State Ignored Previous Warnings About Drilling Inspector
Shortage
Charleston Gazette
15 November 2011
By Ken Ward Jr.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Long before most West Virginians had ever
heard the words "Marcellus Shale," outside auditors were warning
that the state's oil and gas regulatory agency was greatly
underfunded and severely understaffed.
In December 1993, a review by the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact
Commission warned that lack of funding and a shortage of
inspectors were among the chronic problems facing the state
Department of Environmental Protection's Office of Oil and Gas.
"The OOG does not have enough inspectors or funding to fully meet
its statutory mandate," said the 98-page review report, written by
a team of regulators from other states, industry officials and
environmental group representatives.
A decade later, another outside examination found that little had
changed. The state oil and gas office still "does not have enough
inspectors or funding to fully meet its statutory mandate," said a
110-page report issued in January 2003.
Lawmakers are considering a proposal for another outside study of
West Virginia's oil and gas regulatory system, but they have yet
to implement important recommendations from prior reviews over the
last two decades.
Today, just 19 state inspectors police thousands of natural gas
wells across West Virginia. That's just four more than DEP had two
decades ago, before the race to tap the Marcellus Shale's vast
reserves greatly increased and complicated the inspection force's
workload.
"The best written rule is no good if you don't have enforcement,
if you don't have inspectors in the field overseeing the
operations," said Don Garvin, lead lobbyist for the West Virginia
Environmental Council.
DEP inspectors are supposed to examine drilling operations at
seven key points in the process, to monitor things like
well-casing construction, pit waste disposal and site reclamation.
But agency officials admit that doesn't always happen.
Overworked staffers have to prioritize those inspections with
increasing numbers of citizen complaints, checking on abandoned
wells, and wrestling with the growing complexity of horizontal
drilling and advanced hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, DEP
officials say.
"It was likely only due to our financial ability to allow
significant amounts of overtime hours to be worked in the field
that we were in a position to provide the regulatory oversight
that was conducted," DEP said earlier this year in an internal
report on the oil and gas office's workload and budget. "Our
current financial condition is bleak and while overtime is being
approved it is at a lower level."
Last year, the state dedicated $3.1 million to running the DEP's
oil and gas division. That's 40 percent more than the division's
1994 budget, but it's also barely enough to keep up with
inflation, according to a Gazette analysis of state financial
data.
Still, increased funding for oil and gas inspections and permit
reviews remains one of the major sticking points that could again
block passage of any legislation to reform oil and gas regulatory
requirements. Major industry lobby groups oppose significant
permit fee hikes included in the bill, even though the current
language calls for smaller fees than DEP Secretary Randy Huffman
himself had proposed earlier this year.
West Virginia business and political leaders have for several
years been promoting a potential boom in Marcellus Shale gas
drilling, saying it will provide a huge economic boost to the
state.
During a U.S. Senate hearing on Monday, Tomblin general counsel
Kurt Dettinger said the Marcellus "presents tremendous economic
opportunities for West Virginia and other states." Staffers for
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., handed out media packets from the West
Virginia Manufacturers Association, touting the potential for
thousands of spin-off jobs, especially if one or more "cracker"
plants are built to extract process natural gas byproducts.
Environmental and citizen groups have warned about impacts, both
to the state's water and land and to homeowners who don't have
title to gas reserves beneath their land. New studies are also
questioning whether natural gas really has the greenhouse gas
advantages over coal that have frequently been cited in the past.
Industry officials and their supporters talk about the need for
updated rules that would provide all sides with "certainty," about
drilling standards. But lawmakers have been working for three
years on such rules with no legislation passed to date.
Across the country, the boom in oil and gas drilling is mostly
regulated by state agencies, with rules and staffing levels that
vary from place to place. No federal statute sets standards for
the drilling process itself, though the environmental impacts do
fall under several national laws.
To help monitor how well states are doing their job, the
Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission in the 1990s conducted
reviews of such programs. Those reviews were later continued by a
nonprofit organization called State Review of Oil and Natural Gas
Environmental Regulations, or STRONGER.
As part of their proposed legislation, some lawmakers would
mandate that DEP seek a STRONGER review of West Virginia's
existing program to regulate natural gas drilling. Two such
reviews were done in 1993 and 2003.
The 1993 review reported that the state's oil and gas office had
the equivalent of 26.5 full-time employees, including 13
inspectors and two supervisors. It reported an annual budget of
$1.7 million, or about $2.5 million in 2010 dollars.
"Most field staff remain motivated in spite of being overworked,"
the report of that 1993 review said.
"However, because of limited resources, some issues are not being
dealt with adequately and there is significant reliance on
operator self-inspection (i.e., the frequency of periodic
inspections is not always commensurate with risk)."
A decade later, a follow-up review reported, "West Virginia has
not significantly increased OOG funding to allow OOG to meet its
statutory mandate."
The 2003 STRONGER report found a decrease in the number of oil and
gas staff and "no significant increases in funding" since the
initial report. "The review team strongly suggests that the state
increase the amount of funding for OOG to assure that the OOG is
able to meet its statutory mandates," the report said.
West Virginia funds the oil and gas office partly through permit
fees paid by drillers. Currently, those fees are set by law at
$650 for deep wells like those drilled into the Marcellus.
In January, DEP proposed legislation to increase permit fees for
horizontal wells to $10,000 per well. At the time, DEP Secretary
Randy Huffman said the move would give his agency enough money to
double the oil and gas office's 34-person staff, including hiring
18 new inspectors. Tomblin, then the acting governor, did not
endorse the proposal, but allowed DEP to seek legislative sponsors
on its own.
After industry complaints, the current bill would now set permit
fees at $10,000 for the first well on any drilling pad and $5,000
for each subsequent well on that pad.
Last month, the West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association
wrote to lawmakers to complain that that the permit fee language
"sends a clear message to the industry that West Virginia is an
uncompetitive business environment."
But during Monday's U.S. Senate hearing, representatives of
Chesapeake Energy and EQT Corp. did not publicly criticize the
proposed increase in permit fees.
"It is the standard that the regulated community has to be paid to
be regulated," said Chesapeake vice president Scott Rotruck. "What
that amount is has to be an amount that has the agency properly
staffed to regulate us. It has to be the right amount."
DEP spokeswoman Kathy Cosco said Tuesday that agency officials
estimate the current legislation would generate enough funding to
hire 14 additional oil and gas staffers -- fewer than half what
Huffman proposed in January.
And Delegate Tim Manchin, D-Marion and co-chairman of the
Legislature's Marcellus committee, told the U.S. Senate hearing
that the current bill would allow DEP to hire just nine more
inspectors and permit writers.
"We do not know if this is sufficient to address regulating the
thousands of existing wells in the state and properly permitting
and inspecting these new wells," Delegate Manchin said.
Reach Ken Ward Jr. at kw...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-1702.