Gas Drilling Awareness for Cortland County
February 20, 2013
Oct 24th, 2012 | By fjgallagher | Category: Fracking, Lead Articles
Natural gas drilling rigs, similar to the one shown here in Colorado, are destroying thousands of acres of forest in Pennsylvania, according to a recent report issued by the U.S. Geological Survey.
Natural gas drilling activity is destroying thousands of acres of forest in Pennsylvania, according to a recent report issued by the U.S. Geological Survey.
“This type of extensive and long-term habitat conversion has a greater impact on natural ecosystems than activities such as logging or agriculture, given the great dissimilarity between gas-well pad infrastructure and adjacent natural areas and the low probability that the disturbed land will revert back to a natural state in the near future,” the U.S.G.S. report states.
Much of the damage can be traced to the consequences of hydraulic fracturing — or “fracking,” as it is called in the parlance of our time — although the extraction of coal-bed methane has also contributed to the ongoing environmental degredation, the report notes.
Ed. note – If you enjoy the content and coverage provided by NaturalGasWatch.org, please take a moment to click on one of the advertisements on the right-hand side of the page. Your support will help us keep the site up and running. Thanks, fj.
Much of the damage, the report states, stems from fragmentation of the existing forest, where a habitat is divided by roads, drilling pads, pipelines and other infrastructure development associated with fracking into smaller, less functional areas.
From the U.S.G.S. report:
Although many human and natural activities result in habitat fragmentation, gas exploration and development activity can be extreme in their effect on the landscape. Numerous secondary roads and pipeline networks crisscross and subdivide habitat structure. Landscape disturbance associated with shale-gas development infrastructure directly alters habitat through loss, fragmentation, and edge effects, which in turn alters the flora and fauna dependent on that habitat. The fragmentation of habitat is expected to amplify the problem of total habitat area reduction for wildlife species, as well as contribute towards habitat degradation.
The picture, below, (Figure 2 from the U.S.G.S. report) illustrates the effect that fragmentation has on a forest.
A photograph from a recent report issued by the U.S. Geological Survey illustrates the degree of damage done to forest land in Pennsylvania by natural gas drilling activity. The report found that natural gas driling activity is a primary force behind the destruction of Pennsylvania forest land.
The bottom line, according to the report: natural gas drilling has profoundly altered the forest in Pennsylvania.
From the U.S.G.S. report:
The overall landscape effects of natural gas development have been substantial. (emphasis added) Over 9,600 Marcellus Shale gas drilling permits and over 49,500 non-Marcellus Shale permits have been issued from 2000 to 2011 in Pennsylvania (Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, 2011) and over 2,300 Marcellus Shale permits in West Virginia (West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey, 2011), with most of the development activity occurring since 2005.
With the accompanying areas of disturbance, well pads, new roads, and pipelines from both types of natural gas wells, the effect on the landscape is often dramatic. Figure 2 (below) shows a pattern of landscape change from forest to forest, interspersed with gas extraction infrastructure. These landscape effects have consequences for the ecosystems, wildlife, and human populations that are colocated with natural gas extraction activities.
Read the complete report here: Landscape Consequences of Natural Gas Extraction in Bradford and Washington Counties, Pennsylvania, 2004–2010
February 15, 2013
SkyTruth Custom Alert FeedThe following SkyTruth Alerts incidents have been reported in your selected geographical area since the last update was sent. |
Administrative violation issued on 2013-02-13 to Southwestern Energy Prod Co in Stevens Twp, Bradford county. 78.12 – Oil or gas well drilled, altered or operated not in accordance with a permit or the regulations.
Tags: PADEP, frack, violation, drilling
Administrative violation issued on 2013-02-13 to Southwestern Energy Prod Co in Stevens Twp, Bradford county. 78.12 – Oil or gas well drilled, altered or operated not in accordance with a permit or the regulations.
Tags: PADEP, frack, violation, drilling
Administrative violation issued on 2013-02-13 to Range Resources Appalachia Llc in Jackson Twp, Lycoming county. 78.56(1) – Pit and tanks not constructed with sufficient capacity to contain pollutional substances.
Tags: PADEP, frack, violation, drilling
Administrative violation issued on 2013-02-13 to Range Resources Appalachia Llc in Cogan House Twp, Lycoming county. 78.56(1) – Pit and tanks not constructed with sufficient capacity to contain pollutional substances.
Tags: PADEP, frack, violation, drilling
Environmental Health & Safety violation issued on 2013-02-05 to Catalyst Energy Inc in Hamilton Twp, McKean county. SWMA301 – Failure to properly store, transport, process or dispose of a residual waste.
