Pavillion Hearing Raises More Questions for EPA
After a theatrical start to a hearing inside the stuffy walls of the Rayburn House Office Building, witnesses testified today about EPA’s recent draft report on water quality in Pavillion, Wyo. The report, which attempts to link hydraulic fracturing technology to groundwater contamination, has been widely criticized...
After a theatrical start to a hearing inside the stuffy walls of the Rayburn House Office Building, witnesses testified today about EPA’s recent draft report on water quality in Pavillion, Wyo. The report, which attempts to link hydraulic fracturing technology to groundwater contamination, has been widely criticized for the poor methodology upon which it is based, as well as obvious errors in sampling and testing procedures that EPA itself now concedes are real. And perhaps worst of all, the EPA hasn’t exactly been receiving requests for transparency with open arms.
The first to testify today was Jim Martin, administrator for EPA’s Region 8 office, who defended the agency’s report but also included an important caveat in his remarks:
We make clear that the causal link [of water contamination] to hydraulic fracturing has not been demonstrated conclusively, and that our analysis is limited to the particular geologic conditions in the Pavillion gas field and should not be assumed to apply to fracturing in other geologic settings.
Immediately following the release of EPA’s draft report, a series of questions began to emerge not just about the report’s finding on hydraulic fracturing, but even the process itself that EPA used to test ground water. Martin’s public admission that no causal link exists between water contamination and hydraulic fracturing followed in the wake of those questions, but was unfortunately made nearly two months after the EPA claimed such a link was “likely.” Martin claimed today, however, that the EPA merely “hypothesized potential pathways.”
Tom Doll from the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission added to the mounting list of questions, accusing the EPA of using a “limited data set” to make “technically inadequate conclusions” in its report. “No data was provided by the EPA for the Pavillion Draft Report showing the producing depth, well construction or producing aquifer isolation,” Doll noted in his prepared remarks. During questioning by the Committee, Doll pointed out that the groundwater that the EPA tested for its report is different from the drinking water used by Pavillion residents, and the methane EPA analyzed was not the same as any potential biogenic methane that could be found in drinking water.
Doll also called into question the EPA’s focus for the report, which began as a means of helping local residents solve problems related to their water quality. “The EPA report does not address the need to solve the landowner’s water supply issues; rather the report only addresses hydraulic fracturing,” Doll added.
In December, Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead (R) wrote to the EPA about the report, saying he was “troubled by the EPA’s dismissal of the practical concerns raised by the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (WOGCC), Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), and Encana related to the nature and the protocols employed in conducting the sampling procedures.” Doll noted at the hearing that the EPA did not reach out to WOGCC as it was preparing its report, a fact that Martin disputed on the basis that EPA had reached out to DEQ. WOGCC regulates oil and gas development in the state.
Kathleen Sgamma of the Western Energy Alliance criticized EPA’s draft report, noting that the industry is justifiably held to extremely high standards and regulators should be held to a similarly high standard in their research and conclusions. “The public trusts EPA to protect the environment, follow the law, and use sound science as the foundation of its regulatory work,” Sgamma said. But, in the case of Pavillion, “EPA’s own data and methods have raised serious questions” about their report and “led to concerns about unscientific methods, and lack of transparency and peer review.”
While the focus of the hearing was on the Pavillion report, the participants also engaged in a broader discussion of natural gas development. Professor Bernard Goldstein of the University of Pittsburgh, whose testimony was “based upon personal discussion” with environmental activist groups, called for a slowdown in development until public health impacts could be determined.
But public data compiled late last year found that key health indicators actually improved across the board in Denton County, Texas – the heart of shale development in the United States. That followed the release of a separate study that found “no significant health risks” associated with developing natural gas from shale.
Goldstein also likened hydraulic fracturing to a “two-ton bomb” and, echoing remarks from Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC), accused the industry of keeping fracturing fluids a secret (Miller’s opening statement included the term “secret sauce” when referencing the additives). Last year the Ground Water Protection Council and the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission established the website Frac Focus, which provides well-by-well information of the additives used during hydraulic fracturing. In the past year, both Texas and Colorado have passed laws that incorporate Frac Focus into their statutory requirements on disclosure (and, of course, EID has also maintained a publicly available list of those chemicals for years).
