Posts

Compressor station within Loyalsock State Forest, PA.

Air Pollution from Pennsylvania Shale Gas Compressor Stations – REPORT

March 19, 2020/0 Comments/in Air, Articles, Compressor Stations, Infrastructure /by Guest Author

Air pollution from Pennsylvania shale gas compressor stations is a significant, worsening public health concern.

By Cynthia Walter, Ph.D.

Dr. Walter is a retired biology professor who has worked on shale gas industry pollution since 2009 through Westmoreland Marcellus Citizens Group, Protect PT and other groups. Contact: walter.atherton@gmail.com

Executive Summary

Compressor Stations (CS) in the gas industry are sources of serious air pollutants known to harm humans and the environment. CS are permanent facilities required to transport gases from wells to major pipelines and along pipelines. Additional operations and equipment located at CS also emit toxins. In the last 20 years, CS abundance and sizes have dramatically increased in shale gas extraction areas across the US. This report will focus on CS in and near Southwestern Pennsylvania. Numbers of CS there have risen more than tenfold in the last decade in response to well completions and pipelines after the local fracking boom began in 2005. For example, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, had two CS before 2005 and now has 50 CS corresponding with about 341 active shale gas wells. In Pennsylvania, state regulations allow CS to be as close as 750 feet from homes, schools, and businesses. Emission monitoring relevant to public health exposure is limited or absent.

Current Pennsylvania policies allow rapid CS expansion. Also, regulations do not address public health risks due to several major flaws. First, permits allow annual totals of emitted toxins using models that assume constant releases, but substantial emissions from CS occur in peaks that expose citizens to concentrations may impair health, ranging from asthma to cancer. Second, permits do not address the fact that CS simultaneously release many serious air toxins including benzene and formaldehyde, and particulates that carry toxins into lungs. This allowance of multiple toxin release does not reflect the well-established science that public health risks multiply when people are exposed to several toxins at once. Third, permit reviews rarely consider nearby known air pollution sources contributing to aggregate air toxin exposures that occur in bursts and continually. Fourth, permits do not require operators to provide public access to real-time reports of air pollutants released by CS and ambient air quality near CS.

Poor air quality causes harm directly, e.g. respiratory distress, and indirectly, e.g., through increased vulnerability to respiratory viruses. The annual cost of damages from air pollution from CS was estimated at $4 million-$24 million in Pennsylvania based on emissions from CS in 2011. These damages include harm to human and livestock health and losses of crops and timber. After 2011, CS and gas infrastructures continue to expand, with increasing air pollution and damages, especially in shale gas areas. These costs must be compared to the benefits of using alternative energy sources. For example, in a neighboring state, New York, shifting to renewable energy will save tens of billions of dollars annually in air pollution costs, prevent thousands of premature deaths each year, and trigger substantial job creation, based on peer-reviewed research using US government data.

Recommendations

Constant air monitoring must occur at current compressor stations and nearby sites important to the public, such as schools. The peak concentrations and totals for substances relevant to public health must be recorded and made available to the public in real time.
Air pollution from compressor stations must become an important part of measuring and modeling pollution exposures from all components of the shale gas industry.
Permits for new compressor stations must be revised to better protect the public in ways including, but not limited to the following:
- Location, e.g., increased general setback limits and expanded limits for sensitive sites such as schools, senior care facilities and hospitals
- Emission limits for criteria air pollutants and hazardous air pollutants including Radon, especially limits for peak concentrations and annual totals
- Monitoring air quality within the station, at the fence-line and in key sites nearby, such as schools, using information from air movement models to select locations and heights.
- Limits for CS size based on aggregate pollution from other local air pollution sources.
Costs of harm from CS and other shale gas activities must be compared to alternatives.

Chemistry of Compressor Station Emissions

Health Effects of Compressor Station Emissions

Regional Air Toxins and Cancer Risk in Southwestern Pennsylvania

Measurements of Compressor Station Emissions

Compressor Station Locations

Costs of Compressor Stations and Air Pollution

Appendix – Compressor Station Locations in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania

Chemistry of Compressor Station Emissions

CS emissions contribute major air pollutants to the total pollution from unconventional gas development (UCGD), but their role in regional air quality problems has not always been noted. In 2009, when UCGD operations were only a few years in this region and many CS had not yet been built, CS emissions were estimated to be a small component. Now, in 2020, gas transport requirements have increased, leading to many more and larger CS. The amounts of CS emissions have increased accordingly, based on estimates by Carnegie Mellon University atmospheric researcher, Robinson (Figure 1). Part of the reason that CS are such a major pollution source is that they run constantly, in contrast to machinery for well development and trucking that fluctuate with the market for new wells.

Figure 1. Relative contribution of compressor stations and other components of shale gas industry to Nitrous Oxides (NOx) and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC). Source: Clean Air Council- adapted from webinar by Alan Robinson.

Air pollutants in CS emissions vary substantially in chemistry and concentrations due to differences in equipment (Table 1). Emissions in CS can come from several types of sources described below.

Engines: Compression engines powered with methane release nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and hazardous air pollutants (HAP). Diesel engines release those pollutants as well as sulfur dioxide (SO₂) and substantial particulate matter. In addition, diesel storage on site is a hazard. Electric engines produce less pollutants, but they are much less common than fossil fuel engines in southwestern Pennsylvania. CS operators can vary the use of engines at a station, and therefore, emissions vary during partial or full shutdowns and start-up periods.
Blowdowns: Toxic emissions dramatically increase during blowdowns, a procedure that is scheduled or used as needed to release the build-up of gases. Blowdown frequency and emissions vary with the rate of gas transport and the chemistry of transported gases. The full extent of emissions from any CS, therefore, is not known. Blowdowns can release a wide range of substances, and when flaring is used to burn off gases, the combustion creates new substances and additional particulates. Blowdowns are the most likely source of peaks in emissions at continuously operated CS. For example, Brown et al. (2015) used PA DEP measures of a CS in Washington County, Pennsylvania, alongside likely blowdown frequencies and weather models to predict peak emission frequency. They estimated nearby residents would experience over 118 peak emissions per year.
Non-compression Procedures: CS facilities are often the location for equipment that separate gases, remove water and other fluids, and run pipeline testing operations called pigging. These activities can be constant or intermittent and release a wide range of substances which may or may not be included in estimates for a permit. In addition, some of the processing releases gases which are flared at the facility, thus releasing a range of combustion by-products and particulate pollution. For example, the Shamrock CS operated by Dominion Transfer Inc. includes equipment for dehydration, glycol processing and pigging. The Janus facility operated by EQT includes dehydration and flaring. Permitted emissions for those facilities are listed in Table 1.
Storage Tank Emissions: CS often include storage tanks that hold substances known to release fumes. For example, the Shamrock CS was permitted to have an above ground storage tank of 3000 gallons for drip gas and a 1000-gallon tank for used oil, both of which release volatile organic compounds. The EQT Janus CS has two 8,820-gallon tanks. Gas releases from such tanks could be controlled and recorded by the operator or they could be unrecorded leaks.
Fugitive emissions: Gas leaks, called fugitive emissions, occur readily from many components in CS facilities; such problems will increase as equipment ages. A study of CS stations in Texas is an example.

“In the Fort Worth, TX area, researchers evaluated compressor station emissions from eight sites, focusing in part on fugitive emissions. A total of 2,126 fugitive emission points were identified in the four month field study of 8 compressor stations: 192 of the emission points were valves; 644 were connectors (including flanges, threaded unions, tees, plugs, caps and open-ended lines where the plug or cap was missing); and 1,290 were classified as Other Equipment. The Other category consists of all remaining components such as tank thief hatches, pneumatic valve controllers, instrumentation, regulators, gauges, and vents. 1,330 emission points were detected with an IR camera (i.e. high-level emissions) and 796 emission points were detected by Method 21 screening (i.e. low-level emissions). Pneumatic Valve Controllers were the most frequent emission sources encountered at well pads and compressor stations.”

Eastern Research Group (2011).

Table 1. Examples of air pollutants allowed for release by compressor stations. Air pollutants (pounds/year) are estimates provided by the companies for permits in West Virginia and Pennsylvania in recent years. Total compressor engine horsepower (hp) is noted. Sources: Janus and Tonkin CS Permits at WV DEP website. Shamrock CS permit. Buffalo CS, Washington, Co PA – PENNSYLVANIA BULLETIN, VOL. 45, NO. 16 APRIL 18, 2015.

Pollutant	Term	Janus (WV) 22,000 hp	Tonkin (WV) 4390 hp	*Shamrock (PA) 4140 bhp**	Buffalo (PA) 20,000 hp + 5,000 bhp**
Nitrogen Oxides	NOx	254,400	248,000	170,000	155,800
Volatile Organic Compounds	VOC	191,200	30,000	66,000	77,000
Carbon Monoxide	CO	118,200	80,000	154,000	144,400
Sulfur Dioxide	SO₂	1,400	400	10,000	5,400
Hazardous Air Pollutants-Total	HAP	48,200	3,280	19,400	30,000
Formaldehyde			1,080	12,800	12,200
Benzene			540
Ethylbenzene			60
Toluene			140
Xylene			200
Hexane			500
Acetaldehyde			600
Acrolein			160
Total Particulate Matter (PM-2.5, PM-10-separate or combined)	PM	18,200	11,000	32,000	PM-10 32,000 PM-2.5 32,000
TOTAL TOXINS		631,600	372,680	417,400	444,600
Carbon Dioxide Equivalents	CO2-e	29,298,000	27,200,000	367,000,000	214,514,000

Health Effects of Compressor Station Emissions

Several toxic chemicals are released by individual CS in amounts that range from a few thousand pounds to a quarter of a million pounds per year (Tables 1 & 2) as described below.

Nitrous Oxides (NOx) are often the largest total amount of emissions from fossil fuel machinery. In CS, these oxides are formed when a fossil fuel such as methane or diesel is combusted to produce the energy to compress and propel gases. NOx contribute to acid rain. Excess acids in rain lower the pH of waters, in some cases to levels that dissolve toxic metals in drinking water supplies. NOx also trigger the formation of ozone, a substance well known to impair lungs.
Ozone forms when oxygen reacts with nitrous oxides, carbon monoxide, and a wide range of volatile organic compounds. Ozone exposure can trigger asthma and heart attacks in sensitive individuals, and for healthy people, ozone causes breathing problems in the short term and eventual scarring of lungs and impaired function.
Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) are gaseous compounds containing carbon, such as benzene and formaldehyde. In air pollution regulation, the EPA lists many compounds as VOC, but excludes carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane and butane. Many VOC’s are toxic in themselves (Tables 2, 3 and 4). Also, several VOC’s react to form ozone. https://www.epa.gov/air-emissions-inventories/what-definition-voc
Carbon Monoxide (CO) is another product of fossil fuel combustion and another contributor to ozone formation. CO is directly toxic because it prevents oxygen from binding to the blood.
Sulfur Dioxide (SO₂) adds to lung irritation. It also contributes to acid rain, lowering the pH of water and increasing the ability of toxic metals to dissolve in water supplies.
Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAP) include highly toxic substances such as formaldehyde and benzene, which are known carcinogens, as well as the other substances known to be emitted from CS (Tables 3 & 4). The EPA lists 187 substances as HAP, which include many VOC’s as well as some non-organic chemicals such as arsenic and radionuclides including Radon. (https://www.epa.gov/haps/initial-list-hazardous-air-pollutants-modifications)
Particulate Matter (PM) usually refers to particles in small size classes. Most state or federal regulations address measures of particles less than 10 microns (PM-10) and some monitoring systems separate out particles less than 2.5 microns (PM-2.5). Particles in either of those size ranges are not visible, but highly damaging because they travel deep into the lungs where they irritate tissues and impair breathing. Also, these tiny particles carry toxins from air into the blood passing through the lungs. This blood transports substances directly to the brain where toxins can quickly impair the nervous system and subsequently impact other organs. (https://www.epa.gov/pm-pollution/particulate-matter-pm-basics)

Health impacts from many of the substances released by CS are well-known in medical research. For example, many of the VOC and HAP compounds permitted for release by state agencies are known carcinogens (Table 3). Many of these substances also impact the nervous system as shown in the organic compounds measured in CS in PA and listed in Table 4. Also, a study of 18 CS in New York by Russo and Carpenter (2017) found that all 18 CS released substances with known impacts on the nervous system and total annual emissions were over five million pounds, among the highest of all types of emissions (Table 5). Russo and Carpenter also found high annual emissions of over five million pounds for substances known to be associated with each of the following other health problems: digestive problems, circulatory disorders, and congenital malformations.

Congenital defects were significantly more common for mothers living in a 10-mile radius of denser shale gas development in Colorado compared to reference populations (MacKenzie et al. 2014). Currie et al. (2017) examined over a million birth records in Pennsylvania and found statistically significant increased frequencies of low birth weight and negative health scores for infants born to mothers within 3 km of unconventional gas wells compared to matching populations more distant from shale gas developments. Such developments include a wide range of gas infrastructure including CS and also high truck traffic and fracking. One plausible mechanism for harm to developing babies is exposure to VOCs such as benzene, toluene and xylene associated with CS and well operations. These VOC’s are classified by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry as known to cross the placental barrier and cause harm to the fetus including birth deformities.

In sum, CS are a significant source of air pollutants with direct and indirect impacts on health. One indirect impact especially important during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, is the increased incidence and severity of respiratory viral infections in populations living in areas with poor air quality. Ciencewicki, and Jaspers (2007) write, “a number of studies indicate associations between exposure to air pollutants and increased risk for respiratory virus infections.”

Table. 2. Health effects of air pollutants permitted for release by compressor stations.

Pollutant	Health Effects
Particulate Matter	Impairs lungs and transfers toxins into body when microscopic particles carry chemicals deep into lungs and release into bloodstream.
Nitrogen Oxides	Forms ozone that impairs lung function which can trigger asthma and heart attacks and scars lungs in the long term. Forms acid rain that dissolves toxic metals into water supplies.
Volatile Organic Compounds	Includes a wide variety of gaseous organic compounds, some of which cause cancer. Many VOC react to form ozone that impairs lungs as noted above.
Carbon Monoxide	Blocks ability of blood to carry oxygen. Also forms ozone that impairs lungs as noted above.
Sulfur Dioxide	Irritates lungs, triggering respiratory and heart distress. Forms acid rain that dissolves toxic metals into water supplies.
Hazardous Air Pollutants	Category of various toxic compounds many of which impact the nervous system. Includes formaldehyde, benzene and several other carcinogens.
Total Toxins	Sum of emissions of all toxins. Exposure to multiple toxins exacerbates harm directly through impairment of lungs and circulatory system and indirectly through injury to detoxification mechanisms, such as liver function.
Carbon Dioxide Equivalents	A measure of the combined effects of greenhouse gases such as CO2 and Methane expressed in a standard unit equivalent to the heat trapping effect of CO2. Greenhouse gases trap heat and worsen climate change and related harm to health when increased air temperatures directly cause stress directly and indirectly accelerate ozone formation.

Table 3. Gas industry list of carcinogenicity rating for Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAPs) released by compressor stations in a factsheet prepared by EQT for Janus compressor, WV. 2015 Source: DEP.

Substance	Type	Known/Suspected Carcinogen	Classification
Acetaldehyde	VOC	Yes	B2-Probable Human Carcinogen
Acrolein	VOC	No	Inadequate Data
Benzene	VOC	Yes	Category A – Known Human Carcinogen
Ethyl-benzene	VOC	No	Category D Not Classifiable
Biphenyl	VOC	Yes	Suggested Evidence of Carcinogenic Potential
1,3 Butadiene	VOC	Yes	B2-Probable Human Carcinogen
Formaldehyde	VOC	Yes	B1- Probable Human Carcinogen
n-Hexane	VOC	No	Inadequate Data
Naphthalene	VOC	Yes	C- Possible human Carcinogen
Toluene	VOC	No	Inadequate Data
2,3,4-Trimethlypentane	VOC	No	Inadequate Data
Xylenes	VOC	No	Inadequate Data

Table 4. Center for Disease Control list of health effects for volatile organic carbons measured by PA DEP near compressor station. Source: CDC.

Substance	Exposure Symptoms	Target Organs
Ethylbenzene	Irritation to eyes and nose; nausea, headache; neuropath; numb extremities, muscle weakness; dermatitis; dizziness	Eyes, skin, respiratory system, central nervous system, peripheral nervous system
n-Butane	Drowsiness	Central nervous system
n-Hexane	Irritation to eyes, skin & respiratory system; headache, dizziness; nausea	Eyes, skin, respiratory system, central nervous system
2-Methyl Butane	n/a	n/a
Iso-butane	Drowsiness, narcosis, asphyxia	Central nervous system

Table 5. Amounts of pollutants known to be associated with health impacts in a review of 18 New York compressor stations. Emissions were grouped and tallied based on their impacts on disorders classified by ICD codes as defined by the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD), a medical classification list by the World Health Organization. Source: Copy of Table 3.17b, Russo and Carpenter 2017.

ICD-10			Facilities				Chemicals				Pounds
#	Description		‘08	‘11	‘14	Tot	‘08	‘11	‘14	Tot	2008	2011	2014	Total
1	Q00-Q89	Congenital malformations and deformations	18	18	17	18	57	54	54	57	4,393,806	6,607,676	5,900,691	16,902,175
1.1	Q00-Q07	Nervous system	18	18	17	18	16	16	16	16	4,068,877	5,882,704	5,258,344	15,209,926
1.2	Q10-Q18	Eye, ear, face and neck	15	15	12	15	4	4	4	4	5,825	19,569	11,475	36,869
1.3	Q20-Q28	Circulatory system	18	18	17	18	10	10	10	10	4,269,779	6,336,905	5,651,896	16,258,581
1.4	Q30-Q34	Respiratory system	14	8	7	14	4	4	4	4	150	107	113	372
1.5	Q35-Q45	Digestive system	18	18	17	18	17	17	17	17	4,386,043	6,586,345	5,884,324	16,856,713
1.6	Q50-Q56	Genital organs	6	7	8	8	2	2	2	2	1,399	4,373	2,612	8,385
1.7	Q60-Q64	Urinary system	18	17	16	18	9	9	9	9	119,382	254,922	237,359	611,663
1.8	Q65-Q79	Musculoskeletal system	18	18	16	18	19	19	19	19	122,314	262,300	243,932	628,547
1.9	Q80-Q89	Other	18	18	17	18	55	52	52	55	2,124,445	3,614,575	3,413,375	9,152,395
2	Q90-Q99	Chromosomal abnormalities, nec	18	18	16	18	30	31	31	32	120,669	256,739	239,709	617,118
	Q00-Q99	Total	18	18	17	18	57	56	56	59	4,393,806	6,607,676	5,900,691	16,902,175

Regional Air Toxins and Cancer Risk in Southwestern Pennsylvania

Cancer risks from HAPs have been elevated for many years in several areas of Southwestern PA, as noted in a map from 2005 (Figure 2), when most air pollution was from urban traffic and single sources such as coke works and unconventional gas development (UCGD) had just begun in the region. The cancer risk pattern changed by 2014 (Figure 3). The specific numbers of excess cancer risk predicted for each location cannot be compared between the two maps because each map was produced using different sources of information and models. The pattern, however, can be compared and shows that elevated cancer risk is now more widespread across Southwestern PA and no longer primarily in Allegheny County.

Cancer risk maps are constructed by the EPA office of National Air Toxics Assessment (NATA) using models of reported air toxics and their relationship to cancer as a risk factor, as defined by NATA: “A risk level of “N”-in-1 million implies that up to “N” people out of one million equally exposed people would contract cancer if exposed continuously (24 hours per day) to the specific concentration over 70 years (an assumed lifetime). This would be in addition to cancer cases that would normally occur in one million unexposed people.” (https://www.epa.gov/national-air-toxics-assessment/nata-glossary-terms) In the current context, the NATA models are useful to compare the relative differences in air quality from a public health perspective, assuming the data on air pollutants is complete.

Another, very different statistic regarding cancer is the rate of cancer, also called the incidence. This number is based on actual reported cases and applies to cancers that occur due to all causes. The cancer rate, therefore, is a much higher number than a risk factor. For example, according to the US Center for Disease Control, the annual rate of new cases of cancer in PA in 2016, the most recent year reported, was 482.5 per 100,000 people. Compared to other states, PA is among the ten states with the highest cancer incidence. In the US, one in four people die from cancer, placing it second to heart disease as a leading cause of death. (https://gis.cdc.gov/Cancer/USCS/DataViz.html). Compared to other nations, the US has the fifth highest cancer rate, with 352 new cases each year per 100,000 people. (https://www.wcrf.org/dietandcancer/cancer-trends/data-cancer-frequency-country)

Compressor station emissions contribute to air pollutants known to be associated with cancer. For example, in a review of emissions for 18 CS in New York, Russo and Carpenter (2017) found that most or all CS released substances associated with a wide range of cancers (Table 6). Up to 56 such chemicals were emitted in amounts that totaled over 1 million pounds each year.

Maps of cancer risk are likely to be under-reporting risk levels in both the amount rates of risk and also the locations. Cancer risks from serious air pollutants cannot be properly mapped for several reasons. First, reports on concentrations of HAP in emissions are limited. HAP emissions are in accounts required only from large facilities, and thus, smaller operations, such as many CS, are likely be ignored. Second, general air quality monitoring stations are limited in location and do not measure HAP. For example, the PA DEP maintains 47 air quality stations dispersed among over 60 counties (http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/deputate/airwaste/aq/aqm/pollt.html). Most stations report hourly measures of Ozone and PM-2.5, and only a handful also monitor one or more other substances such as CO, NOx, SO ₂ or H₂S. One county in Southwestern PA has additional air quality stations. Allegheny has a county health department that maintains 17 stations to report real-time air quality based on Ozone, SO₂or PM-2.5 (https://alleghenycounty.us/Health-Department/Programs/Air-Quality/Air-Quality.aspx).

In sum, cancer risk estimates from air pollution fall short in the following ways:

Estimates of air quality do not reflect the reality of air pollution from CS as well as many other new sources such as increased truck traffic associated with shale gas development.
Tallies of annual emissions do not represent the actual exposures of individuals to pulses of toxins.
Models of air pollution and cancer are not sufficiently based on real world studies of impacts from multiple toxins in short and long-term exposures.

Figure 2. Cancer risk map in Southwestern Pennsylvania in 2005 from the National Air Toxics Assessment program in the EPA. Total Lifetime Cancer Risk from Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAP) per million. Colors indicate yellow for 28-78, gold for 79-95, light orange for 99-148, orange for 149-271, bright orange for 272-517, and red for 518-744 excess cancer risk per million. (https://www.epa.gov/national-air-toxics-assessment)

Figure 3. Cancer risk map in Southwestern Pennsylvania in 2014 from the National Air Toxics Assessment in the EPA. Facilities are locations where air quality information was available for modeling. Total Risk of cancer as a baseline was assumed to be 1 per 1,000,000. Estimates of risk predict known air pollution sources alone will cause 1-24 excess cancers per million in Light Pink areas, 25-49 excess cancers per million in Gray areas, and 50-74 excess cancers per million in Blue areas. Source: EPA.

Table 6. Amounts of pollutants known to be associated with cancer in a review of 18 New York compressor stations. Emissions were grouped and tallied based on their impacts on disorders classified by ICD codes as defined by the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD), a medical classification list by the World Health Organization. Source: Copy of Table 3b, Russo and Carpenter 2017.

ICD-10			Facilities				Chemicals				Pounds
#	Code	Description	‘08	‘11	‘14	Tot	‘08	‘11	‘14	Tot	2008	2011	2014	Total
1	C00-C97	Malignant neoplasms	18	18	17	18	53	54	54	56	744,394	1,679,621	1,583,745	4,007,761
2	C00-C14	Lip, oral cavity and pharynx	18	18	16	18	12	14	14	14	118,992	254,897	238,943	612,833
3	C15-C26	Digestive organs	18	18	16	18	37	38	38	38	121,690	258,670	241,866	622,227
4	C30-C39	Respiratory system and intrathoracic organs	18	18	17	18	36	37	37	38	740,798	1,673,574	1,579,882	3,994,254
5	C40-C41	Bone and articular cartilage	18	18	17	18	33	34	34	35	694,106	1,551,399	1,492,704	3,738,210
6	C43-C44	Skin	16	15	13	16	12	12	12	14	2,362	5,008	4,029	11,400
7	C45-C49	Connective and soft tissue	17	17	15	17	17	17	17	17	1,929	5,074	4,639	11,643
8	C50-C58	Breast and female genital organs	18	18	16	18	23	25	25	25	361,015	823,303	663,237	1,847,556
9	C60-C63	Male genital organs	18	17	16	18	12	13	13	13	111,217	233,176	224,147	568,541
10	C64-C68	Urinary organs	18	18	16	18	24	24	24	25	119,062	255,474	238,596	613,133
11	C69-C72	Eye, brain and central nervous system	18	18	16	18	20	20	20	20	121,282	258,655	241,954	621,892
12	C73-C75	Endocrine glands and related structures	18	17	16	18	10	10	10	10	112,911	235,120	225,269	573,300
13	C76-C80	Secondary and ill-defined	17	16	14	17	6	6	6	6	2,054	5,690	5,771	13,516
14	C81-C96	Malignant neoplasms, stated or presumed to be primary, of lymphoid, haematopoietic and related tissue	18	18	16	18	31	31	31	31	364,338	833,140	671,245	1,868,724
15	C97	Malignant neoplasms of independent (primary) multiple sites	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
16	D00-D09	In situ neoplasms	16	15	13	16	3	3	3	3	3,313	7,557	6,606	17,477
17	D10-D36	Benign neoplasms	17	17	14	17	27	27	27	27	12,499	35,013	23,068	70,580
18	D37-D48	Neoplasms of uncertain or unknown behavior	18	18	16	18	39	40	40	41	121,277	257,142	240,115	618,535

Measurements of Compressor Station Emissions

Studies of real-world concentrations of air pollutants from CS emissions are lacking, but some reports exist. Of these, a few records are in peer-reviewed studies, and cited in reviews such as Saunders et al. 2018. A few published reports are described below. They all show the high variation over time for CS emissions and the occurrence of peak concentrations.

