Tag Archive for: Pennsylvania

Shale Gas Development on Public Lands

February 25, 2015/by Guest Author

By Mark Szybist and George Jugovic, Jr., PennFuture Guest Authors

Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future (PennFuture) and FracTracker Alliance have collaborated to create a unique GIS map that enables the public to investigate how shale gas development is changing the face of our public lands. The map allows viewers to see, in one place:

Pennsylvania’s State Forests, Parks and Game Lands;
State Forest tracts containing active oil and gas leases;
State Forest areas where the oil and gas rights have been “severed” from the surface lands and are owned by third parties;
State Forest lands that are to be protected for recreational use under the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund Act;
The location of unconventional shale gas wells that have been drilled on State Forest and State Game Lands; and
The boundaries of watersheds that contain one or more High Quality or Exceptional Value streams.

The goal of this project was to develop a resource that would highlight the relationship between unconventional shale gas development and public resources that the State holds in trust for Pennsylvania’s citizens under Article I, Section 27 of the Pennsylvania Constitution. It is our hope that the map will be useful to citizens, conservation groups and others in planning educational, advocacy, and recreational activities.

The Public Lands Map

A full screen version of The Public Lands Map can be found here.

Background

Public lands held in trust by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for citizens of the state are managed by various state agencies and commissions. The vast majority of State lands, though, are managed by just two bodies – the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) and the Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC). Under Act 147 of 2012, the Department of General Services has the authority to lease other lands controlled by the state. In recent years, DCNR and the PGC have made liberal use of their powers to lease State lands for oil and gas development.

DCNR: State Forests, State Parks, and Publicly Owned Streambeds

The DCNR manages approximately 2.2 million acres of State Forest lands and 283,000 acres of State Park lands, as well as many miles of publicly owned streambeds. The Conservation and Natural Resources Act (CNRA) authorizes DCNR to develop oil, gas and other minerals under these lands, so long as the state controls those mineral rights. In some cases, separate persons or entities own the surface of the land and mineral rights. Where DCNR does not control the mineral rights, the owners of the oil and gas have the ability to make reasonable use of the land surface for mineral extraction, subject to restrictions in their property deeds.

Before the start of the Marcellus era, the DCNR leased about 153,268 acres of State Forest lands for mineral development. These leases largely allowed the drilling of “conventional” shallow vertical gas wells. Between 2008 and 2010, the DCNR, under Governor Ed Rendell, leased another 102,679 acres of public lands for natural gas development – but this time the leases were for the drilling of horizontal wells in “unconventional” shale formations using high-volume hydraulic fracturing.

Following the lease sale, DCNR published a report on October 26, 2010 that stated any further gas leasing of State Forest Lands would jeopardize the sustainability of the resource. As a result, Governor Rendell signed Executive Order 2010-05, which placed a moratorium on the sale of any additional leases for oil and gas development on lands “owned and managed by DCNR.

On May 23, 2014, Governor Tom Corbett revoked Governor Rendell’s moratorium, and issued a new Executive Order that allowed the issuance of additional leases for gas development beneath State Lands so long as the leases did not entail “additional surface disturbance on State Forest or State Park lands.” Ultimately, Governor Corbett’s DCNR did not enter into any leases under the new Order. However, between January 2011 and January 2015, Governor Corbett’s DCNR did issue leases for gas extraction beneath a number of publicly owned streambeds, which, according to the Post-Gazette, raised $19 million. Governor Corbett’s DCNR also renewed at least one State Forest lease that otherwise would have expired.

On January 29, 2015, Governor Tom Wolf issued another Executive Order on the matter, which re-established a moratorium on the leasing of State Park and State Forest lands “subject to future advice and recommendations by DCNR.” The Order allows for the continued leasing of publicly owned streambeds. As of the publication of this blog, the DCNR is fighting two lawsuits concerning the leasing of the lands it manages, one by the Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Foundation and one by the Delaware Riverkeeper Network.

Drilling in Loyalsock State Forest, PA. Photo by Pete Stern 2013.

PGC: State Game Lands

The PGC manages more than 1.5 million acres of State Game Lands that it may lease for gas development under the Pennsylvania Game and Wildlife Code. The PGC can also exchange mineral rights beneath State Game Lands for “suitable lands having an equal or greater value.” To date, the PGC has entered into surface and non-surface leases (technically, cooperative agreements for the exercise of oil and gas production rights) for natural gas development totaling 92,000 acres, of which about 45,000 acres were leased since 2008.

Land and Water Conservation Fund Act Lands

The LWCF Act is a federal law administered by the National Park Service (NPS) that authorizes federal grants to state and local governments for “outdoor recreation.” When a state accepts money for a recreational project, it agrees to protect the recreational value of the area supported by the grant. If the state later decides to take or allow actions that would “convert” parts of the protected area to a non-recreational use (1) the state must seek prior approval from the NPS, and (2) the NPS must perform an environmental assessment of the proposed conversion under the National Environmental Policy Act. The NPS may approve a conversion of LWCF-supported lands only if those lands will be replaced with “other recreation properties of at least equal fair market value and of reasonably equivalent usefulness and location.”

