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Utica Shale Development By The Numbers

Thursday, September 6th, 2012 | 0 Comments

Utica Shale development has been taking off in Ohio this year.  It seems each week headlines zip past our desks indicating new jobs, investments, and opportunities thanks to increased oil and natural gas production in the Buckeye State.  While the barrage of developments is good news, its  important to understand what activities are supporting these developments. With that, Energy In Depth Ohio has consolidated information on Utica Shale development so Ohioans can know whats happening throughout the Buckeye State.

To date, there have been 359 permits issued by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Mineral Resource Management for wells in the Utica/Point Pleasant geological formation since 2009. Of those 359 permitted wells 129 of them have been developed, and of those 11 are in production.

Thus far Utica Shale permits have been issued in the following 21 counties:

All of these permits have been provided to 18 companies that are working to develop Utica Shale in Ohio.

While still very early in its development, hosting only 11 producing wells, the Utica Shale is already showing some very exciting early results. The best part, this development, and the jobs and revenue that come with it, has occurred without a single environmental violation to date.  That successful track record is due to the diligence of companies operating in the state in addition to Ohio’s strong regulations as noted in Senate Bill 315 the bi-partisan update to those regulations.

Thanks to our natural resources, the diligence of these companies, a strong regulatory foundation and the billions being invested  from development there’s a renewed sense of optimism in Ohio thanks to the Utica Shale.

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*Update I* ODNR Records Help Separate Myth from Fact on Mangan Case

Wednesday, March 14th, 2012 | 2 Comments

Update I (5:30p.m. EDT;  March 14) – The Cleveland Plain Dealer today highlighted Mr. Mangan’s efforts to have a federal court consider his lawsuit after the Medina County Court of Common Pleas threw out a previous legal suit.  Among other items, the article highlighted the inaccuracies in Mangan’s claims stating his  declaration of  impacts from hydraulic fracturing were made “several weeks if not months before the (gas) wells were actually fracked”.  The article also highlighted ODNR’s  investigation which found that an abandoned natural gas well, developed in 1942, was the likely source of methane entering the Mangan well.  The ATSDR report  also noted that neither the Mangan or Boggs’s well posed any threat to human health (page 3).

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The Network for Oil & Gas Accountability & Protection (NEOGAP), an organization committed to banning oil and gas development in Ohio, makes a victim out of Medina County resident Mark Mangan, who is in many respects becoming the poster child for NEOGAP and the anti-development crowd here in Ohio.  Mr. Mangan, a volunteer firefighter, shows up at local town hall meetings with a jug of dirty water and contends that the water well at his house was impacted from development of a natural gas well at the nearby Allardale County Park property (Allard #3A) in 2008.  The facts tell us this is far from the truth.

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Welcome Back, Calvin!

Wednesday, February 1st, 2012 | 2 Comments

Energy In Depth-Ohio welcomed back  Gasland activist Calvin Tillman  as he visited Ohio again, this time with his sights set on Athens.   As you may recall, the EID-Ohio team was there to greet the Mayor at his last visit this past fall in Stark County.  Since then his story has changed a bit including new elements and accusations.  Like his last visit,  all of his claims lack any facts, studies, or data supporting his assertions.  In fact, the overwhelming amount of data contradicts the Mayor at every turn.

Mr. Tillman began his presentation by revisiting his old, oft debunked, remarks on air quality in DISH, Texas.  Unfortunately, we don’t have new video footage of Mr. Tillman’s old narrative as he wouldn’t allow us to record his remarks.  However, that part of his presentation can be found on our previous post.

We did capture Mr. Tillman’s question and answer session which is where the real excitement took place.  Below an individual  asks Mr. Tillman if it is possible to feasibly enjoy the economic prosperity from natural resource development while ensuring that the environment around us is safe?

 

Mr. Tillman refuses to answer the question directly.  Instead he side-steps it and immediately embarks into his assertion that natural gas activities in DISH adversely impacted the town’s air quality.  His theory is founded entirely on a study he commissioned by a group called Wolf Eagle Environmental.   The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) challenged these findings.  It conducted an internal review of this study and found  “it is not possible” to draw the types of conclusions that appear in that report.  Interestingly, Wolf Eagle Environmental did not then (and  still does not) employ a licensed professional engineer on its staff.

Once the Wolf Eagle evaluation was debunked, Mr. Tillman wouldn’t stop there.  He then accepted an offer from the national Oil & Gas Accountability Project (OGAP) to fund a second study of a similar type.  Seeing this trend, Texas state health officials installed a 24-hour Automated Gas Chromatograph to monitor air quality in DISH to ensure there was access to real-data, as opposed to politically biased studies.  What did those monitors find? Two years later, they have not registered a single measurement that exceeds state or federal health standards.  More on that can be found here.