Macey et al. (2014) observed ambient air near CS contained toxins at concentrations that impair health. They collected grab samples of air from industrial sites including CS in Arkansas and Pennsylvania and analyzed them for toxins using EPA approved methods. Most of the CS studied in Arkansas (Table 6) and Pennsylvania (Table 7) released formaldehyde at amounts associated with a cancer risk from exposure to this substance of 1/10,000 which is equivalent to 100 times higher risk than the widely accepted baseline risk of 1 per million. This means the amounts of formaldehyde found near CS substantially increased the risk of cancer using well-established federal analyses (https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/hac/phamanual/appf.html). Some toxins Macey et al. recorded are less well studied than formaldehyde and benzene. For example, 1,3-butadiene is classified by the EPA as a known human carcinogen, but a calculation of cancer risk for this substance is lacking. Air samples in the Macey study were collected close to the CS (e.g., 30-42m) and at greater distances (e.g., 254-460m). Those distant samples were well beyond the 750-foot set-back rule for Pennsylvania. At all these distances, air movement modeling predicts that toxins released from a source such as a CS are likely to travel downwind within the air mass under most weather conditions, thus exposing residents near and further from CS. Many people, therefore, in homes, schools and businesses that are downwind of CS are likely to experience serious air toxins at concentrations that harm their health.

Air toxins were also measured by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection in 2010 in a variety of unconventional gas extraction facilities including one CS in Washington County, PA. Brown et al. (2015) reported these data, showing the concentrations that citizens could experience near a compressor station varied greater than tenfold within a day and among consecutive days (Table 8). The length of time for peak concentrations was unknown, but Brown et al. used a model of weather including wind patterns to estimate citizens are likely to experience 118 peak concentrations per year.

Goetz et al. (2015) sampled air in Marcellus shale regions of Pennsylvania for short periods (1-2.5 hrs.) at distances 480-1100 meters from eight CS, four with relatively small capacity (5,000-9,000 hp) and four with moderate capacity (14,000-17,000 hp). They found that each CS had a different pattern of relatively higher concentrations of some pollutants, such as NOX versus other pollutants, e.g., CO. Also, totals of all pollutants did not correlate with compressor engine capacity, probably because the CS they sampled include a mix of engines using fossil fuels and electric power. Goetz et al. concluded with recommendations for more comprehensive and longer-term monitoring to better understand air pollution from CS and all components in shale gas development.

Radionuclides in CS emissions are almost never measured, even though Marcellus shales are well known for containing elevated amounts of radiologic substances such as uranium, radium and radon. The only published report of testing for radionucleotides in CS emissions in PA was a test of a single CS emission for one period of time. In a review of radiation in shale gas industry components, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PA DEP) measured radon (Rn) in ambient air at one CS by deploying sample bags in four cardinal directions at the fence line at a height of 5 feet for 62 days. They reported Rn concentrations of 0.1-0.8 pCi/L, values they stated were within the range of outdoor air in the US. (https://www.dep.pa.gov/Business/Energy/OilandGasPrograms/OilandGasMgmt/Oil-and-Gas-Related-Topics/Pages/Radiation-Protection.aspx) Given the high variation of amounts of emissions from CS and variable chemistry in sources of gases released from combustion, blowdowns and leaks, frequent testing for radionucleotides should be standard in monitoring CS emissions.

Methane is the substance tracked most often in emissions from CS and other gas industry facilities because of its central role in operations, requirements to avoid explosive concentrations, and readily available measurement technology, in comparison to other substances emitted from CS. Although methane emissions from CS are not always correlated with amounts of other, more toxic emissions, patterns observed in plumes of methane from CS are likely to reflect elevated concentrations of other harmful substances from CS.

Nathan et al (2015) sampled methane emissions from one CS in the Barnett shale region using a sensor carried on a model aircraft. The open-path, laser sensor produced measures with a precision of 0.1 ppmv over short intervals, allowing researchers to see emission variation in time and space as the aircraft changed position. Based on 22 flights within a week period, they observed a substantial range in methane released from 0.3 – 73 g CH4 per second. These values calculate to 0.02 – 6.3 metric tons of methane per day, a range that matches that estimated by Goetz of 0.5 – 9 metric tons per day. In addition, Nathan et al. found high variability in concentrations at different heights, as the emission plumes shifted in response to wind velocity, direction and topography. They recommend caution in interpretations of ground-based emission monitors and called for more monitoring of air movements and emissions at different elevations.

Payne et al. 2017 confirmed these ideas when they mapped plumes of methane in CS in New York and Pennsylvania using a sensor capable of recording methane in parts per million (ppm) every 0.25 – 5 seconds. The sensor was located on a mobile unit that marked GPS location. They found high variability in the shape and extent of plumes. For example, one of most extensive plumes was recorded near Dimock, Pennsylvania in a locale with CS as the only major source of methane. Researchers recorded the highest concentrations of methane in the study, 22 ppm, at 500 m from the CS, with a second peak of 0.6 ppm noted over 1 km from the CS and elevated methane as far as 3 km from the site (Figure 4). Wind direction did not always predict the shape of the plume, but data collection was restricted by the path of the sensor and the transport vehicle (Figure 8). Most importantly, they found that …“during atmospheric temperature inversions, when near-ground mixing of the atmosphere is limited or does not occur, residents and properties located within 1 mile of a compressor station can be exposed to rogue methane from these point sources.” These residents are likely to also experience excess toxins from CS as well, especially under such weather conditions.

Exposure to peak concentrations of air pollutants have dramatic effects on health for several reasons. First, lungs carry toxins into the blood within seconds, and the blood quickly transfers compounds to the brain and other vital organs. Many of the substances released by compressor stations impact the central nervous system as seen in Table 3, and these toxins are released simultaneously. Citizens, therefore inhaling a plume of emissions will have impacts from the total of these compounds. The health impacts for these combined toxins are unknown, and especially of concern during pregnancy and child development. Exposure studies in animals and humans test individual substances and the Center for Disease Control and NIOSH use these to develop exposure guidelines for a healthy adult in a work-place. In contrast, residents near compressor stations will include citizens of all ages with various health conditions. For example, the American Lung Association determined that over 50% of the 360,000 residents of Westmoreland County are at greater risk for health impairment due to air pollution because they have one or more of these conditions: asthma, diabetes, heart disease, respiratory illness, advanced age (https://www.lung.org/our-initiatives/healthy-air/sota/key-findings/people-at-risk.html).

In sum, the research on CS emissions of methane, air pollutants such as NOx, and hazardous air pollutants such as formaldehyde and benzene, all indicate exposures to CS emissions pose a threat to public health, but the emissions have not yet been fully quantified and modeled. Documenting CS contributions to harmful ambient air quality is feasible, however. The published studies from as far back as 2011 indicate that instrumentation to record substances and weather are readily available. Activities within a station such as compressor function, blowdowns, venting and flaring are all recorded by operators, but such reports are not released to researchers or the public. The science of models that predict public health risks in response to air pollution exposure are highly developed. In sum, operators of CS have the technology to measure emissions and ambient air quality and scientists have the models, but lack of industry data prevents the public from knowing impacts from CS.

Table 6. Air toxins found in grab samples near Arkansas compressor stations including concentrations, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ASTDR), Minimum Risk Level (MRL) exceedance, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) cancer risk. Source: Copy of Table 4 from Macey et al. 2014.

State/ID	County	Nearest infrastructure	Chemical	Concentration (μg/m³)	ATSDR MRLs exceeded	EPA IRIS cancer risk exceeded
AR-3136-003	Faulkner	355 m from compressor	Formaldehyde	36	C	1/10,000
AR-3136-001	Cleburne	42 m from compressor	Formaldehyde	34	C	1/10,000
AR-3561	Cleburne	30 m from compressor	Formaldehyde	27	C	1/10,000
AR-3562	Faulkner	355 m from compressor	Formaldehyde	28	C	1/10,000
AR-4331	Faulkner	42 m from compressor	Formaldehyde	23	C	1/10,000
AR-4333	Faulkner	237 m from compressor	Formaldehyde	44	C, I	1/10,000
AR-4724	Van Buren	42 m from compressor	1,3-butadiene	8.5	n/a	1/10,000
AR-4924	Faulkner	254 m from compressor	Formaldehyde	48	C, I	1/10,000

C = chronic; I = intermediate.

Table 7. Air toxins found in grab samples near Pennsylvania compressor stations including concentrations, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ASTDR), Minimum Risk Level (MRL) exceedance, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) cancer risk. Source: Copy of Table 5 from Macey et al. 2014

State ID	County	Nearest infrastructure	Chemical	Concentration (μg/m³)	ATSDR MRLs exceeded	EPA IRIS cancer risk exceeded
PA-4083-003	Susquehanna	420 m from compressor	Formaldehyde	8.3		1/10,000
PA-4083-004	Susquehanna	370 m from compressor	Formaldehyde	7.6		1/100,000
PA-4136	Washington	270 m from PIG launch^a	Benzene	5.7		1/100,000
PA-4259-002	Susquehanna	790 m from compressor	Formaldehyde	61	C, I, A	1/10,000
PA-4259-003	Susquehanna	420 m from compressor	Formaldehyde	59	C, I, A	1/10,000
PA-4259-004	Susquehanna	230 m from compressor	Formaldehyde	32	C	1/10,000
PA-4259-005	Susquehanna	460 m from compressor	Formaldehyde	34	C	1/10,000

C = chronic; A = acute; I = intermediate.

aLaunching station for pipeline cleaning or inspection tool.

Table 8. Variation in air pollutants measured in ug/cubic meter by PA DEP during two sampling times per day for three consecutive days near a compressor station in Southwest PA. Source: Copied from Table 1. Brown et al. 2015 based on data from Southwestern Pennsylvania Short Term Marcellus Ambient Air Sampling Report, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, Nov. 2010.

*May 18*		*May 19*		*May 20*
Chemical	Morning	Evening	Morning	Evening	Morning	Evening	3-day Average
Ethylbenzene	No detect	No detect	964	2015	10,553	27,088	13,540
n-Butane	385	490	326	696	12,925	915	5,246
n-Hexane	No detect	536	832	11,502	33,607	No detect	15,492
2-Methyl Butane	No detect	230	251	5137	14,271	No detect	6,630
Iso-butane	397	90	No detect	1481	3,817	425	2070

Figure 4. Methane emission plumes from compressor stations near Dimock, Pennsylvania (left) and Springvale, Pennsylvania (right). Source: Copied from Payne et al. 2017.

Compressor Station Locations

Prior to 2008, compressor stations were infrequent with one or a few per county broadly distributed across PA as part of gas transport from locations outside of PA (Figure 5). These pipelines were mainly an issue for public health in the case of explosions. Major transmission pipelines use pressures up to 1500 psi. Leaks, therefore, release large amounts of gas much of which is not noticed because it lacks the mercaptan odorant added to household methane. For example, the 30-inch Spectra gas pipeline that exploded in 2016 in Westmoreland County caused a hole 12 feet deep and1500 square feet in area and burned 40 acres. The PA DEP claimed to have measured air quality, but they did not arrive until long after the plume from the fire traveled downwind. This pipeline was transporting gas from one of the largest gas storage facilities in the country, the Sunoco Gas Depot in Delmont, Pennsylvania to New Jersey as part of over 9,000 miles of pipelines in the Texas Eastern system from the Gulf Coast to the Northeast. That section of pipeline was built in 1981 and had recently been increased in pressure, probably using older or newer compressors in nearby locations. Faulty joints between pipeline sections were blamed for the catastrophic release of gas. (Phillips, S. 2016. State Impact, NPR). Immediately after the explosion, while gas continued to pour out of the pipeline, emergency workers needed at least one hour to locate shut-off locations. In general, pipeline shut-offs are sited at compressors stations or at intervals along a pipeline.

CS abundance in counties with shale gas extraction increased over tenfold in the decade after 2005 when the gas industry obtained exemptions to the Clean Water Act and began unconventional gas extraction in Pennsylvania (Figure 6). Permit applications for new wells, pipelines and CS continue throughout southwest Pennsylvania. In PA, the Oil and Gas law states the following: “ In order to allow for the reasonable development of oil and gas resources, a local ordinance … Shall authorize natural gas compressor stations as a permitted use in agricultural and industrial zoning districts and as a conditional use in all other zoning districts, if the natural gas compressor building meets the following standards:….(i) is located 750 feet or more from the nearest existing building or 200 feet from the nearest lot line, whichever is greater, unless waived by the owner of the building or adjoining lot;” (Pennsylvania Statutes Title 58 Pa.C.S.A. Oil and Gas §3304). CS and many aspects of the shale gas industry are controlled by this state law.

Each stage of gas extraction involves emissions that can be close or far from the well pad. Most emissions involve diesel engines. Diesel engines are well-known to produce substantial amounts of VOC’s, NOx and particulate pollution (PM-2.5, PM-10). Well pad construction requires intense activity by diesel trucks and earth moving equipment. Well drilling uses diesel engines. From 3 – 5 million gallons of water are used for each fracking event and up to 300 truck visits are needed to transport water for the many wells that are not close to water supplies from piped sources. Trucks are used to transport the 1 – 2 million gallons of produced water that emerges from the well for disposal in injection wells likely to be distant from most wells. Additional waste is carried long distances as well, including drill cuttings and sludge. For example, shale gas industry waste was handled for years in Max Environmental, one of the largest industrial waste sites in the eastern US located in Yukon, Westmoreland County since the 1960’s. Within one mile of Yukon is Reserved Environmental, a waste facility with operations focused since 2008 on processing sludge from fracking into solid cakes to be trucked to other landfills. In sum, all stages of shale gas industry contribute to many poorly documented sources of air pollution likely to be near CS.

The density of CS in some areas such as southwest Pennsylvania impacts the local and regional air quality. For example, Westmoreland County has 50 CS and 341 shale gas wells (https://www.fractracker.org) and some neighboring counties have even more shale gas emission sources. People in Westmoreland County receive pollutants from shale gas activities in their immediate vicinity and additional air pollutants from CS and other industries in neighboring counties. Wind patterns shown in Figure 7 indicate Westmoreland County is frequently downwind from Washington County, a county with a very high density of shale gas operations, and Eastern Allegheny County where large industries such as coke works release substantial amounts of air pollutants.

Figure 5. Compressor Stations prior to 2008 and in around 2013. Source: Copied from article by James Hilton in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Figure 6. Compressor Stations in Pennsylvania mapped in 2019. Source: FracTracker Alliance. 2000.

Figure 7. Wind patterns at small airports around Pennsylvania 1991-2005 showing predominant direction of wind and velocity in knots (Orange 0 – 4, Yellow 4 – 7, Turquoise 7 – 11, Medium Blue 11 – 17, Dark Blue 17 – 21). Source: The Pennsylvania State Climatologist.

Costs of Compressor Stations and Air Pollution

As permanent, constant sources of air and noise pollution and safety risks, CS add significant costs to communities. Poor air quality alone is well-established as an economic drain for a region due to many factors including increased health care, lower property values, a declining tax base, and difficulty in attracting new businesses or housing development. Litovitz et al. (2013) estimated that, compared to other activities of shale gas extraction, CS made up the majority of the annual emissions of important air toxins in 2011, and therefore a majority of the damages from air pollution, totaling 4 – 24 million dollars of the 7 – 32 million dollars of the aggregate air pollution damages from gas operations (Table 9).

Litovitz and others recognize that the costs of damages from the gas industry air pollution in 2011 may appear smaller than the state-wide impacts from other industries, such as coal burning power plants and coke production, but that appearance deserves a second look. First, shale gas extraction activities are concentrated in a few regions of Pennsylvania, and local air quality is most relevant to public health and local economics such as property values. Second, emissions from gas extraction in 2011 was only in its early stages in Pennsylvania and shale gas operations will expand greatly unless regulations change, while coal-fired power plants are declining due to the advanced age of most facilities. For example, in Westmoreland County, PA alone there are over 50 CS in 2020, the number currently in the entire state of New York, where unconventional gas development was suspended due, in large part, to concerns for public health. Costs from one aspect of an energy sector can be viewed in the context of economic and other benefits of alternative energy efforts. For example, Jacobson et al. (2013) estimated that shifting to clean, renewable energy in NY state would prevent 4000 premature deaths each year and save $33 billion/year through air pollution reductions that impact health care, crop production and other costs. Jacobson et al. used government data in their models regarding health benefits and also identified substantial job growth during and after the transition away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy. Pennsylvania has the potential to attain similar benefits in air quality, public health, savings and job growth gained from a shift to clean, renewable energy in place of fossil fuels.

Table 9. a) Emissions from shale gas industry in 2011 throughout Pennsylvania in metric tons per year. b) Costs of damages due to air pollution from shale gas extraction in 2011 throughout Pennsylvania. Copied from Tables 5 and 6 in Litovitz et al. 2013.

Activities	VOC	NO_x	PM2.5	PM₁₀	SO_x
(1) Transport	31–54	550–1000	16–30	17–30	0.82–1.4
(2) Well drilling and hydraulic fracturing	260–290	6600–8100	150–220	150–220	6.6–190
(3) Production	71–1800	810–1000	15–78	15–78	4.8–6.2
(4) Compressor stations	2200–8900	9300–18 000	280–1100	280–1100	0–340
Totalᵃ	2500–11 000	17 000–28 000	460–1400	460–1400	12–540

ᵃ These totals are reported to two significant figures, as are all intermediate emissions values in this document. The activity emissions may not exactly sum to the totals.

Activities	Timeframe	Total regional damage for 2011 ($2011)	Average per well or per MMCF damage ($2011)
(1) Transport	Development	$320 000–$810 000	$180–$460 per well
(2) Well drilling, fracturing	Development	$2 200 000–$4 700 0	$1 200-$2 700 per well
(3) Production	Ongoing	$290 000–$2 700 0	$0.27-$2.60 per MMCF
(4) Compressor stations	Ongoing	$4 400 000–$24 000 000	$4.20-$23.00 per MMCF
(1)-(4) Aggregated	Both	$7 200 000–$32 000 000	NA

Major Studies Cited in Text:

Brown, David, Celia Lewis, Beth I. Weinberger and Heather Bonaparte. 2014. Understanding air exposure from natural gas drilling put air standards to the test. Reviews in Environmental Health. https://doi.org/10.1515/reveh-2014-0002

Brown, David, Celia Lewis and Beth I. Weinberger. 2015. Human exposure to unconventional natural gas development; a public health demonstration of high exposure to chemical mixtures in ambient air. Journal of Environmental Science and Health (Part A) 50: 460-472.

Ciencewicki, J. and I. Jaspers 2007. Air Pollution and Respiratory Viral Infection. Inhalation Toxicology 19:1135–1146, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/08958370701665434

Currie, J, M Greenstone and K Meckel. 2017. Hydraulic fracturing and infant health: New evidence from Pennsylvania. Science Advances 2017;3:e1603021

Eastern Research Group, Inc. and Sage Environmental Consulting, LP. City of Fort Worth natural gas air quality study: final report. July 13, 2011. http://fortworthtexas.gov/gaswells/air-quality-study/final/

Goetz, J.D. E. Floerchinger, E., C. Fortner, J. Wormhoudt, P. Massoli, W. Berk Knighton, S.C. Herndon, C.E. Kolb, E. Knipping, S. L. Shaw, and P. F. DeCarlo. 2015. Atmospheric Emission Characterization of Marcellus Shale Natural Gas Development Sites. Environ. Sci. Technol. 49, 7012−7020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.5b00452

Jacobson, MZ, RW Howarth, MA Delucchi, ST Scobie, JH Barth, M Dvorak, M Klevze, H. Hatkhuda, B. Mirand, NA Chowdhury, R Jones, L Plano, AR Ingraffea. 2013. Examining the feasibility of converting New York State’s all-purpose energy infrastructure to one using wind, water, and sunlight. Energy Policy 57: 585-601.

Litovitz, A., A. Curtright, S. Abramzon, N. Burger and C. Samaras. 2013. Estimation of regional air-quality damages from Marcellus Shale natural gas extraction in Pennsylvania. Environ. Res. Lett. 8; 014017 (8pp) doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/1/014017. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/1/014017/meta

Macey, G.P., Breech, R., Chernaik, M. (2014) Air concentrations of volatile compounds near oil and gas production: a community-based exploratory study. Environ Health 13, 82 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1186/1476-069X-13-82

McKenzie, LM, G Ruisin, RZ Witter, DA Savitz, LS Newman, JL Adgate. 2014. Birth Outcomes and Maternal Residential Proximity to Natural Gas Development in Rural Colorado. Environmental Health Perspectives Vol 22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.1306722.

Nathan BJ, LM Golston, AS O’Brien , K Ross, WA Harrison, L Tao, DJ Larry, DR Johnson, AN Covington, NN Clark, MA Zondlo. 2015. Environ Sci Technol. 2015 Near-Field Characterization of Methane Emission Variability from a Compressor Station Using a Model Aircraft. Environ Sci Technol. 2015 Jul 7;49(13):7896-903 doi: 10.1021/acs.est.5b00705.

Payne, RA, P Wicker, ZL Hildenbrand, DD Carlton, and KA Schug. 2017. Characterization of methane plumes downwind of natural gas compressor stations in Pennsylvania and New York. Science of The Total Environment 580:1214-1221

Russo, PN and DO Carpenter 2017. Health Effects Associated with Stack Chemical Emissions from NYS Natural Gas Compressor Stations: 2008-2014 Institute for Health and the Environment, A Pan American Health Organization / World Health Organization Collaborating Centre in Environmental Health, University at Albany, 5 University Place, Rensselaer New York. Https://www.albany.edu/about/assets/Complete_report.pdf

Saunders, P.J., D. McCoy. R. Goldstein. A. T. Saunders and A. Munroe. 2018. A review of the public health impacts of unconventional natural gas development Environ Geochem Health 40:1–57. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-016-9898-x

Appendix

Compressor Stations in Westmoreland Co. PA in Dec 2019, based on information from FracTracker Alliance, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection Air Quality Report, and the Department of Homeland Security.

