know of it.
Cynthia Giles nods.
Sen. Inhofe: Alright, Mr. Larsen?
Matthew Larsen (Assoc. Director for Water, EPA): I’ll have to respond in writing, I don’t, I’m not aware of all of our studies on that topic.
Click HERE to view online footage of this exchange.
Also, Sen. Inhofe says this in a statement that was released earlier today following the hearing:
“The Obama Administration has it right: there are no documented cases of ground water contamination from hydraulic fracturing. Hydraulic fracturing is a safe production technique that is thoroughly regulated by the states. We have a 60 year history to prove it.
“With the unemployment rate at 10 percent, we need to put people back to work. Imposing more bureaucracy and regulation will destroy jobs and stifle opportunities for those looking to find a job. The oil and gas industry employs 6 million people in the U.S. I want to see that number go up, not down.”
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Energy In Depth breaks down the anti-energy documentary, separates fact from fiction on history, performance of HF
“Split Estate,” an editorial in Colorado’s Grand Junction paper argued last week, “is a polemic, aimed at highlighting one side’s views … not at presenting a balanced picture of the arguments related to fracking.” But as we lay out in further detail below, “balance” isn’t the only component of responsible story-telling that was left on the cutting room floor by film director Debra Anderson.
Having been screened in near-empty theaters in New York and Los Angeles earlier this summer, and on satellite TV earlier this month, the producers of Split Estate appear now to be focused on advancing their message in a more targeted, overtly political way – asking supporters to demand the film be played at local county commission hearings, and sending out frequent calls-to-action requesting that letters of support for the FRAC Act be mailed to Washington, D.C.
Make no mistake: Every bit of Split Estate is directed at advocating a specific policy position as it relates to responsible energy development in the United States: Stop it. All of it. Smartly, the film’s supporters and director recognize the extent to which attacking hydraulic fracturing can be used to deliver the practical outcomes they seek.
Movies are fun to watch. This is a movie. But none of that should absolve those in positions of responsibility from checking up on some of these assertions for themselves, and perhaps even thinking critically about why they were made in the first place. The fact sheet provided below seeks, in the very least, to begin such a process.
What follows are a few of the most outrageous examples of distortion, disinformation, and outright dishonesty included in the film:
Movie Message #1: The process that led to hydraulic fracturing earning an “exemption” from federal law in 2005 was quite a scandal – and everyone, as it were, was in on it.
Narrator: “In 2004, the Bush-Cheney administration’s Environmental Protection Agency asserted that fracturing does not threaten drinking water.”EPA’s Weston Wilson: “Within a few months of coming into office, [the] vice president was pressuring the administrator of EPA, Christie Todd Whitman, to exempt hydraulic fracturing from Safe Drinking Water Act regulation.”Narrator: “Because of its high cost, [hydraulic fracturing] was not widely used until recently, in the 1990s, when the price of natural gas shot up high enough to make it affordable.”Fact Check:
- Interestingly, the 2004 EPA report that found hydraulic fracturing to be a safe and effective energy technology was initiated not by the “Bush-Cheney” EPA, but by EPA administrator Carol Browner during the Clinton administration. This fact is directly at odds with several assertions made in the film.
- Currently serving in the White House as President Obama’s energy advisor, Ms. Browner wrote in 1995 that there was “no evidence” that hydraulic fracturing contributed to contamination, and that even the possibility of contamination happening in the future was “extremely remote.”
- Hydraulic fracturing did not earn an exemption to federal law under the Bush administration – it was never regulated under federal law to begin with. The 2005 energy bill, supported by then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), simply clarified the reach of the existing statute, making clear that states – who have been regulating fracturing activities for more than a half century – were best-equipped to oversee this process.
- Fracturing first came into commercial use in the late 1940s, and has been used consistently and efficiently over the years not only to produce oil and natural gas, but to tap water wells and even by EPA to clean up Superfund sites. It is not a new technology.
- The EPA study demonstrating the safety of hydraulic fracturing is one of many – all of which conclude that fracturing is environmentally safe as currently regulated.
- It should also be noted that EPA is an independent agency of the federal government, one that exists outside the structure of existing executive departments. It’s an agency with more than 18,000 employees – only a handful of which must be confirmed by the Senate, and even fewer selected by the president.
