Explosion rocks natural gas compressor station

SPRINGVILLE TWP. - An explosion at a natural gas compressor station in Susquehanna County on Thursday morning blew a hole in the roof of the complex holding the engines, shaking homes as far as a half-mile away and drawing emergency responders from nearby counties.

The 11 a.m. blast at the Lathrop compressor station off Route 29 sent black and gray clouds billowing from the building for several hours, but the damage was contained to the site and no one was injured, said a spokeswoman for Williams Partners LP, which owns the Lathrop station.

Automated emergency shutdown procedures stopped gas from entering or leaving the compressors, and Williams will do a full investigation of the cause and damage as soon as it is safe to go back into the building, Williams spokeswoman Helen Humphreys said.

"The emergency shutdown equipment did work properly to isolate and minimize the incident," she said. "Emergency procedures were immediately activated. That included notifying local authorities and first responders, and evacuating all personnel."

The Lathrop station pressurizes and dehydrates natural gas from Marcellus Shale wells in the county for transport through interstate pipelines, including the Tennessee and Transco, which bring the gas to market. The station was sold to Williams by Cabot Oil and Gas Corp. as part of a deal announced in 2010 that also included a second compressor station and 75 miles of the natural gas drilling company's gathering pipelines.

Cabot spokesman George Stark said the company was working at its well sites Thursday to make sure they were not sending gas to the Lathrop station. He was unable to provide an estimate of how many wells were influenced by the interruption.

"We're working on rerouting the gas to other, operating compressor stations," he said. "We've got multiple ways we flow our gas."

In a press release Thursday, Cabot referred to the incident as a "flash fire, which extinguished itself immediately" and said it was moving approximately 365 million cubic feet of gas per day through the station before it was shut down.

"The investigation has just begun as to equipment damage, if any, the length of disruption or potential impact," Cabot CEO Dan O. Dinges said in the statement.

Colleen Connolly, a spokeswoman for the Department of Environmental Protection, said regulators were alerted to the explosion at around 11:30 a.m., and inspectors spent the afternoon monitoring air quality around the site after gas escaped from the station.

"The natural gas release valve was quickly shut off," she said. "So far, the levels are coming back acceptable, and there is no danger to the public."

The DEP has permitted seven compressor engines for the site, although it was unclear Thursday how many were running at the time of the fire.

"We're going to begin a full-scale investigation into how this happened," she said, "what was going on up there and the situation with the permits - how many compressors were operating up there and how many they were allowed to operate."

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Fracking opponents push for protection

Auburn residents Linda Zmek and Traci Fee said it's time to institute protective measures against gas- and oil-well drilling in the township.

They said they are particularly concerned with drilling into deep shale deposits, where hydraulic fracturing, with water under pressure, is used to create fractures in the rock to release oil and gas deposits.

More companies are drilling down and then horizontally to reach shale deposits, they said, and there are concerns that ground water will be contaminated in the process.

Mrs. Zmek and Ms. Fee are members of the Network for Oil and Gas Accountability and Protection.

Last week, they asked Auburn Trustees to consider a resolution not to allow hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," in Auburn.

Mrs. Zmek said they hope Auburn will write a resolution opposing fracturing in drilling. "It would be on our books," she said.

Burton Village has written a moratorium on fracking, she said.

"When you inject in the ground, it has to come up," Mrs. Zmek said.

"The gas and oil companies are not keeping the gas locally," she added. They are shipping it overseas. So why should we allow it?

"Foreign-owned companies are taking our minerals and leaving the earth barren in Ohio with ugly wells, with the good possibility of destroying our aquifer," she said.

Livestock in the West has been damaged, and water coming from taps has caught fire, Mrs. Zmek said. "It's not something we're making up or over-reacting to."

Drillers are pumping millions of gallons of water and chemicals into the ground which is deadly to everyone's health, Mrs. Zmek said. "The water has to come up somewhere, and when it does, it runs into the streams and lakes and water reservoirs like La Due. And it goes into Lake Erie, which is a source of water for Cleveland," she said.

"They go through deep Marcellus and Utica shale and bore horizontally," Ms. Zmek said. "They could end up two miles away under someone else's property, and million of gallons of water are injected with chemicals. It's a danger to do that. It's not safe. I don't care what they say. They are endangering all of us by even wanting to drill."

The drilling companies force people into agreeing to mandatory pooling, when property owners join to provide the required acreage for a well, Mrs. Zmek said. "They promise you are going to get rich." Then they take whatever gas they can once the lease is signed, she said.

"What would it hurt to place a moratorium on drilling by the township?" Mrs. Zmek said. "If residents know of the pros and cons, no prudent person would want this. I want water to be drinkable for my great-grandchildren," she said.

"We're all doing this on our own money. We don't have money, but the oil and gas companies do," she said.

Mrs. Fee said, "This is horizontal, large-scale drilling, which is new to us. It's the large-scale fracking that we're concerned with. It's a mix of water and chemicals. There's a lot of concern for the air, water and property values."

Protective measures are needed, she said. "We're willing to work with Township Trustees to do something that protects our properties. We're offering to help on this," she said.

"Fracking is a threat to the water aquifer. We're on well water, and, if our water is affected, our homes are worthless," Ms. Fee said.

She also noted that property owners who sign leases for drilling could be in violation of their mortgage agreements.

The bigger concerns involve health, water, air and property values, Ms. Fee said.

