An energy company whose natural gas operations are suspected of contaminating drinking water in northeast Pennsylvania was banned from gas drilling in the state until it shuts down three wells and pays nearly a quarter million dollars in fines.
Fourteen households in Dimock Township say their drinking water has been polluted by methane gas and other toxins from gas wells operated by Houston-based Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. Environmental officials told the Associated Press the company has failed to uphold the terms of an agreement made last November to clean up the contamination.
The fines and shutdown of Cabot reflect state officials’ frustration over a series of drilling-related spills, leaks and water contamination incidents, according to ProPublica.
The events at Dimock have been the black eye for the industry and have also been a black eye for Pennsylvania,” the state’s chief environment official, John Hanger, told ProPublica. “It’s been an enormous headache. If Cabot doesn’t get this message, the company has got an amazing hearing problem.”
The company denied contaminating drinking water and said the high methane levels could be natural, the AP reported.
There is an easy way to determine if the methane levels are natural or not.. Record the natural methane levels in the area before drilling, and then after.. Just as the Deepwater Horizon required independent gov’t measurements, Pennsylvania and the EPA should _require_ independently measured natural methane gas levels both before and after drilling.
Rama, you’re right they should. But the results wont change. Fact is, gas companies already test before and after. They’ve done so from day one. They test before drilling and fracture operations. Time and time again the conclusion is the same. The water was already bad. But that won’t change anyones mind. Everyone is convinced the big bad oil companies are out to get them.
If you want to dive further in to it; every test done to date (both DEP and gas industry) has found a different geological methane gas than what is being drilled for. I.e Marcellus shale methane has not once been found in a water supply. Furthermore, not one trace of any of the chemicals used to drill and fracture wells has been found either. The DEP reported this finding themselves in the same report they used to fine and shut down Cabot.
I think the results speak for themselves. This methane gas in the water was already there. Some people just can’t help but blame the oil companies.
Justin, I’m sorry, the data you provide do not support the conclusion that “the methane gas in the water was already there.” You mention every test found a different methane gas than what was drilled for. This suggests the fracture drilling companies do not really understand the mechanics of what is happening under the earth. A suitable course of action would be to test further, to understand the sub-terran processes, _before_ any hydrofracking is performed at all — since hydrofracking is non-reversible. It breaks up rock, and releases gases, which percolate the soil. The mechanisms, types of gases, effects on water, as you point out yourself are generally not understand.. For your specific claim: What reference, and page #, do you point to in order to show directly that a methane test prior to hydrofracking had higher methane than it did after hydrofracking? Was the test performed by an independent body, or the oil comapny itself?
There is, however, clear past evidence that oil companies are out for profit. Performing hydrofracking without a clear understanding of mechanism is one symptom. The fact that oil companies seek profits is alone reason enough to suspect them of motives which are not consistent with the local community. Oil companies are not know for their good behavior, which is why the public perception of them is justifiably bad.
Here is conclusive evidence: Why have hydrofracking companies not made a clear, open, public, effort to get support from local communities? And if the local communities are against them, why do they go after individual? They don’t yet fully understand the processes, and therefore can’t predict the outcomes. For such an invasive process, the public deserves a complete, sound understanding of the outcomes. Instead, they go to individual land owners, rather than communities, to ask for rights. This is by definition suspicious behavior, as it takes advantage of a resource the community wishes to protect in a particularly deceptive way.
A final note: What makes you believe the American way is for companies to look out for public interests? Everything in our past, and in the definition of capitalism itself, suggests the opposite is true, especially for large companies. See this article:
http://www.rchoetzlein.com/theory/2011/being-american/
You may claim not all companies are “bad”, but so far hydrofracking companies do not have a good record precisely because of their questionable practices — and the questionable impacts of the method itself.. Why not perform extensive tests in remote, isolated locations for 50 years, with a full understanding of impacts _before_ doing this in people’s back yards?
A 2011 peer-reviewed study found, on average, methane concentrations 17 times above normal in samples taken from water wells near shale gas drilling sites employing hydraulic fracturing. Water samples from 68 private water wells in the states of Pennsylvania and New York were tested and some were found to have extremely high concentrations of methane: 64 milligrams of methane per liter of drinking water, compared with a normal level of one milligram or lower. According to one of the authors of the study, “That sort of concentration is up at a level where people worry about an explosion hazard.”[17][18] The average concentration of methane in the water wells near drilling sites lies within a range that, according to the U.S. Department of the Interior, is dangerous and requires urgent “hazard mitigation” action.[19][20] The research was conducted by scientists at Duke University and what they found was that “levels of flammable methane gas in drinking water wells increased to dangerous levels when those water supplies were close to natural gas wells. They also found that the type of gas detected at high levels in the water was the same type of gas that energy companies were extracting from thousands of feet underground, strongly implying that the gas may be seeping underground through natural or manmade faults and fractures, or coming from cracks in the well structure itself “.[21] (from Wikipedia)