Between 1978 and 1986, Pennsylvania received three LWCF grants (Project Numbers 42-00580, 42-01235, and 42-01351) to support recreational opportunities on State Forest lands. Most of the money was used to improve roads in various State Forests to improve access for hunters, hikers and anglers. The LWCF layer on the Public Lands map represents those areas that Pennsylvania agreed to protect in exchange for these grants.

In 2009 and 2010, Pennsylvania entered into leases opening up about 11,718 acres of LWCF-protected areas to unconventional gas development. On the map, these areas can be highlighted by selecting “Land and Water Conservation Fund Lands” and “SF Lands – DCNR Leases”; the purplish, overlapping areas represent the leased LWCF lands.

Governor Corbett’s DCNR refused to recognize that shale gas development on public lands constituted a “conversion” under the LWCF Act. The Sierra Club was the first to identify this problem in a 2011 letter to the NPS and the DCNR. That letter requested, among other things, that the NPS formally determine the extent to which DCNR leasing of LWCF-protected State Forest lands has violated the LWCF Act. Nearly four years later, the NPS has yet to determine whether drilling and fracking of unconventional gas wells and construction of the necessary support structures constitutes a “conversion” and loss of recreational opportunities under the LWCF Act.

Old Loggers Path, a favorite among hikers

A Note on the Map Layers

The sources of the GIS layers in the Public Lands map are explained in the “Details” section of the map. For the most part, PennFuture and FracTracker obtained or created the layers from public sources and through open records requests to the DCNR. In all cases, the layers came from the DCNR with a disclaimer as to the accuracy of the data and a warning about relying on the data.

GIS layers that are not currently on the map, but that this project hopes to add, include:

State Game Lands that have been leased for drilling;
State Park and Game Lands where the oil and gas rights have been “severed” and not controlled by the State;
Publicly owned streambeds that the State has leased for oil and gas development;
Public lands containing areas of significant ecologic value; and
Compressor stations, natural gas and water pipelines, and fresh water and wastewater impoundments.

Persons having access to this data are invited to contact PennFuture or FracTracker.

Pennsylvania Data Discrepancies

February 11, 2015/by Matt Kelso, BA

By Matt Kelso, Manager of Data & Technology

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) publishes oil and gas well data in two different places: on their own website’s Spud Data Report, and in the Oil and Gas Locations file published on the PA Spatial Data Access repository, also known as PASDA. Because these two sources are both ultimately published by PADEP, it would stand to reason that the data sources would match up. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Learn more about the data discrepancies we uncovered:

This map shows those wells in Pennsylvania that only show up on one of the two data sources. Pink dots show wells that appear on PASDA but not the PADEP site, while the reverse is true for blue wells. Click here for the full screen view with additional map tools.

Methodology

Both of these data sources have existed for years. When FracTracker does analyses of PA, we usually use data directly from the PADEP site, because it includes far more information about the wells, such as the spud date, county, municipality, well configuration, and whether or not the well is classified as unconventional. Even though it has less information about each well, the data on PASDA is useful for expediently mapping the inventory of wells in the Keystone State. In this current analysis, we looked at both sources, and found significant discrepancies between the two.

Individual oil and gas wells have been given unique API numbers since the 1950’s. The overwhelming majority of items on both lists that we examined have these numbers, and those that do not have other numeric identifiers in their place. The uniqueness of the data in these columns is what we used to determine the number of wells on both lists. These columns in both data sources were then tested against one another using Microsoft Excel in order to determine which wells were included on both lists.

The data on PASDA is described as “Oil and Gas Locations,” and nothing in available metadata made it clear as to whether wells that were permitted but not yet drilled might be included in this or not. Additionally, we are mostly interested in wells that are still operational, assuming that there might be accuracy issues for historical wells in an industry that has been operational in the state since before the Civil War. We did, however, include orphaned and abandoned wells, as they remain a source of impact throughout the state.

Summary

Number of wells in PA in various categories. For brevity, “Total wells – Drilled and not plugged” is shown as “TW-DnP.”

We found 3,315 records of drilled, unplugged wells with location information on the PASDA dataset that are not on the PADEP search tool, and 96 such wells on the PADEP site that aren’t found on PASDA. Additionally, there are 35,434 drilled and unplugged wells in the PADEP data that lack location data, although six of these wells are actually on the PASDA site, meaning that there is some location data for them somewhere at PADEP.

For those of you who might be looking for discrepancies in our discrepancy table, one might expect the number of both wells that appear on both lists (the second to last row on the chart) to be identical. The biggest reason that they are not is that some wells appear in the PASDA dataset multiple times. There are 6,997 fewer unique wells than there are entries on the full file, or a 95.74% match rate. In comparison, the PADEP spud report only has 19 duplicates for over 204,000 wells, a 99.99% match between the number of wells and the number of records. Indeed, when we filter for unique wells, the difference between the two lists shrinks to only 40 records, which might be explained by differences is well statuses that were used to shape our analysis.