ID #	Facility #	Name/Operator	Municipality	Latitude	Longitude	Status
627743	645570	CNX GAS CO/HICKMAN COMP STA	Bell Twp	40.5174	-79.5498	Active
693305	696606	PEOPLES TWP/RUBRIGHT COMP STA	Bell Twp	40.5278	-79.5561	Active
626482	644726	CNX GAS CO/BELL POINT COMP STA	Bell Twp	40.5413	-79.5338	Active
na	na	NORTH OAKFORD	Delmont	40.4018	-79.5597	Active
714057	713241	RW GATHERING LLC/ECKER BERGMAN RD COMP STA	Derry Twp	40.3533	-79.3028	Active
760724	752063	RE GAS DEV/ORGOVAN COMP STA	Derry Twp	40.3857	-79.4019	Active
736807	732436	RW GATHERING LLC/SALEM COMP STA	Derry Twp	40.3908	-79.3361	Active
714057	713241	RW GATHERING LLC/ECKER BERGMAN RD COMP STA	Derry Twp	40.3533	-79.3028	Active
774714	766854	EQT GATHERING LLC/DERRY COMP STA	Derry Twp	40.4511	-79.3161	Active
na	na	Layman Compressor, Range Resources Appalachia, LLC	East Huntingdon	40.1113	-79.6345	Unknown
na	na	Key Rock Energy/LLC	East Huntingdon	40.1228	-79.6489	Unknown
662759	673466	Kriebel Minerals Inc./Sony Compressor Station (Inactive)	East Huntingdon	40.181	-79.5882	Unknown
662781	673477	Lynn Compressor, Kriebel Minerals Inc.	East Huntingdon	40.1798	-79.5557	Unknown
636316	660570	Range Resources Appalachia/ Layman Compressor Station	East Huntingdon	40.1086	-79.6359	Unknown
na	na	Keyrock Energy LLC/ Hribal Compresor Station, East Huntingdon, Pa. (active)	East Huntingdon	40.1353	-7905653	Unknown
761545	752755	KeyRock Energy LLC/ Hribal Compressor Station (Active)	East Huntingdon	40.1333	-79.55	Unknown
649767	663499	Range Resources Appalachia/Schwartz Comp. Station	East Huntingdon	40.0879	-79.601	Unknown
652968	665874	TEXAS KEYSTONE/FAIRFIELD TWP COMP STA	Fairfield Twp	40.3363	-79.1786	Active
557780	572987	EQUITRANS LP/W FAIRFIELD COMP STA	Fairfield Twp	40.3333	-79.1167	Active
675937	683303	DIVERSIFIED OIL & GAS LLC/MURPHY COMP SITE	Fairfield Twp	40.3362	-79.1122	Active
812881	806928	TEXAS KEYSTONE INC/ MURPHY COMP STA	Fairfield Twp	40.3543	-79.1123	Active
na	na	SOUTH OAKFORD/Dominion	Greensburg	40.365	-79.5585	Unknown
na	na	OAKFORD	Greensburg	40.3848	-79.5489	Active
na	na	DELMONT	Geensburg	40.382	-79.5554	Active
496667	626720	Silvis Compressor Station, Exco Resources Pa. Inc	Hempfield	40.2022	-79.5526	Unknown
na	na	Dominion Trans Inc., Lincoln Heights	Hempfield Township	40.3004	-79.6193	Active
812660	806731	CNX Gas Co. LLC	Hempfield Township	40.2957	-79.6277	Active
812661	806732	CNX Gas Co. LLC/ Jackson Compressor Station, Status: Active	Hempfield Township	40.2931	-79.6119	Unknown
601521	626775	PEOPLES NATURAL GAS CO/ARNOLD COMP STA	Lower Burrell City	40.3623	-79.4316	Active
812883	806930	TEXAS KEYSTONE INC/LOYALHANNA	Loyalhanna Twp	40.4514	-79.4727	Inactive
na	na	J.B. TONKIN	Murrysville Boro	40.4629	-79.6402	Active
815083	809310	HUNTLEY & HUNTLEY INC/BOARST COMP STA	Murrysville Boro	40.4686	-79.6417	Inactive
735725	731655	MTN GATHERING LLC/10078 MAINLINE COMP STA	Murrysville Boro	40.4708	-79.65	Active
241708	276314	Dominion Trans Inc/Jeannette	Penn Township	40.3317	-79.5935	inactive
na	701239	DOMINION ENERGY TRANS INC/ROCK SPRINGS COMP STA	Salem Twp	40.4052	-79.5546	Unknown
na	na	OAKFORD	Salem Twp	40.4052	-79.5546	Unknown
465965	495182	EQT GATHERING/SLEEPY HOLLOW COMP STA	Salem Twp	40.3634	-79.5426	Inactive
465965	495182	EQT GATHERING/SLEEPY HOLLOW COMP STA	Salem Twp	40.3634	-79.5426	Inactive
483173	512126	COLUMBIA GAS TRANS CORP/DELMONT COMP STA	Salem Twp	40.3871	-79.5638	Active
707759	708010	LAUREL MTN MIDSTREAM OPR LLC/SALEM COMP STA	Salem Twp	40.3782	-79.4929	Active
459024	488214	CNX Gas Co./ Jacobs Creek Compressor Station,	South Huntingdon Twp	40.1172	-79.6681	Unknown
634559	650802	Rex Energy I LLC/Launtz	Unity Twp	40.3325	-79.4295	Unknown
na	668776	Keyrock Energy LLC/ Unity Compressor Station	Unity Twp	40.2251	-79.5109	Unknown
na	na	Nelson/RE Gas Dev LLC	UnityTwp	40.3378	-79.4348	Unknown
657366	66932	People’s Natural Gas/ Latrobe Compressor Station	Unity Twp	40.3075	-79.4369	Inactive
812662	806733	CNX Gas Co. LLC, Troy Compressor Station	Unity Twp	na	na	Unknown
657366	564168	Dominion Peoples (Inactive)	Unity Twp	40.3073	-79.4371	Inactive
815196	809457	HUNTLEY & HUNTLEY INC/WASHINGTON STATION	Washington Twp	40.4967	-79.6206	Active
605562	629821	PEOPLES NATURAL GAS/MERWIN COMP STA	Washington Twp	40.5083	-79.6203	Active
815203	809466	HUNTLEY & HUNTLEY INC/TARPAY STA	Washington Twp	40.5222	-79.6186	Active
na	na	Mamont (CNX GAS CO/MAMONT COMP STA)	Washington Twp	40.5046	-79.5862	Unkown
741197	735870	CONE MIDSTREAM PARTNERS LP/MAMONT COMP STA	Washington Twp	40.5067	-79.5644	Active

Feature image of a compressor station within Loyalsock State Forest, PA. Photo by Brook Lenker, FracTracker Alliance, June 2016.

Early Construction (2016) of Shell Ethane Cracker in Monaca, Beaver County, Pennsylvania

House Bill 1100: What you need to know

March 5, 2020/0 Comments/in Articles, Legislation & Politics /by Shannon Smith

Pennsylvania’s House Bill 1100, sponsored by state Rep. Mike Turzai, has passed through the House and Senate with broad bipartisan support. If approved, the bill would provide billions of dollars in subsidies to energy and fertilizer companies that use fracked natural gas as feedstock.

The Bill is part of “Energize PA,” a package of bills that encourage natural gas and petrochemical development by providing companies with streamlined permitting processes and subsidies. The Shell ethane cracker plant in Beaver County received $1.6 billion in state subsidies, the largest tax break in state history. HB1100 would provide similar tax credits to additional petrochemical and natural gas projects.

According to its Republican sponsors, HB1100 is “designed to make Pennsylvania attractive to outside businesses, create family-sustaining jobs and provide economic benefits to underserved regions, without creating any new fees or taxes.” Indeed, the cumulative wage impacts of the Appalachian basin shale gas build-out was around $21 billion from 2004 to 2016, according to a 2019 Carnegie Mellon University study.

March 25, 2020 Update

After weeks of sitting on the bill, the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed HB1100, and the Pennsylvania Senate submitted it to Governor Wolf on March 18. This came amidst the chaos of the COVID-19 outbreak. The Governor is still expected to veto the bill, after which point, the General Assembly is likely to attempt an override.

March 27, 2020 Update

Governor Wolf said in his press release:

“Rather than enacting this bill, which gives a significant tax credit for energy and fertilizer manufacturing projects, we need to work together in a bipartisan manner to promote job creation and to enact financial stimulus packages for the benefit of Pennsylvanians who are hurting as they struggle with the substantial economic fallout of COVID-19.” Read the full press release here.

Some lawmakers have said that they will attempt to override the veto.

Fiscal Responsibility

However, both Energize PA and HB1100 have been criticized for their overall economic inefficacy and environmental externalities. The aforementioned CMU study found that the cumulative air pollution damage cost about $23 billion and the cumulative greenhouse gas damage reached $34 billion, leading the authors to conclude that the negative environmental and health externalities outweigh the benefits of shale gas development.

Diana Polson, Senior Policy Analyst at Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center, has also raised concerns about the economics of the petrochemical buildout in Pennsylvania. At a recent town hall meeting in Millvale, Pennsylvania, she made the point that tax incentives are rarely a deciding factor in a company’s decision on where to operate. This means that initiatives like “Energize PA” have little impact in terms of private investment decisions. Many factors outweigh the impact that tax credits have on a private company’s bottom line, such as proximity to a strong workforce, other existing industries, and access to supply chains.

Employment

What about job creation? The Pennsylvania Department of Revenue estimates that the HB1100 tax credit program would cost the Commonwealth $22 million per plant per year over the next 30 years. Diana Polson estimates that this would equate to about $8.8 million per permanent job over the course of the tax break.

This cost-to-job ratio is unacceptable to representatives like Sara Innamorato. “According to Shell, the cracker plant in Beaver will support 6,000 construction jobs at the peak of work, but will only lead to a possible 600 permanent jobs. Each of these jobs costs $2.75 million in subsidies — money that could have sustained many more families currently struggling to make ends meet in our communities,” the State Representative wrote. “Imagine how many workers we could employ with that level of investment in rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, replacing lead pipes, and repairing bus-swallowing sinkholes.”

Corporate tax revenue has fallen to 14% of Pennsylvania’s General Fund revenue, about half of what it was in the 1970’s. Without these corporate tax cuts, Pennsylvania would have about $4 billion more in corporate tax revenue per year than it does today. Critics like Innamorato believe that the state should respond to an already large public investment deficit by subsidizing investments such as education, human services, infrastructure, and environmental protection. HB1100 runs counter such public investments, particularly Democratic Governor Tom Wolf’s efforts to instate a severance tax on fracking operations that would subsidize infrastructure projects.

Environmental & Climate Impacts

Critics of HB1100 also raise environmental concerns. Much of the petrochemical buildout in the Appalachian basin would produce plastics, exacerbating the problem of single-use plastic pollution. There are also worries about the industry’s contributions to climate change. A recent report co-authored by FracTracker Alliance and the Center for Environmental Integrity found that plastic production and incineration in 2019 contributed greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to that of 189 new 500-megawatt coal power plants. If plastic production and use grow as currently planned, these emissions could rise to the equivalent to the emissions released by more than 295 coal-fired power plants. Locking in these emissions for decades to come has some wondering how Pennsylvania will reach its carbon budget goal of 58 million tons of CO2 in 2050.

Health Concerns

In addition to economic and environmental concerns, HB1100 has come under criticism for its potential to worsen the health impacts associated with natural gas and petrochemical development, which range from asthma attacks, cardiovascular disease, strokes, abnormal heart rhythms and heart attacks. Research has also shown that natural gas and petrochemical development increase the risk of cancer, and there is growing evidence that air pollution affects fetal development and adverse birth outcomes.

Moving Forward

It is now in the hands of Governor Wolf to either pass or veto HB1100. Wolf’s spokesman J.J. Abbott said that the governor “believes such projects should be evaluated on a specific case-by-case basis. However, if there was a specific project, he would be open to a conversation.”

One in three jobs in Pennsylvania’s energy sector are in clean energy. Many taxpayers will continue to push for policies that support this kind of job creation and investment in public services and infrastructure. Will our Commonwealth leaders listen, or will they continue to prioritize fossil fuel companies?

Learn More

Visualize the petrochemical buildout by exploring FracTracker’s maps.

Explore the Maps

Attend an informative press conference

Penn Future and dozens of other groups are holding a press conference in Harrisburg on March 9th.

Harrisburg Press Conference - March 9

When: Monday, March 9, 10:00 – 11:00 AM
Where: Pennsylvania State Capitol – Main Rotunda
State and Third Street
Harrisburg, PA 17101

The list of speakers is subject to change. Current confirmed speakers include:
Jacquelyn Bonomo, President and C.E.O., PennFuture
State Representative Sara Innamorato, (21st House District)
State Representative Chris Rabb, (200th House District)
State Representative Carolyn Comitta, (156th House District)
State Senator Katie Muth, (44th Senatorial District)
Veronica Coptis, Executive Director, The Center for Coalfield Justice
Ashleigh Deemer, Deputy Director, PennEnvironment
Rabbi Daniel Swartz, Temple Hesed
Briann Moye, One Pennsylvania

RSVP

You can contact PennFuture Western Pennsylvania Outreach Coordinator, Kelsey Krepps, at krepps@pennfuture.org or (412) 224 – 4477 with any questions or concerns.

Cover photo showing early construction (2016) of the Shell Ethane Cracker in Beaver County, PA. By Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance. Aerial assistance provided by LightHawk. Provided by FracTracker Alliance, fractracker.org/photos.

National Energy and Petrochemical Map

February 28, 2020/0 Comments/in Articles, Compressor Stations, Infrastructure, Petrochemicals & Plastics, Pipelines, Wells /by Erica Jackson

FracTracker Alliance has released a new national map, filled with energy and petrochemical data. Explore the map, continue reading to learn more, and see how your state measures up!

View map full screen

The items on the map (followed by facility count in parenthesis) include:

Extraction

Offshore petroleum and gas production (157) – offshore platforms that are included in the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program.

For oil and gas wells, view FracTracker’s state maps.

Transportation & Storage

Natural gas compressor stations (1,367) – Facilities built along a pipeline route that pressurize natural gas to keep it flowing through the pipeline.
Crude oil rail terminals (94) – Rail terminals that load and unload crude oil (liquid hydrocarbons that have yet to be processed into higher-value petroleum products).
Liquefied natural gas import/export terminals (8) – Facilities that can a) liquefy natural gas so it can be exported as LNG (liquefied natural gas) and/or b) re-gasify LNG so it can be used as natural gas. Natural gas is transported in a liquid state because it takes up less space as a liquid than as a gas.
Natural Gas Underground Storage (486) – Locations where natural gas is stored underground in aquifers, depleted gas fields, and salt formations.
Liquefied Natural Gas Storage (6) – LNG storage facilities included in the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program.
Petroleum Product Terminals (1,484) – Terminals with a storage capacity of 50,000 barrels or more and/or the ability to receive volumes from tanker, barge, or pipeline. Petroleum products include products “produced from the processing of crude oil and other liquids at petroleum refineries, from extraction of liquid hydrocarbons at natural gas processing plants, and from production of finished petroleum products at blending facilities.”
Petroleum Ports (242) – A port that can import and/or export 200,000 or more short tons of petroleum products a year.
Natural gas import/export pipeline facility (54) – A facility where natural gas crosses the border of the continental United States.
Pipelines
- Crude oil pipelines – major crude oil pipelines, including interstate truck lines and selected intrastate lines, but not including gathering lines.
- Natural gas liquid pipelines – Also referred to as hydrocarbon gas liquid pipelines, they carry the heavier components of the natural gas stream which are liquid under intense pressure and extreme cold, but gas in normal conditions.
- Natural gas pipelines– Interstate and intrastate natural gas pipelines. Due to the immensity of this pipeline network and lack of available data, this pipeline layer in particular varies in degree of accuracy.
- Petroleum Product Pipelines – Major petroleum product pipelines.
- Recent Pipeline Projects – Pipeline projects that have been announced since 2017. This includes projects in various stages, including under construction, complete, planned or canceled. Click on the pipeline for the status.

Processing & Downstream

Natural Gas Processing Plants (478) – Plants that separate impurities and components of the natural gas stream.
Chemical plants (36) – Includes two types of chemical plants – petrochemical production and ammonia manufacturing – that report to EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program.
Ethylene Crackers (30) – Also referred to as ethane crackers, these petrochemical complexes that converts ethane (a natural gas liquid) into ethylene. Ethylene is used to make products like polyethylene plastic.
Petroleum Refineries (135) – A plant that processes crude oil into products like petroleum naphtha, diesel fuel, and gasoline.
Power Plants (9,414) – Electric generating plants with a capacity of at least one megawatt, sorted by energy source.
Wind Turbines (63,003) – Zoom in on wind power plants to see this legend item appear.

Natural Resources

This map is by no means exhaustive, but is exhausting. It takes a lot of infrastructure to meet the energy demands from industries, transportation, residents, and businesses – and the vast majority of these facilities are powered by fossil fuels. What can we learn about the state of our national energy ecosystem from visualizing this infrastructure? And with increasing urgency to decarbonize within the next one to three decades, how close are we to completely reengineering the way we make energy?

Key Takeaways

Natural gas accounts for 44% of electricity generation in the United States – more than any other source. Despite that, the cost per megawatt hour of electricity for renewable energy power plants is now cheaper than that of natural gas power plants.
The state generating the largest amount of solar energy is California, while wind energy is Texas. The state with the greatest relative solar energy is not technically a state – it’s D.C., where 18% of electricity generation is from solar, closely followed by Nevada at 17%. Iowa leads the country in relative wind energy production, at 45%.
The state generating the most amount of energy from both natural gas and coal is Texas. Relatively, West Virginia has the greatest reliance on coal for electricity (85%), and Rhode Island has the greatest percentage of natural gas (92%).
With 28% of total U.S. energy consumption for transportation, many of the refineries, crude oil and petroleum product pipelines, and terminals on this map are dedicated towards gasoline, diesel, and other fuel production.
Petrochemical production, which is expected to account for over a third of global oil demand growth by 2030, takes the form of chemical plants, ethylene crackers, and natural gas liquid pipelines on this map, largely concentrated in the Gulf Coast.

Electricity generation

The “power plant” legend item on this map contains facilities with an electric generating capacity of at least one megawatt, and includes independent power producers, electric utilities, commercial plants, and industrial plants. What does this data reveal?

Power plants by energy source. Data from EIA.

In terms of the raw number of power plants – solar plants tops the list, with 2,916 facilities, followed by natural gas at 1,747.

In terms of megawatts of electricity generated, the picture is much different – with natural gas supplying the highest percentage of electricity (44%), much more than the second place source, which is coal at 21%, and far more than solar, which generates only 3% (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Electricity generation by source in the United States, 2019. Data from EIA.

This difference speaks to the decentralized nature of the solar industry, with more facilities producing less energy. At a glance, this may seem less efficient and more costly than the natural gas alternative, which has fewer plants producing more energy. But in reality, each of these natural gas plants depend on thousands of fracked wells – and they’re anything but efficient.

The cost per megawatt hour of electricity for a renewable energy power plants is now cheaper than that of fracked gas power plants. A report by the Rocky Mountain Institute, found “even as clean energy costs continue to fall, utilities and other investors have announced plans for over $70 billion in new gas-fired power plant construction through 2025. RMI research finds that 90% of this proposed capacity is more costly than equivalent [clean energy portfolios, which consist of wind, solar, and energy storage technologies] and, if those plants are built anyway, they would be uneconomic to continue operating in 2035.”

The economics side with renewables – but with solar, wind, geothermal comprising only 12% of the energy pie, and hydropower at 7%, do renewables have the capacity to meet the nation’s energy needs? Yes! Even the Energy Information Administration, a notorious skeptic of renewable energy’s potential, forecasted renewables would beat out natural gas in terms of electricity generation by 2050 in their 2020 Annual Energy Outlook.

This prediction doesn’t take into account any future legislation limiting fossil fuel infrastructure. A ban on fracking or policies under a Green New Deal could push renewables into the lead much sooner than 2050.

In a void of national leadership on the transition to cleaner energy, a few states have bolstered their renewable portfolio.

How does your state generate electricity?

Figure 2. Electricity generation state-wide by source, 2019. Data from EIA.

One final factor to consider – the pie pieces on these state charts aren’t weighted equally, with some states’ capacity to generate electricity far greater than others. The top five electricity producers are Texas, California, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Illinois.

Transportation

In 2018, approximately 28% of total U.S. energy consumption was for transportation. To understand the scale of infrastructure that serves this sector, it’s helpful to click on the petroleum refineries, crude oil rail terminals, and crude oil pipelines on the map.

Transportation Fuel Infrastructure. Data from EIA.

The majority of gasoline we use in our cars in the US is produced domestically. Crude oil from wells goes to refineries to be processed into products like diesel fuel and gasoline. Gasoline is taken by pipelines, tanker, rail, or barge to storage terminals (add the “petroleum product terminal” and “petroleum product pipelines” legend items), and then by truck to be further processed and delivered to gas stations.

The International Energy Agency predicts that demand for crude oil will reach a peak in 2030 due to a rise in electric vehicles, including busses. Over 75% of the gasoline and diesel displacement by electric vehicles globally has come from electric buses.

China leads the world in this movement. In 2018, just over half of the world’s electric vehicles sales occurred in China. Analysts predict that the country’s oil demand will peak in the next five years thanks to battery-powered vehicles and high-speed rail.

In the United States, the percentage of electric vehicles on the road is small but growing quickly. Tax credits and incentives will be important for encouraging this transition. Almost half of the country’s electric vehicle sales are in California, where incentives are added to the federal tax credit. California also has a “Zero Emission Vehicle” program, requiring electric vehicles to comprise a certain percentage of sales.

We can’t ignore where electric vehicles are sourcing their power – and for that we must go back up to the electricity generation section. If you’re charging your car in a state powered mainly by fossil fuels (as many are), then the electricity is still tied to fossil fuels.

Petrochemicals

Many of the oil and gas infrastructure on the map doesn’t go towards energy at all, but rather aids in manufacturing petrochemicals – the basis of products like plastic, fertilizer, solvents, detergents, and resins.

This industry is largely concentrated in Texas and Louisiana but rapidly expanding in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia.

On this map, key petrochemical facilities include natural gas plants, chemical plants, ethane crackers, and natural gas liquid pipelines.

Petrochemical infrastructure. Data from EIA.

Natural gas processing plants separate components of the natural gas stream to extract natural gas liquids like ethane and propane – which are transported through the natural gas liquid pipelines. These natural gas liquids are key building blocks of the petrochemical industry.

Ethane crackers process natural gas liquids into polyethylene – the most common type of plastic.

The chemical plants on this map include petrochemical production plants and ammonia manufacturing. Ammonia, which is used in fertilizer production, is one of the top synthetic chemicals produced in the world, and most of it comes from steam reforming natural gas.

As we discuss ways to decarbonize the country, petrochemicals must be a major focus of our efforts. That’s because petrochemicals are expected to account for over a third of global oil demand growth by 2030 and nearly half of demand growth by 2050 – thanks largely to an increase in plastic production. The International Energy Agency calls petrochemicals a “blind spot” in the global energy debate.

Petrochemical development off the coast of Texas, November 2019. Photo by Ted Auch, aerial support provided by LightHawk.

Investing in plastic manufacturing is the fossil fuel industry’s strategy to remain relevant in a renewable energy world. As such, we can’t break up with fossil fuels without also giving up our reliance on plastic. Legislation like the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act get to the heart of this issue, by pausing construction of new ethane crackers, ensuring the power of local governments to enact plastic bans, and phasing out certain single-use products.

“The greatest industrial challenge the world has ever faced”

Mapped out, this web of fossil fuel infrastructure seems like a permanent grid locking us into a carbon-intensive future. But even more overwhelming than the ubiquity of fossil fuels in the US is how quickly this infrastructure has all been built. Everything on this map was constructed since Industrial Revolution, and the vast majority in the last century (Figure 3) – an inch on the mile-long timeline of human civilization.

Figure 3. Global Fossil Fuel Consumption. Data from Vaclav Smil (2017)

In fact, over half of the carbon from burning fossil fuels has been released in the last 30 years. As David Wallace Wells writes in The Uninhabitable Earth, “we have done as much damage to the fate of the planet and its ability to sustain human life and civilization since Al Gore published his first book on climate than in all the centuries—all the millennia—that came before.”

What will this map look like in the next 30 years?

A recent report on the global economics of the oil industry states, “To phase out petroleum products (and fossil fuels in general), the entire global industrial ecosystem will need to be reengineered, retooled and fundamentally rebuilt…This will be perhaps the greatest industrial challenge the world has ever faced historically.”

Is it possible to build a decentralized energy grid, generated by a diverse array of renewable, local, natural resources and backed up by battery power? Could all communities have the opportunity to control their energy through member-owned cooperatives instead of profit-thirsty corporations? Could microgrids improve the resiliency of our system in the face of increasingly intense natural disasters and ensure power in remote regions? Could hydrogen provide power for energy-intensive industries like steel and iron production? Could high speed rail, electric vehicles, a robust public transportation network and bike-able cities negate the need for gasoline and diesel? Could traditional methods of farming reduce our dependency on oil and gas-based fertilizers? Could zero waste cities stop our reliance on single-use plastic?

Of course! Technology evolves at lightning speed. Thirty years ago we didn’t know what fracking was and we didn’t have smart phones. The greater challenge lies in breaking the fossil fuel industry’s hold on our political system and convincing our leaders that human health and the environment shouldn’t be externalized costs of economic growth.

Fracking in Pennsylvania: Not Worth It

January 7, 2020/2 Comments/in Articles, Petrochemicals & Plastics, Waste, Water, Wells /by Matt Kelso, BA

Despite the ever-increasing heaps of violations and drilling waste, Pennsylvania’s fracked wells continue to produce an excess supply of gas, driving prices down. To cut their losses, the oil and gas industry is turning towards increased exports and petrochemical production. Continuing to expand fracking in Pennsylvania will only increase risks to the public and to the climate, all for what may amount to another boom and bust cycle that is largely unprofitable to investors.

Let’s take a look at gas production, waste, newly drilled wells, and violations in Pennsylvania in the past year to understand just how precarious the fracking industry is.

Production

Fracked hydrocarbon production continues to rise in Pennsylvania, resulting in an increase in waste production, violations, greenhouse gas emissions, and public health concerns. There are three types of hydrocarbons produced from wells in Pennsylvania: gas, condensate, and oil. Gas is composed mostly of methane, the most basic of the hydrocarbons, but in some parts of Pennsylvania, there can be significant quantities of ethane, propane, and other so-called “natural gas liquids” (NGLs) mixed in. Each of these NGLs are actually gaseous at atmospheric conditions, but operators try to separate these with a combination of pressure and low temperatures, converting them to a liquid phase. Some of these NGLs can be separated on-site, and this is typically referred to as condensate. Fracked wells in Pennsylvania also produce a relatively tiny amount of oil.