Tags: PADEP, frack, violation, drilling
JAMES ALLEN CRIPE reports drilling started on 2013-02-15 00:00:00 at site TRAILER COURT 18 in Pleasant township, Warren county
Tags: PADEP, frack, spud, drilling, oil
CATALYST ENERGY INC reports drilling started on 2013-02-15 00:00:00 at site BIALCZAK LEASE 1945 in Brokenstraw township, Warren county
Tags: PADEP, frack, spud, drilling, oil
VISTA OPR INC reports drilling started on 2013-02-15 00:00:00 at site CHAGRIN 8 17A in Cranberry township, Venango county
Tags: PADEP, frack, spud, drilling, oil
SHEFFIELD LAND & TIMBER CO reports drilling started on 2013-02-15 00:00:00 at site WT 2980 142 in Howe township, Forest county
Tags: PADEP, frack, spud, drilling, oil
SHEFFIELD LAND & TIMBER CO reports drilling started on 2013-02-15 00:00:00 at site WT 2980 140 in Howe township, Forest county
Tags: PADEP, frack, spud, drilling, oil
GAS & OIL MGMT ASSN INC reports drilling started on 2013-02-15 00:00:00 at site LOT 523 12 in township, county
Tags: PADEP, frack, spud, drilling, oil
SkyTruth Custom Alert Feed
January 5, 2013
files.dep.state.pa.us/AboutDEP/AboutDEPPortalFiles/RemarksAndTestimonies/MLK-Testimony-111611.pdf.
Natural Gas Drilling: Pennsylvania’s Perspective
The States’ Regulation of the Natural Gas Industry
Testimony of
Michael L. Krancer
Secretary
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
Department of Environmental Protection
Before the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment,
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
January 2, 2013
Losses of up to 9% show need for broader data on US gas industry’s environmental impact.
Natural-gas wells such as this one in Colorado are increasingly important to the US energy supply.
DAVID ZALUBOWSKI/AP PHOTO
Scientists are once again reporting alarmingly high methane emissions from an oil and gas field, underscoring questions about the environmental benefits of the boom in natural-gas production that is transforming the US energy system.
The researchers, who hold joint appointments with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the University of Colorado in Boulder, first sparked concern in February 2012 with a study1 suggesting that up to 4% of the methane produced at a field near Denver was escaping into the atmosphere. If methane — a potent greenhouse gas — is leaking from fields across the country at similar rates, it could be offsetting much of the climate benefit of the ongoing shift from coal- to gas-fired plants for electricity generation.
Industry officials and some scientists contested the claim, but at an American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting in San Francisco, California, last month, the research team reported new Colorado data that support the earlier work, as well as preliminary results from a field study in the Uinta Basin of Utah suggesting even higher rates of methane leakage — an eye-popping 9% of the total production. That figure is nearly double the cumulative loss rates estimated from industry data — which are already higher in Utah than in Colorado.
“We were expecting to see high methane levels, but I don’t think anybody really comprehended the true magnitude of what we would see,” says Colm Sweeney, who led the aerial component of the study as head of the aircraft programme at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder.
Whether the high leakage rates claimed in Colorado and Utah are typical across the US natural-gas industry remains unclear. The NOAA data represent a “small snapshot” of a much larger picture that the broader scientific community is now assembling, says Steven Hamburg, chief scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) in Boston, Massachusetts.
The NOAA researchers collected their data in February as part of a broader analysis of air pollution in the Uinta Basin, using ground-based equipment and an aircraft to make detailed measurements of various pollutants, including methane concentrations. The researchers used atmospheric modelling to calculate the level of methane emissions required to reach those concentrations, and then compared that with industry data on gas production to obtain the percentage escaping into the atmosphere through venting and leaks.
The results build on those of the earlier Colorado study1 in the Denver–Julesburg Basin, led by NOAA scientist Gabrielle Pétron (see Nature 482, 139–140; 2012). That study relied on pollution measurements taken in 2008 on the ground and from a nearby tower, and estimated a leakage rate that was about twice as high as official figures suggested. But the team’s methodology for calculating leakage — based on chemical analysis of the pollutants — remains in dispute. Michael Levi, an energy analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, published a peer-reviewed comment2 questioning the findings and presenting an alternative interpretation of the data that would align overall leakage rates with previous estimates.
Pétron and her colleagues have a defence of the Colorado study in press3, and at the AGU meeting she discussed a new study of the Denver–Julesburg Basin conducted with scientists at Picarro, a gas-analyser manufacturer based in Santa Clara, California. That study relies on carbon isotopes to differentiate between industrial emissions and methane from cows and feedlots, and the preliminary results line up with their earlier findings.
A great deal rides on getting the number right. A study4 published in April by scientists at the EDF and Princeton University in New Jersey suggests that shifting to natural gas from coal-fired generators has immediate climatic benefits as long as the cumulative leakage rate from natural-gas production is below 3.2%; the benefits accumulate over time and are even larger if the gas plants replace older coal plants. By comparison, the authors note that the latest estimates from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) suggest that 2.4% of total natural-gas production was lost to leakage in 2009.
