PA-DEP Chief Seeks Tougher Oversight of Marcellus Shale Drilling
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
17 June 2010
By Tom Barnes, Harrisburg Bureau
HARRISBURG -- The state's top environmental official wants the state
Legislature to enact laws to reinforce his regulatory power to control
safety at Marcellus Shale drilling sites.
John Hanger, secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection,
told the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee Wednesday
that putting his powers into law would protect the state from potential
lawsuits challenging his authority. That is particularly true as
Marcellus Shale drilling expands throughout the state, he said.
Mr. Hanger said he will submit a list of amendments to the state's Oil
and Gas Act "to make it clear that the department can withhold permits
from companies that act in an unsafe manner."
The agency continues to hire more inspectors to check the growing
number of natural gas wells being drilled by the expanding Marcellus
Shale industry. So far there are 167 inspectors, with the number to top
190 in several months. The extra staffing is paid by increased permit
fees for drillers. So far, 3,800 permits for wells have been issued,
with drilling begun at 1,500 sites. They are needed as gas well
drilling increases across the state, especially in western and
northcentral Pennsylvania.
In a few more years, Pennsylvania will likely be producing 10 percent
of all the natural gas produced in the U.S., Mr. Hanger said, because
of the huge amount of gas in the widespread Marcellus Shale areas
throughout the state.
As the Marcellus gas industry expands, Mr. Hanger said he has made
safety in drilling the deep underground wells a top priority for the
department and repeatedly tells the gas industry that safety should be
its top goal, too.
"We've told the industry that safety can't be sacrificed, and not to
allow profit to trump safety," he said. "There will be serious
consequences if safety is lax."
Since January, Mr. Hanger said, DEP has completed almost 1,700
inspections of Marcellus Shale drilling sites in the state and has
found 530 violations, some of them he called "troubling" and "reasons
for concern." DEP inspectors found 638 violations in all of 2009.
Some of the problems, he said, pertain to "improperly constructed or
maintained drilling waste and flowback containment pits at 29 of the
364 Marcellus Shale wells drilled this year," he said.
One serious incident the agency is investigating is the June 3 gas well
"blowout" in Clearfield County, an incident he said narrowly missed
being a catastrophe. A report on that incident should be finished next
month, he said.
"There were no injuries [in Clearfield County] but it was a dangerous
situation," he said. "It was a near-miss. We were lucky there wasn't
ignition" of the gas that escaped.
Several committee members asked what had caused the blowout at the EOG
Resources Inc. well, which sent an uncontrolled stream of natural gas
and polluted drilling waste water spouting 75 feet into the air for 16
hours, before it was finally capped on June 4.
Mr. Hanger said he has hired a natural gas expert with 27 years
experience to head up the department's probe and didn't want to
speculate on the cause based on preliminary information. When the
report comes out, he said, "There will be a full understanding of what
went wrong and what needs to change to prevent such an incident from
happening again."
In a related matter, Mr. Hanger said DEP has checked drilling
operations at seven Marcellus Shale drilling sites in Pennsylvania
being done by Union Drilling Co., the company that was working at a
West Virginia well that exploded June 7, and has found no violations.
Bureau Chief Tom Barnes: tbarnes@post-gazette.com or 717-787-4354.