Despite what all the data shows, Mr. Tillman continued to assert that natural gas operators were responsible for benzene emissions problems in DISH.  Below are just four examples of the extensive data, monitoring, and completed studies that refute the Mayor.  We think the data speaks for itself so we provide it below without much additional explanation:

1. May 2010 study from the Texas Dept. of State Health Services (DSHS)

“In Dish, we found no pattern to our test results indicating community-wide exposure to any of these contaminants,” said Dr. Carrie Bradford, the DSHS toxicologist who led the investigation. “We were looking to see whether a single contaminant or a handful of contaminants were notably elevated in many or all of the people we tested. We didn’t find that pattern in Dish.” (News Release, 5/12/10)

“DSHS paid particular attention to benzene because of its association with natural gas wells. The only residents who had higher levels of benzene in their blood were smokers. Because cigarette smoke contains benzene, finding it in smokers’ blood is not unusual.” (News Release, 5/12/10) “

2. Sept. 2010 study on air quality in Barnett region (Dallas, Ft. Worth) by  TCEQ

In December of 2009, TCEQ began a study on air quality in the Barnett Shale region. 220 natural gas production sites were surveyed, and the study confirmed no “detectable levels of volatile organic compounds (VOC) or levels that cause short-term or long-term health concerns.”

Based on the results of the tests, TCEQ Chief Toxicologist Dr. Michael Honeycutt reiterated the fact there is “no need for widespread alarm,” a fact certainly in conflict with Mayor Tillman’s agenda.

“In fact, the majority of the testing during that trip found no detection of volatile organic compounds at all…As a matter of fact, had we not seen the things that we did, I’d have been very surprised.”

- John Sadlier, Deputy Director of the Office of Compliance and Enforcement, TCEQ (9/2010)

3. Dec. 2010 – TCEQ did an air quality study of DISH, Texas  to determine what was happening in the area:

This study was conducted specifically in DISH to alleviate any concerns the Mayor or the residents of DISH may have had regarding air quality. Most would be comforted by the fact the study found no danger or health risks related to the containment wells. For the Mayor, it was another study showing his trending contradiction of fact:

“All reported target carbonyl concentrations were either non-detect or below their respective short-term AMCVs and are not of any short-term health or welfare concern.” (Key Findings, 12/13/10)

 4. Feb. 2011 – another air quality study of Fort Worth, requested by the city: 

This study (completed less than a year ago) demonstrates the consistency of these findings – at great inconvenience to Mr. Tillman’s story:

“No pollutant concentrations were observed that exceeded any published short-term (or acute) health benchmark published by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), EPA, or the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.” (Natural Gas Air Quality Study Interim Report Executive Summary, 2/11/11)

What is clear in just a cursory review of the data is that Mr. Tillman’s  claims concerning air quality issues fail to measure up to the facts. That much we expected, as he’s carried his well-told tall-tale far and wide from Canada to Pennsylvania.

However, the Mayor was not content to rehash the old bag of tricks. This time, he attempted to make hay by making sensational (however, untrue) statements on hydraulic fracturing:

For the record, oil and gas activities are highly regulated in Texas and Pennsylvania to protect groundwater.   Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale wells require multiple, redundant layers of steel casing and cement as well as strict quality controls to protect groundwater.  In the video, Mr. Tillman claims that 2 out of 5 Pennsylvania residents (40%) will have contaminated water if they live within a mile radius of an existing well.  This is simply not the case. In fact, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has not documented a single case of drinking water contamination related to the stimulation of an oil or natural gas well. In April 2009, the Ground Water Protection Council stated that the chances of groundwater contamination due to this process are as low as 1 in 200,000,000.

But you would assume the Mayor recalls correctly what happened in his own town when Mr. Tillman suggests that a local Dish family’s water was contaminated by a nearby well stimulation procedure.   According to the Texas Railroad Commission (RRC) there are around 14,000 producing wells in the Barnett Shale, most of those drilled since 2001.  In all of these cases, there has never been a recorded case of hydraulic fracturing contaminating a water table. Groundwater is protected from natural gas and oil wells by seven layers of steel casing and cement.  This is a fact, confirmed just this past year by EPA administrator Lisa Jackson when she testified to Congress that that she wasn’t aware “of any proven case where the [hydraulic fracturing] process itself affected water.”  This is a statement reinforced by the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Department of the Interior, the Ground Water Protection Council, and by over two dozen environmental regulatory acencies in states throughout the nation.

The reality is that hydraulic fracturing is a game changer, allowing the extraction of at least six times as much recoverable natural gas today than was possible a decade ago. The implications for energy security are startling as the technique is being utilized to unlock resources which can dramatically increase our domestic reserves and production of needed energy sources. The risks associated with the well stimulation process are very low and the potential rewards are extremely high, a finding confirmed by no less a respected institution than the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Here in Ohio, these benefits are stark and greatly needed, including the creation of 200,000 jobs and $12 billion in wages.