- To refer to the agency circa 2004 as the “Bush-Cheney administration’s EPA” is an attempt to obfuscate this fact, and to insinuate (without evidence) that the president ordered EPA scientists to produce analysis favorable to hydraulic fracturing.
Message #2: Medical personnel, state regulators, the general public – no one has any way of knowing what sort of materials are used in the fracturing process.
EPA’s Weston Wilson: “We cannot know what the industry injects in our land. It is exempt from being reported.”Activist Theo Colborn: “You may only get five percent of what’s in that product, and the rest is proprietary or they just don’t give it – they don’t have to.”Ms. Colborn: “There is no way a physician can truly treat what he’s seeing. They have not been given a list of these chemicals that are being used.”Fact Check:
- Mr. Wilson’s assertion (echoed by Ms. Colborn) that “we cannot know” what materials are involved in the fracturing process is demonstrably untrue.
- Mandated by the federal government, documents known as Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) are required to be kept on-hand at all well sites. These sheets contain full listings of the materials involved in the fracturing process, and are even available on the Internet. They are also readily available to all medical and emergency response personnel.
- States in which fracturing activities take place have required a complete list of materials used in the process be submitted to state agencies when they have found it necessary.
- Some states, such as Pennsylvania, post those material sheets online (available here). Additional sheets can be accessed from Energy In Depth and the Ground Water Protection Council.
Ms. Colborn: “For people who are telling you that these products are safe, first, ask them what they have been trained in; two, find out who’s paying their salary; and third, actually hand them a real glass full of something that you have taken from an evaporation well, and ask them to drink it.”
- Ms. Colborn, a former zoology professor at the University of Florida, previously drew a salary from the professional environmental interest group WWF.
- Groundwater is not the same thing as drinking water, nor is it similar to the liquids involved in the fracturing of a well. The Safe Drinking Water Act requires groundwater to be treated to meet federal standards before it can be used in public water supplies. One of the treatment chemicals used in public water management is – and has been for over a hundred years – chlorine. It destroys water-borne bacteria; but no one would suggest drinking concentrated chlorine.
- Water residing thousands of feet underground (naturally) and brought to the surface following the fracturing process is called “produced water.” It must be managed to protect the environment under either the federal Clean Water Act or the Safe Drinking Water Act. No one suggests that it should be considered as drinking water.
- According to the Ground Water Protection Council, “[M]ost additives contained in fracture fluids including sodium chloride, potassium chloride, and diluted acids, present low to very low risks to human health and the environment.”
Message #3: The 2004 EPA study proving fracturing to be safe was “unsupportable” – EPA’s own experts said so.
Narrator: “[The 2004 EPA study] was challenged by a 30-year EPA environmental engineer Weston Wilson, acting under protected whistleblower status.”
Fact Check:
- Mr. Wilson does indeed work (to this day) for EPA’s regional office in Denver. His areas of expertise (as defined by himself) are in Clean Air Act and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) enforcement, not in the Safe Drinking Water Act or hydraulic fracturing. Consequently, Mr. Wilson was not part of the team of scientists and engineers that spent more than five years studying hydraulic fracturing for EPA.
- Wilson has a long and well-documented history of aggressive opposition to responsible resource and mineral development. Over his 35-year career, Mr. Wilson has invoked “whistleblower” status to fight dam construction in Colorado, oil and gas development in Montana, and the mining of gold in Wyoming.
- Wilson in his own words: “The American public would be shocked if they knew we make six figures and we basically sit around and do nothing.”
Message #4: Energy producers in America benefit from unprecedented exemptions to existing federal environmental laws.
Graphic box: “The oil and gas industry is exempt from sections of the following U.S. Laws: Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, Clean Air Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, CERCLA, and The Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act”NRDC’s Amy Mall: “What’s most important is for Congress to close these loopholes – and to hold the oil and gas industry to the same standards as other industries.”Fact Check:
- Notice here the documentarian doesn’t say energy producers are exempt from these laws – they’re only exempt from “sections” of them. Obviously, not every section of every environmental law deals with oil and gas production.
- Whereas some sections of the environmental statutes identified by the film’s director do not cover oil and gas, other “sections” in those same laws do. And that’s true for every single one cited in this documentary.