This chart shows the number of wells drilled per year in Susquehanna County, through 2/11/15.

Number of wells drilled per year in Susquehanna Co., through 2/11/15.

Undoubtedly, it will take some effort to get the two datasets to reflect the full set of wells in PA, but that is certainly a task than can be accomplished. The wells lacking location data are likely to be much more of a challenge. If we include all status types, there are 75,508 wells on the spud report that lack latitude and longitude values altogether, leaving us with only the county and municipality to determine where these wells are located. Hopefully, this crucial data exists somewhere in the PADEP inventory, and these wells are not in fact lost.

Finally, there are a couple of things to note about dates. Since the PASDA dataset does not include spud dates, it is impossible to determine the age of the majority of the mismatched wells. Looking at the pink dots on the interactive map above, though, it is clear that a large number of these mismatched PASDA wells are in the northeastern corner of the state that has been booming since the recent development of the Marcellus, but saw little to no development before that time – at least according to the spud report.

Of the 96 wells that are on the spud report but not PASDA, 67 are given the date “1/1/1800,” which seems to be a default date; over 94,000 wells on the report have this listed as the spud date. Most of the other wells that don’t match are relatively old wells, with spud dates ranging between 1960 and 1984. One of these wells was drilled on May 6, 1999 though, and four more were drilled on August 19, 2014.

The mismatched data can be accessed here for those who are interested.

A Bird’s Eye View of Pipeline Oppositions

January 8, 2015/by FracTracker Alliance

By Samantha Malone, FracTracker Alliance

New York State is not the only area where opposition to fracking and its related activities is emerging. A 108-mile proposed PennEast pipeline between Wilkes-Barre, PA and Mercer County, New Jersey is facing municipal movements against its construction, as well. The 36-inch diameter pipeline will likely carry 1 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day. According to some sources, this proposed pipeline is the only one in NJ that is not in compliance with the state’s standard of co-locating new pipelines with an existing right-of-way.¹

PennEast Pipeline Oppositions

Below is a dynamic, clickable map of said opposition by FracTracker’s Karen Edelstein, as well as documentation associated with each municipality’s current stance:

Click here to view map and legend fullscreen.

Additional Projects and Pushback

In Ohio, many communities are working on similar projects to prevent over 40,000 miles of proposed pipelines according to recent news reports.

And in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, municipalities are working to ban, reroute, or regulate heavily the Northeast Energy Direct Pipeline (opposition map shown below):

Northeast Energy Direct Proposed Pipeline Paths and Opposition Resolutions in MA & NH

Why is this conversation important?

Participation in government is a beneficial practice for citizens and helps to inform our regulatory agencies on what people want and need. This surge in opposition against oil and gas activity such as pipelines or well pads near schools highlights a broader question, however:

If not pipelines, what is the least risky form of oil and gas transportation?

Oil and gas-related products are typically transported in one of four ways: Truck, Train, Barge, or Pipeline.

Drilling mud spill from truck accident

Lac-Mégantic oil train derailment

Using a barge to transport frac sand

Gas pipeline construction in PA forest

Trucks are arguably the most risky and environmentally costly form of transport, with spills and wrecks documented in many communities. Because most of these well pads are being built in remote areas, truck transport is not likely to disappear anytime soon, however.

Transport by rail is another popular method, albeit strewn with incidents. Several, major oil train explosions and derailments, such as the Lac-Mégantic disaster in 2013, have brought this issue to the public’s attention recently.

Moving oil and gas products by barge is a different mode that has been received with some public concern. While the chance of an incident occurring could be lower than by rail or truck, using barges to move oil and gas products still has its own risks; if a barge fails, millions of people’s drinking water could potentially be put at risk, as highlighted by the 2014 Elk River chemical spill in WV.

So we are left with pipelines – the often-preferred transport mechanism by industry. Pipelines, too, bring with them explosion and leak potential, but at a smaller level according to some sources.² Property rights, forest loss and fragmentation, sediment discharge into waterways, and the potential introduction of invasive species are but a few examples of the other concerns related to pipeline construction. Alas, none of the modes of transport are without risks or controversy.

Footnotes

Colocation refers to the practice of constructing two projects – such as pipelines – in close proximity to each other. Colocation typically reduces the amount of land and resources that are needed.
While some cite pipelines as relatively safe, incidents do occur quite often: ~1.6 incidents per day.

Has our beer been fracked?

December 9, 2014/by FracTracker Alliance

By Matt Unger and Gianna Calisto, FracTracker PA Interns

Recently, a Grist.com article, entitled Hey! Did somebody frack my favorite beer? caught our attention here at FracTracker Alliance. In the piece, a concerned citizen questioned whether or not fracking could be affecting what many consider to be the crown jewel of Pennsylvania brewing – Yuengling. The author responded very thoroughly, but needed a map to help show the locations of breweries closest to drilling. To help identify any potential problems and hopefully allow the Commonwealth’s beer drinkers to drink easily tonight, we’ve pulled together such a map.