View map fullscreen | How FracTracker maps work

For those of you wondering why we are looking at the November, 2018 through October, 2019 time frame, this is simply a reflection of the available data. In this 12-month period, 9,858 fracked Pennsylvania wells, classified as “unconventional,” reported producing 6.68 trillion cubic feet of gas (Tcf), 4.89 million barrels of condensate, and just over 70,000 barrels of oil.

By means of comparison, Pennsylvania consumed about 1.46 Tcf of gas across all sectors in 2018, of which just 253 billion cubic feet (Bcf) was used in the homes of Pennsylvania’s 12.8 million residents. In fact, the amount of gas produced in Pennsylvania exceeds residential consumption in the entire United States by almost 1.7 Tcf. However, less than 17% of all gas consumed in Pennsylvania is for residential use, with nearly 28% being used for industrial purposes (including petrochemical development), and more than 35% used to generate electricity.

Fracked Gas Production and Consumption in Pennsylvania from 2013 through 2018

Figure 1. Fracked gas production compared to all fracked gas consumption and residential gas consumption in Pennsylvania from 2013 through 2018. Data from ref. Energy Information Administration.

While gas production has expansive hotspots in the northeastern and southwestern portions of the state, the liquid production comes from a much more limited geography. Eighty percent of all condensate production came from Washington County, while 87% of all fracked oil came from wells in Mercer County.

Because the definition of condensate has been somewhat controversial in the past (while the oil export ban was still in effect), I asked the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) for the definition, and was told that if hydrocarbons come out of the well as a liquid, they should be reported as oil. If they are gaseous but condense to a liquid at standard temperature and pressure (60 degrees Fahrenheit and pressure 14.7 PSIA) on-site, then it is to be reported as condensate. Any NGLs that remain gaseous but are removed from the gas supply further downstream are reported as gas in this report. For this reason, it is not really possible to use the production report to find specific amounts of NGLs produced in the state, but it certainly exceeds condensate production by an appreciable margin.

The one-year volume withdrawal of gas from unconventional wells in Pennsylvania is equal to the volume of 3.2 Mount Everests

The volume of gas withdrawn from fracked wells in Pennsylvania in just one year is equal to the volume of 3.2 Mount Everests!

Waste

Hydrocarbons aren’t the only thing that come out of the ground when operators drill and frack wells in Pennsylvania. Drillers also report a staggering amount of waste products, including more than 65 million barrels (2.7 billion gallons) of liquid waste and 1.2 million tons of solid waste in the 12-month period.

Waste facilities have significant issues such as inducing earthquakes, toxic leachate, and radioactive sediments in streambeds.

Waste Type	Liquid Waste (Barrels)	Solid Waste (Tons)
Basic Sediment	63
Brine Co-Product	247
Drill Cuttings		1,094,208
Drilling Fluid Waste	1,439,338	11,378
Filter Socks		143
Other Oil & Gas Wastes	2,236,750	6,387
Produced Fluid	61,376,465	41,165
Servicing Fluid	17,196	3,250
Soil Contaminated by Oil & Gas Related Spills		25,505
Spent Lubricant Waste	1,104
Synthetic Liner Materials		21,051
Unused Fracturing Fluid Waste	7,077	1,593
Waste Water Treatment Sludge		35,151
Grand Total	65,078,240	1,239,831

Figure 2. Oil and gas waste generated by fracked wells as reported by drillers from November 1, 2018 through October 31, 2019. Data from ref: PA DEP.

Some of the waste is probably best described as sludge, and several of the categories allow for reporting in barrels or tons. Almost all of the waste was in the well bore at one time or another, although there are some site-related materials that need to be disposed of, including filter socks which separate liquid and solid waste, soils contaminated by spills, spent lubricant, liners, and unused frack fluid waste.

Where does all of this waste go? We worked with Earthworks earlier this year to take a deep dive into the data, focusing on these facilities that receive waste from Pennsylvania’s oil and gas wells. While the majority of the waste is dealt with in-state, a significant quantity crosses state lines to landfills and injection wells in neighboring states, and sometimes as far away as Idaho.

Please see the report, Pennsylvania Oil & Gas Waste for more details.

Read the Report

Drilled Wells

Oil and gas operators have started the drilling process for 616 fracking wells in 2019, which appear on the Pennsylvania DEP spud report. This is less than one third of the 2011 peak of 1,956 fracked wells, and 2019 is the fifth consecutive year with fewer than 1,000 wells drilled. This has the effect of making industry projections relying on 1,500 or more drilled wells per year seem rather dubious.

Fracked Unconventional Wells Drilled per Year in Pennsylvania from 2005 through 2019

Figure 3. Unconventional (fracked) wells drilled from 2005 through December 23, 2019, showing totals by regional office. Data from ref: PA DEP.

Oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania fall under the jurisdiction of three different regional offices. By looking at Figure 2, it becomes apparent that the North Central Regional Office (blue line) was a huge driver of the 2009 to 2014 drilling boom, before falling back to a similar drilling rate of the Southwest Regional Office.

The slowdown in drilling for gas in recent years is related to the lack of demand for the product. In turn, this drives prices down, a phenomenon that industry refers to as a “price glut.” The situation it is forcing major players in the regions such as Range Resources to reduce their holdings in Appalachia, and some, such as Chevron, are pulling out entirely.

Violations

Disturbingly, 2019 was the fifth straight year that the number of violations issued by DEP will exceed the total number of wells drilled.

$Unconventional fracked wells drilled and violations issued from 2005 through 2019$

Figure 4. Unconventional (fracked) drilled wells and issued violations from 2005 through December 2019. Data from ref: DEP.

Violations related to unconventional drilling are a bit unwieldy to summarize. The 13,833 incidents reported in Pennsylvania fall into 359 different categories, representing the specific regulations in which the drilling operator fell short of expectations. The industry likes to dismiss many of these as being administrative matters, and indeed, the DEP does categorize the violations as either “Administrative” or “Environmental, Health & Safety”. However, 9,998 (72%) of the violations through December 3, 2019, are in the latter category, and even some of the ones that are categorized as administrative seem like they ought to be in environmental, health, and safety. For example, let’s look at the 15 most frequent infractions:

Violation Code	Incidents	Category
SWMA301 – Failure to properly store, transport, process or dispose of a residual waste.	767	Environmental Health & Safety
CSL 402(b) – POTENTIAL POLLUTION – Conducting an activity regulated by a permit issued pursuant to Section 402 of The Clean Streams Law to prevent the potential of pollution to waters of the Commonwealth without a permit or contrary to a permit issued under that authority by the Department.	613	Environmental Health & Safety
102.4 – Failure to minimize accelerated erosion, implement E&S plan, maintain E&S controls. Failure to stabilize site until total site restoration under OGA Sec 206(c)(d)	595	Environmental Health & Safety
SWMA 301 – MANAGEMENT OF RESIDUAL WASTE – Person operated a residual waste processing or disposal facility without obtaining a permit for such facility from DEP. Person stored, transported, processed, or disposed of residual waste inconsistent with or unauthorized by the rules and regulations of DEP.	540	Environmental Health & Safety
601.101 – O&G Act 223-General. Used only when a specific O&G Act code cannot be used	469	Administrative
402CSL – Failure to adopt pollution prevention measures required or prescribed by DEP by handling materials that create a danger of pollution.	362	Environmental Health & Safety
78.54* – Failure to properly control or dispose of industrial or residual waste to prevent pollution of the waters of the Commonwealth.	339	Environmental Health & Safety
401 CSL – Discharge of pollutional material to waters of Commonwealth.	299	Environmental Health & Safety
102.4(b)1 – EROSION AND SEDIMENT CONTROL REQUIREMENTS – Person conducting earth disturbance activity failed to implement and maintain E & S BMPs to minimize the potential for accelerated erosion and sedimentation.	285	Environmental Health & Safety
102.5(m)4 – PERMIT REQUIREMENTS – GENERAL PERMITS – Person failed to comply with the terms and conditions of the E & S Control General Permit.	283	Environmental Health & Safety
78.56(1) – Pit and tanks not constructed with sufficient capacity to contain pollutional substances.	256	Administrative
78a53 – EROSION AND SEDIMENT CONTROL AND STORMWATER MANAGEMENT – Person proposing or conducting earth disturbance activities associated with oil and gas operations failed to comply with 25 Pa. Code § 102.	247	Environmental Health & Safety
102.11(a)1 – GENERAL REQUIREMENTS – BMP AND DESIGN STANDARDS – Person failed to design, implement and maintain E & S BMPs to minimize the potential for accelerated erosion and sedimentation to protect, maintain, reclaim and restore water quality and existing and designated uses.	235	Environmental Health & Safety
CSL 401 – PROHIBITION AGAINST OTHER POLLUTIONS – Discharged substance of any kind or character resulting in pollution of Waters of the Commonwealth.	235	Environmental Health & Safety
OGA3216(C) – WELL SITE RESTORATIONS – PITS, DRILLING SUPPLIES AND EQUIPMENT – Failure to fill all pits used to contain produced fluids or industrial wastes and remove unnecessary drilling supplies/equipment not needed for production within 9 months from completion of drilling of well.	206	Environmental Health & Safety

Figure 5. Top 15 most frequently cited violations for unconventional drilling operations in Pennsylvania through December 3, 2019. Data from ref: DEP.

Of the 15 most common categories, only two are considered administrative violations. One of these is a general code, where we don’t know what happened to warrant the infraction without reading the written narrative that accompanies the data, and is therefore impossible to categorize. The only other administrative violation in the top 15 categories reads, “78.56(1) – Pit and tanks not constructed with sufficient capacity to contain pollutional substances,” which certainly sounds like it would have some real-world implications beyond administrative concerns.

Check out our Pennsylvania Shale Viewer map to see if there are violations at wells near you.

Bloated With Gas, Fraught With Trouble

To address the excess supply of gas, companies have tried to export the gas and liquids to other markets through pipelines. Those efforts have been fraught with trouble as well. Residents are reluctant to put up with an endless barrage of new pipelines, yielding their land and putting their safety at risk for an industry that can’t seem to move the product safely. The Revolution pipeline explosion hasn’t helped that perception, nor have all of the sinkholes and hundreds of leaky “inadvertent returns” along the path of the Mariner East pipeline system. In a sense, the industry’s best case scenario is to call these failures incompetence, because otherwise they would be forced to admit that the 2.5 million miles of hydrocarbon pipelines in the United States are inherently risky, prone to failure any time and any place.

In addition to increasing the transportation and export of natural gas to new markets, private companies and elected officials are collaborating to attract foreign investors to fund a massive petrochemical expansion in the Ohio River Valley. The planned petrochemical plants intend to capitalize on the cheap feedstock of natural gas.

Pennsylvania’s high content of NGLs is a selling point by the industry, because they have an added value when compared to gas. While all of these hydrocarbons can burn and produce energy in a similar manner, operators are required to remove most of them to get the energy content of the gas into an acceptable range for gas transmission lines. Because of this, enormous facilities have to be built to separate these NGLs, while even larger facilities are constructed to consume it all. Shell’s Pennsylvania Petrochemicals Complex ethane cracker being built in Beaver County, PA is scheduled to make 1.6 million metric tons of polyethylene per year, mostly for plastics.

This comes at a time when communities around the country and the world are enacting new regulations to rein in plastic pollution, which our descendants are going to finding on the beach for thousands of years, even if everyone on the planet were to stop using single-use plastics today. Of course, none of these bans or taxes are currently permitted in Pennsylvania, but adding 1.6 million metric tons per year to our current supply is unnecessary, and indeed, it is only the beginning for the region. A similar facility, known as the PTT Global Chemical cracker appears to be moving forward in Eastern Ohio, and ExxonMobil appears to be thinking about building one in the region as well. Industry analysts think the region produces enough NGLs to support five of these ethane crackers.

Despite all of these problems, the oil and gas industry still plans to fill the Ohio River Valley with new petrochemical plants, gas processing plants, and storage facilities in the hopes that someday, somebody may want what they’ve taken from the ground.

Here’s hoping that 2020 is a safer and healthier year than 2019 was. But there is no need to leave it up to chance. Together, we have the power to change things, if we all demand that our voices are heard. As a start, consider contacting your elected officials to let them know that renewing Pennsylvania’s blocking of municipal bans and taxes on plastic bags is unacceptable.

By Matt Kelso, Manager of Data & Technology, FracTracker Alliance

Fracking Drilling rig in Washington County, Pennsylvania

Allegheny County Air Quality Monitoring Project

December 18, 2019/0 Comments/in Air, Articles, Health & Safety /by Erica Jackson

A recent study out of Carnegie Mellon University estimated that for every three job years created by fracking in the Marcellus Shale, one year of life is lost for a resident due to increased pollution exposure. As fracking continues to expand around the perimeter of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania — one of the top ten most polluted regions in the U.S. — we’re called to question how this industry is impacting the area’s already poor air quality. To answer this question, Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project (EHP), and FracTracker Alliance conducted a study on air quality around sites impacted by fracking development.

Over the course of this past year, we set up air monitors in seven communities in or near Allegheny County with current or proposed oil and gas infrastructure, with the goal of gathering baseline data and identifying possible public health concerns.

The sites in question are mapped and described below. Click on the arrow to scroll through maps of the different sites.

Study Areas:

North Braddock: Merrion Oil and Gas has proposed a fracking well on the property of the Edgar Thomson Steel Works, near where North Braddock, East Pittsburgh, and North Versailles meet.
Plum Borough: Penneco has proposed to build a wastewater disposal well in Plum Borough. We placed three monitors at homes in areas where the air is likely to be impacted by construction and truck traffic should the wastewater disposal well be installed.
Economy Borough (Beaver County): We monitored around PennEnergy Resource’s B50 well pad, which recently began construction. Of particular concern to residents is the increase in truck traffic along a narrow road in a residential neighborhood that will be used to access the well pad.
Frazer Township: Monitoring took place around the Gulick, Schiller, and Bakerstown well pads. During their monitoring period, there was reported fracking activity on one well, and drilling activity on another.
Elizabeth Township: Monitoring occurred around three EQT and Olympus Energy fracked well pads listed as active; fracking reportedly occurred on one well pad during the monitoring period.
Indiana Township: Monitoring followed the construction of the Miller Jr. fracked well pad.
Stowe Township: Monitoring occurred in Stowe Township, where McKees Rocks Industrial Enterprise (MRIE) is located, and in adjacent McKees Rocks. This facility processes and transports frac sand, which operators use to frack a well by injecting it at extremely high pressures underground.

View a map of the study areas | How FracTracker maps work

What You Need to Know:

PM2.5 is a pollutant small enough to enter our lungs and bloodstream and therefore poses a great risk to human health.
The process of constructing, drilling and fracking a well releases a variety of pollutants, including particulate matter, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and nitrous oxides (NOx).
Allegheny County has some of the worst air quality in the nation. In recent years, the air quality in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, which had been improving since 2005, began to worsen. This is due in part to fracking activities.
There are 163 fracked wells that have been drilled in Allegheny County, all of which pose a threat to human health.
This initial air quality study by Southwest Environmental Health Project and FracTracker found that areas with proposed fracking sites are particularly vulnerable because they already have poor air quality.
Further investigations will need to monitor air quality throughout different stages of development and during different seasons in order to provide meaningful comparisons of changes in air quality that could be correlated with oil and gas development.

Allegheny’s air – from bad to worse

In recent years, the air quality in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, which had been improving since 2005, began to worsen. According to the 2019 State of the Air report, levels of ozone and particle pollution increased over 2015-2017 (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Levels of 24-hour PM2.5 in Allegheny County, from the American Lung Association’s 2019 State of the Air Report

This fact echoes a nationwide trend. Another study out of Carnegie Mellon University found that after several years of improvement, air pollution in the United States worsened in 2017 and 2018. The study cited several possible explanations, including increased natural gas production, more wildfires, and a rollback on Clean Air Act regulations by the EPA.

While Allegheny County’s air pollution is largely attributable to steel, coal, and chemical plants, in the last decade, the oil and gas industry has brought many new sources of pollution to the area.

As of December, 2019, operators have drilled 163 fracking wells in the county (Table 1) and constructed nine compressor stations. Additional pollution caused by the oil and gas industry is attributable to the thousands of truck trips required to frack a well.

Table 1. Fracked wells in Allegheny County by municipality

Data from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PA DEP), which defines gas wells as unconventional (fracked) or conventional.

The fracking process releases emissions that can affect human health at every stage of its lifespan. Research has linked fracking to immediate health symptoms, such as burning eyes, sore throat, and headaches. Ongoing research has identified the potential for long term health impacts, such as cardiovascular disease and adverse birth outcomes.

Air pollution from the oil and gas industry does not impact everyone equally. An individual’s response to exposure varies depending on factors such as age and health conditions.

There is also a great deal of variation amongst wells and compressor stations when it comes to emissions. As such, the best way to understand someone’s exposure is to monitor the places they frequent, such as the home, school, or workplace.

Types of Pollutants

The process of drilling and fracking a well releases a variety of pollutants, including particulate matter, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and nitrous oxides (NOx). Table 2, below, shows reported emissions from gas wells in Allegheny County for 2017.

Table 2. Reported emissions from Allegheny County gas wells in 2017, from the PA DEP

POLLUTANT	Emission Amount (Tons)
2,2,4-Trimethylpentane	0.00093
Benzene	0.10466
Carbon Dioxide	22982.68774
CO	66.20016
Ethyl Benzene	0.00053
Formaldehyde	0.02366
Methane	714.90485
n-Hexane	0.16083
Nitrous Oxide	0.2332
NOX	270.81382
PM10	8.87066
PM2.5	8.74341
SOX	0.23478
Toluene	0.04636
VOC	21.68682
Xylenes (Isomers And Mixture)	0.03487

Our study looked at particulate matter (PM) – a mix of solid particles and liquids found in the air, like dust, soot, and smoke. Specifically, the study focused on PM2.5, which are particles less than 2.5 microns in diameter (Figure 2). PM forms during construction activities, combustion processes such as those in diesel engines, and from industrial sites and facilities.

Fracking and its associated processes release hazardous chemicals into the air, which then attach to PM2.5. Additionally, combustion engines of trucks and machinery used to construct well sites and drill wells release diesel emissions, including PM2.5. Compressor stations and flaring are additional sources.

PM2.5 is small enough to enter our lungs and bloodstream and therefore poses a great risk to human health. Their health impacts include reduced lung function and cardiovascular disease, as well as short term effects such as sinus irritation.

Diagram of particulate matter relevant to air pollution

Figure 2. Particulate matter diagram, from the US EPA

Methods & Parameters for Analyzing Air Quality

Over the course of 2019, we placed 3-4 air monitors at participants’ households in each community for roughly a one-month period. Many of our participants were members of or identified by grassroots community groups, including North Braddock Residents for Our Future, Allegheny County Clean Air Now, Protect Elizabeth Township, and Protect PT.

The monitors were placed at varying distances and directions from the facility in question, not exceeding 1.5 miles from the facility in question. We used Speck monitors indoors and Purple Air monitors outdoors; both types measured the concentration of particulate matter over roughly one month.

The EPA’s guideline for exposure to PM2.5 is 35 μg/m3 averaged over 24 hours. However, averaging exposure over 24 hours can obscure peaks- relatively short time spans of elevated PM2.5 concentrations. While it is normal for peaks to occur occasionally, high, long, or frequent peaks in pollution can affect people’s health, particularly with acute impacts such as asthma attacks.

Results

The graphs below show our results. On each graph, you’ll see three to five lines, one for each outdoor monitor. Lines that follow similar trends show data that is likely an accurate representation of air quality in the community. Lines that stray from the pack may represent a unique situation that only that house is experiencing.

In addition to graphing the results, EHP used the following parameters to analyze the data:

- 1. Frequency of peaks
  2. Duration of peaks
  3. Time between peak exposures
  4. Baseline (level of particles generally found outside when peaks are not occurring)
  5. Total sum (or quantity) of peak exposure

These five parameters were compared to EHP’s data gathered from roughly 400 sites in Ohio, West Virginia, New York, and Pennsylvania. This database compiles air quality data from locations that have no infrastructure present as well as nearby sites such as well pads, compressor stations, frac-sand terminals, processing facilities, etc.

In the table below, numbers in green indicate values that are better than EHP’s averages, while red values show values that are worse than the average of EHP’s dataset. Black numbers show values that are average.

Table 3. EHP/FracTracker sites of air quality investigation in Allegheny County

*The proposed well is near the intersection of East Pittsburgh, North Braddock, and North Versailles

**Monitors were also placed in neighboring McKees Rocks

~In homes where baseline levels of PM2.5 are low, such as in Frazer and Economy, peaks are more easily registered in our analysis, but they typically have a smaller magnitude compared to homes that have high baselines.

Discussion

Communities with proposed sites

In North Braddock and Plum Borough, the outdoor air monitors collected data around sites of future and/or proposed activity. This baseline monitoring helps us understand what the air is like before oil and gas activity and is essential for understanding the future impact of oil and gas development in a community.

In these neighborhoods, we found worse than average values for total accumulation of PM2.5. This may be due to other patterns of PM2.5 movement in the area related to weather and surrounding sources of pollution. North Braddock is an urban environment, and therefore has pollution from traffic and buildings. Another source is the Edgar Thomson Steel Works, one of the county’s top polluters. While Plum Borough is more rural, it also contains an active fracking well pad and is near a coal-fired power plant and a gas power plant.

If constructed, the proposed fracking well and the proposed wastewater disposal well will add additional pollution from construction, truck traffic, and in North Braddock’s case, emissions from the well itself. This may pose a significant health risk, especially in vulnerable populations like children and those with preexisting health conditions.

Communities with constructed well pads

Emissions vary across the timeline of drilling and fracking a well. Figure 2 below shows reported emissions of PM2.5 and VOCs from different components of a fracking operation. PM2.5 emissions are highest during drilling (when the well bore is formed) and completion (when the well is fracked by injecting high volumes of water, sand, and chemicals at tremendous pressure). For a step by step outline of the fracking process, check out FracTracker’s fracking operation virtual tour.

Figure 2. 2017 emissions from Allegheny County gas wells at different stages in the fracking process, reported to the PA DEP

Our monitoring in Economy Borough, where construction on PennEnergy Resources’ B50 well pad had just begun, showed air quality that is better than EHP’s averages. However, if the wells on the well pad are drilled and fracked, EHP hopes to provide monitors again to track changes in air quality. In addition to emissions from the fracking well, which is close to the Chestnut Ridge housing development, residents are concerned about truck traffic along Amsler Ridge Road.

In Indiana, while residents reported truck traffic to the site, the wells were not fracked during the monitoring period. The measurements were average or slightly above the average EHP typically sees near homes. Looking at these results, peak duration was flagged, and the total sum of particulate matter was slightly elevated compared to our average suggesting that the long durations may ignite a health response in sensitive individuals. Other sources that could be contributing to pollution include the PA Turnpike and the Redland Brick manufacturer.

In Frazer, there was reported fracking activity on one well and drilling activity on another; these time periods were only slightly elevated on the hourly average charts. Monitors were left at two households in Frazer because there was an indication that fracking would start soon.

In Elizabeth Township, air quality measurements were generally better compared to the rest of EHP’s data, but there were clear peaks that all monitors registered which generated a similar, if not potentially higher, amounts of accumulated PM2.5.

Frac sand facility

Finally, monitors around MRIE, the frac sand processing facility in Stowe Township, showed air quality that may pose a health risk. The peaks in these neighborhoods generated a higher amount of accumulated PM2.5 and lasted longer compared to the rest of our data. In addition to pollution from MRIE and its associated trucks and trains, the neighborhood has many sources of pollution, including highways and industrial facilities on Neville Island.

Limitations

This study is limited in that PM2.5 was the only pollutant that the Purple Air and Speck monitors captured. To understand the complete burden of air pollution residents are exposed to, other pollutants such as VOCs, must be monitored.

Additionally, monitoring occurred over a short time period. Further investigations will need to monitor air quality throughout different stages of development and during different seasons in order to provide meaningful comparisons of changes in air quality that could be correlated with oil and gas development. EHP will continue to monitor around certain active sites to watch for changes in the data.

Get Involved

If you’re concerned about health or environmental impacts from a well in your neighborhood, make sure to document the issue by taking notes, photos, and videos, and file a complaint with the state’s Department of Environmental Protection. To report an environmental health concern, reach out to the Department of Health by phone at 1-877 PA Health (1-877-724-32584) or email (RA-DHENVHEALTH@pa.gov). If you’re an employer or worker and have health or safety concerns, reach out to your area’s OSHA office or call 1-800-321-OSHA (6742).

While cleaning up the air in your community is difficult, there are steps you can take to protect the air in your home. With the average American spending 90% of their time indoors, the air inside can greatly impact your health. For this project, we also set up air monitors in residents’ homes so participants could better understand these risks. Visit EHP’s resources under the section “What You Can Do” to learn more about protecting your indoor air quality. To learn more about how fracking is impacting residents in southwest Pennsylvania, explore the Environmental Health Channel.