As today’s testimonies show, EPA’s report on Pavillion continues to spur more questions than answers; not about hydraulic fracturing, but rather about EPA’s own conclusions and methodology. EPA essentially confirmed (by way of omission) that it had not consulted WOGCC for its report, which suggests the EPA either didn’t think to seek adequate guidance, or deliberately ignored a state regulatory body in a report that focused on a process regulated by that body.
And, by making politically charged accusation that hydraulic fracturing “likely” caused water contamination, the EPA has undermined its own credibility with its broader national study on hydraulic fracturing. Will that study suffer from the same systemic and methodological flaws as the Pavillion report? Will the EPA seek proper guidance and provide transparent testing results? Will it contain statements about hydraulic fracturing that are more befitting of a political debate than scientific inquiry? Will the EPA once again have to backpedal from its initial “findings,” as it was forced to do in the hearings today? The fact that those questions even have to be asked, and indeed are being asked, is troubling in and of itself.
Regarding the Pavillion report and the EPA’s credibility on hydraulic fracturing, Doll from the WOGCC perhaps summed it up best. “Based on a limited sampling and an inconclusive data set from Pavillion Wyoming ground water, EPA’s conclusion is now national and international fodder for the hydraulic fracturing debate,” Doll said. “Now the quality of the hydraulic fracturing debate suffers and the EPA’s science itself is questioned.”
There They Go Again: Latest Cornell Paper Just More of the Same
It was touted by their PR consultants in a media advisory sent around this week as “a major new paper” in response to the mountain of criticism that has accumulated since the release of their initial study last April (that is, after the first one the year before was retracted).
It was touted by their PR consultants in a media advisory sent around this week as “a major new paper” in response to the mountain of criticism that has accumulated since the release of their initial study last April (that is, after the first one the year before was retracted). But read through the “new” document released by Cornell professors Robert Howarth and Anthony Ingraffea on Thursday, and you quickly come to the following realization: Not only don’t these guys offer a credible response to any of their critics, they don’t even acknowledge that they exist.
Last April, EID took the lead on pointing out some of the more obvious errors in the Cornell GHG report, eventually (and happily!) making way for the cavalcade of academics, government agencies and even environmental groups that followed – each one successively identifying a new and seemingly more obvious and/or egregious miscalculation that, taken on its own, would render the entire thesis unacceptable.
Of course, because none of those basic errors were either corrected or acknowledged in the latest iteration of the Howarth paper, there’s just not a whole lot of new material for us to rebut. Still, a couple of points are probably worth making for those genuinely interested in understanding what’s going on here.
Point #1: The “new” Howarth paper attempts to justify its previous conclusions based on what it says are “new” emissions data from EPA.
The problem?
- Howarth et al. are correct that EPA issued new emissions estimates for natural gas systems in late 2011 – that document is here for anyone who would like to give it a look. Unfortunately for the Cornell researchers, though, those new estimates don’t even approach the same stratosphere of the high-end methane leakage rate of 7.9 percent that Howarth and his colleagues manufactured to arrive at their conclusions. According to EPA, the actual rate is closer to 2.2 percent – a figure that recent studies suggest is far too high in its own right.
- According to Cornell professor Larry Cathles in a response paper published this month in the journal Climatic Letters: “While their low-end estimate of total leakages from well drilling through delivery (3.6%) is consistent with the EPA (2011) methane leakage rate of ~2.2% of production, and consistent with previous estimates in peer reviewed studies, their high end estimate of 7.9% is unreasonably large and misleading.” (page 2)
- Of course, the other problem is with the EPA estimates themselves. According to a report issued in August 2011 by the respected energy consulting firm IHS-CERA: “EPA’s [new] analysis relies on assumptions that are at odds with industry practice and with health and safety considerations at the well site. IHS CERA believes that EPA’s methodology for estimating these emissions lacks rigor and should not be used as a basis for analysis and decision making. … EPA derived the emissions factor from two slide presentations at Natural Gas STAR technology transfer workshops, one in 2004 and one in 2007. These two presentations primarily describe methane that was captured during “green” well completions, not methane emissions. EPA assumes that all methane captured during these green completions would have been emitted in all other completions. This assumption does not reflect industry practice.” (page 5)
Point #2: Just like last time, Howarth et al. assume that virtually all methane produced during the “flowback” phase of operations is simply vented into the atmosphere – not captured or burned.