The PA Beer and Unconventional Drilling Map

Click on the map to explore the breweries and nearby drilling activity

On this map you will see all of the drilled wells (orange), permitted wells (purple), and breweries / brewpubs that we could find in Pennsylvania as of 11-16-2014. The data was gathered from the PA DEP website and The Beer Mapping Project, as well as from a tool our map below contains that allows the viewer to measure distances between two points.

The breweries/brewpubs in the South Central and South Eastern parts of the state are located quite a long distance away from unconventional well pads. This means that Yuengling is likely safe so long as there are no pipeline or traffic incidents nearby!

Even the other areas of Pennsylvania show that brewing near areas of fracking is relatively uncommon. However, there are a few exceptions, particularly in the North Eastern and South Western parts of the state.

Select Results

Yuengling Brewery: 38 Miles from the nearest permitted well, 40 miles from the nearest drilled well.
Iron City Brewing Company: 12 miles from the nearest permitted well, 11.7 miles from the nearest drilled well. Both well sites are upstream from the brewery.
Nimble Hill Brewing Company: 0.5 miles from nearest drilled and permitted well

Use the measure tool on the fullscreen map to explore more about PA brewing and its proximity to drilling.

Things to Consider

The Grist article that we referred to earlier did a great job at outlining some of the risks of drilling and caveats to supporting your favorite brewery. Simply being located near a drilling site does not necessarily mean that the area’s water and air are polluted, but it is a risk. In addition to the points that Grist made, keep in mind that fracking can have other, more indirect effects on the beer industry; well pads are not the only places where effects on the environment can be seen. Spills and traffic involving the transportation of drilling resources, products, and waste pose very serious risks through the areas that these items are transported. This intense industrial activity can also give off localized air pollution. The map above only begins to highlight all of the potential beer-scare scenarios, unfortunately.

If you do feel that your favorite beer is being affected by nearby drilling activity, there are very easy things that you can do, as the Grist article explains. In the mean time, we at FracTracker will happily taste test each PA brewery’s product should the need arise!

If there are other maps that you would like to see made showing where drilling is located near you, just let us know.

Email us

Updated PA Data and Trends

December 8, 2014/by Matt Kelso, BA

By Matt Kelso, Manager of Data and Technology

The FracTracker Alliance periodically takes a deeper look into the unconventional oil and gas data in Pennsylvania, in order to provide updates for some frequently requested statistics on the industry. Here we provide updated PA data and trends as of December 4, 2014. Since unconventional drilling began in the Commonwealth permits have been issued to drill 15,573 unconventional wells, according to data from the Pennsylvania DEP. Many – 8,696 (56%) – of those permits have actually been drilled. In terms of violations, there have been 5,983 entries on the statewide Compliance Report for unconventional wells throughout the state, which are attributed to 1,790 distinct wells.

Pennsylvania Shale Viewer Map

Please click here for the full screen version, with additional map tools and controls.

Additional Stats

The number of permits, wells, and violations vary significantly from month to month, but each category is well off of its peak. The largest number of unconventional permits issued in a single month was 402, which was in December 2010, more than twice as many as were issued last month. In that year, there were six months with 300 or more permits issued, whereas there has only been one such month to date in 2014.

PA unconventional O&G activity per month from Jan. 2009 to Nov. 2014. Source: PADEP

The 210 wells spudded (drilled) in August 2011 represents the high water mark, and is more than two times the amount of wells drilled last month. In the 28 months between March 2010 and June 2012, the industry failed to spud 100 wells only once, reaching 98 in April 2011. In the first 11 months of 2014, that plateau was missed three times, with a low of 58 spuds in February.

There was a significant spike in violations appearing on the compliance report from December 2009 through August 2011. More than 100 violations were issued in 17 out of 21 months, including 196 in March 2010. The number of violations issued has slowed down considerably since then, with November 2014 being the 34th straight month with fewer than 100 violations. Only 14 violations were issued in June 2014.

Violations per Well (VpW)

Unconventional violations per well by county in PA, showing the 10 counties with the largest number of violations. Counties with an above average Violations per Well (VpW) score are highlighted in red.

We often ask whether drilling is more problematic in some areas than others. Since the number of wells varies depending upon the location, we must approach this question by looking at the number of violations issued per well drilled (VpW). However, there is an important caveat to consider. Put simply, what is a violation? The Pennsylvania DEP publishes a Compliance Report for unconventional wells, which has 5,983 incidents listed from 2000 through December 4, 2014. However, it used to be common for the DEP to lump several incidents into the same Violation ID number, although this is not the case for more recent infractions. When the DEP counts violations issued, they look at the total number of unique Violation ID numbers that have been issued, not the total number of incidents on the report. Here, we include the more inclusive list of items on the compliance report.