- In fact, federal environmental laws include sections that distinguish between different dischargers – industries, municipalities, agriculture – because no law written can be applied identically to all situations and circumstances.
- The oil and gas industry is among the most heavily regulated sectors in the U.S. economy. Every stage – from the wellhead to the burner tip – is covered extensively by state, local and federal laws.
Message #5: The Amos Well case demonstrates clearly why Congress needs to act to restrict hydraulic fracturing.
Narrator: In 2004, some residents in Garfield County [Colo.] began to complain that they were getting sick as a result of the drilling activities … A young woman from Silt, Laura Amos, was one of the earliest and loudest voices.”
Fact Check:
- In 2001 (not 2004), Ms. Amos first complained to the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) about a variety of problems associated with her drinking water well, including reduced volume and the suspected presence of methane.
- According to Ms. Amos, these problems were caused by hydraulic fracturing operations conducted on gas wells approximately 1,000 feet from her home. Reports indicate that fracturing operations took place at depths of over 2,000 feet; the Amos well is 225-feet deep.
- COGCC undertook a thorough investigation of Ms. Amos’s complaints. On at least eight occasions between 2001 and 2005, the agency tested the Amos well for contaminants. Nothing of note was ever detected in any of these samples.
Message #6: America’s open spaces are currently under siege – the product of an unprecedented drilling boom initiated by President Bush, and surreptitiously aided by Vice President Cheney.
U.S. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass): “The attitude of the previous administration was drill, drill, drill – and drill some more.”
Narrator: “Back in 2000, after the Bush-Cheney election, there was a dramatic acceleration in drilling activity.”
Fact Check:
- According to the Congressional Research Service, more federal acreage was offered for lease under the Clinton administration than under the Bush administration – 31.3 million acres more.
- While it’s true that more wells were developed during President Bush’s tenure, that increase reflects a change in the dynamics of price — not a change in national policy.
|
Administration
|
Offshore Acreage
|
Onshore Acreage
|
Total Acreage
|
| Clinton (1993-2000) |
420,277,357 |
46,427,365 |
466,704,722 |
| Bush (2001-2008) |
403,953,986 |
31,488,455 |
435,442,441 |
Source: Congressional Research Service (published Jan. 14, 2009)
Odds and Ends
Sen. Kerry: “Sixty-five percent of the current [federal] subsidies go to gas and oil, and you have this imbalance. We ought to have 65 percent or more – 80 percent – ought to be going to alternative, renewable technologies — to energy efficiency.”
Ms. Colborn: “Let’s work on alternatives. Let’s serve the country through alternative energy.”
Fact Check: The Energy information Administration (EIA) estimates that total federal subsidies for electric production are $24.34 per megawatt hour for solar power and $23.37 for wind, compared to 25 cents per megawatt hour for natural gas and petroleum fueled technologies—98 times higher. Yet, even with these subsidies, solar generated only 0.02 percent of U.S. electricity in 2008. Wind barely delivered one percent.
* * *
Narrator: “Industry has brought jobs and money to the county, but for Gilbert Armenta, the price has been much too high.”
Mr. Armenta: “The industry has the mentality that, [the land] is all theirs and it don’t belong to nobody else.”
Fact Check: Mr. Armenta is a fourth generation American who, by his own admission, owns “over 100,000 acres of ranchland” in Bloomfield, New Mexico. In his county, energy development accounts for more than eight percent of the total workforce. Perhaps it’s not unreasonable for residents in his community not fortunate enough to own 100,000 acres of ranchland to pursue high-wage, family-supporting employment opportunities in this field.
* * *
Narrator: “In an effort to convince authorities that the bubbling was not occurring naturally, Lisa [Bracken] and her family demonstrated that the gas would ignite.”
Fact: Gas ignites. That’s true whether the methane found in the Bracken stream arrived there through natural means or not. Once again, the director confuses a basic point of science in her rush to blame hydraulic fracturing for a phenomenon that occurs naturally every single day. This explains why public water systems de-gas their water during treatment; unfortunately, many private wells do not.