"It is a complex issue," she said. "We want to continue to bring awareness to people," Ms. Fee said. "People should understand the magnitude of the risk. People really have to ask questions about the kind of wells being put in."

http://www.chagrinvalleytimes.com/NC/0/4099.html

South Africa debates whether to allow fracking

South Africa's Karoo region is a pristine wilderness of red hills and wildflowers. It is beautiful, desperately poor and is now the new frontline in the global battle over a hugely controversial drilling practice called "fracking".

The semi-desert area of about 400,000 sq km in the west of the country is home to what could be one of the largest deposits of shale gas in the world, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA) - possibly enough to supply the country with gas for the next 400 years.

But the country is not sure whether to allow the gas to be extracted by fracking.

Fracking supporters say it is the future of energy; detractors that it is an environmental disaster - and the resource-rich country does not have laws in place to properly regulate what is literally an "earth-shattering" type of exploration, which can pollute water sources.

Both sides are furiously lobbying the government - and two major reports have just been published to back up their arguments.

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Shale gas lawyers in big demand in Ohio

Firms that already had oil and gas practices are now expanding them. Industry veterans from Texas and Oklahoma are partnering with Ohio lawyers to grab business. Small firms and solo practitioners like Piergallini are representing landowners, while big firms are courting the gas companies. And in Cleveland, law schools are scheduling courses that deal with shale exploration.

Leasing and title quandaries are just the opening volley in what will be years of legal work -- and probably thousands of lawsuits -- tied to exploration, drilling, production and pipeline construction.

"I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't tens of thousands of disputes already," said Roger Proper Jr. at Critchfield, Critchfield & Johnston in Wooster, adding that many may not have reached the courtroom.

For Piergallini, shale work now consumes 100 percent of his law practice in Tiltonsville, a short drive south of Steubenville along the Ohio River.

In two 12-hour shifts last August, Piergallini, 56, helped 550 families in Harrison and Jefferson counties execute leases with oil and gas companies covering 32,000 acres.

"My practice was real estate and probate, and coal was a big part of that," said the grandson of Italian immigrants who moved to southeast Ohio in the 1920s to work in bituminous coal mining. "It only made sense that it would transition into oil and gas."

The rush by energy companies to get at eastern Ohio's resources has Lee Plakas working long weeks, too.

The managing partner of Tzangas, Plakas, Mannos & Raies in Canton helps property owners form associations that combine their land into bigger chunks that are more attractive to developers.

"In numbers there is strength, and because of the dramatically different technology of the horizontal drilling, all of the procedures and customs have been thrown out the window," Plakas said.

Harvesting oil and gas from shale uses techniques for drilling horizontal wells and then fracturing, or "fracking," the rock. Wells go down about 8,000 feet before they branch into horizontal sections that can extend a mile or more from the vertical shaft. A mixture of water, sand and chemicals is pumped under pressure into the horizontal borings.

Plakas said it's a world different from the time when farmers would lease land for $10 or $15 an acre, with operators setting up see-saw natural gas "grasshoppers" that almost blended into the landscape like rusty farm equipment. Today's horizontal drilling rigs tower up to 90 feet, surrounded by rock and gravel well pads stretching 5 to 15 acres.

http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2012/03/shale_play_lawyers_in_big_dema.html

Tighter Fracking Regulations Favored by 65% of U.S. in Poll

The U.S. public favors greater regulation of hydraulic fracturing, a natural gas drilling technique that has reduced prices for consumers while raising environmental concerns.

More than three times as many Americans say there should be more regulation of fracturing, known as fracking, than less, according to a Bloomberg News National Poll conducted March 8-11. The findings coincide with recent surveys in Ohio and New York where people who believe fracking will cause environmental damage outnumber those who say the process is safe.

“That actually doesn’t surprise me,” Mark Boling, executive vice president for Houston-based Southwestern Energy Co. (SWN), said of the poll results in an interview. “We have been so focused as an industry on figuring out how to crack the code and get these huge volumes of gas trapped in shale formations. We haven’t focused on the things we have to do differently above ground.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-15/tighter-fracking-regulations-favored-by-65-of-u-s-in-poll.html

Appalachia banks on natural gas, chemical plants

The mining and manufacturing industries have a checkered environmental record in the Appalachians, with watershed contamination, chemical spills and river dumping.

Rivers and forests have been degraded by mountaintop removal mining in which the tops of mountains are shaved off to get to the coal below, sending debris into to the valley.

"Don't get me wrong, I want jobs, but I don't want an environmental wasteland when the chemical plants leave," said Steve Terry, a laborer in Moundsville, West Virginia. "I want this area to prosper, not go to hell."

Despite the plans, some are not convinced ground will be broken for the Shell chemical plant, citing decades of broken economic promises to Appalachia by politicians and corporations.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/12/us-appalachia-chemicalplant-idUSBRE82B06820120312

Cleveland Law Firm Provides Expert Legal Help with Fracking Problems and Opportunities

Several significant environmental concerns surround the fracking process. These include the potential contamination of water tables, improper disposal of waste water, and earthquakes such as the one that recently took place in Youngstown, Ohio. Property owners with water or land contaminated by a fracking well should consult Lowe Eklund Wakefield & Mulvihill Co., LPA who will carefully review the situation and offer advice on available litigation options.

In addition to the potential environmental problems, fracking is an occupation that may be very dangerous, resulting in significant injury or even death. Individuals who have been injured by any aspect of the fracking process should contact the firm for expert legal help. Lowe Eklund Wakefield & Mulvihill Co., LPA is highly experienced in assisting personal injury victims with any legal situation, including potential workers' compensation claims and injury lawsuits.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/cleveland-law-firm-provides-expert-legal-help-with-fracking-problems-and-opportunities-2012-03-12