Of the 10 counties with the largest number of violations issued, only 3 counties have a violations per well mark below the statewide average. Notably, each of those three counties are located in Southwestern Pennsylvania. It is unclear from these numbers what is going on in Potter County, but clearly there is a significant problem in that location – with almost three violations issued per well drilled, Potter County has a VpW score 4.3 times the statewide average.

Operator Trends

Before we look at the operators with the most violations, there is an additional caveat to consider: It is relatively common for wells to change hands over their operational lifetimes. This characteristic could be due to one company buying another out, or simply transferring some of their assets. Still, wells changing from one operator to another is a normal aspect of the oil and gas industry. Such a fact matters for this analysis because while violations issued always stick with the responsible party in the DEP data, the name of the operator changes on the Spud Report to the current operator.

Unconventional violations per well by operator in PA, showing the 10 operators with the largest number of violations. Operators with an above average Violations per Well (VpW) score are highlighted in red.

Because of how these datasets are maintained, we see that East Resources has 261 violations for zero wells, which is of course an impossibly large ratio. That is because East sold off its stake in the Marcellus to Royal Dutch Shell, which does business as SWEPI in Pennsylvania. SWEPI, by the way, is 13th on the list of violations in its own right, with 154 violations for 675 wells, resulting in a 0.23 VpW. If the legacy violations for the old East wells were included, the result would be a 0.61 ViW score, which is almost three times as high, but still below the statewide average. FracTracker doesn’t do the analysis that way, both because it is unfair to the new operator to charge them with violations that they had nothing to do with, as well as being nearly impossible to keep track of the various transactions that result in wells changing hands over the years.

Cover image by Pete Stern, 2013.

Oil Trains Passing Through Pittsburgh

December 2, 2014/by FracTracker Alliance

A Pilot Train Count

By Samantha Malone – Manager of Education, Communications, & Partnerships

FracTracker Alliance and the CREATE Lab at CMU recently launched a pilot project to track the transportation of volatile crude oil as it passes through Pennsylvania and specifically the Pittsburgh region.

For a bit of background, we were specifically interested in how many cars marked with either a 1075 or 1267 placard (shown below). 1075 placards designate cars that are carrying or recently carried (not yet cleaned out) butane, LPG, propane, or a flammable gas. Alternatively, 1267 placards are warning signs for cars carrying petroleum crude oil or some sort of flammable liquid.

DOT Placard 1075 Butane, LPG, Propane, Flammable Gas, Class 2

DOT Placard 1267 Petroleum Crude Oil, Flammable Liquid, Class 3

Oil Train Counts

Over 11 hours we counted 28 trains, 10 of which contained at least one car with the 1075 or 1267 placard. Most of these trains were quite long, with 28 trains hauling 2,874 cars.

The largest inbound train with the 1267 placard that we identified and estimated to be full was hauling 97 crude tankers. If they were indeed full, this train carried between 2.5 and 3.4 million gallons of crude oil. As a point of reference, the Lac-Mégantic derailment that occurred in 2013 in Quebec and killed 47 people was only carrying 74 Bakken crude cars.

Of the 2,874 cars that we counted, 360 were carrying some sort of oil product. Of those oil cars, approximately 70% were of the 1267 variety (Figure 1).

Ratio of oil cars to total over 11 hours

Figure 1. Ratio of oil cars to total documented by volunteers in Pittsburgh, PA over 11 hours

Speed Matters

The fastest oil train that we observed was going approximately 50 MPH. This train was likely full, based on load estimates and the direction it was traveling. This speed violates a voluntary compliance that crude trains run <40 MPH through high-threat areas. A train that derailed in Lynchburg, VA in April was traveling just 24 mph. Our counting location would likely qualify as a high-threat area, as we were near Neville Island, relatively close to ALCOSAN and the City of Pittsburgh, and just a few yards from the Ohio River and residential homes.

While Pittsburgh certainly has its share of oil trains, concern over the dangers that these trains pose to towns along its tracks extends far beyond the Pittsburgh area. Groups as far as California have gathered together to monitor train traffic. We hope that by tracking and monitoring the number of oil trains over time, we can begin to understand the risks that these trains pose should an incident occur.

The Data Collection Process

Here is how we collected the above data: On October 21^st our staff, interns, and generous volunteers spent designated shifts observing the passing of trains and the contents of their cars between about 7:30 AM and 6:30 PM. Under the cover of a pop-up shelter, teams of at least three participants videotaped trains as they passed in either direction, counted and recorded the number of cars that they carried, and most importantly identified and counted specific placards that labeled individual cars as oil-carrying.

Many thanks to the groups who helped with this pilot count: volunteer citizens, Group Against Smog and Pollution, Three Rivers Waterkeeper, Women for a Healthy Environment, our interns from Pitt and Duquesne, and CMU staff.

The CREATE Lab then reviewed and analyzed the collected information and video feed. You can take a look at some of the high-resolution video feed they were able to collect with their BreatheCam. If you have specific questions about the train counting protocol or would like to set up one of your own, please contact us.

