Wyoming pushed EPA to delay study on fracking: report

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The governor of Wyoming pressed the top U.S. environmental regulator to delay its December, 2011 release of a draft study linking fracking for natural gas to contamination of drinking water, a news report said on Thursday.

Governor Matt Mead contacted Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson and persuaded her to delay for about a month releasing the study that found fluids used in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, had likely polluted an aquifer in the small town of Pavillion, the Associated Press report said.

The delay gave state officials time to raise dozens of questions about the draft study and coordinate an "all-out-press" against the EPA in the weeks before the agency released the study on December 8 last year, said the report, which relied on emails obtained from a state records request and an interview with Mead, a drilling supporter.

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NYPIRG joins bipartisan lawmakers asking Cuomo to scrap fracking regs

The New York Public Interest Research Group last week joined a bipartisan group of lawmakers in calling on Gov. Andrew Cuomo to withdraw the Department of Environmental Conservation's revised draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement on hydraulic fracturing, or "hydrofracking."

Hydrofracking, the blasting of a mixture of water, chemicals and sand into the ground to break up rock formations and release natural gas deposits, emerged a contentious issue last summer upon the governor's proposal to lift a state moratorium on the process. Proponents have argued the drilling process would be a job creator, with opponents pointing to the potential for negative environmental impacts from hydrofracking.

The DEC is in the midst of reviewing the more than 60,000 public comments received in regard to the revised draft, which was released last September. 

"Not only is this a dangerous and dirty industrial activity, but the state's review is completely inadequate and fatally flawed," said Brendan Woodruff, NYPIRG hydrofracking campaign organizer. "The state did not conduct an assessment of the potential impact that fracking could have on public health, they have no plan to dispose of the millions of gallons of toxic wastewater and they have failed to address the financial impact this will have on local governments, including damage to roads and increased costs for emergency services."

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New Proposal on Fracking Gives Ground to Industry

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Friday issued a proposed rule governing hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas on public lands that will for the first time require disclosure of the chemicals used in the process.

But in a significant concession to the oil industry, companies will have to reveal the composition of fluids only after they have completed drilling — a sharp change from the government’s original proposal, which would have required disclosure of the chemicals 30 days before a well could be started.

The pullback on the rule followed a series of meetings at the White House after the original regulation was proposed in February. Lobbyists representing oil industry trade associations and individual major producers like ExxonMobil, XTO Energy, Apache, Samson Resources and Anadarko Petroleum met with officials of the Office of Management and Budget, who reworked the rule to address industry concerns about overlapping state regulations and the cost of compliance.

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EPA issues air pollution rules for 'fracking' wells

Federal regulators issued first-ever air pollution rules for "fracking" wells this past week, requiring drillers burn or capture the gas and its smog-producing compounds released when the wells are first tapped.

Environmental Protection Agency official Gina McCarthy announced the long-anticipated rules, the first to cover some of the 13,000 wells drilled yearly nationwide that use hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to collect natural gas and oil from deep shale layers.

Going into effect in 60 days, the rules cover the period when a well is first drilled when natural gas is still venting but before it begins actual production. In a compromise with the industry, regulators said the drillers can flare, or burn off, the gas for now, a process that can last for weeks. But starting in 2015 they would lose that option. Instead, they'll be required to collect it -- so-called green completion of new fracking wells.

"We wanted to encourage 'green completions' as soon as the technology can become widely available," McCarthy said, explaining the 2015 "phase-in" of the rules. The announcement came in response to a lawsuit involving the Clean Air Act. EPA estimates the rules will cut 95 percent of the smog- related chemicals released by fracking wells, ones linked to asthma, respiratory ailments and cancer.

http://www.mansfieldnewsjournal.com/article/20120422/NEWS01/204220304/EPA-issues-air-pollution-rules-fracking-wells?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CFrontpage

Reporting of fracking and drilling violations weak

WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. (CNNMoney) -- For Pennsylvanians with natural gas wells on their land, chances are they won't know if a safety violation occurs on their property.

That's because the state agency charged with regulating the wells -- the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) -- does not have to notify landowners if a violation is discovered. Even if landowners inquire about safety violations, DEP records are often too technical for the average person and incomplete.

While some landowners would like more transparency around safety issues, as a group they are not pushing for stronger regulations. Landowners, who are paid royalties by the companies that drill on their property, generally want the drilling to proceed.

Violations: In February, CNNMoney spoke with four families in Lycoming County, Pa., about violations issued against natural gas wells on or near their property.

The families have a total of 26 natural gas wells among them. They've received royalties from the wells, ranging from the low hundreds to hundreds of thousands of dollars over the last few years.

How fracking works

Yet none said they had ever been notified by the DEP or any of the well operators that wells near their homes had been cited for what DEP's website said were 62 safety violations over four years.

"We had no idea that there were any violations," said Dan Bower, who lives next door to his mother, Jane, and her five wells.

"We should have been contacted or something," echoed Neil Barto, another well owner.

DEP says that in cases in which violations pose risk to human health, they "certainly notify landowners."

The violations range from simple things such as improper signage toserious infractions such as subpar cementing -- which according to DEP can allow gas to seep out of a well and in some cases "has the potential to cause a fire or explosion."

While the violations are posted online, the digital records are short on specifics -- most importantly whether a violation poses a health risk.

A time consuming process: If landowners want to inquire about all violations on their property, DEP says they should do an in-person file review of the state regulator's documents relating to each well.

