January to August Marcellus Shale Violations by Operator

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s Bureau of Oil and Gas maintains violation data on their website (download the Excel file). The following is a summary of Marcellus Shale violations issued in the first eight months of this year, including the number of wells that were flagged for violations.


Marcellus Shale violations and offending wells in Pennsylvania: January – August, 2011

5 replies
  1. Cheryl Speir
    Cheryl Speir says:

    It would be useful to show the total # of wells, since it is assumed that the operators who have a greater # of wells would be more likely to have violations than those with very few wells. Showing the violations as a percentage of the total wells would be a good indicator of performance.
    For example, say there are 50 offending wells out of a total of 100 wells for a particular operator; showing that 50% of the operating wells had violations would be useful. If instead, the opertor had 50 offending wells out of 500 wells, showing that 10% of opertaing wells had violations would allow for a better picture of how well this operator was performing.

    • Matt Kelso
      Matt Kelso says:

      Yes, there are many worthwhile ways to break this data down. Please search for “violations” on the search tool to find many analyses along those lines from recent months.

  2. LE Thompson
    LE Thompson says:

    In addition to the above suggestion of a footnoted-summary to this table, “Fines for Violation Data and Summary”, it would also be valuable to include the data for:
    – Total number of cited violations corrected;
    – Total number of cited-violations not corrected; and
    – Total number of cited-violations, duplicated for same violation, not corrected.

    • Matt
      Matt says:

      It would also be helpful to know what the violations are for. Maybe a number system with a chart where the number can be matched to a description of the violation.

  3. LE Thompson
    LE Thompson says:

    For the fracking drill-sites listed, this data for the year, 2011 indicates that on-average:
    – Each well is cited for violations: 3.2 times per year; and
    – The total violations are: 2,817.5 per year.

    As a ‘footnote’ to this table, it would be valuable to also include the data for:
    – Total amount billed for all fines;
    – Total amount of all fines remitted or credited to payment; and
    – Total amount of all fines outstanding or in-debt to payment.

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