Dark Side of a Natural Gas Boom
New York Times
7 December 2009
By Jad Mouawad and Clifford Krauss
DIMOCK, Pa. — Victoria Switzer dreamed of a peaceful retirement in
these Appalachian hills. Instead, she is coping with a big problem
after a nearby natural gas well contaminated her family’s drinking
water with high levels of methane.
Environmental concern about hydraulic fracturing is
creating political obstacles for gas drilling companies.- Fred R.
Conrad/The New York Times
Through no design of hers, Ms. Switzer has joined a rising chorus
of voices skeptical of the nation’s latest energy push. “It’s been
‘drill, baby, drill’ out here,” Ms. Switzer said bitterly. “There is no
stopping this train.”
Victoria Switzer at her home in Dimock, Pa., where
13 water wells, including hers, are contaminated. - Fred R. Conrad/The
New York Times
Across vast regions of the country, gas companies are using a
technology called hydraulic fracturing to produce natural gas from
previously untapped beds of shale. The push has been so successful that
the country’s potential gas reserves jumped by 35 percent in two years.
The new supplies have driven down natural gas prices for consumers and
might help the global environment by allowing more production of
electricity from natural gas, which emits fewer global warming
emissions than coal.
What the drilling push will do to local environments is another matter.
The drilling boom is raising concern in many parts of the country, and
the reaction is creating political obstacles for the gas industry.
Hazards like methane contamination of drinking water wells, long known
in regions where gas production was common, are spreading to populous
areas that have little history of coping with such risks, but happen to
sit atop shale beds.
And a more worrisome possibility has come to light. A string of
incidents in places like Wyoming and Pennsylvania in recent years has
pointed to a possible link between hydraulic fracturing and pollution
of groundwater supplies. In the worst case, such pollution could damage
crucial supplies of water used for drinking and agriculture.
So far, the evidence of groundwater pollution is thin. Environmental
groups contend that is because governments have been slow to react to
the drilling boom and are not looking hard for contamination. Gas
companies acknowledge the validity of some concerns, but they claim
that their technology is fundamentally safe.
The debate is becoming more urgent as gas companies move closer to more
populated areas, especially in the Northeast, where millions of people
are likely to find themselves living near drilling operations in coming
years.
“To be able to scale up our drilling, clearly we have to be in sync
with people’s concerns about water,” said Aubrey K. McClendon, chief
executive of the Chesapeake Energy Corporation, a leading gas company.
“It’s our biggest challenge.”
Hydraulic fracturing consists of injecting huge volumes of water at
high pressure to break shale rocks and allow natural gas to flow out
more easily. The water is mixed with sand, chemicals and gels to
lubricate the process and help keep the rocks open.
After refining the technique in Western states in recent years, gas
companies are moving to tap the nation’s largest shale structure, the
Marcellus shale, which stretches from Virginia to New York.
“It’s a very reliable, safe, American source of energy,” said John
Richels, president of the Devon Energy Corporation.
Environmental activists, however, say there is at least scattered
evidence that fracturing operations can pose risks to groundwater
sources, particularly when mistakes are made in drilling operations.
They have also questioned how some companies deal with the wastewater
produced by their operations, warning that liquids laced with chemicals
and salt from drilling can overload public sewage treatment plants or
pollute surface waters.
Deborah Goldberg, a lawyer for the nonprofit environmental group
Earthjustice who is fighting to toughen Pennsylvania’s discharge rules,
said the state “is facing enormous pressure from gas drillers, who are
generating contaminated water faster than the state’s treatment plants
can handle it.”
According to the New York State Department of Environmental
Conservation, which is going through a public review of its new rules
on hydraulic fracturing, gas companies use at least 260 types of
chemicals, many of them toxic, like benzene. These chemicals tend to
remain in the ground once the fracturing has been completed, raising
fears about long-term contamination.
The most immediate hazard from the national drilling bonanza, it is
clear, involves contamination of residential drinking water wells by
natural gas. In Bainbridge, Ohio, an improperly drilled well
contaminated groundwater in 2007, including the water source for the
township’s police station, according to a complaint filed this year.
After building to high pressures, gas migrated through underground
faults, and blew up one house.
Here in Dimock, about 30 miles north of Scranton, Pa., 13 water wells,
including that of Ms. Switzer, were contaminated by natural gas. One of
the wells blew up.