Finally, help us crowdsource new data on the impacts and status of oil and gas development in your community by reporting what you see, hear, smell, and question on the FracTracker mobile app (also available from your computer!). Those living near oil and gas infrastructure are the best source of knowledge when it comes to understanding the impacts of this industry. With your help, we want to make sure all of these impacts are being documented to inform decision makers and residents about the risks of fracking.

Many thanks to the Southwest Environmental Health Project for including us as collaborators on this study.

By Erica Jackson, Community Outreach and Communications Specialist

Allegheny County, Pennsylvania Land Lease Map front page

Prizio Increases Transparency in Oil & Gas Data in Allegheny County

December 2, 2019/0 Comments/in News, Press Releases /by Matt Kelso, BA

Want Not, Waste Not? Fossil Fuel Extraction’s Waste Disposal Challenges

October 3, 2019/0 Comments/in Articles, Health & Safety, Waste, Water /by Karen Edelstein

Pennsylvania’s fracking industry is producing record amounts of toxic waste — where does it all go?

Drilling for methane and other fossil fuels is an energy-intensive process with many associated environmental costs. In addition to the gas that is produced through high volume hydraulic fracturing (“unconventional drilling,” or “fracking”), the process generates a great deal of waste at the drill site. These waste products may include several dozen tons of drill cutting at every well that is directionally drilled, in addition to liner materials, contaminated soil, fracking fluid, and other substances that must be removed from the site.

In 2018, Pennsylvania’s oil and gas industry (including both unconventional and conventional wells) produced over 2.9 billion gallons (nearly 69 million barrels) of liquid waste, and 1,442,465 tons of solid waste. In this article, we take a look at where this waste (and its toxic components) end up and how waste values have changed in recent years. We also explore how New York State, despite its reputation for being anti-fracking, isn’t exempt from the toxic legacy of this industry.

Waste that comes back to haunt us

According to a study by Physicians, Scientists and Engineers, over 80% of all waste from oil and gas drilling stays within the state of Pennsylvania. But once drilling wastes are sent to landfills, is that the end of them? Absolutely not!

Drilling waste also gets into the environment through secondary means. According to a recent report by investigative journalists at Public Herald, on average, 800,000 tons of fracking waste from Pennsylvania is sent to Pennsylvania landfills. When this waste is sent to landfills, radioactivity and other chemicals can percolate through the landfill, and are collected as leachate, which is then shipped to treatment plants.

Public Herald documented how fourteen sewage treatment plants in Pennsylvania have been permitted by Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection (PA DEP) to process and discharge radioactive wastes into more than a dozen Pennsylvania waterways.

Public Herald’s article includes an in-depth analysis of the issue. Their work is supported by a map of the discharge sites, created by FracTracker.

Trends over time

Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection maintains a rich database of oil and gas waste and production records associated with their Oil and Gas Reporting Website. The changes in waste disposal from Pennsylvania’s unconventional drilling reveal a number of interesting stories.

Let’s look first at overall unconventional drilling waste.

According to data from the federal Energy Information Administration, gas production in Pennsylvania began a steep increase around 2010, with the implementation of high volume hydraulic fracturing in the Marcellus Shale (see Figure 1). The long lateral drilling techniques allowed industry to exploit exponentially more of the tight shale via single well than was ever before possible with conventional, vertical drilling.

Figure 1. Data summary from FracTracker.org, based on EIA data.

The more recently an individual well is drilled, the more robust the production. We see an overall increase in gas production over time in Pennsylvania over the past decade. Paradoxically, the actual number of new wells drilled each year in the past 4-5 years are less than half of the number drilled in 2011 (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Data summary from FracTracker.org, based on PA DEP data

Why is this? The longer laterals —some approaching 3 miles or more—associated with new wells allow for more gas to be extracted per site.

With this uptick in gas production values from the Marcellus and Utica Formations come more waste products, including copious amounts drilling waste, “produced water,” and other byproducts of intensive industrial operations across PA’s Northern Tier and southwestern counties.

Comparing apples and oranges?

When we look at the available gas production data compared with data on waste products from the extraction process, some trends emerge. First of all, it’s readily apparent that waste production does not track directly with gas production in a way one would expect.

Recall that dry gas production has increased annually since 2006 (see Figure 1). However, the reported waste quantities from industry have not followed that same trend.

In the following charts, we’ve split out waste from unconventional drilling by solid waste in tons (Figure 3) and liquid waste, in barrels (Figure 4).

Figure 3: Annual tonnage of solid waste from the unconventional oil and gas industry, organized by the state it is disposed in. Data source: PA DEP, processed by FracTracker Alliance

Figure 4: Annual volume of liquid waste from the unconventional oil and gas development, organized by state it is disposed in. One barrel is equivalent to 42 gallons. Data source: PA DEP, processed by FracTracker Alliance

Note the striking difference in disposal information for solid waste, compared with liquid waste, coming from Pennsylvania.

“Disposal Location Unknown”

Until just the last year, often more than 50% of the known liquid waste generated in PA was disposed of at unknown locations. The PA DEP waste report lists waste quantity and method for these unknown sites, depending on the year: “Reuse without processing at a permitted facility,” “Reuse for hydraulic fracturing,” “Reuse for diagnostic purposes,” “Reuse for drilling or recovery,” “Reuse for enhanced recovery,” and exclusively in more recent years (2014-2016), “Reuse other than road-spreading.”

In 2011, of the 20.5 million barrels of liquid waste generated from unconventional drilling, about 56% was allegedly reused on other drilling sites. However, over 9 million barrels—or 44% of all liquid waste—were not identified with a final destination or disposal method. Identified liquid waste disposal locations included “Centralized treatment plant for recycle,” which received about a third of the non-solid waste products.

In 2012, the quantity of the unaccounted-for fracking fluid waste dropped to about 40%. By 2013, the percentage of unaccounted waste coming from fracking fluid dropped to just over 21%, with nearly 75% coming from produced fluid, which is briny, but containing fewer “proprietary”—typically undisclosed—chemicals.

By 2017, accounting had tightened up further. PA DEP data show that 99% of all waste delivered to undisclosed locations was produced fluid shipped to locations outside of Pennsylvania. By 2018, all waste disposal was fully accounted for, according to DEP’s records.

In looking more closely at the data, we see that:

Prior to 2018, well drillers did not consistently report the locations at which produced water was disposed of or reused. Between 2012 and 2016, a greater volume of unconventional liquid waste went unaccounted for than was listed for disposal in all other locations, combined.
In Ohio, injection wells, where liquid waste is injected into underground porous rock formations, accounted for the majority of the increase in waste accepted there: 2.9 million barrels in 2017, and 5.7 million barrels in 2018 (a jump of 97%).
West Virginia’s acceptance of liquid waste increased significantly in 2018 over 2017 levels, a jump of over a million barrels, up from only 55,000. This was almost entirely due to unreported reuse at well pads.
In 2018, reporting, in general, appears to be more thorough than it was in previous years. For example, in 2017, nearly 692,000 barrels of waste were reused at well pads outside PA, but those locations were not disclosed. Almost 7000 more barrels were also disposed of at unknown locations. In 2018, there were no such ambiguities.

A closer look at Pennsylvania’s fracking waste shipped to New York State

Despite a reputation for being resistant to the fracking industry, for most of this decade, the state of New York has been accepting considerable amounts of fracking waste from Pennsylvania. The greatest percentage shipped to New York State is in the form of drilling waste solids that go to a variety of landfills throughout Central and Western New York.

Looking closely at the bar charts above, it’s easy to notice that the biggest recipients of Pennsylvania’s unconventional liquid drilling waste are Pennsylvania itself, Ohio, as well as a significant quantity of unaccounted-for barrels between 2011 and 2016 (“Disposal location unknown”). The data for disposal of solid waste in New York tells a different story, however. In this case, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York State all play a role. We’ll take a look specifically at the story of New York, and illustrate the data in the interactive map that follows.

In this map, source locations in Pennsylvania are symbolized with the same color marker as the facility in New York that received the waste from the originating well pad. In the “Full Screen” view, use the “Layers” drop down menu to turn on and off data from separate years.

View map full screen | How FracTracker maps work

Solid waste transported to New York State

From the early days of unconventional drilling in Pennsylvania, New York State’s landfills provided convenient disposal sites due to their proximity to the unconventional drilling occurring in Pennsylvania’s Northern tier of counties. Pennsylvania and Ohio took the majority of solid wastes from unconventional drilling waste from Pennsylvania. New York State, particularly between 2011-2015, was impacted far more heavily than all other states, combined (Figure 5, below).

Figure 5: Known disposal locations (excluding PA and OH) of Pennsylvania’s solid waste. Data source: PA DEP, processed by FracTracker Alliance

Here’s the breakdown of locations in New York to where waste was sent. Solid waste disposal into New York’s landfills also dropped by half, following the state’s ban on unconventional drilling in 2014. Most of the waste after 2012 went to the Chemung County Landfill in Lowman, New York, 10 miles southeast of Elmira.

Figure 6: Solid waste from unconventional drilling, sent to facilities in NYS. Data source: PA DEP, processed by FracTracker Alliance

Is waste immobilized once it’s landfilled?

The fate of New York State’s landfill leachate that originates from unconventional drilling waste is a core concern, since landfill waste is not inert. If drilling waste contains radioactivity, fracking chemicals, and heavy metals that percolate through the landfill, and the resulting leachate is sent to municipal wastewater treatment plants, will traditional water treatment methods remove those wastes? If not, what will be the impact on public and environmental health in the water body that receives the “treated” wastewater? In Pennsylvania, for example, a case is currently under investigation relating to pollution discharges into the Monongahela River near Pittsburgh. “That water was contaminated with diesel fuels, it’s alleged, carcinogens and other pollutants,” said Rich Bower, Fayette County District Attorney.

Currently, a controversial expansion of the Hakes Landfill in Painted Post, New York is in the news. Sierra Club and others were concerned about oversight of radium and radon in the landfill’s leachate and air emissions, presumably stemming from years of receiving drill cuttings. The leachate from the landfill is sent to the Bath Wastewater Treatment plant, which is not equipped to remove radioactivity. “Treated” wastewater from the plant is then discharged into the Cohocton River, a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay. In April 2019, these environmental groups filed a law suit against Hakes C&D Landfill and the Town of Campbell, New York, in an effort to block the expansion.

Similar levels of radioactivity in leachate have also been noted in leachate produced at the Chemung County Landfill, according to Gary McCaslin, President of People for a Healthy Environment, Inc.

In recent years, much of the solid unconventional waste arriving in New York State has gone to the Chemung County Landfill (see Figure 6, above). Over the course of several years, this site requested permission to expand significantly from 180,000 tons per year to 417,000 tons per year. However, by 2016, the expansion was deemed unnecessary, and according, the plans were put on hold, in part “…because of a decline in the amount of waste being generated due to a slower economy and more recycling than when the expansion was first planned years ago.” The data in Figure 5 above also parallel this story, with unconventional drilling waste disposed in New York State dropping from over 200,000 tons in 2011 to just over 20,000 tons in 2018.

Liquid waste transported to New York State

The story about liquid unconventional drilling waste exported from Pennsylvania to states other than Ohio is not completely clear (see Figure 7, below). Note that the data indicate more than a 2000% increase in waste liquids going from Pennsylvania to West Virginia after 2017. While it has not been officially documented, FracTracker has been anecdotally informed that a great deal of waste was already going to West Virginia, but that the record-keeping prior to 2018 was simply not strongly enforced.

Figure 7: Known disposal locations (excluding Pennsylvania and Ohio) of Pennsylvania’s liquid waste. Data source: PA DEP, processed by FracTracker Alliance

Beginning in the very early years of the Pennsylvania unconventional fracking boom, a variety of landfills in New York State have also accepted liquid wastes originating in Pennsylvania, including produced water and flowback fluids (see Figure 8, below).

Figure 8: Liquid waste from unconventional drilling, sent to facilities in New York State. Data source: PA DEP, processed by FracTracker Alliance

In addition, while this information doesn’t even appear in the PA DEP records (which are publicly available back to 2010), numerous wastewater treatment plants did accept some quantity, despite being fully unequipped to process the highly saline waste before it was discharged back into the environment.

One such facility was the wastewater treatment plant in Cayuga Heights, Tompkins County, which accepted more than 3 million gallons in 2008. Another was the wastewater treatment plant in Auburn, Cayuga County, where the practice of accepting drilling wastewater was initially banned in July 2011, but the decision was reversed in March 2012 to accept vertical drilling waste, despite strong public dissent. Another wastewater treatment plant in Watertown, Jefferson County, accepted 35,000 gallons in 2009.

Fortunately, most New York State wastewater treatment plant operators were wise enough to not even consider adding a brew of unknown and/or proprietary chemicals to their wastewater treatment stream. Numerous municipalities and several counties banned fracking waste, and once the ban on fracking in New York State was instituted in 2014, nearly all importation of liquid unconventional drilling waste into the state ceased.

Nevertheless, conventional, or vertical well drilling also generates briny produced water, which the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) permits communities in New York to accept for ice and dust control on largely rural roads. These so-called “beneficial use determinations” (BUDs) of liquid drilling waste have changed significantly over the past several years. During the height of the Marcellus drilling in around 2011, all sorts of liquid waste was permitted into New York State (see FracTracker’s map of affected areas) and was spread on roads. As a result, the chemicals—many of them proprietary, of unknown constituents, or radioactive—were indirectly discharged into surface waters via roadspreading.

Overall, in the years after the ban in 2014 on high volume hydraulic fracturing was implemented, restrictions on Marcellus waste coming into New York have strengthened. Very little liquid waste entered New York’s landfills after 2013, and what did come in was sent to a holding facility owned by Environmental Services of Vermont. This facility is located outside Syracuse, New York.

New York State says “no” to this toxic legacy

Fortunately, not long after these issues of fracking fluid disposal at wastewater treatment facilities in New York State came to light, the practice was terminated on a local level. The 2014 ban on fracking in New York State officially prevented the disposal of Marcellus fluids in municipal wastewater treatment facilities and required extra permits if it were to be road-spread.

In New York State, the State Senate—after 8 years of deadlock—in early May 2019, passed key legislation that would close a loophole that had previously allowed dangerous oil and gas waste to bypass hazardous waste regulation. Read the press release from Senator Rachel May’s office here. However, despite strong support from both the Senate, and the Assembly, as well as many key environmental groups, the Legislature adjourned for the 2019 session without bringing the law to a final vote. Said Elizabeth Moran, of the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG), “I want to believe it was primarily a question of timing… Sadly, a dangerous practice is now going to continue for at least another year.”

See Earthworks’ recent three part in-depth reporting on national, New York, and Pennsylvania oil and gas waste, with mapping support by FracTracker Alliance.

All part of the big picture

As long as hydrocarbon extraction continues, the issues of waste disposal—in addition to carbon increases in the atmosphere from combustion and leakage—will result in impacts on human and environmental health. Communities downstream and downwind will bear the brunt of landfill expansions, water contamination, and air pollution. Impacts of climate chaos will be felt globally, with the greatest impacts at low latitudes and in the Arctic.

Transitioning to net-zero carbon emissions cannot be a gradual endeavor. Science has shown that in order to stay under the 1.5 °C warming targets, it must happen now, and it requires the governmental buy-in to the Paris Climate Agreement by every economic power in the world.

No exceptions. Life on our planet requires it.

We have, at most, 12 years to make a difference for generations to come.

By Karen Edelstein, Eastern Program Coordinator, FracTracker Alliance

Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services

October 1, 2019/0 Comments/in Articles, Health & Safety, Waste /by Guest Author

Guest Blog by Josh Eisenfeld, Director of Marketing with Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services

Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services looks maps the origin of their intake calls and reflects on their geographic distribution as it relates to areas with heavy environmental burdens.

Over the last five years, Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services has worked in Ohio and Pennsylvania to promote environmental justice by providing legal services at income-based rates. Our service area has a long history of extraction, from timbering, conventional drilling for oil, multiple forms of mining, and unconventional drilling for natural gas. Because of our proximity to these resources, we also have a long history of industrial manufacturing, which can be evidenced by the many oil refineries, steel production facilities, power plants, cement factories, factory farms, and chemical production facilities. Fair Shake offers counsel and representation in environmental law with accessible, sliding scale fees, and we receive a continuous stream of phone calls from those on the front lines. We were curious to see if our intake calls correlated with geographic areas with heavy environmental burdens in order to allocate our limited resources to those regions most efficiently.

With the help of Ted Auch from FracTracker Alliance we collected zip codes from nearly 600 of intake calls received by Fair Shake and placed them on the map below.

View map fullscreen | How FracTracker maps work

In general, our intakes in Pennsylvania mirror the Marcellus Shale formation. Over the last decade and a half, technical advancements in drilling have transformed the Marcellus Shale formation from a nonproducing region to the largest producing natural gas formation by volume in the world. Entering 2005, only 13 “unconventional” wells had been drilled in the Marcellus Shale region of Pennsylvania, where today there are roughly 12,000 wells according to FracTracker’s PA Shale Viewer Map. Reduced regulations for unconventional drilling and infrastructure have facilitated this rush for production, resulting in an influx of compressor stations, gathering lines, pump stations, processing plants, wastewater impoundments, wastewater treatment facilities, wastewater injection wells, and more.

We believe that this map indicates that these 12,000 wells place a significant burden on residents living within this region. Speaking broadly, reduced regulation has left loopholes in major environmental laws that have to get justice when their rights have been violated and, even more concerning, when harm has occurred.

One of the most prominent manifestations of this burden is the contamination of private drinking water sources near drilling and wastewater sites. Our region’s history of extraction and industrial enterprise and the pollution associated with these industries makes it extremely difficult to prove, in court, that drilling activity is the sole cause of damage to private wells. The fact is that our groundwater (and therefore private drinking wells) has been contaminated over and over again. Polluters use this to their advantage, leaning on the uncertainty of what caused the contaminants in question to get there. Simply put, water contamination is not a question of whether contaminants exist (they do) it’s a question of how can you prove that it was a given industry when there are many other possible culprits.

One thing we do know is that the number of reports for well contamination has increased in conjunction with the increase in drilling activity. The graph below, created by FracTracker and The Public Herald, shows the correlation of wells drilled, complaints to the Department of Environmental Protection, and complaints specifically about water.

Upon closer examination of the intake map, we saw a higher density of cases in more populated areas of Allegheny County, which actually has very little fracking activity (less than 170 drilled wells). But Allegheny is also one of the most polluted counties in America. The American Lung Association gave the county all F’s on its air quality and ranked it as 7^th worst air quality in the nation according to the association’s state of the air. Allegheny County is also home to two of the most polluted rivers in our country: the Monongahela and the Ohio. Over a century of industrial activity and coal mining have impaired the water but most recently sewer overflows from the city of Pittsburgh have sent dangerous levels of raw sewage into the surrounding waterways.

The population density combined with the very poor air and water quality could be the explanation for the anomaly. Furthermore, Allegheny County is also where our Pittsburgh office is located, which is perhaps the reason that we see so many cases in this region and not in other regions of high population density such as Philadelphia, Harrisburg, or Scranton.

When we started this project, we thought we would discover a correlation between intakes and regions with the heaviest environmental burdens. This could allow us to allocate our limited resources to those regions most efficiently. Unfortunately, the problem is not so simple.

As evidenced by the intake map, resource extraction in Ohio and Pennsylvania is spread over a very large area. That is troubling because the bigger the problem geographically the harder it becomes to deal with. We need to devote far more resources to protecting individuals who face spills, emissions, erosion, impacts to wetland, etc. By speaking more openly about how pervasive these environmental risks are, and how that risk plays into the bigger picture of the climate emergency, we hope we can incite folks to give their time, effort, and resources to defending their health and environment.

By Josh Eisenfeld, Marketing Director at Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services

Abandoned Wells in Pennsylvania: We’re Not Doing Enough

August 8, 2019/0 Comments/in Articles, Infrastructure, Wells /by Guest Author

By Isabelle Weber, FracTracker Alliance Spring 2019 Intern

Fracking in Pennsylvania: The History

When driving through Pennsylvania, you can see what an impact oil and gas has had on the state. Towns like Oil City and Petrolia speak to the oil and gas industry’s long standing history here. In more recent history, Pennsylvania has been a prime fracking location because of the presence of the Marcellus shale formation that covers over half of the state. With more unconventional oil and gas exploration came impacts to communities, who were denied their right to “clean air, pure water, and the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic, and esthetic values of the environment” as defined by the Pennsylvania Constitution.

Hydraulically fractured wells are often no longer profitable after just one stimulation, after which they are abandoned. Improperly abandoned wells wreak havoc on our communities and our environment. The number of improperly abandoned wells has been increasing over time as companies go bankrupt transfer wells to other companies. These wells can easily go undetected because they are often buried underground, leaving no traces at the surface level.

These unplugged abandoned wells are underneath our homes, our schools, and in our own backyards, negatively impacting our health and the environment.

FracTracker’s West Coast Coordinator Kyle Ferrar shows how abandoned wells are hiding all around us in his investigation of downtown Los Angeles. He used an infrared camera to visualize the plumes of methane and other volatile organic compounds spewing out of abandoned wells in the middle of streets.

Dangers of unplugged abandoned wells

The plugging process consists of filling the well with cement, ensuring that nothing leaks from the well into the surrounding ecosystem. Without that measure in place, the chemical-water solution used to frack the underlying shale, as well as any oil or natural gas still left in the well, can very easily seep into nearby aquifers or into close by waterways. Wells that are not plugged or are not plugged properly leak into nearby aquifers, releasing methane and other volatile organic compounds are continually released from the well into the atmosphere as well. This leakage into the atmosphere and ground water can have disastrous effects on our ecosystem and health.

Abandoned wells are also a dangerous threat because many of their locations are unknown. These wells can ruin the structural integrity of buildings and homes that are unknowingly built on top of them. The methane leaking out of the well is colorless and odorless, meaning that it can easily build-up in homes or elsewhere and cause explosions.

Bankruptcy and Bonds

When an oil and gas company drills a well, they are responsible for making sure that it is plugged properly at the end of the well’s life. This is the case even if the company goes bankrupt. To do this, Pennsylvania government requires that the company put up a bond that is set aside to plug the well properly. This ensures that if the company does go bankrupt, the necessary funds are already set aside to plug the well. Normally, this bond takes the shape of a blanket bond amount of $25,000 which is intended to cover the total expenses that would be incurred in plugging all of the wells a company has in the state. Depending on the number of wells a company possesses, this could mean very little actually being set aside for each individual well.

A shallow well can cost between $8,000 to $10,000 plus, and up to $50,000 or more depending on how difficult it is to plug. In the case of Pennsylvania’s top oil and gas holder Diversified Gas & Oil PLC and its recently acquired. Company Alliance Petroleum Corp, this bond sets aside just $2 per well. With most other companies holding no more than 5,700 wells, this sets aside $4.40 per well. Where the bond amounts fall short in accounting for the cost to plug the hundreds of thousands of abandoned wells across the state, the rest of the cost falls at the feet of taxpayers.

The New Contract

The state government has started to recognize the severity of the situation as they are confronted with a mountain of costs in plugging these wells. To start to mitigate this, the government has recently settled with Diversified Gas & Oil. The company has been ordered to properly plug 1,058 abandoned wells. To do this they have signed on to a $7 million bond with $20,000 to $30,000 bonds for each additional abandoned or non-producing well that is acquired.

Although it is a great start to ensure that these two major companies have the proper bonding amount moving forward, this does not apply to all companies, whose likelihood of going bankrupt puts a lot of financial pressure on Pennsylvanian citizens. Also, these 1,058 wells are only the tip of the iceberg, with the DEP estimating that there are between 100,000 and 560,000 total abandoned wells in Pennsylvania, many of which still have unknown locations.

In the 2017 Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Report, it is stated that: “Currently, more abandoned wells are being added to the state’s inventory than are being addressed through permanent plugging through state-issued contracts. Since 2015, DEP has been able to fund the plugging of oil and gas wells only in emergency situations and/or when residents must be temporarily evacuated from their homes due to imminent threats that legacy wells pose when well integrity is compromised.” They continue on by stating that, considering the historic operating costs and acknowledging the sheer number of wells, properly addressing es the abandoned wells will cost between $150 million and $3.7 billion. The $150 million is an estimation based on the scenario that no more historic legacy wells are discovered, and the $3.7 billion is based on if 200,000 more are found, a more likely scenario.

The funding to cover the costs of plugging these abandoned wells comes from surcharges of $150 and $200 established by the 1984 Oil and Gas Act for each oil well permit and gas well permit. The DEP has received fewer permits in recent years meaning that there are very little funds to resolve this issue. This means that eventually this public health and environmental burden will have to fall at the feet of the taxpayers.

This makes the state’s step in the right direction look more like a tip toe. With no real, substantial plans to locate and address the large amount of wells across the state, the government is putting their people at risk because these abandoned wells are not harmless.