Additional resources available at Energy In Depth:
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Energy Insider: Focusing on Frac Jobs. KFYR-TV. “Workers for Pumpco Services are on a mission: to make getting oil from the Bakken shale as easy as possible. “What we’re doing is creating fractures in 18 different spots in that rock,” said Roger Nash, Pumpco`s Technical Manager. “And together those 18 fractures will allow the oil to flow through.” It all starts with a blast down the well bore to puncture the rock. “What they’ll in essence do is like shooting a gun into a piece of wood,” Nash said. That’s when a company like Pumpco brings in specialized pumping trucks. The system is forcing nearly a million gallons of water into the ground at high pressures – between 4000 and 6000 pounds just at the surface.”
Protecting Water While Drilling for Natural Gas. New York Times, NY State Petroleum Council’s Mike Doyle. “We can safely develop New York’s extensive clean-burning natural gas supplies while also providing jobs, growth and substantial revenues to the state. Studies of hydraulic fracturing, a 60-year-old technology crucial to natural gas development and already widely used in New York, strongly suggest that the technology is safe despite recent concerns. The state’s Department of Environmental Conservation says that “no known instances of groundwater contamination have occurred from … hydraulic fracturing projects in New York State.” In fact, no investigation by any state or federal agency has demonstrated that hydraulic fracturing has caused groundwater contamination, despite its use in about one million wells drilled in the United States.”
La. is drilling hot spot. The Daily Advertiser/Shreveport Times. “Ten percent of all of the current oil and gas exploration in the United States is centered in a corner of northwestern Louisiana, home to what’s known as the Haynesville Shale. Even more surprising, says Scott Angelle, secretary of the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources, is “5 percent of the nation’s drilling activity is in one parish — DeSoto,” a sparsely populated 894-square-mile section just south of Shreveport along the Texas border. Crews currently have 108 wells drilling in what’s known as the North Louisiana Province, Angelle said, and 53 are in DeSoto Parish. … The Haynesville Shale is a rich depository of natural gas trapped between vertical columns of rock. To get the gas out of the ground, crews drill about two miles down and then move horizontally, blasting the shale with high-pressure water to break down or fracture the chambers, releasing the gas to be transported to the surface through the well. The process is known as “fraccing.”
Gas documentary offers anecdotes, not evidence. Grand Junction Sentinel, Editorial. “Many of the people featured in the documentary, “Split Estates,” have heart-breaking stories about health problems they have suffered. What they don’t have, and what is absent from the documentary itself, is actual evidence that connects those health problems to the hydraulic fracturing of natural gas wells. Without this causal link between the fracturing substances and disease, the claim of wrongdoing — like the documentary itself — falls flat, at least with respect to hydraulic fracturing. … When it comes to fracking fluids, however, some of the stories recounted in “Split Estates” may provide fodder for those on the other side. For instance, it is difficult to accept that fracking is responsible for someone’s health problems if another person living in the same house, breathing the same air, drinking the same water suffers none of those ailments. … The Environmental Protection Agency has twice concluded that fracking is not dangerous — once during the Clinton administration and most recently in 2004. … By substantially overstating the case against fracking while providing little evidence to support its claims, “Split Estate” may actually harm the cause it seeks to champion.”
Boom towns: Gas drilling quickly changes small-town life in Central Pa. Scranton Times Tribune. “An owner of Beck Oilfield Supply traveled from Oklahoma to Pennsylvania this year to find the best place in the midst of the Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling rush to plant one of his stores.He picked Wysox, a small town that borders Towanda, the Bradford County seat, and he wasn’t alone. Two other stores that specialize in drilling and gas production supplies have opened within two miles of Beck Supply along Route 6 in the past year. … “Things have changed,” Bradford County Commissioner Doug McLinko said. “There’s storefronts filling back up again, there’s vacant lots filling back up again. The independent, family-owned businesses are being saved. “The impact it’s having for real people is pretty incredible.” … An industry-financed study released by Penn State University in July projects that Marcellus Shale drilling will create a total economic output of $3.8 billion in the state this year and $13.5 billion in 2020.”
