Misrepresenting shale gas

Misrepresentation building in the eastern US threatens to limit a technology-based, multiple-location gas play that's reshaping energy markets in ways that benefit US interests such as national security, air quality, employment, and tax receipts. It's the allegation that drilling and completing wells in gas-bearing shales threaten subsurface supplies of drinking water. If not discredited, repeated falsehoods will coalesce into a political force able to stop the most promising development in generations for US energy supply.

To the good fortune of the producing industry and its customers, a company facing resistance to its drilling in the Marcellus shale is calling nonsense what it is. Cabot Oil & Gas Corp.'s struggle in Pennsylvania differs from the usual fight over components of fluids used in hydraulic fracturing. In Pennsylvania, the operator faces a lawsuit and regulatory pressure for allegedly causing methane seepage that led to a January 2009 explosion at a Susquehanna County residence.

Other US producers should not dismiss Cabot's struggles as an isolated dispute. Hydraulic fracturing is under study by an aggressive federal agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, that earlier ruled it safe. Sixty years of safe practice, effective state oversight, and simple facts—such as that substances other than water and sand constitute tiny fractions of frac fluids and enter the subsurface thousands of feet below aquifers—should be enough to hold regulators at bay. But an operation that supposedly leaks methane into drinking water and makes houses explode is a more-easily imagined menace that environmentalist publicity machines can turn into perverse influence at EPA and Congress.

So Cabot isn't defending just itself when it fights back against misrepresentation in Pennsylvania, starting with affidavits from responders to the alleged 2009 incident saying they found no sign of explosion or fire. And gas in drinking water? It's a long-standing phenomenon in that part of Pennsylvania, a result of shallow fractures and uncased water wells, evident long before Cabot drilled its wells. It can't be mere coincidence that the discredited explosion report came from a plaintiff in the lawsuit against Cabot related to methane in drinking water.

None of that stopped the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PDEP) from extracting a Nov. 4, 2009, agreement from Cabot to suspend drilling and fracing wells in the affected area and to submit information supporting a resumption of work. In a Sept. 28 letter to PDEP Sec. John Hanger, Cabot Chief Executive Officer Dan O. Dinges says the company submitted the documents by its Mar. 31 deadline, but the department didn't act. Dinges, also chairman and president of the company, says Cabot signed the original agreement under threat of a shutdown of well-pad construction, drilling, and hydraulic fracturing.

In April, PDEP ordered Cabot to shut down all its operations and demanded that it sign a "nonnegotiable" agreement in which the company was to admit responsibility for gas leaks. Cabot said scientific studies were needed to determine the extent of its responsibility but nevertheless agreed to supply drinking water to the 14 affected residences and install methane-treatment systems for their wells. It commissioned a study showing the presence of methane in area drinking water before its drilling began and concluding Cabot wasn't responsible. Last month, PDEP rejected the study in a letter Cabot has rebutted point by point. PDEP wants Cabot to pay for a water pipeline to the residences, an option far more costly than the methane-treatment systems Cabot has purchased but not been allowed to install.

These manipulations have played out in a political climate conducive to passage on Sept. 29 by the Pennsylvania House of Representatives of a 39¢/Mcf tax on gas production. In his letter to Hanger, Dinges complains of media stunts by PDEP and meetings of the PDEP director with plaintiffs in the lawsuit. "This is obvious political pandering at Cabot's expense," Dinges writes.

Indeed. This is how misrepresentation thwarts important energy work. And not just in Pennsylvania.

More Oil & Gas Journal Current Issue Articles
More Oil & Gas Journal Archives Issue Articles
View Oil and Gas Articles on PennEnergy.com