About Us

FracTracker Alliance is a non-profit with an office in the Pittsburgh area whose mission is to share maps, data, and analyses to communicate impacts of the global oil and gas industry and to inform actions that positively shape our energy future. www.fractracker.org

The Community Robotics, Education and Technology Empowerment Lab (CREATE Lab) explores socially meaningful innovation and deployment of robotic technologies and is based out of Carnegie Mellon University. www.cmucreatelab.org

Conventional and unconventional wells in PA

Over 1.2 Million Pennsylvanians Within 1/2 Mile of a Well

October 30, 2014/by Matt Kelso, BA

Aging well in McKean County, PA. Source: saveourstreamspa.org

One of the potentially troubling aspects of oil and gas development is that there are usually people who live in the vicinity of the wells. Pennsylvania now has over 8,000 active unconventional wells; there are any number of issues that can occur with these modern, industrial-scale sites, including road degradation, contaminated water, and health impacts, among others. In addition, there are over 93,000 of the smaller, conventional wells in operation throughout the Commonwealth. While these garner far less attention than their unconventional counterparts, they are also prone to producing similar impacts, not to mention that since many of them are older wells, they not only have potentially been subject to deterioration and occasional neglect, but were constructed during a period with less stringent requirements than are currently expected.

Petroleum engineers are now capable of drilling horizontally for tens of thousands of feet. For the most part, however, this technology is employed to maximize production, rather than to ameliorate impacts on people who live near the product. But who are these people? To help to answer this question, the FracTracker Alliance calculated the number of people living in a half-mile radius around active wells in the state.

More than 1.2 million Pennsylvanians live within the impact area.

Of the 93,754 wells that have been drilled in the state since 1950 that have not yet been plugged, the Pennsylvania DEP only has location data for 79,118 of them. All but one of the 14,636 missing locations are for wells that are categorized as Conventional. While one must presume that there is some overlap in coverage within the half-mile zone, the extent of this region – and therefore the population that lives within it – cannot be determined.

Fig. 1. PA Populations Near Oil and Gas Wells. Click here to access written description and additional map tools.

To maximize the reliability of our calculations, this map was created using a custom Albers equal-area projection centered on Pennsylvania. A half-mile buffer around each well type was created, and the resulting layer was clipped to Census tract data. The ratio of the smaller clipped area to the full Census tract area was calculated, and that ratio was then multiplied by the population totals from the 2010 Census to obtain our population estimates of the half-mile zone. The area in the study area is larger than six states, while the calculated population is larger than that of eight states.

Of the 79,118 active oil and gas wells in PA for which location data are available, we determined the area and estimated the population within a half mile radius. Note that some regions are with a half-mile of both conventional and unconventional wells.

Fig. 2. Number of people in PA near oil and gas wells (79,118 active wells for which location data are available). Note that some regions are with a half-mile of both conventional and unconventional wells.

The county most impacted, in terms of area, for unconventional wells is Bradford, with 353 square miles (See Figure 2). Washington County had the most people living in the zone, however, with 20,566. For conventional wells, the drilling landscape is the largest in Indiana County, affecting 761 square miles, while Erie County has the most people in the half-mile zone, with 212,900. When considering all wells together, the numbers are almost identical to conventional wells. Indiana County leads with 762 square miles, while the drill zone in Erie County represents 211,903 people, or 76% of the county’s population in 2010.

Digging into Waste Data

October 22, 2014/by FracTracker Alliance

By Katie Mattern, FracTracker Summer Intern

Seeing is believing, as the saying goes. Without physically observing the amount of waste generated from hydraulic fracturing of unconventional oil and gas wells, it is difficult to comprehend the volume and scope of the waste produced.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) makes a considerable amount of waste production data publicly available, speaking to the quantities of fluids and solids produced by 25 oil and gas operators across 25 counties. This figure, however, is only about 40% of all of the operators according to StateImpactPA. Also, complete data is not available for the 25 companies that are included, but let’s dig into some waste data simply as an exercise.

Dig Into Basic Cabot Waste Statistics

In order to gain a sense for industry trends we decided to look at data pertaining to Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation, specifically, whose entire 2013 inventory of oil and gas wells were in Susquehanna County and the surrounding region. The first and second halves of 2013 contain fairly complete records for Cabot – such as well location, waste facility location, waste type, waste quantity, and disposal method. It is interesting to note that in the comments section, all but a few of the well permit sites read “Entire water fraction of waste stream recycled at a centralized treatment plant for reuse by Cabot,” even for drill cuttings that were taken to a landfill.

The following analysis focuses on the waste generated by 264 Cabot wells during this period. All of Cabot’s unconventional oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania during 2013 were in Susquehanna County and the surrounding region.

Waste Produced

In the first 6 months of 2013 (Period 1), liquid waste – consisting of produced fluid, servicing fluid, hydraulic fracturing fluid (frac fluid) waste, and drilling fluid waste – totaled 745,898 barrels (Bbl) or over 30,000,000 gallons. Solid waste – or drill cuttings – totaled 51,981 tons.¹ To put this into perspective, 745,898 Bbls is equivalent to the water usage requirements of about 4 wells in West Virginia.² The 51,981 tons of drill cuttings weighs about the same as the average amount of garbage produced by 65,029 Americans per year, or 1.5 times the population of Susquehanna County. The fluid waste is also enough to fill approximately 48 Olympic swimming pools.