To see if that number holds up, the NOAA scientists are also taking part in a comprehensive assessment of US natural-gas emissions, conducted by the University of Texas at Austin and the EDF, with various industry partners. The initiative will analyse emissions from the production, gathering, processing, long-distance transmission and local distribution of natural gas, and will gather data on the use of natural gas in the transportation sector. In addition to scouring through industry data, the scientists are collecting field measurements at facilities across the country. The researchers expect to submit the first of these studies for publication by February, and say that the others will be complete within a year.
In April, the EPA issued standards intended to reduce air pollution from hydraulic-fracturing operations — now standard within the oil and gas industry — and advocates say that more can be done, at the state and national levels, to reduce methane emissions. “There are clearly opportunities to reduce leakage,” says Hamburg.
03 January 2013
doi
December 3, 2012
With thanks to Richard Averett for posting info about Concerned Health Professionals of New York, here is my entire statement from the press conference today in Albany with Barbara LIfton, Matt Ryan, Walter Hang, and Roger Downs of the Sierra Club. I haven’t seen any media coverage yet. Sandra
Prepared Remarks, Albany Press Conference, “Cuomo Puts the Cart Before the Horse on Fracking—Elected Officials, Leading Environmental and Health Experts Call on Cuomo to Open Health Review to the Public,” Dec. 3, 2012
I am Sandra Steingraber, biologist at Ithaca College
I saw some of you last Thursday when I was here to announce the launch of Concerned Health Professionals of New York—an initiative of doctors, nurses, and environmental health researchers.
Concerned Health Professionals was launched in response to the secrecy of the ongoing health review, the exclusion of New York State’s own public health experts in the process, and Governor Cuomo’s rejection of our unified demand for a transparent, comprehensive Health Impact Assessment.
Not knowing what documents the three outside health reviewers have been asked by DOH to review, we’ve created a website: www.concernedhealthny.org where we’ve uploaded peer-reviewed studies, reports, and our testimonies and letters to serve as a repository of our many concerns about the consequences of fracking for public health.
Since then, we’ve also uploaded an eight-minute video appeal to the three panelists from three of New York’s leading public health physicians, two nurses, the founder of New York Breast Cancer Network, and myself—an environmental researcher. In this video, we speak directly to the three panelists about our most urgent concerns. These include—
None of these concerns appear in the last iteration of the sGEIS. We have no idea if they are in the current one or are part of documents pieced together in secrecy by the DOH.
Okay. Can I just say that this is crazy? Scientists and doctors creating videos and websites funded out of their own pockets to get information and data to our out-of-state colleagues because our collective knowledge has been entirely ignored by our own government?
But it gets even crazier. On Thursday, we learned that draft regulations were being released. On Friday, we learned that two of the three outside reviews—in whose hands the fate of millions of New Yorkers now lie—are being paid for 25 hours of work. Twenty-five hours is three working days. You cannot even READ all the literature on fracking’s health effects in three days.
So what should be a linear, deliberative process of decision-making—
first, we investigate cumulative health impacts (how many New Yorkers will get sick and die if fracking comes to our state?), then we fold those answers into a larger EIS that examines if said impacts are acceptably mitigatable, and only then, if they are, do those results become the foundation for regulations—
what should be a linear process of decision-making is twisted into a pretzel:
The regs are out and we can comment on them.
But the EIS is not out.
And the health study, which should be its basis, isn’t even done, and it’s being carried out in total secrecy, and, oh, yeah, today’s the reported deadline for the receipt of the outside reviewers review based on unknown scoping and three days’ work.
That’s not just irrational. That’s surreal
In twenty years of serving on state and federal advisory panels and watching science get turned into policy, I have never seen a more shameful process. The scientific process behind the decision to frack or not to frack New York is befitting a Third World dictatorship, not a progressive democracy.
Here’s what needs to happen: The process by which the state of New York is evaluating health effects must be opened up to public scrutiny and input. We must have public hearings. We must define the broad spectrum of pollutants associated with fracking, document their fate in the environment, identify pathways of human exposure, and investigate long-term health consequences.
Until then, the public health community of New York will raise our voices in objection. Because science is supposed to be transparent, and the Governor’s process has been anything but transparent. Because this process feels like a series of reactions to attacks from the fracking industry, rather than a deliberative process for implementing sound public policy.
It is alarming for the administration to attempt to rush the enormous amount of work that must be done into the next 85 days. We hope—and demand—that they will step back, see the dangerous path they are on, step out of the backrooms to engage the public, and keep their promise to follow the science.
GDACC 