Washington County Case study

Washington County can be used as a window into the abandoned well crisis in Pennsylvania. This county sits in the middle of the Marcellus Shale formation, making it a key site for unconventional oil and gas development. According to the DEP, there are 215 abandoned, orphaned wells in Washington county, but realistically we know that there are likely many more than that.

The Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access (PASDA) has derived a dataset from historical sources to determine the possible locations of other abandoned wells. These historical documents include the WPA, Ksheet, and Hsheet collections. This data set highlights over 6,000 locations where an abandoned oil and gas well could be located.

View map fullscreen | How FracTracker maps work

This is a testament to how many of these wells exist without our knowledge. If this difference in DEP records and possible wells is this great in Washington County, then we face the enormous potential problem of tens of thousands of additional abandoned wells that need to be resolved. The effects of these wells are real and they must be identified quickly.

These are some of the physical effects of abandoned wells:

Fig 1. A Collapsed Well Opening – A Physical Hazard (photo credit: Friends of Oil Creek State Park)

Fig. 2. Well Spouting Acid Water. Well later plugged by DEP (photo credit: Friends of Oil Creek State Park)

Fig. 3. Oil Seepage (photo credit:(photo credit: Friends of Oil Creek State Park)

Fig. 4. Abandoned Well and Storage Tank (photo credit: Friends of Oil Creek State Park)

Conclusion

Pennsylvania is facing a mountain of an issue with decades of work ahead. The state must act quickly to ensure the health and protection of our people and our environment, which entails taking active steps to secure an adequate budget to resolve this issue. To start, the state should identify where all of the wells are, set up a financial plan that puts the cost of the plugging process for these wells back onto the oil and gas companies, and begin to take active measures to plug the wells quickly and efficiently.

The Underlying Politics and Unconventional Well Fundamentals of an Appalachian Storage Hub

July 23, 2019/0 Comments/in Articles, Infrastructure, Legislation & Politics, Petrochemicals & Plastics, Wells /by Ted Auch, PhD

FracTracker is closely mapping and following the petrochemical build-out in Appalachia, as the oil and gas industry invests in petrochemical manufacturing. Much of the national attention on the build-out revolves around the Appalachian Storage Hub (ASH), a venture spearheaded by Appalachian Development Group.

The ASH involves a network of infrastructure to store and transport natural gas liquids and finds support across the political spectrum. Elected officials are collaborating with the private sector and foreign investors to further development of the ASH, citing benefits such as national security, increased revenue, job creation, and energy independence.

Left out of the discussion are the increased environmental and public health burdens the ASH would place on the region, and the fact that natural gas liquids are the feedstock of products such as plastic and resins, not energy.

The “Shale Revolution”

The Allegheny Plateau. Wikipedia

The “Shale Revolution” brought on by high-volume hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in this region encompasses thousands of wells drilled into the Marcellus and Utica-Point Pleasant shale plays across much of the Allegheny Plateau. This area spans from north of Scranton-Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, just outside the Catskills Mountains to the East in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, and down to the West Virginia counties of Logan, Boone, and Lincoln. The westernmost extent of the fracking experiment in the Marcellus and Utica shale plays is in Noble and Guernsey Counties in Ohio.

Along the way, producing wells have exhibited steeper and steeper declines during the first five years of production, leading the industry to develop what they refer to as “super laterals.” These laterals (the horizontal portion of a well) exceed 3 miles in length and require in excess of 15 million gallons of freshwater and 15,000 tons of silica sand (aka, “proppant”)[1].

The resource-intense super laterals are one way the industry is dealing with growing pressure from investors, lenders, the media, state governments, and the public to reduce supply costs and turn a profit, while also maintaining production. (Note: unfortunately these sources of pressures are listed from most to least concerning to industry itself!)

Another way the fracking industry is hoping to make a profit is by investing in the region’s natural gas liquids (NGLs), such as ethane, propane, and butane, to support the petrochemical industry.

The Appalachian Storage Hub

Continued oil and gas development are part of a nascent effort to establish a mega-infrastructure petrochemical complex, the Appalachian Storage Hub (ASH). For those that aren’t familiar with the ASH it could be framed as the fracking industry’s last best attempt to lock in their necessity across Appalachia and nationwide. The ASH was defined in the West Virginia Executive as a way to revitalize the Mountain State and would consist of the following:

“a proposed underground storage facility that would be used to store and transport natural gas liquids (NGLs) extracted from the Marcellus, Utica and Rogersville shales across Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Construction of this hub would not only lead to revenue and job creation in the natural gas industry but would also further enable manufacturing companies to come to the Mountain State, as the petrochemicals produced by shale are necessary materials in most manufacturing supply chains…[with] the raw materials available in the region’s Marcellus Shale alone…estimated to be worth more than $2 trillion, and an estimated 20 percent of this shale is composed largely of ethane, propane and butane NGLs that can be utilized by the petrochemical industry in the manufacturing of consumer goods.”

This is yet another example of fracking rhetoric that appeals to American’s sense of patriotism and need for cheaper consumer goods (in this case, plastics), given that they are seeing little to no growth in wages.

While a specific location for underground storage has not been announced, the infrastructure associated with the ASH (such as pipelines, compressor stations, and processing stations) would stretch from outside Pittsburgh down to Catlettsburg, Kentucky, with the latter currently the home of a sizeable Marathon Oil refinery. The ASH “would act like an interstate highway, with on-ramps and off-ramps feeding manufacturing hubs along its length and drawing from the available ethane storage fields. The piping would sit above-ground and follow the Ohio and Kanawha river valley.”

The politics of the ASH – from Columbus and Charleston to Washington DC

Elected officials across the quad-state region are supporting this effort invoking, not surprisingly, its importance for national security and energy independence.

State-level support

West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin (D) went so far as to introduce “Senate Bill 1064 – Appalachian Energy for National Security Act.” This bill would require Secretary of Energy Rick Perry and his staff to “to conduct a study on the national security implications of building ethane and other natural-gas-liquids-related petrochemical infrastructure in the United States, and for other purposes.”

Interestingly, the West Virginia Senator told the West Virginia Roundtable Inc’s membership meeting that the study would not examine the “national security implications” but rather the “additional security benefits” of an Appalachian Storage Hub and cited the following to pave the way for the national security study he is proposing: “the shale resource endowment of the Appalachian Basin is so bountiful that, if the Appalachian Basin were an independent country, the Appalachian Basin would be the third largest producer of natural gas in the world.”

Senator Manchin is not the only politician of either party to unabashedly holler from the Appalachian Mountaintops the benefits of the ASH. Former Ohio Governor, and 2016 POTUS primary participant, John Kasich (R) has been a fervent supporter of such a regional planning scheme. He is particularly outspoken in favor of the joint proposal by Thailand-based PTT Global Chemical and Daelim to build an ethane cracker in Dilles Bottom, Ohio, across the Ohio River from Moundsville, West Virginia. The ethane cracker would convert the region’s fracked ethane into ethylene to make polyethylene plastic. This proposed project could be connected to the underground storage component of the ASH.

The Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf has consistently advocated for the project, going so far as to sign “an unprecedented agreement at the Tri-State Shale Summit, promising collaboration between the states in securing crackers for the region and, by extension, support of the storage hub.”

Dilles Bottom, OH ethane cracker site. Photo by Ted Auch, aerial assistance provided by LightHawk.

Not to be outdone in the ASH cheerleading department, West Virginia Governor Jim Justice (R), who can’t seem to find any common ground with Democrats in general nor Senator Manchin specifically, is collaborating with quad-state governors on the benefits of the ASH. All the while, these players ignore or dismiss the environmental, social, and economic costs of such an “all in” bet on petrochemicals and plastics.

Even the region’s land-grant universities have gotten in on the act, with West Virginia University’s Appalachian Oil and Natural Gas Research Consortium and Energy Institute leading the way. WVU’s Energy Institute Director Brian Anderson pointed out that, “Appalachia is poised for a renaissance of the petrochemical industry due to the availability of natural gas liquids. A critical path for this rebirth is through the development of infrastructure to support the industry. The Appalachian Storage Hub study is a first step for realizing that necessary infrastructure.”

National-level support

The Trump administration, with the assistance of Senator Manchin’s “Senate Bill 1337 – Capitalizing on American Storage Potential Act”, has managed to stretch the definition of the Department of Energy’s Title XVII loan guarantee to earmark $1.9 billion for the Appalachian Development Group, LLC (ADG) to develop the ASH, even though any project that receives such a loan must:

utilize a new or significantly improved technology;
avoid, reduce or sequester greenhouse gases;
be located in the United States; and,
have a reasonable prospect of repayment.

This type of Public-Private Investment Program is central planning at its finest, in spite of the likelihood that the prospects of the ASH meeting the second and fourth conditions above are dubious at best (even if the project utilizes carbon capture and storage technologies).

Public-Private Investment Programs have a dubious past. In her book “Water Wars,” Vandana Shiva discusses the role of these programs globally and the involvement of institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund:

“public-private partnerships”…implies public participation, democracy, and accountability. But it disguises the fact that the public-private partnership arrangements usually entail public funds being available for the privatization of public goods…[and] have mushroomed under the guise of attracting private capital and curbing public-sector employment.”

In response to the Department of Energy’s Title XVII largesse, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal and Ilhan Omar introduced Amendment 105 in Rule II on HR 2740. According to Food and Water Watch, this amendment would restrict “the types of projects the Department of Energy could financially back. It would block the funding for ALL projects that wouldn’t mitigate climate change.”

On Wednesday, June 19^thCongress voted 233-200 along party lines to pass the amendment, preventing funds from the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to be provided to any “project that does not avoid, reduce, or sequester air pollutants or anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases”.

International interest

The only condition of Department of Energy’s Title XVII loan program ASH is guaranteed to meet is the third (be located in the United States), but as we’ve already mentioned, the level of foreign money involved complicates the domestic facade.

Foreign involvement in the ASH lends credence to Senator Manchin’s and others’ concerns about where profits from the ASH will go, and who will be reaping the benefits of cheap natural gas. The fact that the ASH is being heavily backed by foreign money is the reason Senator Manchin raised an issue with the outsized role of state actors like Saudi Arabia and China as well as likely state-backed private investments like PTT Global Chemical’s. The Senator even cited how a potential $83.7 billion investment in West Virginia from China’s state-owned energy company, China Energy, would compromise “domestic manufacturing and national security opportunities.”

“Critical” infrastructure

With all of the discussion and legislation focused on energy and national security, many don’t realize the output of the ASH would be the production of petroleum-based products: mainly plastic, but also fertilizers, paints, resins, and other chemical products.

Not coincidentally, Republican Ohio State Representatives George Lang and Don Jones just introduced House Bill 242, and attempt to support the plastic industry by “prohibit[ing] the imposition of a tax or fee on [auxiliary or plastic] containers, and to apply existing anti-littering law to those containers.”

There will most certainly be a battle in the courts between the state and urban counties like Cuyahoga County, Ohio, who’s council just voted to ban plastic bags countywide on May 28.

Bills like this and the not unrelated “critical infrastructure” bills being shopped around by the American Legislative Exchange Council will amplify the rural vs urban and local vs state oversight divisions running rampant throughout the United States. The reason for this is that yet another natural resource boom/bust will be foisted on Central Appalachia to fuel urban growth and, in this instance, the growth and prosperity of foreign states like China.

Instead of working night and day to advocate for Appalachia and Americans more broadly, we have legislation in statehouses around the country that would make it harder to demonstrate or voice concerns about proposals associated with the ASH and similar regional planning projects stretching down into the Gulf of Mexico.

Producing wells mapped

Impacts from the ASH and associated ethane cracker proposals will include but are not limited to: an increase in the permitting of natural gas wells, an increase in associated gas gathering pipelines across the Allegheny Plateau, and an exponential increase in the production of plastics, all of which are harmful to the region’s environment and the planet.

The production of the region’s fracked wells will determine the long-term viability of the ASH. From our reading of things, the permitting trend we see in Ohio will have to hit another exponential inflection point to “feed the beast” as it were. Figure 1 shows an overall decline in the number of wells drilled monthly in Ohio.

Figure 2, below it, shows the relationship between the number of wells that are permitted verse those that are actually drilled.

Figures 1. Monthly (in blue) and cumulative (in orange) unconventional oil and gas wells drilled in Ohio, January, 2013 to November, 2018

Figure 2. Permitted Vs Drilled Wells in Ohio, January, 2013 to November, 2018

That supply-demand on steroids interaction will likely result in an increased reliance on “super laterals” by the high-volume hydraulic fracturing industry. These laterals require 5-8 times more water, chemicals, and proppant than unconventional laterals did between 2010 and 2012.

Given this, we felt it critical to map not just the environmental impacts of this model of fracking but also the nuts and bolts of production over time. The map below shows the supply-demand links between the fracking industry and the ASH, not as discrete pieces or groupings of infrastructure, but rather a continuum of up and downstream patterns.

The current iteration of the map shows production values for oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids, how production for any given well changes over time, and production declines in newer wells relative to those that were fracked at the outset of the region’s “Shale Revolution.” Working with volunteer Gary Allison, we have compiled and mapped monthly (Pennsylvania and West Virginia) and quarterly (Ohio)[2] natural gas, condensate, and natural gas liquids from 2002 to 2018.

This map includes 15,682 producing wells in Pennsylvania, 3,689 in West Virginia, and 2,064 in Ohio. We’ve also included and will be updating petrochemical projects associated with the ASH, either existing or proposed, across the quad-states including the proposed ethane cracker in Dilles Bottom, Ohio and the ethane cracker under construction in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, along with two rumored projects in West Virginia.

View Map Full Screen

Conclusion

We will continue to update this map on a quarterly basis, will be adding Kentucky data in the coming months, and will be sure to update rumored/proposed petrochemical infrastructure as they cross our radar. However, we can’t be everywhere at once so if anyone reading this hears of legitimate rumors or conversations taking place at the county or township level that cite tapping into the ASH’s infrastructural network, please be sure to contact us directly at info@fractracker.org.

By Ted Auch, Great Lakes Program Coordinator, FracTracker Alliance with invaluable data compilation assistance from Gary Allison

Feature Photo: Ethane cracker plant under construction in Beaver County, PA. Photo by Ted Auch, aerial assistance provided by LightHawk.

[1] For a detailed analysis of the HVHF’s increasing resource demand and how lateral length has increased in the last decade the reader is referred to our analysis titled “A Disturbing Tale of Diminishing Returns in Ohio” Figures 12 and 13.

[2] Note: For those Bluegrass State residents or interested parties, Kentucky data is on its way!

Pages

Wildness Lost – Pine Creek

August 7, 2019/in Air, Compressor Stations, Health & Safety, Infrastructure, Land, Pipelines, Social, Waste, Water, Wells, Wildlife and Ecology /by Shannon Smith

WILDNESS LOST

A Digital Atlas Examining Over a Decade of Unconventional Natural Gas Development in Pennsylvania’s Pine Creek Watershed

SITE TYPE	ABANDONED	RECLAMATION COMPLETE	TOTAL FACILITIES	TOTAL ACRES
Dry Strip Mine	31	5	36	322.0
Flooded Strip Mine	2	–	2	1.7
Spoil Pile	13	–	13	148.4
Refuse Pile	12	–	12	23.2
Known Subsidence Prone Area	2	–	2	0.4
Coal Processing Settling Basin	3	–	3	1.5
TOTAL	63	5	68	497.4

Oil & Gas Well Status	# of Wells
Operator reported not drilled	404
Proposed but never materialized	111
Active (conventional)	25
Active (unconventional)	529
Other	304
TOTAL	1,374

YEAR	STATEWIDE	PINE CREEK WATERSHED	PCT. TOTAL
2006	37	1	2.7%
2007	113	1	0.9%
2008	332	9	2.7%
2009	821	26	3.2%
2010	1598	114	7.1%
2011	1956	186	9.5%
2012	1351	85	6.3%
2013	1212	48	4.0%
2014	1369	30	2.2%
2015	784	11	1.4%
2016	503	20	4.0%
2017	810	29	3.6%
2018	777	16	2.1%
2019 (YTD)	366	17	4.6%
TOTAL	11999	593	5.8%

CATEGORY	GALLONS	EQUIVALENT PERSONS (ANNUAL USAGE)
Average Single Well	6,745,697	246
Maximum Single Well	13,313,916	486
All Wells (2013-2017)	850,648,219	31,074

VIOLATIONS	COUNT	WATER RELATED
Administrative	61	No
Casing / Cement Violation	31	Yes
Clean Streams Law Violation	32	Yes
Erosion & Sediment	84	Yes
Failed to Control / Dispose of Fluids	279	Yes
Failure to Comply With Permit	3	No
Failure to Plug Well	1	Yes
Failure to Prevent Pollution Event	23	Yes
Failure to Protect Water Supplies	8	Yes
Failure to Report Pollution Event	20	Yes
Failure to Restore Site	8	No
Hazardous Venting	1	No
Industrial Waste / Pollutional Material Discharge	229	Yes
Rat Hole Not Filled	7	Yes
Residual Waste Mismanagement	2	Yes
Restricted Site Access to Inspector	1	No
Site Restoration Violation	9	No
Unmarked Plugged Well	1	No
Unpermitted Residual Waste Processing	73	Yes
Unsound Impoundment	20	Yes
Unspecified Violation	48	No
Waste Analysis Not Completed	1	No
Water Obstruction & Encroachment	7	Yes
TOTAL	949	–

CATEGORY	BARRELS	GALLONS	PCT. TOTAL
Reuse at Well Pads	2,042,662	85,791,801	23%
Other Facilities	6,701,292	281,454,261	77%
GRAND TOTAL	8,743,954	367,246,062	100%

[i] Owlett, Steven. Seasons Along the Tiadaghton: An Environmental History of the Pine Creek Gorge. Wellsboro, PA: Steven E. Owlett, 1993. P. 11.

[ii] Wikipedia. Pine Creek (Pennsylvania). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Creek_(Pennsylvania)

[iii] Owlett, Steven. Seasons Along the Tiadaghton: An Environmental History of the Pine Creek Gorge. Wellsboro, PA: Steven E. Owlett, 1993. P. 11.

[iv] DCNR. History of Colton Point State Park, 2019. https://www.dcnr.pa.gov/StateParks/FindAPark/ColtonPointStatePark/Pages/History.aspx

[v] DCNR, Bureau of Forestry. Marcellus Shale Management Field Tour, 2012. http://www.paforestcoalition.org/documents/Marcellus_Shale_Management_Field_Tour_5-14-12.pdf

[vi] Hayes, Samuel P. Wars in the Woods: The Rise of Ecological Forestry in America. Pittsburgh, PA. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006. (2007). P 120-121.

[vii] Owlett, Steven. Seasons Along the Tiadaghton: An Environmental History of the Pine Creek Gorge. Wellsboro, PA: Steven E. Owlett, 1993. P.58-60.

[viii] Owlett, Steven. Seasons Along the Tiadaghton: An Environmental History of the Pine Creek Gorge. Wellsboro, PA: Steven E. Owlett, 1993. P.61.

[ix] Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, Oil Gas Locations – Conventional Unconventional, 2019. https://www.pasda.psu.edu/uci/DataSummary.aspx?dataset=1088

[x] Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. Abandoned and Orphan Oil and Gas Wells and the Well Plugging Program, 2018. http://www.depgreenport.state.pa.us/elibrary/PDFProvider.ashx?action=PDFStream&docID=1419023&chksum=&revision=0&docName=ABANDONED+AND+ORPHAN+OIL+AND+GAS+WELLS+AND+THE+WELL+PLUGGING+PROGRAM&nativeExt=pdf&PromptToSave=False&Size=411528&ViewerMode=2&overlay=0

[xi] Pennsylvania Wilds. Homepage, 2019. https://pawilds.com/#modal-2

[xii] Ferguson et al. The impacts of shale natural gas energy development on outdoor recreation: A statewide assessment of pennsylvanians, September 2019. J ournal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism. Volume 27.

[xiii]Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. Oil and Gas Compliance Report Viewer. 2019. http://www.depreportingservices.state.pa.us/ReportServer/Pages/ReportViewer.aspx?/Oil_Gas/OG_Compliance

[xiv] Joshua Pribanic & Melissa Troutman. Triple Divide, 2013.

All aerial photography by Ted Auch with flight support by LightHawk (May 2019).

Pine Creek compressor station FLIR camera footage by Earthworks (May 2019).

Project funding provided by:

Pennsylvania

March 19, 2020/0 Comments/in Air, Infrastructure, Land, Waste, Water, Wells /by Guest Author

Oil & Gas Activity in Pennsylvania

Explore the PA Shale Viewer

View a map of unconventional wells, violations, and compressor stations – click on image.

Oil & Gas Waste

Earthworks Report and Interactive Map

Go to the Earthworks Report

Pennsylvania a leading producer of waste from oil and gas production, which contains carcinogens, secret fracking chemicals, heavy metals, and radioactive materials. Read Earthworks’ latest report, and view FracTracker’s interactive map to see how much PA oil and gas waste is being processed, transported, and disposed near you.

106,224

Total wells (As of February 2020)

Additional Maps, Data, & Reports

PA Oil & Gas Activity Over Time

GIF of unconventional wells drilled between May 2002 and March 2017

PA unconventional oil and gas wells drilled over time 2002-17

Pennsylvania Oil & Gas Waste: report & map - Earthworks

September 2019

PA is Discharging Radioactive Fracking Waste - Investigation by Public Herald

August 2019

Who Pays? Health & Economic Impacts of Fracking in PA

May 2019

Report: Delaware River Basin Risks

March 2018

Conventional & Historical Wells in PA

Updated: June 2017

PA O&G Complaint Map & Investigation with Public Herald

January 2017

E2 Clean Energy Map for PA

Fall 2016

Population density along Mariner East 2 route

November 2016

You Are Here Map w/Sane Energy

Updated: October 2016

PA & VA Class II Injection Wells (Data)

Updated: April 2016

PA Population Near Active Freight Lines

Updated: Mar 2015

Proposed Drilling in Loyalsock State Forest

Updated: Nov 2014

Unconventional Production & Waste - Jan-Jun 2014

Updated: Sep 2014

Conventional, Non-Vertical Wells in PA

Updated: May 2014

Unconventional Production & Waste - Jul-Dec 2013

Updated: Mar 2014

Unconventional Drilling & Bird Habitat in PA

Updated: Jan 2014

Unconventional Production & Waste Jan-June 2013

Updated: Aug 2013

PADEP Determination Letters for Groundwater Complaints

Updated: Jul 2013

Proposed Development in Loyalsock SF’s Clarence Moore Tracts

Updated: May 2013

Trout Unlimited water quality testing areas in PA

Updated: Feb 2013

Data by County 2005-2012

Updated: Dec 2012

Production Jul 2010 through Dec 2012

Updated: Dec 2012

Change in Number of Drilled Wells by Co. from 2011-2012

Updated: Jan 2012

Pennsylvania Oil & Gas Imagery

This album contains PA imagery contributed to our site from FracTracker staff and volunteers. Reuse is permitted so long as you cite the photographer if one is listed in the photo’s info section, as well as FracTracker Alliance.

Explore PA photos and videos in our online album

Drilling pad, PA. Photo by Bob Donnan, 2014

Report a Concern or Incident

To file an environmental health concern in PA, please contact:

Pennsylvania Department of Health (PA DOH)
Division of Environmental Health Epidemiology, Room 933, Health and Welfare Building
625 Forster St., Harrisburg, PA 17120
Toll free hotline: 1-877 PA Health (1-877-724-32584)
Email: RA-DHENVHEALTH@pa.gov • PA DOH Website

Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA)
OSHA can help answer questions or concerns from employers and workers. To reach your regional or area OSHA office, go to OSHA’s Regional & Area Offices webpage or call 1-800-321-OSHA (6742). • OSHA Oil & Gas Website

Air Pollution from Pennsylvania Shale Gas Compressor Stations – REPORT

March 19, 2020/0 Comments/in Air, Articles, Compressor Stations, Infrastructure /by Guest Author

Air pollution from Pennsylvania shale gas compressor stations is a significant, worsening public health concern.

By Cynthia Walter, Ph.D.

Executive Summary

Recommendations

Constant air monitoring must occur at current compressor stations and nearby sites important to the public, such as schools. The peak concentrations and totals for substances relevant to public health must be recorded and made available to the public in real time.
Air pollution from compressor stations must become an important part of measuring and modeling pollution exposures from all components of the shale gas industry.
Permits for new compressor stations must be revised to better protect the public in ways including, but not limited to the following:
- Location, e.g., increased general setback limits and expanded limits for sensitive sites such as schools, senior care facilities and hospitals
- Emission limits for criteria air pollutants and hazardous air pollutants including Radon, especially limits for peak concentrations and annual totals
- Monitoring air quality within the station, at the fence-line and in key sites nearby, such as schools, using information from air movement models to select locations and heights.
- Limits for CS size based on aggregate pollution from other local air pollution sources.
Costs of harm from CS and other shale gas activities must be compared to alternatives.