The problem?
- For starters, it’s not even close to being correct. According to that IHS-CERA report: “Compounding this error is the assumption that all flowback methane is vented, when industry practice is to capture and market as much as possible, flaring much of the rest. Vented emissions of the magnitudes estimated by Howarth would be extremely dangerous and subject to ignition. The simple fact that fires are rare in all gas-producing areas suggests that this analysis grossly overestimates the quantities of methane that are leaking uncontrolled into the atmosphere at the well site.” (page 9-10)
- Even more problematic, Howarth et al. rely on flowback data they say comes from the Haynesville Shale to make their claims, simply extrapolating that out to account for and characterize all wells everywhere in the country. But according to Dr. Cathles of Cornell: “The numbers they use to represent fugitive emissions for the Haynesville Shale cannot be found in the references they cite.” (page 6) Added Cathles: “If a sales pipeline is not available, the gas captured by REC technologies could be easily be (and are) flared and the GHG footprint thereby minimized.” (page 3)
- Finally, Howarth et al. again cite EPA emissions data to support their contention that as much as 85 percent of the methane produced during the flowback stage is vented into the atmosphere. Interestingly, EPA’s actual estimates of vented methane come in at 49 percent – which, according to industry data, is itself wildly off the mark. According to Cathles: “Based on Howarth et al’s own references … we believe the losses during drill out and well completion for unconventional shale gas wells are not significantly greater than those cited by Howarth et al. for conventional gas wells. …This is supported by some of the examples cited by the EPA and Howarth et al. The Williams Corp (EPA 2007, p 14) shows, for example, that [greater than] 90 percent of the flowback gas is captured and some of the remainder flared (George 2011, p14).” (page 7)
Point #3: Howarth and his team refuse to acknowledge that their previous assumptions on lost-and-unaccounted for gas were incorrect, even in the face of a direct response/refutation by the U.S. Department of Energy.
The problem?
- As we highlighted in our initial rebuttal last year, Howarth, et al. estimate that between 1.4 percent and 3.6 percent of all natural gas produced over the life of a well leaks off into the atmosphere during the transmission process, a hypothesis that relies heavily on “lost and unaccounted for gas” (LUG) figures reported in a non peer-reviewed Texas trade magazine that went out of circulation in December 2010.
- CFR’s Michael Levi, reporting on a presentation produced last year by the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), explains why that’s a bad idea: “The NETL documents don’t address the Howarth study explicitly, but if you flip to page 25, you’ll see a big part of the discrepancy explained. Some readers will recall that Howarth found a large fraction of produced gas from unconventional wells never made it to end users, assumed that all of that gas was vented as methane, and thus concluded that the global warming impacts were huge. As the NETL work explains, though, 62% of that gas isn’t lost at all – it’s ‘used to power equipment.’” (CFR blog, “Rebutting the Howarth Shale Gas Study,” May 20, 2011)
Given the lack of substantive response to these and several other important points highlighted in the Cathles paper, it’s understandable that Howarth and his team didn’t receive quite the same volume and intensity of press coverage this time around relative to their first effort back in April.
Unfortunately, though, much of the coverage they did get seeks to advance the simple narrative that this whole thing is just a friendly dust-up among faculty at Cornell – with Howarth and Ingraffea on one side, and Cathles, Larry Brown and Andrew Hunter on the other. This Bloomberg lede is typical of the approach: “Two groups of Cornell University researchers have split over the contribution to global warming by rising extraction of natural gas from shale beds through a process known as fracking.” (Bloomberg, Jan. 20, 2012)
Of course, the reality of the situation is quite a bit different. Actually, it’s Howarth and Ingraffea on one side, and the rest of the intelligent world on the other. In the nine months since their initial paper was published, detailed responses have been compiled and released by no fewer than a dozen separate academic, government and non-governmental institutions (a quick list of those is available here and here). In a study commissioned by the Sierra Club, one researcher even went so far as to call the Howarth data biased: “We don’t think they’re using credible data and some of the assumptions they’re making are biased. And the comparison they make at the end, my biggest problem, is wrong.”