Period 2 (July through December) of 2013, consisting of 319 reporting wells, experienced a 77% increase in liquid waste, climbing past the 1 million Bbl mark to 1,340,143 Bbl. This figure is the equivalent of filling almost 85 Olympic swimming pools. Similarly, drill cuttings increased to 96,165 tons, almost double the amount generated in Period 1. The total amount of waste generated by Cabot for the entire year yields more than 2 million Bbl of liquid waste and nearly 150,000 tons of solid waste from drill cuttings¹ – more than 130 Olympic swimming pools worth of water and a weight of solid waste equivalent to the average waste generated by more than 120,000 American per year- over 2.8 times the population pf Susquehanna County (see infographic below).

Waste Composition

According to Cabot’s waste data, most of the liquid waste is made up of produced fluid,¹ which is the saline water that returns to the surface as a byproduct of the drilling process. This fluid can be up to 10 times saltier than ocean water and can also be radioactive.³ Frac fluid waste³ contributed to the next largest amount of waste, followed by drilling fluid waste and servicing fluid. Produced fluid tripled from Period 1 to Period 2, while frac fluid waste remained fairly steady, and drilling fluid waste decreased slightly. However, the amount of servicing fluid waste generated between the first and second half of 2013 increased more than 12 times.¹ Overall, the following increases were seen between Period 1 and Period 2 in 2013:

Fluid waste from hydraulic fracturing rose by nearly 80%
Solid waste rose by 85%
The number of unconventional oil and gas reporting wells only increased by about 20%, from 264 to 319.

Examining the data from FracFocus that is available for these reporting wells,⁴ it is interesting to note that the average true vertical depth of the wells decreased by about 100 feet between the two periods. Therefore, it is difficult to understand why the amount of drill cuttings increased by 85% in Period 2. Why is there such a large increase in both solid and liquid waste between these two periods when there was only a 20% increase in the number of wells? There are various theories that could result in such a dramatic increase in period 2 compared to the 6 months prior, including but not limited to:

The use of more liquids for the construction or drilling processes,
Longer lateral distances per horizontal well,
More lax operating procedures,
More detailed reporting by Cabot, and/or
Stricter reporting/enforcement by the PADEP.

Waste Impoundment – Photo by Pete Stern 2013

Waste Produced Means Waste Transported

Although Cabot is responsible for producing large amounts of waste, they also are recycling their liquid waste (as is listed for every site in the Period 2 data). To do so, the company transports their waste to a centralized treatment plant. There, the water is filtered so that it can be mixed with more freshwater and chemicals and be reused at another well site. However, hauling so much fluid to the centralized treatment plant requires numerous trips by tanker trucks, as well as dump trucks and trailer trucks taking drill cuttings to landfills. Some treatment facilities for PA waste are located as far away as Ohio, West Virginia, and New York. Cabot trucks travelled approximately 114,000 miles⁵ in Period 1 of 2013, and over 1,122,000 miles were travelled in Period 2 of 2013. The total miles travelled to transport Cabot’s waste is equivalent to almost 50 times around the earth – for one company in one state, operating in only two counties.¹

Additional Considerations

Further analysis should examine the air pollution and carbon footprint generated from such extensive traffic. The miles make a difference, considering that a highly efficient tractor trailor only gets ~10 miles per gallon.

While reusing the majority of liquid waste in an effort to reduce the amount of fresh water needed for hydraulic fracturing is a positive step, transporting recycling water by truck still results in fuel used, pollutants emitted, and traffic impacts.

Cabot Oil and Gas Corp. was the second largest unconventional shale gas producer in PA behind Chesapeake Appalachia LLC, which had more than 809 reporting wells in Period 2 of 2013. With a total of 62 companies operating in PA at this time,⁶ the cumulative effects of waste transportation undoubtedly add up. Serious efforts should be made on the part of all oil and gas companies to reduce their waste and provide accurate and timely waste reports.

References and Resources

Data obtained from the PA DEP Oil and Gas Reporting Website
Data originally posted on FracTracker.org
Data obtained from New York State Water Resources Institute
True vertical depth measurements are missing for many of the sites in Period 1. Data obtained from FracFocus
Miles calculated in Microsoft Excel using formula obtained from Blogspot.com
Data obtained from StateImpact Pennsylvania

Help Us to Track Oil Trains in Pittsburgh and Beyond

October 15, 2014/by FracTracker Alliance

Call for Volunteers

FracTracker Alliance and the CREATE Lab at CMU are seeking volunteers to track oil trains on October 21^st near Pittsburgh, PA for 2-hour segments from 7:00am – 7:00pm.