Chemistry of Compressor Station Emissions

Health Effects of Compressor Station Emissions

Regional Air Toxins and Cancer Risk in Southwestern Pennsylvania

Measurements of Compressor Station Emissions

Compressor Station Locations

Costs of Compressor Stations and Air Pollution

Appendix – Compressor Station Locations in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania

Chemistry of Compressor Station Emissions

Air pollutants in CS emissions vary substantially in chemistry and concentrations due to differences in equipment (Table 1). Emissions in CS can come from several types of sources described below.

Engines: Compression engines powered with methane release nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and hazardous air pollutants (HAP). Diesel engines release those pollutants as well as sulfur dioxide (SO₂) and substantial particulate matter. In addition, diesel storage on site is a hazard. Electric engines produce less pollutants, but they are much less common than fossil fuel engines in southwestern Pennsylvania. CS operators can vary the use of engines at a station, and therefore, emissions vary during partial or full shutdowns and start-up periods.
Blowdowns: Toxic emissions dramatically increase during blowdowns, a procedure that is scheduled or used as needed to release the build-up of gases. Blowdown frequency and emissions vary with the rate of gas transport and the chemistry of transported gases. The full extent of emissions from any CS, therefore, is not known. Blowdowns can release a wide range of substances, and when flaring is used to burn off gases, the combustion creates new substances and additional particulates. Blowdowns are the most likely source of peaks in emissions at continuously operated CS. For example, Brown et al. (2015) used PA DEP measures of a CS in Washington County, Pennsylvania, alongside likely blowdown frequencies and weather models to predict peak emission frequency. They estimated nearby residents would experience over 118 peak emissions per year.
Non-compression Procedures: CS facilities are often the location for equipment that separate gases, remove water and other fluids, and run pipeline testing operations called pigging. These activities can be constant or intermittent and release a wide range of substances which may or may not be included in estimates for a permit. In addition, some of the processing releases gases which are flared at the facility, thus releasing a range of combustion by-products and particulate pollution. For example, the Shamrock CS operated by Dominion Transfer Inc. includes equipment for dehydration, glycol processing and pigging. The Janus facility operated by EQT includes dehydration and flaring. Permitted emissions for those facilities are listed in Table 1.
Storage Tank Emissions: CS often include storage tanks that hold substances known to release fumes. For example, the Shamrock CS was permitted to have an above ground storage tank of 3000 gallons for drip gas and a 1000-gallon tank for used oil, both of which release volatile organic compounds. The EQT Janus CS has two 8,820-gallon tanks. Gas releases from such tanks could be controlled and recorded by the operator or they could be unrecorded leaks.
Fugitive emissions: Gas leaks, called fugitive emissions, occur readily from many components in CS facilities; such problems will increase as equipment ages. A study of CS stations in Texas is an example.

“In the Fort Worth, TX area, researchers evaluated compressor station emissions from eight sites, focusing in part on fugitive emissions. A total of 2,126 fugitive emission points were identified in the four month field study of 8 compressor stations: 192 of the emission points were valves; 644 were connectors (including flanges, threaded unions, tees, plugs, caps and open-ended lines where the plug or cap was missing); and 1,290 were classified as Other Equipment. The Other category consists of all remaining components such as tank thief hatches, pneumatic valve controllers, instrumentation, regulators, gauges, and vents. 1,330 emission points were detected with an IR camera (i.e. high-level emissions) and 796 emission points were detected by Method 21 screening (i.e. low-level emissions). Pneumatic Valve Controllers were the most frequent emission sources encountered at well pads and compressor stations.”

Eastern Research Group (2011).

Pollutant	Term	Janus (WV) 22,000 hp	Tonkin (WV) 4390 hp	*Shamrock (PA) 4140 bhp**	Buffalo (PA) 20,000 hp + 5,000 bhp**
Nitrogen Oxides	NOx	254,400	248,000	170,000	155,800
Volatile Organic Compounds	VOC	191,200	30,000	66,000	77,000
Carbon Monoxide	CO	118,200	80,000	154,000	144,400
Sulfur Dioxide	SO₂	1,400	400	10,000	5,400
Hazardous Air Pollutants-Total	HAP	48,200	3,280	19,400	30,000
Formaldehyde			1,080	12,800	12,200
Benzene			540
Ethylbenzene			60
Toluene			140
Xylene			200
Hexane			500
Acetaldehyde			600
Acrolein			160
Total Particulate Matter (PM-2.5, PM-10-separate or combined)	PM	18,200	11,000	32,000	PM-10 32,000 PM-2.5 32,000
TOTAL TOXINS		631,600	372,680	417,400	444,600
Carbon Dioxide Equivalents	CO2-e	29,298,000	27,200,000	367,000,000	214,514,000

Health Effects of Compressor Station Emissions

Several toxic chemicals are released by individual CS in amounts that range from a few thousand pounds to a quarter of a million pounds per year (Tables 1 & 2) as described below.

Nitrous Oxides (NOx) are often the largest total amount of emissions from fossil fuel machinery. In CS, these oxides are formed when a fossil fuel such as methane or diesel is combusted to produce the energy to compress and propel gases. NOx contribute to acid rain. Excess acids in rain lower the pH of waters, in some cases to levels that dissolve toxic metals in drinking water supplies. NOx also trigger the formation of ozone, a substance well known to impair lungs.
Ozone forms when oxygen reacts with nitrous oxides, carbon monoxide, and a wide range of volatile organic compounds. Ozone exposure can trigger asthma and heart attacks in sensitive individuals, and for healthy people, ozone causes breathing problems in the short term and eventual scarring of lungs and impaired function.
Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) are gaseous compounds containing carbon, such as benzene and formaldehyde. In air pollution regulation, the EPA lists many compounds as VOC, but excludes carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane and butane. Many VOC’s are toxic in themselves (Tables 2, 3 and 4). Also, several VOC’s react to form ozone. https://www.epa.gov/air-emissions-inventories/what-definition-voc
Carbon Monoxide (CO) is another product of fossil fuel combustion and another contributor to ozone formation. CO is directly toxic because it prevents oxygen from binding to the blood.
Sulfur Dioxide (SO₂) adds to lung irritation. It also contributes to acid rain, lowering the pH of water and increasing the ability of toxic metals to dissolve in water supplies.
Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAP) include highly toxic substances such as formaldehyde and benzene, which are known carcinogens, as well as the other substances known to be emitted from CS (Tables 3 & 4). The EPA lists 187 substances as HAP, which include many VOC’s as well as some non-organic chemicals such as arsenic and radionuclides including Radon. (https://www.epa.gov/haps/initial-list-hazardous-air-pollutants-modifications)
Particulate Matter (PM) usually refers to particles in small size classes. Most state or federal regulations address measures of particles less than 10 microns (PM-10) and some monitoring systems separate out particles less than 2.5 microns (PM-2.5). Particles in either of those size ranges are not visible, but highly damaging because they travel deep into the lungs where they irritate tissues and impair breathing. Also, these tiny particles carry toxins from air into the blood passing through the lungs. This blood transports substances directly to the brain where toxins can quickly impair the nervous system and subsequently impact other organs. (https://www.epa.gov/pm-pollution/particulate-matter-pm-basics)

Table. 2. Health effects of air pollutants permitted for release by compressor stations.

Pollutant	Health Effects
Particulate Matter	Impairs lungs and transfers toxins into body when microscopic particles carry chemicals deep into lungs and release into bloodstream.
Nitrogen Oxides	Forms ozone that impairs lung function which can trigger asthma and heart attacks and scars lungs in the long term. Forms acid rain that dissolves toxic metals into water supplies.
Volatile Organic Compounds	Includes a wide variety of gaseous organic compounds, some of which cause cancer. Many VOC react to form ozone that impairs lungs as noted above.
Carbon Monoxide	Blocks ability of blood to carry oxygen. Also forms ozone that impairs lungs as noted above.
Sulfur Dioxide	Irritates lungs, triggering respiratory and heart distress. Forms acid rain that dissolves toxic metals into water supplies.
Hazardous Air Pollutants	Category of various toxic compounds many of which impact the nervous system. Includes formaldehyde, benzene and several other carcinogens.
Total Toxins	Sum of emissions of all toxins. Exposure to multiple toxins exacerbates harm directly through impairment of lungs and circulatory system and indirectly through injury to detoxification mechanisms, such as liver function.
Carbon Dioxide Equivalents	A measure of the combined effects of greenhouse gases such as CO2 and Methane expressed in a standard unit equivalent to the heat trapping effect of CO2. Greenhouse gases trap heat and worsen climate change and related harm to health when increased air temperatures directly cause stress directly and indirectly accelerate ozone formation.

Table 3. Gas industry list of carcinogenicity rating for Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAPs) released by compressor stations in a factsheet prepared by EQT for Janus compressor, WV. 2015 Source: DEP.

Substance	Type	Known/Suspected Carcinogen	Classification
Acetaldehyde	VOC	Yes	B2-Probable Human Carcinogen
Acrolein	VOC	No	Inadequate Data
Benzene	VOC	Yes	Category A – Known Human Carcinogen
Ethyl-benzene	VOC	No	Category D Not Classifiable
Biphenyl	VOC	Yes	Suggested Evidence of Carcinogenic Potential
1,3 Butadiene	VOC	Yes	B2-Probable Human Carcinogen
Formaldehyde	VOC	Yes	B1- Probable Human Carcinogen
n-Hexane	VOC	No	Inadequate Data
Naphthalene	VOC	Yes	C- Possible human Carcinogen
Toluene	VOC	No	Inadequate Data
2,3,4-Trimethlypentane	VOC	No	Inadequate Data
Xylenes	VOC	No	Inadequate Data

Table 4. Center for Disease Control list of health effects for volatile organic carbons measured by PA DEP near compressor station. Source: CDC.

Substance	Exposure Symptoms	Target Organs
Ethylbenzene	Irritation to eyes and nose; nausea, headache; neuropath; numb extremities, muscle weakness; dermatitis; dizziness	Eyes, skin, respiratory system, central nervous system, peripheral nervous system
n-Butane	Drowsiness	Central nervous system
n-Hexane	Irritation to eyes, skin & respiratory system; headache, dizziness; nausea	Eyes, skin, respiratory system, central nervous system
2-Methyl Butane	n/a	n/a
Iso-butane	Drowsiness, narcosis, asphyxia	Central nervous system

ICD-10			Facilities				Chemicals				Pounds
#	Description		‘08	‘11	‘14	Tot	‘08	‘11	‘14	Tot	2008	2011	2014	Total
1	Q00-Q89	Congenital malformations and deformations	18	18	17	18	57	54	54	57	4,393,806	6,607,676	5,900,691	16,902,175
1.1	Q00-Q07	Nervous system	18	18	17	18	16	16	16	16	4,068,877	5,882,704	5,258,344	15,209,926
1.2	Q10-Q18	Eye, ear, face and neck	15	15	12	15	4	4	4	4	5,825	19,569	11,475	36,869
1.3	Q20-Q28	Circulatory system	18	18	17	18	10	10	10	10	4,269,779	6,336,905	5,651,896	16,258,581
1.4	Q30-Q34	Respiratory system	14	8	7	14	4	4	4	4	150	107	113	372
1.5	Q35-Q45	Digestive system	18	18	17	18	17	17	17	17	4,386,043	6,586,345	5,884,324	16,856,713
1.6	Q50-Q56	Genital organs	6	7	8	8	2	2	2	2	1,399	4,373	2,612	8,385
1.7	Q60-Q64	Urinary system	18	17	16	18	9	9	9	9	119,382	254,922	237,359	611,663
1.8	Q65-Q79	Musculoskeletal system	18	18	16	18	19	19	19	19	122,314	262,300	243,932	628,547
1.9	Q80-Q89	Other	18	18	17	18	55	52	52	55	2,124,445	3,614,575	3,413,375	9,152,395
2	Q90-Q99	Chromosomal abnormalities, nec	18	18	16	18	30	31	31	32	120,669	256,739	239,709	617,118
	Q00-Q99	Total	18	18	17	18	57	56	56	59	4,393,806	6,607,676	5,900,691	16,902,175

Regional Air Toxins and Cancer Risk in Southwestern Pennsylvania

In sum, cancer risk estimates from air pollution fall short in the following ways:

Estimates of air quality do not reflect the reality of air pollution from CS as well as many other new sources such as increased truck traffic associated with shale gas development.
Tallies of annual emissions do not represent the actual exposures of individuals to pulses of toxins.
Models of air pollution and cancer are not sufficiently based on real world studies of impacts from multiple toxins in short and long-term exposures.

ICD-10			Facilities				Chemicals				Pounds
#	Code	Description	‘08	‘11	‘14	Tot	‘08	‘11	‘14	Tot	2008	2011	2014	Total
1	C00-C97	Malignant neoplasms	18	18	17	18	53	54	54	56	744,394	1,679,621	1,583,745	4,007,761
2	C00-C14	Lip, oral cavity and pharynx	18	18	16	18	12	14	14	14	118,992	254,897	238,943	612,833
3	C15-C26	Digestive organs	18	18	16	18	37	38	38	38	121,690	258,670	241,866	622,227
4	C30-C39	Respiratory system and intrathoracic organs	18	18	17	18	36	37	37	38	740,798	1,673,574	1,579,882	3,994,254
5	C40-C41	Bone and articular cartilage	18	18	17	18	33	34	34	35	694,106	1,551,399	1,492,704	3,738,210
6	C43-C44	Skin	16	15	13	16	12	12	12	14	2,362	5,008	4,029	11,400
7	C45-C49	Connective and soft tissue	17	17	15	17	17	17	17	17	1,929	5,074	4,639	11,643
8	C50-C58	Breast and female genital organs	18	18	16	18	23	25	25	25	361,015	823,303	663,237	1,847,556
9	C60-C63	Male genital organs	18	17	16	18	12	13	13	13	111,217	233,176	224,147	568,541
10	C64-C68	Urinary organs	18	18	16	18	24	24	24	25	119,062	255,474	238,596	613,133
11	C69-C72	Eye, brain and central nervous system	18	18	16	18	20	20	20	20	121,282	258,655	241,954	621,892
12	C73-C75	Endocrine glands and related structures	18	17	16	18	10	10	10	10	112,911	235,120	225,269	573,300
13	C76-C80	Secondary and ill-defined	17	16	14	17	6	6	6	6	2,054	5,690	5,771	13,516
14	C81-C96	Malignant neoplasms, stated or presumed to be primary, of lymphoid, haematopoietic and related tissue	18	18	16	18	31	31	31	31	364,338	833,140	671,245	1,868,724
15	C97	Malignant neoplasms of independent (primary) multiple sites	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
16	D00-D09	In situ neoplasms	16	15	13	16	3	3	3	3	3,313	7,557	6,606	17,477
17	D10-D36	Benign neoplasms	17	17	14	17	27	27	27	27	12,499	35,013	23,068	70,580
18	D37-D48	Neoplasms of uncertain or unknown behavior	18	18	16	18	39	40	40	41	121,277	257,142	240,115	618,535

Measurements of Compressor Station Emissions

State/ID	County	Nearest infrastructure	Chemical	Concentration (μg/m³)	ATSDR MRLs exceeded	EPA IRIS cancer risk exceeded
AR-3136-003	Faulkner	355 m from compressor	Formaldehyde	36	C	1/10,000
AR-3136-001	Cleburne	42 m from compressor	Formaldehyde	34	C	1/10,000
AR-3561	Cleburne	30 m from compressor	Formaldehyde	27	C	1/10,000
AR-3562	Faulkner	355 m from compressor	Formaldehyde	28	C	1/10,000
AR-4331	Faulkner	42 m from compressor	Formaldehyde	23	C	1/10,000
AR-4333	Faulkner	237 m from compressor	Formaldehyde	44	C, I	1/10,000
AR-4724	Van Buren	42 m from compressor	1,3-butadiene	8.5	n/a	1/10,000
AR-4924	Faulkner	254 m from compressor	Formaldehyde	48	C, I	1/10,000

C = chronic; I = intermediate.

State ID	County	Nearest infrastructure	Chemical	Concentration (μg/m³)	ATSDR MRLs exceeded	EPA IRIS cancer risk exceeded
PA-4083-003	Susquehanna	420 m from compressor	Formaldehyde	8.3		1/10,000
PA-4083-004	Susquehanna	370 m from compressor	Formaldehyde	7.6		1/100,000
PA-4136	Washington	270 m from PIG launch^a	Benzene	5.7		1/100,000
PA-4259-002	Susquehanna	790 m from compressor	Formaldehyde	61	C, I, A	1/10,000
PA-4259-003	Susquehanna	420 m from compressor	Formaldehyde	59	C, I, A	1/10,000
PA-4259-004	Susquehanna	230 m from compressor	Formaldehyde	32	C	1/10,000
PA-4259-005	Susquehanna	460 m from compressor	Formaldehyde	34	C	1/10,000

C = chronic; A = acute; I = intermediate.

aLaunching station for pipeline cleaning or inspection tool.

*May 18*		*May 19*		*May 20*
Chemical	Morning	Evening	Morning	Evening	Morning	Evening	3-day Average
Ethylbenzene	No detect	No detect	964	2015	10,553	27,088	13,540
n-Butane	385	490	326	696	12,925	915	5,246
n-Hexane	No detect	536	832	11,502	33,607	No detect	15,492
2-Methyl Butane	No detect	230	251	5137	14,271	No detect	6,630
Iso-butane	397	90	No detect	1481	3,817	425	2070

Figure 4. Methane emission plumes from compressor stations near Dimock, Pennsylvania (left) and Springvale, Pennsylvania (right). Source: Copied from Payne et al. 2017.

Compressor Station Locations

Figure 5. Compressor Stations prior to 2008 and in around 2013. Source: Copied from article by James Hilton in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Figure 6. Compressor Stations in Pennsylvania mapped in 2019. Source: FracTracker Alliance. 2000.

Costs of Compressor Stations and Air Pollution

Activities	VOC	NO_x	PM2.5	PM₁₀	SO_x
(1) Transport	31–54	550–1000	16–30	17–30	0.82–1.4
(2) Well drilling and hydraulic fracturing	260–290	6600–8100	150–220	150–220	6.6–190
(3) Production	71–1800	810–1000	15–78	15–78	4.8–6.2
(4) Compressor stations	2200–8900	9300–18 000	280–1100	280–1100	0–340
Totalᵃ	2500–11 000	17 000–28 000	460–1400	460–1400	12–540

ᵃ These totals are reported to two significant figures, as are all intermediate emissions values in this document. The activity emissions may not exactly sum to the totals.

Activities	Timeframe	Total regional damage for 2011 ($2011)	Average per well or per MMCF damage ($2011)
(1) Transport	Development	$320 000–$810 000	$180–$460 per well
(2) Well drilling, fracturing	Development	$2 200 000–$4 700 0	$1 200-$2 700 per well
(3) Production	Ongoing	$290 000–$2 700 0	$0.27-$2.60 per MMCF
(4) Compressor stations	Ongoing	$4 400 000–$24 000 000	$4.20-$23.00 per MMCF
(1)-(4) Aggregated	Both	$7 200 000–$32 000 000	NA

Major Studies Cited in Text:

Ciencewicki, J. and I. Jaspers 2007. Air Pollution and Respiratory Viral Infection. Inhalation Toxicology 19:1135–1146, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/08958370701665434

Currie, J, M Greenstone and K Meckel. 2017. Hydraulic fracturing and infant health: New evidence from Pennsylvania. Science Advances 2017;3:e1603021

Appendix

ID #	Facility #	Name/Operator	Municipality	Latitude	Longitude	Status
627743	645570	CNX GAS CO/HICKMAN COMP STA	Bell Twp	40.5174	-79.5498	Active
693305	696606	PEOPLES TWP/RUBRIGHT COMP STA	Bell Twp	40.5278	-79.5561	Active
626482	644726	CNX GAS CO/BELL POINT COMP STA	Bell Twp	40.5413	-79.5338	Active
na	na	NORTH OAKFORD	Delmont	40.4018	-79.5597	Active
714057	713241	RW GATHERING LLC/ECKER BERGMAN RD COMP STA	Derry Twp	40.3533	-79.3028	Active
760724	752063	RE GAS DEV/ORGOVAN COMP STA	Derry Twp	40.3857	-79.4019	Active
736807	732436	RW GATHERING LLC/SALEM COMP STA	Derry Twp	40.3908	-79.3361	Active
714057	713241	RW GATHERING LLC/ECKER BERGMAN RD COMP STA	Derry Twp	40.3533	-79.3028	Active
774714	766854	EQT GATHERING LLC/DERRY COMP STA	Derry Twp	40.4511	-79.3161	Active
na	na	Layman Compressor, Range Resources Appalachia, LLC	East Huntingdon	40.1113	-79.6345	Unknown
na	na	Key Rock Energy/LLC	East Huntingdon	40.1228	-79.6489	Unknown
662759	673466	Kriebel Minerals Inc./Sony Compressor Station (Inactive)	East Huntingdon	40.181	-79.5882	Unknown
662781	673477	Lynn Compressor, Kriebel Minerals Inc.	East Huntingdon	40.1798	-79.5557	Unknown
636316	660570	Range Resources Appalachia/ Layman Compressor Station	East Huntingdon	40.1086	-79.6359	Unknown
na	na	Keyrock Energy LLC/ Hribal Compresor Station, East Huntingdon, Pa. (active)	East Huntingdon	40.1353	-7905653	Unknown
761545	752755	KeyRock Energy LLC/ Hribal Compressor Station (Active)	East Huntingdon	40.1333	-79.55	Unknown
649767	663499	Range Resources Appalachia/Schwartz Comp. Station	East Huntingdon	40.0879	-79.601	Unknown
652968	665874	TEXAS KEYSTONE/FAIRFIELD TWP COMP STA	Fairfield Twp	40.3363	-79.1786	Active
557780	572987	EQUITRANS LP/W FAIRFIELD COMP STA	Fairfield Twp	40.3333	-79.1167	Active
675937	683303	DIVERSIFIED OIL & GAS LLC/MURPHY COMP SITE	Fairfield Twp	40.3362	-79.1122	Active
812881	806928	TEXAS KEYSTONE INC/ MURPHY COMP STA	Fairfield Twp	40.3543	-79.1123	Active
na	na	SOUTH OAKFORD/Dominion	Greensburg	40.365	-79.5585	Unknown
na	na	OAKFORD	Greensburg	40.3848	-79.5489	Active
na	na	DELMONT	Geensburg	40.382	-79.5554	Active
496667	626720	Silvis Compressor Station, Exco Resources Pa. Inc	Hempfield	40.2022	-79.5526	Unknown
na	na	Dominion Trans Inc., Lincoln Heights	Hempfield Township	40.3004	-79.6193	Active
812660	806731	CNX Gas Co. LLC	Hempfield Township	40.2957	-79.6277	Active
812661	806732	CNX Gas Co. LLC/ Jackson Compressor Station, Status: Active	Hempfield Township	40.2931	-79.6119	Unknown
601521	626775	PEOPLES NATURAL GAS CO/ARNOLD COMP STA	Lower Burrell City	40.3623	-79.4316	Active
812883	806930	TEXAS KEYSTONE INC/LOYALHANNA	Loyalhanna Twp	40.4514	-79.4727	Inactive
na	na	J.B. TONKIN	Murrysville Boro	40.4629	-79.6402	Active
815083	809310	HUNTLEY & HUNTLEY INC/BOARST COMP STA	Murrysville Boro	40.4686	-79.6417	Inactive
735725	731655	MTN GATHERING LLC/10078 MAINLINE COMP STA	Murrysville Boro	40.4708	-79.65	Active
241708	276314	Dominion Trans Inc/Jeannette	Penn Township	40.3317	-79.5935	inactive
na	701239	DOMINION ENERGY TRANS INC/ROCK SPRINGS COMP STA	Salem Twp	40.4052	-79.5546	Unknown
na	na	OAKFORD	Salem Twp	40.4052	-79.5546	Unknown
465965	495182	EQT GATHERING/SLEEPY HOLLOW COMP STA	Salem Twp	40.3634	-79.5426	Inactive
465965	495182	EQT GATHERING/SLEEPY HOLLOW COMP STA	Salem Twp	40.3634	-79.5426	Inactive
483173	512126	COLUMBIA GAS TRANS CORP/DELMONT COMP STA	Salem Twp	40.3871	-79.5638	Active
707759	708010	LAUREL MTN MIDSTREAM OPR LLC/SALEM COMP STA	Salem Twp	40.3782	-79.4929	Active
459024	488214	CNX Gas Co./ Jacobs Creek Compressor Station,	South Huntingdon Twp	40.1172	-79.6681	Unknown
634559	650802	Rex Energy I LLC/Launtz	Unity Twp	40.3325	-79.4295	Unknown
na	668776	Keyrock Energy LLC/ Unity Compressor Station	Unity Twp	40.2251	-79.5109	Unknown
na	na	Nelson/RE Gas Dev LLC	UnityTwp	40.3378	-79.4348	Unknown
657366	66932	People’s Natural Gas/ Latrobe Compressor Station	Unity Twp	40.3075	-79.4369	Inactive
812662	806733	CNX Gas Co. LLC, Troy Compressor Station	Unity Twp	na	na	Unknown
657366	564168	Dominion Peoples (Inactive)	Unity Twp	40.3073	-79.4371	Inactive
815196	809457	HUNTLEY & HUNTLEY INC/WASHINGTON STATION	Washington Twp	40.4967	-79.6206	Active
605562	629821	PEOPLES NATURAL GAS/MERWIN COMP STA	Washington Twp	40.5083	-79.6203	Active
815203	809466	HUNTLEY & HUNTLEY INC/TARPAY STA	Washington Twp	40.5222	-79.6186	Active
na	na	Mamont (CNX GAS CO/MAMONT COMP STA)	Washington Twp	40.5046	-79.5862	Unkown
741197	735870	CONE MIDSTREAM PARTNERS LP/MAMONT COMP STA	Washington Twp	40.5067	-79.5644	Active

Feature image of a compressor station within Loyalsock State Forest, PA. Photo by Brook Lenker, FracTracker Alliance, June 2016.

