DEP

Tom Shepstone
Shepstone Management Company, Inc.

The recently released Pennsylvania DEP data on water supplies impacted by gas drilling doesn’t live up to all the fractivist hype.

When the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) released information on 243 water wells impacted by gas drilling, fractivists went apoplectic with various versions of “See, we told you so.” Our friend Jim Willis did a quick analysis and concluded it wasn’t so. Now, we’ve done a more thorough analysis and confirmed it – the balloon launched by fractivists is now little more than a fragment of rubber caught on a fence someplace where it still waves in the wind to get attention.

Pennsylvania DEP Data Covers Both Conventional and Unconventional Wells

When the DEP released the data, it did so with this introduction (emphasis added):

The following list identifies cases where DEP determined that a private water supply was impacted by oil and gas activities. The oil and gas activities referenced in the list below include operations associated with both conventional and unconventional drilling activities that either resulted in a water diminution event or an increase in constituents above background conditions. This list is intended to identify historic water supply impacts and does not necessarily represent ongoing impacts. Many of the water supply complaints listed below have either returned to background conditions, have been mitigated through the installation of water treatment controls or have been addressed through the replacement of the original water supply. This list is dynamic in nature and will be updated to reflect new water supply impacts as they are reported to DEP and a determination is made; however, the list will retain cases of water supply impacts even after the impact has been resolved.

A redacted copy of the water supply determination letter/order can be viewed by clicking on the “Complaint #” or “ORDER” cell in the table. Each row on the list represents a single water supply determination. A single water supply determination may be represented by multiple “Complaint #s” (i.e., when more than one Complaint # is included in the same row) and, conversely, separate water supplies may be identified using the same “Complaint #” (i.e., when multiple rows list the same Complaint #). The list also identifies the municipality and county where each water supply is located along with the date of the water supply determination letter or the date the order was issued.

There are several important points to be drawn right from the start. First, notice the list includes issues related to both conventional and unconventional (horizontal drill combined with hydraulic fracturing). Secondly, the list doesn’t represent ongoing impacts, most of the issues having been resolved by corrective actions or having resolved themselves. Thirdly, the list of 243 incidents has to do with water supplies that were impacted, not the number of gas wells with issues.

Pennsylvania DEP Data Distorted by Fractivists

These three facts, easily discernible from merely the introduction, illustrate what an outrageous distortion this typical claim from a blogger writing on the Daily Kos really is (emphasis added):

The state of Pennsylvania has released redacted details of 243 cases of water contamination caused by fracking and related activities by the natural gas industry. Claims made by the fracking industry that they have not contaminated water are utter rubbish. These 243 cases which took place in Pennsylvania between 2008 and 2014 involve a wide range of contamination problems including the contamination of multiple water supply wells by one fracking operation. State officials did not indicate how many more cases of contamination may have occurred since 2008 that are not included in this list.

The writer, George Birchard, of North Carolina, is a down-the-line activist belonging to several predicable Daily Kos groups (e.g., “Meatless Advocates,” “Shut Down the NRA,” “Beyond Kyoto,” etc.) and appropriately goes by the moniker of “Fish Out of Water” and belongs to another group called the “Amateur Left.” There are so many possible comments here, but I don’t want to offend our liberal gas supporters and guest bloggers here, of whom there many, so, let’s move right along.

“Fish Out of Water” clearly knows the difference between hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) and drilling; otherwise he wouldn’t say “caused by fracking and related activities.” He then pulls a Josh Fox bit of deception by using “fracking” to suggest industry claims (facts, actually, facts confirmed by the EPA and several states) to the effect hydraulic fracturing has never contaminated a water supply in the US is nothing more than rubbish. Well, you can’t use drilling impacts that, if any, occur prior to hydraulic fracturing to argue the latter is the source of contamination. That line of reasoning is fraudulent and Birchard knows exactly what he’s doing; deliberately distorting the facts.

Putting the Pennsylvania DEP Data Into Perspective

The other key point from the intro is the fact some single gas well issues generated problems with multiple neighboring water supplies. That’s not a good thing but it also means there weren’t 243 gas wells with issues. Review of the details from the list for this factor indicates there were, at best, perhaps 160 and probably significantly fewer gas well that created the water supply problems. That’s 160 gas wells out of a total of 18,269 conventional and unconventional oil and gas wells drilled since the beginning of 2008 when the DEP report starts – a incident rate of just 0.9%, which, while tiny, likely still overstates things.

The reason the number is likely to be overstated is that Section 208 of the Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Act includes a Presumption of Liability rule that states a well is presumed to have caused pollution or diminution of a water supply located within 2,500 feet of a well (was 1,000 feet before). That means the oil and gas company is held liable regardless of actual responsibility unless it can prove otherwise. It’s one of the very few areas of law where one is required to prove their innocence.

Here’s a good example from Lenox Township in Susquehanna County. There is no evidence other than distance that the drilling caused the problem (high Manganese) and it went away on its own by the time the letter was written. Manganese is ubiquitous and natural occurring in the area so it’s as possible this was a natural occurrence as it is that it was caused by drilling but the law simply presumed in this case it was from drilling. Here is another more recent case from Cross Creek, Washington County and still another from Warsaw Township, Jefferson County. Our review of the data suggests as many as 10% or more of the cases fell into this category where they were presumed to have been caused by drilling, but could have been natural.

We also know roughly 10% of the cases involved temporary conditions that either remedied themselves as water tables perhaps initially disturbed by drilling settled back to normal or were corrected by quick actions of operators and DEP. Here’s a good example from Hickory Township, Forest County. Here’s another from Springville Township, Susquehanna County and one from Bradford Township, McKean County.

Methane was the most common problem, associated with 114 of the 243 water supplies impacted and we know methane is not poisonous. There is no EPA drinking water standard for it, in fact, but there are recommended maximum levels for safety reasons. It’s easily corrected with venting and/or water treatment systems and it occurs naturally throughout much of the Commonwealth, as has been proven time and again.

There is no doubt it can be aggravated by drilling for gas, drilling for oil, drilling for water (see illustration above) and drilling for geothermal heat. Precautions are taken to minimize and mitigate these impacts but they do happen on occasion (about one-half of one percent of the time, based on these numbers), which is a fact the industry has repeatedly acknowledged. However, it has zero to do with hydraulic fracturing, as we noted above.

The other contaminants include Iron (60 mentions), Manganese (54), Aluminum (23) Chlorides (17), Sodium (13), Calcium (9), Barium (7) and Strontium (2). Every one of these naturally occurs in the area. Iron and Manganese are relatively common problems and are discussed more fully here. Aluminum is discussed here and the Water Research Center also provides more information on the others.

None of this to suggest the DEP letters of determination don’t represent real problems. The point is this; they are not unusual problems and have nothing to do with fracking. Moreover, there is nothing new or startling in the data. Much of it was reported earlier, the occurrence rate is tiny at best, many of the problems have been temporary and all of them have been remedied in one fashion or another by on-site improvements, installation of water treatment systems, drilling of new water wells or similar measures at the expense of oil and gas companies. There is very little in the report to indicate problems that couldn’t have just easily (and have been) caused by water well drilling and geothermal well drilling. The Pennsylvania DEP data is simply not what it’s been hyped up to be by fractivists, which is hardly a surprise is it?