Entries by Matt Kelso, BA

Determination Letters Added to PADEP Groundwater Complaints Map

A couple of months ago, Laura Legere of the Scranton Times-Tribune published an article showing her research into determination letters sent by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) in response to people who claimed that their groundwater had been impacted by oil and gas activity in the state.  Of the 973 complaints represented on this dataset, […]

New Maps for Oklahoma, Virginia, and Wyoming

The FracTracker Alliance got its start by monitoring the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania in the summer of 2010.  Since then, many things have changed, including increased interest in shale deposits in a variety of formations throughout the country.  We have been attempting to keep current in a variety of states, as requests come in for […]

PA Unconventional Production Data Aggregated

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) publishes unconventional oil and gas production data twice a year.  In its raw form, the data show the production values per well for a given six month period, either January to June or July to December.  The FracTracker Alliance has aggregated the five most recent unconventional production reports […]

PA Unconventional Drilling Activity Trends

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) publishes data on unconventional oil and gas permits, drilled wells, and violations. The FracTracker Alliance has taken this data, and summarized it by month: There are numerous ways to interpret the raw data, to the point where it is easy to get bogged down in the specifics. Still, […]

Groundwater Complaints to PADEP Compiled by Times-Tribune

In a May 19th article published in the Scranton Times-Tribune, Laura Legere discusses data that she has compiled from a Right-to-know law request to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP).  The data show 969 complaints between 2008 and the fall of 2012.  According to the article, 161 of these complaints include determination letters where […]

Introducing the US Map of Suspected Well Water Impacts

About the Map The FracTracker Alliance has been working with nine different community partners on a project to map instances where oil and gas activity are suspect of impacting groundwater supplies in the United States. The US Map of Suspected Well Water Impacts is now ready for its initial release, and consists of the following data […]

US Pipelines Incidents Are a Daily Occurrence

Recently, there has been a lot of attention focused on the Mayflower, Arkansas pipeline failure that resulted in a massive oil spill, particularly as it comes at a time when discussions of the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline project are once again heating up.  However, the situation is far from unusual.  In fact, according to data […]

PACWA’s List of the Harmed Now Mapped by FracTracker

Jenny Lisak, co-director of the Pennsylvania Alliance for Clean Water and Air, maintains a list of people claiming to be harmed by hydraulic fracturing or related processes, called the List of the Harmed.  This version of the list, last updated on February 23, 2013, has 822 people thought to be negatively impacted by the industry, with […]

Six Months of Production and Waste From PA’s Unconventional Wells

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) recently published its biannual reports for production and waste from unconventional wells throughout the state for the last half of 2012. FracTracker has learned the hard way not to be too eager in analyzing this data.  In the previous cycle, this data was released without the contribution several […]

New Michigan Map Shows off New FracMapper Functionality

Recently, FracTracker has been getting requests from residents in many locations to map large-scale oil and gas operations in their area.  We now have content for Michigan, which happens to correspond with the release of additional map export functionality on FracMapper: View map fullscreen | How FracTracker maps work About the Michigan Data Each state […]