Under prodding, environmental regulators are stepping up the search for
groundwater contamination. In Pavilion, Wyo., for instance, the
Environmental Protection Agency has begun an investigation into
contamination of several drinking water wells.
Luke Chavez, an E.P.A. investigator, said that traces of methane and
2-butoxyethanol phosphate, a foaming agent, had been found in several
wells near an area where the EnCana Corporation, a Canadian gas
company, had used hydraulic fracturing in recent years.
He said the compounds could have come from cleaning products or oil and
gas production, but “it tells us something is happening here that
shouldn’t be here.”
An EnCana spokesman, Doug Hock, said the company was “committed to
working with E.P.A. to resolve this issue.” But he added, “At this
point, no specific connection has been made between the tentatively
identified compounds and oil and gas activities.”
In September, the the Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation was required to
suspend its fracturing operations for three weeks after causing three
spills in the course of nine days.
In a 2004 study, the E.P.A. decided that hydraulic fracturing was
essentially harmless. Critics said the analysis was politically
motivated, but it was cited the following year when the Republican-led
Congress removed hydraulic fracturing from any regulation under the
Safe Drinking Water Act.
The current Democratic Congress recently enacted a law requiring the
E.P.A. to review the study. Lawmakers from Colorado and New York have
also introduced legislation to end the water act exemption and require
gas companies to disclose all chemicals used in fracturing operations.
The agency has begun an analysis of whether hydraulic fracturing
requires tighter federal regulation.
“E.P.A. is reviewing available information to determine whether
hydraulic fracturing fluids have contaminated drinking water and has
dedicated resources to properly studying this issue,” the agency said
in a statement.
The political situation has put the gas companies on the defensive.
“It’s not going to stop us, but we do have to solve the problem in a
prudent manner,” said Rodney L. Waller, a senior vice president at the
Range Resources Corporation, a major gas producer in the Marcellus
shale.
Partly in response to opposition it has encountered in New York,
Chesapeake recently indicated that it would not drill in the New York
City watershed, a region that supplies drinking water to nearly 10
million people. Schlumberger, a service company that performs
fracturing operations on behalf of gas companies, said it was working
on “green” fracturing fluids, including safer substitutes for hazardous
chemicals.
In the Barnett shale gas field in Texas, Devon Energy and Chesapeake
are trying various treatment techniques for disposing of contaminated
drilling water. Gas executives hope that wider use of such techniques
will damp public opposition in some regions. Several companies are
starting a joint water treatment effort in Pennsylvania in the next few
weeks.
Still, around Dimock, the gas boom is viewed with mixed feelings. Many
public officials support drilling. Governor Edward G. Rendell has
called the surge “a great boon” to Pennsylvania. Many people have
leased their land here and are collecting royalty checks from gas
production.
The hills around Dimock have been bulldozed to clear the ground for
dozens of drilling pads the size of football fields. Eighteen-wheelers
thunder down narrow country roads, kicking up dust and fumes. Recently,
a helicopter buzzed overhead while dangling heavy cables used for
seismic tests.
In September, the Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation, a Houston energy
company, was required to suspend its fracturing operations for three
weeks after causing three spills in the course of nine days. Cabot,
which was fined $56,650 by the state, said the spills consisted mainly
of water, with only 0.5 percent chemicals. This month, Cabot was fined
an additional $120,000 by Pennsylvania for the contamination of
homeowners’ wells. It must now submit strict drilling plans to the
state.
A company spokesman, Kenneth S. Komoroski, said it was too early to
blame hydraulic fracturing — the technology at the heart of the boom —
for pollution of water wells. He said Cabot was still investigating the
causes of last January’s contamination incidents.
“None of the issues in Dimock have anything to do with hydraulic
fracturing,” he said.
The fines were little consolation to Ms. Switzer, the woman who can no
longer draw drinking water from her well.
After moving here in 2005, she sold drilling rights on her property for
a mere $180 after, as she recalled it, a gas company representative
convinced her only one well might be drilled. In fact, no well was
drilled, but three were on surrounding properties. Her well was
contaminated at the beginning of the year after gas leaked from a well
drilled by Cabot.
Her family now uses bottled water supplied by Cabot every week. She
fears that if she tried to sell her home, which sits in the middle of a
drilling zone, no one would buy it.
“Can you imagine the ad? ‘Beautiful new home. Bring your own water,’ ”
Ms. Switzer said. “We’re like a dead zone here.”