House Bill 1100: What you need to know

March 5, 2020/0 Comments/in Articles, Legislation & Politics /by Shannon Smith

March 25, 2020 Update

March 27, 2020 Update

Governor Wolf said in his press release:

Some lawmakers have said that they will attempt to override the veto.

Fiscal Responsibility

Employment

Environmental & Climate Impacts

Health Concerns

Moving Forward

Learn More

Visualize the petrochemical buildout by exploring FracTracker’s maps.

Explore the Maps

Attend an informative press conference

Penn Future and dozens of other groups are holding a press conference in Harrisburg on March 9th.

Harrisburg Press Conference - March 9

When: Monday, March 9, 10:00 – 11:00 AM
Where: Pennsylvania State Capitol – Main Rotunda
State and Third Street
Harrisburg, PA 17101

RSVP

You can contact PennFuture Western Pennsylvania Outreach Coordinator, Kelsey Krepps, at krepps@pennfuture.org or (412) 224 – 4477 with any questions or concerns.

National Energy and Petrochemical Map

February 28, 2020/0 Comments/in Articles, Compressor Stations, Infrastructure, Petrochemicals & Plastics, Pipelines, Wells /by Erica Jackson

FracTracker Alliance has released a new national map, filled with energy and petrochemical data. Explore the map, continue reading to learn more, and see how your state measures up!

View map full screen

The items on the map (followed by facility count in parenthesis) include:

Extraction

Offshore petroleum and gas production (157) – offshore platforms that are included in the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program.

For oil and gas wells, view FracTracker’s state maps.

Transportation & Storage

Natural gas compressor stations (1,367) – Facilities built along a pipeline route that pressurize natural gas to keep it flowing through the pipeline.
Crude oil rail terminals (94) – Rail terminals that load and unload crude oil (liquid hydrocarbons that have yet to be processed into higher-value petroleum products).
Liquefied natural gas import/export terminals (8) – Facilities that can a) liquefy natural gas so it can be exported as LNG (liquefied natural gas) and/or b) re-gasify LNG so it can be used as natural gas. Natural gas is transported in a liquid state because it takes up less space as a liquid than as a gas.
Natural Gas Underground Storage (486) – Locations where natural gas is stored underground in aquifers, depleted gas fields, and salt formations.
Liquefied Natural Gas Storage (6) – LNG storage facilities included in the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program.
Petroleum Product Terminals (1,484) – Terminals with a storage capacity of 50,000 barrels or more and/or the ability to receive volumes from tanker, barge, or pipeline. Petroleum products include products “produced from the processing of crude oil and other liquids at petroleum refineries, from extraction of liquid hydrocarbons at natural gas processing plants, and from production of finished petroleum products at blending facilities.”
Petroleum Ports (242) – A port that can import and/or export 200,000 or more short tons of petroleum products a year.
Natural gas import/export pipeline facility (54) – A facility where natural gas crosses the border of the continental United States.
Pipelines
- Crude oil pipelines – major crude oil pipelines, including interstate truck lines and selected intrastate lines, but not including gathering lines.
- Natural gas liquid pipelines – Also referred to as hydrocarbon gas liquid pipelines, they carry the heavier components of the natural gas stream which are liquid under intense pressure and extreme cold, but gas in normal conditions.
- Natural gas pipelines– Interstate and intrastate natural gas pipelines. Due to the immensity of this pipeline network and lack of available data, this pipeline layer in particular varies in degree of accuracy.
- Petroleum Product Pipelines – Major petroleum product pipelines.
- Recent Pipeline Projects – Pipeline projects that have been announced since 2017. This includes projects in various stages, including under construction, complete, planned or canceled. Click on the pipeline for the status.

Processing & Downstream

Natural Gas Processing Plants (478) – Plants that separate impurities and components of the natural gas stream.
Chemical plants (36) – Includes two types of chemical plants – petrochemical production and ammonia manufacturing – that report to EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program.
Ethylene Crackers (30) – Also referred to as ethane crackers, these petrochemical complexes that converts ethane (a natural gas liquid) into ethylene. Ethylene is used to make products like polyethylene plastic.
Petroleum Refineries (135) – A plant that processes crude oil into products like petroleum naphtha, diesel fuel, and gasoline.
Power Plants (9,414) – Electric generating plants with a capacity of at least one megawatt, sorted by energy source.
Wind Turbines (63,003) – Zoom in on wind power plants to see this legend item appear.

Natural Resources

Key Takeaways

Natural gas accounts for 44% of electricity generation in the United States – more than any other source. Despite that, the cost per megawatt hour of electricity for renewable energy power plants is now cheaper than that of natural gas power plants.
The state generating the largest amount of solar energy is California, while wind energy is Texas. The state with the greatest relative solar energy is not technically a state – it’s D.C., where 18% of electricity generation is from solar, closely followed by Nevada at 17%. Iowa leads the country in relative wind energy production, at 45%.
The state generating the most amount of energy from both natural gas and coal is Texas. Relatively, West Virginia has the greatest reliance on coal for electricity (85%), and Rhode Island has the greatest percentage of natural gas (92%).
With 28% of total U.S. energy consumption for transportation, many of the refineries, crude oil and petroleum product pipelines, and terminals on this map are dedicated towards gasoline, diesel, and other fuel production.
Petrochemical production, which is expected to account for over a third of global oil demand growth by 2030, takes the form of chemical plants, ethylene crackers, and natural gas liquid pipelines on this map, largely concentrated in the Gulf Coast.

Electricity generation

Power plants by energy source. Data from EIA.

In terms of the raw number of power plants – solar plants tops the list, with 2,916 facilities, followed by natural gas at 1,747.

Figure 1. Electricity generation by source in the United States, 2019. Data from EIA.

In a void of national leadership on the transition to cleaner energy, a few states have bolstered their renewable portfolio.

How does your state generate electricity?

Figure 2. Electricity generation state-wide by source, 2019. Data from EIA.

Transportation

Transportation Fuel Infrastructure. Data from EIA.

Petrochemicals

This industry is largely concentrated in Texas and Louisiana but rapidly expanding in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia.

On this map, key petrochemical facilities include natural gas plants, chemical plants, ethane crackers, and natural gas liquid pipelines.

Petrochemical infrastructure. Data from EIA.

Ethane crackers process natural gas liquids into polyethylene – the most common type of plastic.

Petrochemical development off the coast of Texas, November 2019. Photo by Ted Auch, aerial support provided by LightHawk.

“The greatest industrial challenge the world has ever faced”

Figure 3. Global Fossil Fuel Consumption. Data from Vaclav Smil (2017)

What will this map look like in the next 30 years?

Fracking in Pennsylvania: Not Worth It

January 7, 2020/2 Comments/in Articles, Petrochemicals & Plastics, Waste, Water, Wells /by Matt Kelso, BA

Let’s take a look at gas production, waste, newly drilled wells, and violations in Pennsylvania in the past year to understand just how precarious the fracking industry is.

Production

View map fullscreen | How FracTracker maps work

Figure 1. Fracked gas production compared to all fracked gas consumption and residential gas consumption in Pennsylvania from 2013 through 2018. Data from ref. Energy Information Administration.

The volume of gas withdrawn from fracked wells in Pennsylvania in just one year is equal to the volume of 3.2 Mount Everests!

Waste

Waste facilities have significant issues such as inducing earthquakes, toxic leachate, and radioactive sediments in streambeds.

Waste Type	Liquid Waste (Barrels)	Solid Waste (Tons)
Basic Sediment	63
Brine Co-Product	247
Drill Cuttings		1,094,208
Drilling Fluid Waste	1,439,338	11,378
Filter Socks		143
Other Oil & Gas Wastes	2,236,750	6,387
Produced Fluid	61,376,465	41,165
Servicing Fluid	17,196	3,250
Soil Contaminated by Oil & Gas Related Spills		25,505
Spent Lubricant Waste	1,104
Synthetic Liner Materials		21,051
Unused Fracturing Fluid Waste	7,077	1,593
Waste Water Treatment Sludge		35,151
Grand Total	65,078,240	1,239,831

Figure 2. Oil and gas waste generated by fracked wells as reported by drillers from November 1, 2018 through October 31, 2019. Data from ref: PA DEP.

Please see the report, Pennsylvania Oil & Gas Waste for more details.

Read the Report

Drilled Wells

Figure 3. Unconventional (fracked) wells drilled from 2005 through December 23, 2019, showing totals by regional office. Data from ref: PA DEP.

Violations

Disturbingly, 2019 was the fifth straight year that the number of violations issued by DEP will exceed the total number of wells drilled.

$Unconventional fracked wells drilled and violations issued from 2005 through 2019$

Figure 4. Unconventional (fracked) drilled wells and issued violations from 2005 through December 2019. Data from ref: DEP.

Violation Code	Incidents	Category
SWMA301 – Failure to properly store, transport, process or dispose of a residual waste.	767	Environmental Health & Safety
CSL 402(b) – POTENTIAL POLLUTION – Conducting an activity regulated by a permit issued pursuant to Section 402 of The Clean Streams Law to prevent the potential of pollution to waters of the Commonwealth without a permit or contrary to a permit issued under that authority by the Department.	613	Environmental Health & Safety
102.4 – Failure to minimize accelerated erosion, implement E&S plan, maintain E&S controls. Failure to stabilize site until total site restoration under OGA Sec 206(c)(d)	595	Environmental Health & Safety
SWMA 301 – MANAGEMENT OF RESIDUAL WASTE – Person operated a residual waste processing or disposal facility without obtaining a permit for such facility from DEP. Person stored, transported, processed, or disposed of residual waste inconsistent with or unauthorized by the rules and regulations of DEP.	540	Environmental Health & Safety
601.101 – O&G Act 223-General. Used only when a specific O&G Act code cannot be used	469	Administrative
402CSL – Failure to adopt pollution prevention measures required or prescribed by DEP by handling materials that create a danger of pollution.	362	Environmental Health & Safety
78.54* – Failure to properly control or dispose of industrial or residual waste to prevent pollution of the waters of the Commonwealth.	339	Environmental Health & Safety
401 CSL – Discharge of pollutional material to waters of Commonwealth.	299	Environmental Health & Safety
102.4(b)1 – EROSION AND SEDIMENT CONTROL REQUIREMENTS – Person conducting earth disturbance activity failed to implement and maintain E & S BMPs to minimize the potential for accelerated erosion and sedimentation.	285	Environmental Health & Safety
102.5(m)4 – PERMIT REQUIREMENTS – GENERAL PERMITS – Person failed to comply with the terms and conditions of the E & S Control General Permit.	283	Environmental Health & Safety
78.56(1) – Pit and tanks not constructed with sufficient capacity to contain pollutional substances.	256	Administrative
78a53 – EROSION AND SEDIMENT CONTROL AND STORMWATER MANAGEMENT – Person proposing or conducting earth disturbance activities associated with oil and gas operations failed to comply with 25 Pa. Code § 102.	247	Environmental Health & Safety
102.11(a)1 – GENERAL REQUIREMENTS – BMP AND DESIGN STANDARDS – Person failed to design, implement and maintain E & S BMPs to minimize the potential for accelerated erosion and sedimentation to protect, maintain, reclaim and restore water quality and existing and designated uses.	235	Environmental Health & Safety
CSL 401 – PROHIBITION AGAINST OTHER POLLUTIONS – Discharged substance of any kind or character resulting in pollution of Waters of the Commonwealth.	235	Environmental Health & Safety
OGA3216(C) – WELL SITE RESTORATIONS – PITS, DRILLING SUPPLIES AND EQUIPMENT – Failure to fill all pits used to contain produced fluids or industrial wastes and remove unnecessary drilling supplies/equipment not needed for production within 9 months from completion of drilling of well.	206	Environmental Health & Safety

Figure 5. Top 15 most frequently cited violations for unconventional drilling operations in Pennsylvania through December 3, 2019. Data from ref: DEP.

Check out our Pennsylvania Shale Viewer map to see if there are violations at wells near you.

Bloated With Gas, Fraught With Trouble

By Matt Kelso, Manager of Data & Technology, FracTracker Alliance

Allegheny County Air Quality Monitoring Project

December 18, 2019/0 Comments/in Air, Articles, Health & Safety /by Erica Jackson

The sites in question are mapped and described below. Click on the arrow to scroll through maps of the different sites.

Study Areas:

North Braddock: Merrion Oil and Gas has proposed a fracking well on the property of the Edgar Thomson Steel Works, near where North Braddock, East Pittsburgh, and North Versailles meet.
Plum Borough: Penneco has proposed to build a wastewater disposal well in Plum Borough. We placed three monitors at homes in areas where the air is likely to be impacted by construction and truck traffic should the wastewater disposal well be installed.
Economy Borough (Beaver County): We monitored around PennEnergy Resource’s B50 well pad, which recently began construction. Of particular concern to residents is the increase in truck traffic along a narrow road in a residential neighborhood that will be used to access the well pad.
Frazer Township: Monitoring took place around the Gulick, Schiller, and Bakerstown well pads. During their monitoring period, there was reported fracking activity on one well, and drilling activity on another.
Elizabeth Township: Monitoring occurred around three EQT and Olympus Energy fracked well pads listed as active; fracking reportedly occurred on one well pad during the monitoring period.
Indiana Township: Monitoring followed the construction of the Miller Jr. fracked well pad.
Stowe Township: Monitoring occurred in Stowe Township, where McKees Rocks Industrial Enterprise (MRIE) is located, and in adjacent McKees Rocks. This facility processes and transports frac sand, which operators use to frack a well by injecting it at extremely high pressures underground.

View a map of the study areas | How FracTracker maps work

What You Need to Know:

PM2.5 is a pollutant small enough to enter our lungs and bloodstream and therefore poses a great risk to human health.
The process of constructing, drilling and fracking a well releases a variety of pollutants, including particulate matter, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and nitrous oxides (NOx).
Allegheny County has some of the worst air quality in the nation. In recent years, the air quality in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, which had been improving since 2005, began to worsen. This is due in part to fracking activities.
There are 163 fracked wells that have been drilled in Allegheny County, all of which pose a threat to human health.
This initial air quality study by Southwest Environmental Health Project and FracTracker found that areas with proposed fracking sites are particularly vulnerable because they already have poor air quality.
Further investigations will need to monitor air quality throughout different stages of development and during different seasons in order to provide meaningful comparisons of changes in air quality that could be correlated with oil and gas development.

Allegheny’s air – from bad to worse

Figure 1. Levels of 24-hour PM2.5 in Allegheny County, from the American Lung Association’s 2019 State of the Air Report

Table 1. Fracked wells in Allegheny County by municipality

Data from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PA DEP), which defines gas wells as unconventional (fracked) or conventional.

Air pollution from the oil and gas industry does not impact everyone equally. An individual’s response to exposure varies depending on factors such as age and health conditions.

Types of Pollutants

Table 2. Reported emissions from Allegheny County gas wells in 2017, from the PA DEP

POLLUTANT	Emission Amount (Tons)
2,2,4-Trimethylpentane	0.00093
Benzene	0.10466
Carbon Dioxide	22982.68774
CO	66.20016
Ethyl Benzene	0.00053
Formaldehyde	0.02366
Methane	714.90485
n-Hexane	0.16083
Nitrous Oxide	0.2332
NOX	270.81382
PM10	8.87066
PM2.5	8.74341
SOX	0.23478
Toluene	0.04636
VOC	21.68682
Xylenes (Isomers And Mixture)	0.03487

Figure 2. Particulate matter diagram, from the US EPA

Methods & Parameters for Analyzing Air Quality

Results

In addition to graphing the results, EHP used the following parameters to analyze the data:

- 1. Frequency of peaks
  2. Duration of peaks
  3. Time between peak exposures
  4. Baseline (level of particles generally found outside when peaks are not occurring)
  5. Total sum (or quantity) of peak exposure

Table 3. EHP/FracTracker sites of air quality investigation in Allegheny County

*The proposed well is near the intersection of East Pittsburgh, North Braddock, and North Versailles

**Monitors were also placed in neighboring McKees Rocks

Discussion

Communities with proposed sites

Communities with constructed well pads

Figure 2. 2017 emissions from Allegheny County gas wells at different stages in the fracking process, reported to the PA DEP

Frac sand facility

Limitations

Get Involved

Many thanks to the Southwest Environmental Health Project for including us as collaborators on this study.

By Erica Jackson, Community Outreach and Communications Specialist

Prizio Increases Transparency in Oil & Gas Data in Allegheny County

December 2, 2019/0 Comments/in News, Press Releases /by Matt Kelso, BA

Want Not, Waste Not? Fossil Fuel Extraction’s Waste Disposal Challenges

October 3, 2019/0 Comments/in Articles, Health & Safety, Waste, Water /by Karen Edelstein

Pennsylvania’s fracking industry is producing record amounts of toxic waste — where does it all go?

Waste that comes back to haunt us

Public Herald’s article includes an in-depth analysis of the issue. Their work is supported by a map of the discharge sites, created by FracTracker.

Trends over time

Let’s look first at overall unconventional drilling waste.

Figure 1. Data summary from FracTracker.org, based on EIA data.

Figure 2: Data summary from FracTracker.org, based on PA DEP data

Why is this? The longer laterals —some approaching 3 miles or more—associated with new wells allow for more gas to be extracted per site.

Comparing apples and oranges?

Recall that dry gas production has increased annually since 2006 (see Figure 1). However, the reported waste quantities from industry have not followed that same trend.

In the following charts, we’ve split out waste from unconventional drilling by solid waste in tons (Figure 3) and liquid waste, in barrels (Figure 4).

Figure 3: Annual tonnage of solid waste from the unconventional oil and gas industry, organized by the state it is disposed in. Data source: PA DEP, processed by FracTracker Alliance

Note the striking difference in disposal information for solid waste, compared with liquid waste, coming from Pennsylvania.

“Disposal Location Unknown”

In looking more closely at the data, we see that:

Prior to 2018, well drillers did not consistently report the locations at which produced water was disposed of or reused. Between 2012 and 2016, a greater volume of unconventional liquid waste went unaccounted for than was listed for disposal in all other locations, combined.
In Ohio, injection wells, where liquid waste is injected into underground porous rock formations, accounted for the majority of the increase in waste accepted there: 2.9 million barrels in 2017, and 5.7 million barrels in 2018 (a jump of 97%).
West Virginia’s acceptance of liquid waste increased significantly in 2018 over 2017 levels, a jump of over a million barrels, up from only 55,000. This was almost entirely due to unreported reuse at well pads.
In 2018, reporting, in general, appears to be more thorough than it was in previous years. For example, in 2017, nearly 692,000 barrels of waste were reused at well pads outside PA, but those locations were not disclosed. Almost 7000 more barrels were also disposed of at unknown locations. In 2018, there were no such ambiguities.

A closer look at Pennsylvania’s fracking waste shipped to New York State

View map full screen | How FracTracker maps work

Solid waste transported to New York State

Figure 5: Known disposal locations (excluding PA and OH) of Pennsylvania’s solid waste. Data source: PA DEP, processed by FracTracker Alliance

Figure 6: Solid waste from unconventional drilling, sent to facilities in NYS. Data source: PA DEP, processed by FracTracker Alliance

Is waste immobilized once it’s landfilled?

Similar levels of radioactivity in leachate have also been noted in leachate produced at the Chemung County Landfill, according to Gary McCaslin, President of People for a Healthy Environment, Inc.

Liquid waste transported to New York State

Figure 7: Known disposal locations (excluding Pennsylvania and Ohio) of Pennsylvania’s liquid waste. Data source: PA DEP, processed by FracTracker Alliance

Figure 8: Liquid waste from unconventional drilling, sent to facilities in New York State. Data source: PA DEP, processed by FracTracker Alliance

New York State says “no” to this toxic legacy

See Earthworks’ recent three part in-depth reporting on national, New York, and Pennsylvania oil and gas waste, with mapping support by FracTracker Alliance.

All part of the big picture

No exceptions. Life on our planet requires it.

We have, at most, 12 years to make a difference for generations to come.

By Karen Edelstein, Eastern Program Coordinator, FracTracker Alliance

Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services

October 1, 2019/0 Comments/in Articles, Health & Safety, Waste /by Guest Author

Guest Blog by Josh Eisenfeld, Director of Marketing with Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services

Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services looks maps the origin of their intake calls and reflects on their geographic distribution as it relates to areas with heavy environmental burdens.

With the help of Ted Auch from FracTracker Alliance we collected zip codes from nearly 600 of intake calls received by Fair Shake and placed them on the map below.

View map fullscreen | How FracTracker maps work

By Josh Eisenfeld, Marketing Director at Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services

Abandoned Wells in Pennsylvania: We’re Not Doing Enough

August 8, 2019/0 Comments/in Articles, Infrastructure, Wells /by Guest Author

By Isabelle Weber, FracTracker Alliance Spring 2019 Intern

Fracking in Pennsylvania: The History

These unplugged abandoned wells are underneath our homes, our schools, and in our own backyards, negatively impacting our health and the environment.

FracTracker’s West Coast Coordinator Kyle Ferrar shows how abandoned wells are hiding all around us in his investigation of downtown Los Angeles. He used an infrared camera to visualize the plumes of methane and other volatile organic compounds spewing out of abandoned wells in the middle of streets.

Dangers of unplugged abandoned wells

Bankruptcy and Bonds

The New Contract

Washington County Case study

View map fullscreen | How FracTracker maps work

These are some of the physical effects of abandoned wells:

Fig 1. A Collapsed Well Opening – A Physical Hazard (photo credit: Friends of Oil Creek State Park)

Fig. 2. Well Spouting Acid Water. Well later plugged by DEP (photo credit: Friends of Oil Creek State Park)

Fig. 3. Oil Seepage (photo credit:(photo credit: Friends of Oil Creek State Park)

Fig. 4. Abandoned Well and Storage Tank (photo credit: Friends of Oil Creek State Park)

Posts

Executive Summary

Recommendations

Table of Contents

Chemistry of Compressor Station Emissions

Health Effects of Compressor Station Emissions

Regional Air Toxins and Cancer Risk in Southwestern Pennsylvania

Measurements of Compressor Station Emissions

Compressor Station Locations

Costs of Compressor Stations and Air Pollution

Major Studies Cited in Text:

Appendix

Support this work

Stay in the know

Fiscal Responsibility

Employment

Environmental & Climate Impacts

Health Concerns

Moving Forward

Learn More

Visualize the petrochemical buildout by exploring FracTracker’s maps.

Attend an informative press conference

Support this work

Stay in the know

Electricity generation

How does your state generate electricity?

Transportation

Petrochemicals

“The greatest industrial challenge the world has ever faced”

Support this work

Stay in the know

Production

Waste

Drilled Wells

Violations

Bloated With Gas, Fraught With Trouble

Support this work

Stay in the know

Study Areas:

What You Need to Know:

Allegheny’s air – from bad to worse

Table 1. Fracked wells in Allegheny County by municipality

Types of Pollutants

Table 2. Reported emissions from Allegheny County gas wells in 2017, from the PA DEP

Methods & Parameters for Analyzing Air Quality

Results

Table 3. EHP/FracTracker sites of air quality investigation in Allegheny County

Discussion

Communities with proposed sites

Communities with constructed well pads

Frac sand facility

Limitations

Get Involved

Support this work

Stay in the know

Waste that comes back to haunt us

Trends over time

Comparing apples and oranges?

“Disposal Location Unknown”

A closer look at Pennsylvania’s fracking waste shipped to New York State

Solid waste transported to New York State

Is waste immobilized once it’s landfilled?

Liquid waste transported to New York State

New York State says “no” to this toxic legacy

All part of the big picture

Support this work

Stay in the know

Support this work

Stay in the know

Fracking in Pennsylvania: The History

Dangers of unplugged abandoned wells

Bankruptcy and Bonds

The New Contract

Washington County Case study

Conclusion

The “Shale Revolution”

The Appalachian Storage Hub

The politics of the ASH – from Columbus and Charleston to Washington DC

State-level support

National-level support