Of course, over on Planet Ithaca, not only don’t any of these criticisms hold merit – according to the Cornell research team, they don’t even exist. In an online chat hosted by the Syracuse Post-Standard in September, Prof. Ingraffea provided the following answer when asked how he’s dealing with the all the controversy that his paper has engendered: “We have not received any of what we would consider intense peer criticism.” Which we guess is true. Just so long as you continue to believe it.
States Continue Effective Regulation of Shale
It's a tired refrain (and demonstrable fiction) used incessantly by opponents of responsible shale development in their press releases and fundraising pleas: The industry, they claim, is unregulated. But for those of us interested in facts, we know better. And news this week from Colorado and Texas provides yet another example of how states are doing a more than adequate job in regulating the industry: both states' primary regulatory bodies overseeing oil and gas development moved forward with rules requiring disclosure of fluids used during hydraulic fracturing.
It’s a tired refrain (and demonstrable fiction) used incessantly by opponents of responsible shale development in their press releases and fundraising pleas: The industry, they claim, is unregulated. But for those of us interested in facts, we know better. And news this week from Colorado and Texas provides yet another example of how states are doing a more than adequate job in regulating the industry: both states’ primary regulatory bodies overseeing oil and gas development moved forward with rules requiring disclosure of fluids used during hydraulic fracturing.
In Texas, the Railroad Commission (RRC) adopted its rule on December 13th to comply with a law passed earlier this year by the state’s legislature. That rule will require companies to use the FracFocus.org website to disclose chemicals used during hydraulic fracturing. The requirement will apply to all wells permitted by RRC on or after February 1, 2012, the date the rule goes into effect.
Companies across the country have been voluntarily utilizing Frac Focus for chemical disclosure for months, and anyone who visits the site can look up well-specific data. Of course, FracFocus.org has been available since this past spring to anyone with Internet access, a fact lost on professional opponents of development who still choose to believe that hydraulic fracturing fluids are a mystery.
It’s also worth noting that the new RRC rule was praised by a range of interests, from America’s Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA) to the League of Conservation Voters.
A similar story unfolded in Colorado, where the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) approved its own disclosure requirement for operators in the Centennial State. As in Texas, companies must use FracFocus.org, and both states have provisions to protect proprietary information. The new rule in Colorado was similarly embraced by diverse group of stakeholders, ranging from the Colorado Oil and Gas Association (COGA) to the Environmental Defense Fund.
Texas and Colorado are two of the largest oil and gas producing states in the country (Texas being the largest), and the new rules approved by their respective regulatory bodies demonstrate yet again that state governments — not bureaucrats inside the Environmental Protection Agency — are more than capable of tightly and effectively regulating shale development.
Ohio DNR Geologist: Draft EPA Pavillion study “Truly Flawed Science”
It’s probably a pretty safe bet that no one in Ohio has actually ever been to Pavillion – a town of less than 170 residents in the middle of the Wind River Indian Reservation in Fremont Co., Wyoming. But after the release last week of a draft EPA study suggesting that the fracturing of shallow natural gas wells in the area could have impacted groundwater, it’s probably safe now to assume that hundreds of thousands of Ohio residents have heard of it.
So important was the news that the Columbus Dispatch ran the Pavillion story on its front page. Ditto in Dayton. But now, as the dust starts to settle out a bit, we’re starting to get a much better and clearer sense of exactly what went wrong out in Pavillion. And every shred of data and information coming in right now indicates that most of “what went wrong” resides directly with EPA itself.
From drilling their monitoring wells squarely into a natural gas-producing zone (700 feet below where anyone could expect to find potable groundwater), to reporting that petroleum compounds were found even in the “blank” water samples that were tested (control samples, not even from Pavillion) – the methodological errors that EPA appears to have committed in Pavillion are legion. At least that’s the conclusion to which several prominent news outlets came over the weekend, with one editorial suggesting that EPA’s findings are based on “shoddy scientific analysis.”