The agency declined multiple interview requests, but assured CNNMoney that an in-person review would contain records of any communication with landowners about violations. CNNMoney conducted a file review in late March.

The process required a visit to the regional DEP office, which had to be scheduled weeks in advance. 

But even then, the details discovered were largely in legal and technical language.

In approximately 1,000 pages of documents for the 26 permitted wells, there was only one record of any communication DEP had with a landowner about a violation.

A letter was sent to indicate that a spill of fluid used for drilling on Jane Bower's property had been cleaned up, but the recipient's name was redacted.

Both Jane and Dan say they never received such a letter, even though DEP fined Chief Oil and Gas, the operator of the well at the time, $2,100 for the five barrel spill. There were no details of this spill on the DEP website.

The file review revealed there was also a spill of 294 gallons of 'frac fluid' at the same Bower well. The fluid is what is used in hydraulic fracturing, a process where water, sand and a small amount of chemicals, are injected into shale deep underground to fracture the rock and release gas.

There was no mention of this spill in DEP's online records, and the paper records did not clearly indicate whether the ground water was tested after the spill.

It is not clear from the physical records whether these spills, or any other violations reviewed, ever posed a threat to human health.

Obama tightens oil and gas drilling regulations

The well operator at the time, Chief, said it did not.

But David Yoxtheimer, a hydrogeologist at Penn State's Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research, said there's not enough information to say for certain.

He said that if the Bower spills had gotten into surface or ground water then they "could have a water quality impact of low to moderate severity," but that such a risk would depend on site-specific factors not available in the files.

Landowner apathy: Despite the violations, it's not clear that the landowners are doing all in their power to check for violations on their property. 

Neither the Bowers nor the Bartos have a computer to check for violations, and neither plans on changing that.

"I sure as hell am not gonna buy one to check DEP," Neil Barto said.

All four families continue to support the drilling and note it has been aboon to the local economy. The Bartos, who have six wells on their property, say they have made about $150,000 in royalties off of the wells on their property in the last three years.

Plus, increased regulation is not a priority for them. That's a fairly common viewpoint among landowners.

"In our experience, landowner groups have been focused on advancing expanded drilling to maximize royalty payment opportunities, and have generally been opposed to increased regulation," said Kate Sinding at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

And that, says the NRDC, could be delaying further regulation for the industry, or taking pressure off regulators to report violations more clearly.

"Advocacy for those kinds of protections would undoubtedly carry more weight were they to come from landowners themselves, as opposed to the environmental community," Sinding said.

-- with additional reporting by CNN's Poppy Harlow 

First Published: May 1, 2012: 5:24 AM ET

http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/01/news/economy/fracking-violations/index.htm

Fracking Sand Threatens Gas Well Workers, Researcher Says

Sand dust created from the hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas from rock is one of the most dangerous threats to workers at wells blossoming across the U.S., a government safety researcher said.

About four out of five air samples from well sites in five states in the past two years exceeded recommended limits for silica particles, said Eric Esswein, an industrial hygienist at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. The particles in sand dust created during the so-called fracking process can lodge in the lungs and cause potentially fatal silicosis, he said today at a conference sponsored by the Institute of Medicine.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-04-30/fracking-sand-threatens-gas-well-workers-researcher-says

Sand County, the Sequel

Crystalline silica causes cancer. More specifically, crystalline silica dust is listed by both the World Health Organization and the U.S. National Toxicology Program as a known human lung carcinogen. Unlike tobacco smoke, silica dust does not provoke tumors via genetic mutations. Instead, its method of injury is to trigger inflammation and suppress immune functioning. It also causes silicosis, a disabling and sometimes fatal condition in which fibrous nodules fill the spongy pulmonary chambers, prompting infections and heart failure. For both reasons, crystalline silica is regulated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. There are legal limits to how much silica dust a person operating a sandblaster can inhale.

Before midwestern sand counties were turned inside out—and towering, windblown dunes of powdery silica began appearing within view of people’s kitchen windows—the general public was not thought to suffer appreciable exposures. There are thus no standards for us. No research program has ever addressed the possible impact of silica dust on, say, pregnancy outcome or the lung development of children. Lack of study on public health effects means that the occupational carcinogen crystalline silica is not regulated as a hazardous air pollutant. At least not in Wisconsin and not at this writing.

A SAND COUNTY ALMANAC was published in 1949. In the same year, an oil-field service company called Halliburton fracked its first commercial well and so ushered in a new method for extracting oil and gas by using pressure, water, chemicals, and sand to blow up shale. The function of the sand is to hold the stone doors ajar so that the hydrocarbons can flow out and up.

But the shale boom didn’t really take off until 2005, the year that fracking received exemptions from most major federal environmental regulations (the now-famous “Halliburton loophole”). By 2008, Wisconsin sand had become a highly prized quarry. The Samson of silica, its grains were the ideal size, shape, and strength for propping open cracks a mile or more below the earth’s surface. And that’s how the nation’s Devonian bedrock became the new destination spot for Sand County. That’s how Aldo Leopold’s farm in central Wisconsin could end up fracking Rachel Carson’s childhood home on the Marcellus shale of western Pennsylvania.

In 2009, the last year for which data are available, 6.5 million tons of U.S. sand were mined, washed, processed, loaded onto trucks and trains, carried to wellheads, and shot into the center of the earth. Six and a half million tons is the approximate weight of the Great Pyramid of Giza. According to commodities analysts, that figure probably doubled in 2010 and likely doubled again last year.

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6811