Approximately 400,000 barrels of oil are transported daily from the west, following tracks from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale Play, which typically run through populated urban areas such as Pittsburgh. These trains have been known to derail and cause immense damage. The most recent of cases occurred in Québec in July of 2013, when a derailed train and the subsequent explosions resulted in the deaths of 47 people. The transportation of volatile crude oil from western states to major cities up and down the Eastern seaboard poses a major risk to any town or city through which these trains pass. FracTracker and affiliated groups want to understand the true risk that these volatile train cars pose to our region.

FracTracker and CREATE Lab will use the data collected during this project to analyze the frequency and risk of crude oil freight trains passing through the Pittsburgh area, but we need your help.

We are looking for volunteers that can commit to a two-hour shift throughout the day on October 21st. Volunteers will be equipped with a video camera, tripod, and of course coffee and snacks in order to record the passing of trains in either direction throughout a two-hour shift. The video footage will allow us to identify a plaque that is required to be displayed on cars carrying oil, as well as whether the cars are empty or full.

If you are interested in volunteering with FracTracker and this freight train project, follow the link above to sign up for a shift. Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions or concerns at (412) 802-0273 or Malone@FracTracker.org. We hope to see you there!

About Us

Comparing Unconventional Drilling in Southwestern PA

September 22, 2014/by FracTracker Alliance

By Matt Unger, GIS Intern, FracTracker Alliance

We recently received a request for unconventional (fracking) drilling data in Southwestern Pennsylvania counties and municipalities. Specifically, the resident wanted to know the following information:

Number of drilled wells in Southwestern PA counties, and in each municipality,
How many wells are producing natural gas in each municipality, and
The number of well violations reported there.

The following counties in Southwestern PA were studied (based on available electronic data): Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Cambria, Fayette, Greene, Indiana, Somerset, Washington, and Westmoreland.

The well production data was compiled from a production report found on the Pennsylvania DEP Office of Oil and Gas website. This report detailed production values from unconventional gas wells statewide from January 2014 – June 2014. The well violation data was compiled using the Pennsylvania DEP Office of Oil and Gas’s interactive Oil and Gas Compliance report. From here, a compliance report was created using the following criteria: All PA regions, counties, and municipalities, all well operators, unconventional wells only, and wells inspected from 1/1/2000 – 9/9/2014.

Drilling Data Trends

Once all of the data was compiled, we created a spreadsheet that included a ratio of violations/wells for each municipality and county. Below are a few observations that stood out to us, followed by possible explanations for what has been reported.

Slightly less than 1/3 of all wells drilled in the 11 counties selected for this analysis have committed some sort of violation (.31).
The ratio of violations to wells drilled in Somerset County is 1.38, by far the largest ratio discovered. This means than more than one violation has been cited for every well drilled in that area, but that does not mean that every well carries with it a violation. The second largest ratio would be Cambria County at 1.00.
If you break down the numbers and look at municipality trends, the largest violation/wells ratio by municipality is found in Stewart Township, Fayette County (9.00). There have been 18 reported violations in association with the 2 wells drilled in the area.
Of the 60 municipalities that recorded no violations, South Buffalo Township in Armstrong County has the most wells drilled with 20.
Across the 11 counties studied, Allegheny County has the lowest ratio of violation/wells (.007).
Violations were reported in Somerset Township, Somerset County. No wells were drilled in this area, however.
Violations were reported in Wayne Township, Greene County, yet no wells were reported to be drilled in the municipality.

Explaining Some Data Caveats

Why is Allegheny County seeing such a low violation/well ratio?

Across the 11 counties studied, Allegheny County has the lowest ratio of violation/wells (.007).

Allegheny is the most populated county studied in Southwestern PA. Oil and gas drillers in the county, therefore, have the largest audience watching them. This may be encouraging the drillers to be more cautious or follow rules and regulations more strictly. Another possible explanation is that inspectors may be more lenient when reporting violations in in Allegheny County. Additionally, drillers operating primarily in Allegheny County may be are more likely to or are more capable of drilling according to the regulations. A final possibility is that Allegheny County is one of the last counties in this region to be heavily drilled, perhaps allowing for more best practices to be implemented on site compared to well pads established early on.

Violations With No Wells?

Violations were reported in Somerset Township, Somerset County. No wells were drilled in this area, however. These violations could have occurred when constructing the well pad. If construction has stopped at this site since the violation, there would not have been any wells drilled. Additionally, there may be an error in the dataset as to the actual location (e.g. county) of the well pad.

Violations were reported in Wayne Township, Greene County, yet no wells were reported to be drilled in the municipality. The PA DEP has informed FracTracker that these violations were actually reported for a well pad located in Center Township, Greene County. The entry for Wayne Township was a recording error on their part. Our data has been updated to reflect the proper number of violations reported in Center Township, as well as the removal of any activity in Wayne Township.

Download the Spreadsheet

The spreadsheet we supplied to this resident can be downloaded as a compliance report.

Updated PA Map

Explore our map of PA unconventional wells and violations by clicking on the map below:

Last updated: September 19, 2014