Well, add one more important voice to that choir: ODNR geologist Tom Tomastik. In a position paper released publicly earlier today, Mr. Tomastik lays out what he considers to be myriad errors of both omission and commission with respect to the work product issued by EPA’s Denver office late last week. The full, four-page ODNR analysis is available here – but below, we excerpt out a few of the highlights:
- “As a professional geologist at the Division for 23 years with experience and expertise in conducting several hundred alleged groundwater contamination cases in Ohio, I see many deficiencies and concerns with this draft U.S. EPA report.”
- There is huge lack of geological and hydrogeological information within this report. When conducting a groundwater investigation of this magnitude, local geology and hydrogeology must be presented and evaluated to accurately determine the impacts geology and hydrogeology play in the role of identifying pathways for migration of contamination.
- “Total lack of evaluation or determination of naturally-occurring hydrocarbons in shallow geologic reservoirs. If they exist, they need be evaluated.”
- “In my evaluation of the cement bond logs examples that are presented in this report, U.S. EPA did not consider the normal issues (microannulus, poor cement bonding, gas-cut cement, or free pipe) inherent to first generation cement bond logging evaluation. These issues need to be address prior to obtaining accurate determinations.”
- I see no geochemical analyses by U.S. EPA of oil and gas production brines or other hydrocarbon fluid production to evaluate natural BTEX compounds already present in the reservoirs. To assume these compounds came from additives inherent to hydraulic fracturing is truly flawed science.”
- “The U.S. EPA Investigation of Ground Water Contamination near Pavillion, Wyoming is clearly lacking in the demonstration of the scientific method. A more through geologic and hydrogeologic investigation is warranted.”
Click here for the full response from Mr. Tomastik – and here for EID’s rebuttal to the EPA study.
The Amazing Energy Future that the Federal Government Wants to Prevent
Shale oil development in places like North Dakota means ‘OPEC’s days are numbered,’ but federal regulators pursue alternative future with potentially devastating results.
In 2004, North Dakota was the ninth largest oil producing state in the country, producing less than half as much oil per year as the state of New Mexico. In 2010, a mere six years later, North Dakota had climbed to the fourth largest, surpassing energy rich Oklahoma and Louisiana. What happened?
Two words: shale oil. The Bakken formation in the western part of the state, which the U.S. Geological Survey predicted in 1995 had only 151 million barrels of oil, turned out to be one of the largest onshore oil fields ever discovered in the United States — in 2008 the USGS famously revised its estimate upward by an amazing 25-fold, projecting that the Bakken could hold more than four billion barrels of oil.
This incredible story was told in detail this weekend in the Wall Street Journal‘s weekend interview, ” How North Dakota Became Saudi Arabia,” which focused on Harold Hamm, the oil man credited with discovering the massive energy potential in the Bakken:
[S]ince 2005 America truly has been in the midst of a revolution in oil and natural gas, which is the nation’s fastest-growing manufacturing sector. No one is more responsible for that resurgence than Mr. Hamm. He was the original discoverer of the gigantic and prolific Bakken oil fields of Montana and North Dakota that have already helped move the U.S. into third place among world oil producers.
How much oil does Bakken have? The official estimate of the U.S. Geological Survey a few years ago was between four and five billion barrels. Mr. Hamm disagrees: “No way. We estimate that the entire field, fully developed, in Bakken is 24 billion barrels.”
Of course, none of this would have been possible were it not for horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, both of which are needed to unlock the vast deposits of oil and natural gas in shale deposits across the country.
Yet even with this amazing success story, the America’s ability to reduce its reliance on OPEC is far from written in stone, and indeed seems to be under attack by federal regulators whose actions could undermine this renaissance just as its getting started. As the WSJ further explains:
[Hamm's] only beef these days is with Washington. Mr. Hamm was invited to the White House for a “giving summit” with wealthy Americans who have pledged to donate at least half their wealth to charity. (He’s given tens of millions of dollars already to schools like Oklahoma State and for diabetes research.) “Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, they were all there,” he recalls.
When it was Mr. Hamm’s turn to talk briefly with President Obama, “I told him of the revolution in the oil and gas industry and how we have the capacity to produce enough oil to enable America to replace OPEC. I wanted to make sure he knew about this.”