Plenty of oil out there. The Oklahoman, Op-Ed. “For more than 100 years, people have been claiming the world is running out of oil. But there is no factual support for the claim that the world’s petroleum resources are nearing exhaustion. The world has enough oil left to supply demand through the end of this century. … The Williston Basin in Montana and North Dakota contains nearly 4 billion barrels of oil that has yet to be discovered and produced. Oil has been produced from the Williston Basin since the 1920s. But the introduction of horizontal drilling and hydrofracturing have made it possible to exploit resources heretofore unreachable. Among the leaders in using the new technologies is Oklahoma’s own Continental Resources. … We have the technology to produce petroleum from oil shale in a manner that is efficient, economic and environmentally friendly. What’s stopping us is ignorance and bad public policy.”
INGAA study takes midstream look at long-term gas supply. Oil & Gas Journal. “Projected growth in North American natural gas supplies and markets will require billions of dollars of additional investments in pipelines, storage, and other midstream infrastructure through 2030, a recent INGAA Foundation Inc. study concluded. The study, which the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America’s research division released on Oct. 20, projected that investments of $133-210 billion—or $6-10 billion/year—would be needed in the next 20 years under various market scenarios. … Other experts agree that hydraulic fracturing and other technologies are opening up significant gas resources that would have been ignored 20 years ago. “We have an unconventional gas revolution in the US. I expect it to be the default fuel in electric power,” Daniel Yergin, chairman of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, said during an Oct. 21 forum cosponsored by the US Chamber of Commerce and Foreign Policy magazine.”
Q&A: Energy vet works to turn around downturn. Houston Chronicle. “Victor Burk is a familiar face to many in Houston’s energy business. He spent 30 years with Arthur Andersen, including many years as head of the now-defunct accounting firm’s energy practice. He later headed Deloitte’s energy business before moving over to executive recruiting firm Spencer Stuart. Earlier this year he took his experience (and considerable Rolodex) to turnaround management and advisory firm Alvarez & Marsal … They know the gas is there and it becomes more like a manufacturing process, acquiring acreage, making the decisions on how many drilling locations, which to drill in which order, getting the rigs lined up, the fracing (hydraulic fracturing) and other completion activities. It involves hundreds of drilling rigs, hundreds of frac crews, getting the wells drilled in the least number of days. It’s very different from anything we’ve seen in this industry in the past. We’ve worked with a few E&P companies in applying some of the techniques and tools used by large manufacturing companies.”
Pa. Tapped, Drillers Not. Philadelphia Inquirer. “The drillers must shatter the Marcellus to release the gas locked in the rock. They hydraulically fracture the shale with high-pressure injections of water, chemicals, and sand. The “fracking” process requires huge amounts of water, which returns to the surface with elevated salt and mineral content that requires treatment. … But the gas companies say they increasingly are recycling the frack fluids, and treatment plants are being upgraded. “Handling the water is not a problem, so let’s get on with it,” said Murry S. Gerber, chief executive of EQT Corp., a Pittsburgh producer. … Lodgings are in short supply in Williamsport, where motel parking lots are filled at night with pickup trucks bearing Texas, Louisiana, and Colorado tags. Demand for apartments and office space is also picking up. …Contractors are busy supplying gravel for well sites, or transporting pipe or water to rigs, said Jason C. Fink, executive vice president of the Williamsport-Lycoming Chamber of Commerce. “It’s nice to see some of our existing businesses are getting a bump,” said Fink. He said local banks had reported a substantial increase in deposits from accounts in gas-producing areas.”
Westmoreland Marcellus gas field mapping planned. Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “A three-dimensional map of the Marcellus Shale underneath eastern Westmoreland County, including Keystone State Park, will be produced in the coming months to help two drilling companies locate the best spots for gas wells. A public meeting was held at the park Friday night to help explain the mapping process of the Marcellus Formation, which contains a natural gas reserve energy companies are eager to tap. The map is being produced by Oklahoma-based McDonald Land Services and Dawson Geophysical Company of Texas on behalf of Rex Energy and the Williams Production Appalachia, two energy exploration firms.”
Marcellus Shale drilling pumps water business. Pittsburgh Business Times. “The most familiar refrain from Marcellus Shale drillers is that water remains the biggest obstacle to developing the natural gas trapped inside the rock. Once the chemically treated water, used to help break up rocks and extract the gas, is pumped back out of the ground, what’s to be done with it? Several water treatment facilities are banking on the challenge, hoping to entice the industry’s operators to bring them used “frac” water when they open in the next several months.”
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