The president’s reaction? “He turned to me and said, ‘Oil and gas will be important for the next few years. But we need to go on to green and alternative energy. [Energy] Secretary [Steven] Chu has assured me that within five years, we can have a battery developed that will make a car with the equivalent of 130 miles per gallon.’” Mr. Hamm holds his head in his hands and says, “Even if you believed that, why would you want to stop oil and gas development? It was pretty disappointing.”
Washington keeps “sticking a regulatory boot at our necks and then turns around and asks: ‘Why aren’t you creating more jobs,’” he says. He roils at the Interior Department delays of months and sometimes years to get permits for drilling. “These delays kill projects,” he says. Even the Securities and Exchange Commission is now tightening the screws on the oil industry, requiring companies like Continental to report their production and federal royalties on thousands of individual leases under the Sarbanes-Oxley accounting rules. “I could go to jail because a local operator misreported the production in the field,” he says.
The impact of the “regulatory boot” and federal delays have a greater cost than hamstringing America’s capacity to produce energy. They also undermine the type of job creation and economic growth that a struggling economy so desperately needs:
Mr. Hamm believes that if Mr. Obama truly wants more job creation, he should study North Dakota, the state with the lowest unemployment rate in the nation at 3.5%. He swears that number is overstated: “We can’t find any unemployed people up there. The state has 18,000 unfilled jobs,” Mr. Hamm insists. “And these are jobs that pay $60,000 to $80,000 a year.” The economy is expanding so fast that North Dakota has a housing shortage. Thanks to the oil boom—Continental pays more than $50 million in state taxes a year—the state has a budget surplus and is considering ending income and property taxes.
Less reliance on OPEC. More high-paying jobs. Budget surpluses. Lower tax burdens for everyone. These are undeniable benefits of responsible oil and gas production — particularly in states with significant shale resources such as Pennsylvania (Marcellus shale), Texas (Eagle Ford shale), Louisiana (Haynesville shale), and now Ohio (Utica shale) — that the federal government should be encouraging. Instead, members of Congress are pushing for the Environmental Protection Agency to ban hydraulic fracturing, thereby cutting off at the knees America’s energy revolution. The President, meanwhile, is threatening to curb domestic oil and gas production through higher taxes.
Instead of trying to shut down North Dakota’s model of more American energy production, more jobs, and more public revenue, maybe the federal government should be taking lessons from it.
*UPDATE II* Is Hydraulic Fracturing the ‘Greatest Threat’ to New Jersey’s Water?
Last week the New Jersey legislature passed an ill-informed measure that would ban hydraulic fracturing on the dubious basis that it “represents the greatest threat to New Jersey’s water supply than anything else we face today.” Of course, as EID carefully explained in a letter to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, hydraulic fracturing has never in its 60-year history been tied to the contamination of drinking water. The EPA’s own Lisa Jackson recently admitted that she’s not aware of a single case where the hydraulic fracturing process itself has contaminated water. (You can read more about what state regulators have said about hydraulic fracturing not impacting water by clicking here.)
Speaking of New Jersey’s water, yesterday the EPA actually announced a plan to clean up groundwater at a Superfund site in Pedricktown, NJ, where, it should be noted, there is no hydraulic fracturing taking place. Apparently even without a singled fractured well in the Garden State, the state’s water supply is so contaminated with heavy metals such as lead and cadmium that the federal government is intervening. New Jersey actually has a long history of water pollution from Superfund sites, which, dare it be said once again, has nothing to do with hydraulic fracturing.
And what does EPA plan to do about this particular site?
EPA had originally planned to pump the contaminated ground water to the surface, treat it, and discharge the treated ground water into the Delaware River. This type of treatment is no longer needed because pollutant levels in the ground water have gone down significantly as the sources of the contamination have been removed. EPA conducted a review of newer treatment methods, and is now proposing to inject a non-hazardous additive into the ground water that will absorb metal compounds such as lead and cadmium and remove the dissolved contaminants from the ground water.
Got that? New Jersey’s water is already contaminated with toxic substances, yet the legislature has declared a process that doesn’t even exist in the state — hydraulic fracturing – to be the “greatest threat” to its drinking water supplies. And now the EPA is proposing to inject chemicals into New Jersey residents’ water in the hopes that doing so will make it cleaner.
Also of note: One of the techniques that the Environmental Protection Agency commonly uses to assist in cleaning up Superfund sites is…hydraulic fracturing. Oh, the irony.
(To be fair, the New Jersey legislature’s ban is only in the context of producing natural gas, but it’s still interesting given the wild assertion that hydraulic fracturing — an environmentally sound process that the EPA uses to help clean up water — is somehow the greatest threat to the New Jersey’s available water supplies.)
UPDATE (7/8/11, 12:41pm EDT): Not to pile on, but the unrelated-to-gas-production water contamination stories in New Jersey are…piling up. And apparently so is raw sewage, according to the EPA:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has prepared an important report, Keeping Raw Sewage and Contaminated Stormwater Out of the Public’s Water, to answer commonly asked questions about combined sewer overflows. To read or download a copy of the report, visit http://www.epa.gov/region2/water/. To see an illustration of how serious a problem this is in Brooklyn, go to: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/29/sewage-overflow-in-new-york-believe-it/.
Many of the sewer systems in New York State and New Jersey and some in Puerto Rico are combined systems that carry sewage from homes and businesses as well as rainwater collected from street drains. When they overflow during heavy rains, the rainwater mixes with sewage and results in raw sewage being directly discharged into water bodies. These discharges are called combined sewer overflows and can pose serious environmental and public health risks.
“Clean water is vital to people’s health and our economy and is a priority for the EPA,” said EPA Regional Administrator Judith Enck. “We’ve seen improvements in water quality since the passage of the Clean Water Act forty years ago, but there is much more to be done to protect our rivers, harbors, lakes and streams. EPA’s new report provides important information on the laws that protect our waterways and the actions that can be taken to reduce water pollution.”
Keyword searches don’t always work, but it does not appear that the terms “natural gas” or “hydraulic fracturing” appear once in that release.
UPDATE II (7/11/11, 1:48pm EDT) Remember that time hydraulic fracturing created a Superfund site in New Jersey? Neither does the EPA, which announced today yet another cleanup plan for the squalid wonder that is New Jersey’s water supply:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced a proposed plan to cleanup the Crown Vantage Landfill Superfund site in Alexandria Township, Hunterdon County, New Jersey. The former landfill is contaminated with volatile organic compounds, polychlorinated biphenyls and other pollutants. Volatile organic compounds are a group of chemicals that evaporate easily into the air and have serious health effects. Polychlorinated biphenyls are potentially cancer-causing in people and build up in the fat of fish and animals. The landfill is 10 acres and a small portion sits on the eastern bank of the Delaware River. The EPA has already completed most of the cleanup work at the site, including removing over 2,450 drums and related waste from the landfill, and the site does not present an imminent risk to public health.
Inhofe Reminds Feds that States are in Charge of Hydraulic Fracturing
Last month Energy Department Secretary Steven Chu directed the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (SEAB) — specifically its Natural Gas Subcommittee — to “make recommendations to improve the safety and environmental performance of natural gas hydraulic fracturing from shale formations.” Those recommendations, according to the official memo sent by Steven Chu on May 5th (PDF), will eventually be shared with the Department of Interior and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
But as U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) points out in a recent letter to Secretary Chu, the U.S. Department of Energy has stated that it is “not engaged in regulating [hydraulic fracturing],” and the task laid out for the SEAB “does not include making decisions about regulatory policy,” according to Chu’s official May 5th memo. “Based on these statements,” Senator Inhofe writes in his letter to Chu, “can you confirm that any report issued by DOE pursuant to this announcement will not include recommendations relating to the regulation of the hydraulic fracturing process, or any components thereof, whether by DOE or any other Federal agency?”
The question is an important one: Any attempt to sway the opinions of the EPA (or Interior) toward regulating hydraulic fracturing at the federal level would not only compromise the ongoing research inside the EPA regarding this crucial well stimulation procedure, but also upend the incredibly efficient state-based regulation that already exists. Inhofe references this last point directly, noting in his letter that many in Washington are attempting to “expand federal regulatory and permitting power to supplant State authority.”
State regulators, meanwhile, overwhelmingly believe that hydraulic fracturing is environmentally safe and effectively regulated at the state level.
You can read Inhofe’s entire letter by clicking here (PDF).
U.S EPA: Not aware of any proven case where HF has affected drinking water
Earlier today, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform at a hearing on gas prices and the “Pain At The Pump.” So why are we posting about this on EID? Great question. At the hearing, a Congressman posed the following question to the Administrator: “Is there any evidence that hydraulic fracturing however can affect aquifers and water supplies?” Click on the following video link for the Administrator’s response, which may (or may not) surprise you.
While we often disagree with Mrs. Jackson on a number of issues, today she deserves a hat tip for setting the record straight when it comes to the history and deployment of hydraulic fracturing technology.
Don’t Sweat the Technical – EPA’s SAB Isn’t.
Two weeks from today, EPA’s Science Advisory Board (SAB) Panel will meet “to discuss substantive comments from Panel members on the draft SAB report Review of EPA’s Draft Hydraulic Fracturing Study Plan.” For those of you not familiar with EPA’s HF study, or those looking for a quick refresher, this study dates back to 2009 when Congress passed the FY2010 spending bill instructing EPA to study the relationship between the use of fracturing technology and the safety and quality of underground sources of drinking water. Here’s the report language:
“The conferees urge the EPA to carry out a study on the relationship between hydraulic fracturing and drinking water, using a credible approach that relies on the best available science, as well as independent sources of information. The conferees expect the study to be conducted through a transparent, peer-reviewed process that will ensure the validity and accuracy of the data. EPA shall consult with other federal agencies as well as appropriate state and interstate regulatory agencies in carrying out the study, and it should be prepared in accordance with EPA quality assurance principles.”
Pretty clear directive, right? Here’s the good news: The science is about as straightforward as it gets – which is why state regulators and the EPA itself have been forced to admit that not a single case of groundwater contamination has ever been tied to hydraulic fracturing in the more than 60 years it’s been in use. Here, here, here, here (pg. 34) and here are just a few examples of state and federal regulators attesting to the safety of this process.
Back to the SAB meeting scheduled for May 19. While we certainly want to give these folks the benefit of the doubt and wait to hear what they have to say in two weeks, we got our hands on a 70-page discussion draft that will serve as the basis for the SAB’s upcoming public meeting. And so we decided to take a look – here’s a quick look at what we found.
Righgt out of the gate, to SAB’s credit, the panel references actual field data collected from the Barnett and Marcellus formations by Pinnacle Technologies that clearly demonstrates the thousands of feet of separation that exist between the deepest fresh water aquifers and individual fractures. EID highlighted this research back in August 2010. So it’s nice to see that in there.
Another solid recommendation found in the document is the SAB’s insistence that experts with experience in well construction and fracturing operations be included on the final panel. To wit:
“While EPA has extensive expertise and the timeline is short on this study, the SAB recommends EPA consider expanding the research team to include researchers with experience in this area of investigation (especially those with experience in well construction and fracturing operations).” (SAB Review of EPA’s Draft HF Study Plan, pg. 30)
While the SAB is comprised of individuals with varying backgrounds and interests, the purpose of this study, as dictated by Congress, is to execute a technical review of hydraulic fracturing and its potential impact on drinking water. But looking through the actual document, you don’t find a whole lot of technical analysis. Don’t find a whole lot on the technologies in place that ensure drinking water is protected at each and every stage of the process. What you do find, however, is a lot of talk about non-technical things – a lots of references to lots of terms that have nothing to do with the mandate of this panel. Here’s how many times the following words appear in the text:
Wellbore (0); Regulations (0); Annulus (0); Background (0); Migration (0); Biogenic Methane (0); Containment Technologies (1); Casing (3); Pressure (4); Completion (4); Natural gas (7); Cement (9); Environmental Justice (12); Toxic (74)
Again, this is a technical review of hydraulic fracturing – one that’s designed to review the well completion process and determine what, if any potential impacts the fracturing process has on fresh water aquifers and private water wells. Let’s stick to the science and technical aspects of the fracturing process. So long as that’s the approach, it’s one we will continue to support. But it doesn’t appear to be an approach that’s been followed right now.