 

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Ohio Striking a Balance

Friday, January 27th, 2012 | 0 Comments

While I currently serve as a Technical Director of Natural Resources Management for BHE Environmental in Columbus, I had the opportunity to serve the State of Ohio through regulation of the State’s oil & gas, coal, and industrial minerals mining industries, as the Chief of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Mineral Resources Management (DMRM; 2000-2006).  During my 27 years of experience across Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, my mission as a regulator of energy resource extraction was to strike a balance between the protection of people and the environment with society’s need for economical and available energy resources.  Responsible regulation requires agencies to enact the State’s environmental laws in a manner that manages those impacts consistent with community’s standards that it has adopted as laws and rules.  Many people fail to recognize the important role that responsible regulation plays in striking a balance for the good of society.

However, in my experience, the Ohio oil & gas industry and the DMRM recognize this balance and strive to achieve it:

 

Industries provide a service to citizens when they acknowledge the policies communities have established and work  to achieve the spirit of them.  I found the Ohio oil & gas industry to represent a progressive industry that cooperated with state regulators and proactively communicated with policy makers to achieve the objectives of the State of Ohio.  Importantly, I observed that the leading operators promoted a culture within the industry that supported compliance with state and federal standards to advance industry performance as responsible stewards of the environment.  In the DMRM I also had the pleasure of leading a team of highly skilled, dedicated, and fair-minded regulatory scientists with advanced academic degrees that worked hard to achieve energy extraction in a safe, environmentally responsible manner.

A good example of the progressive, problem-solving culture exhibited by staff at the DMRM, and the regulated community in Ohio, is STRONGER (State Review of Oil & Natural Gas Environmental Regulations).   Many industries and regulators would fear a process organized by a not-for-profit organization that reviews a regulatory program with a team of oil and gas administrators from other states, EPA, industry, and environmental advocates.  The DMRM and the Ohio Oil and Gas Association not only do not fear the program, but they embrace this peer review as a way of advancing scientifically sound, and responsible, process improvements to achieve better environmental regulatory results.  Ohio’s program has been reviewed three times (1995, 2005, and 2010 with a focus on hydraulic fracturing).   STRONGER reported Ohio has been able to adopt 80% of the review recommendations; a percentage that will increase when current regulatory reforms are completed.  A good example is the recent landmark legislation, Senate Bill 165 that anticipated the effects of the Utica Shale industry and enacted changes to better protect water quality and increase inspection, among other things.

The Class II Underground Injection Control (UIC) program is another instance where Ohio regulators and industry were proactive.  According to the U.S. EPA, the UIC program is the best way to ensure underground sources of drinking water are not contaminated by fluids produced from the extraction of oil and gas.

In the 1980’s Ohio enacted critical reforms to protect Ohio water, citizens, and environment from water pollution.  When Ohio prohibited other forms of oil field wastewater disposal, the State sought primacy of the UIC regulatory program from the US EPA.  By doing so, it enhanced the industry’s ability to comply with proper handling of wastewater produced in the development process via a closed loop system, therein preventing release of polluted water to the environment.   The fore-thought has yielded benefits today, because UIC wells are now accepting hydraulic fracturing fluids from Ohio shale development.  This forward thinking has allowed a solution other states have not developed for disposal of a new fluid source.  Industry has utilized these wells for decades without significant incident and in so doing has protected the quality of Ohio’s underground drinking water sources and surface waters.

Utica Shale extraction is providing new opportunities and challenges.  To meet this test, I see progressive industry leaders going beyond the minimum standards.  While state standards require sampling to 300 feet, many companies sample all private water wells 1,000 or more feet to establish baseline conditions so they can respond to complaints with data.  Drill pads have safety berms to minimize release of dust and dampen noise.   Fences protect people and livestock from entering the development area.   Erosion control programs use best management practices to prevent siltation of streams.   In my capacity as an environmental consultant I now see the industry carefully siting gathering lines to avoid impacts to streams, wetlands, and other important resources whenever possible.

All development activities can create unintended consequences caused by a wide variety of factors, e.g. weather, equipment failure, human error, neglect, and more.  In my experience with ODNR, when unintended consequence did occur, both the industry and the DMRM were quick to react, correct the program, and take measures to prevent future occurrences.

Recent unintended consequences have made the news with regard to earth tremors that are preliminarily believed to have been caused by UIC injection water lubrication of previously unknown deep faults in the earth’s crust.  Another story in recent news relates to natural gas reported in a domestic water well.  With literally tens of thousands of wells completed in Ohio, the laws of probability predict something will occasionally go wrong.  How we as a society react to those errors in terms of problem analysis, problem prevention, and public policy determine if we are able to continue to strike a balance between our nation’s need for energy and protection of our people and natural resources.  Based on my experience, I am confident Ohio government and industry will meet the challenge.

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OOGA Environmental Conference Recap

Saturday, December 10th, 2011 | 0 Comments

As focus on Ohio’s Utica Shale becomes more intense, so too are compliance issues associated with environmental regulation.  The Ohio Oil and Gas Association (OOGA) 2011 Conference Series made an express stop early this week at Kent State University (Stark Campus) to help membership stay on the cutting edge of these industry developments and better understand the scope of environmental issues related to wetlands, stream crossings and sensitive habitats for endangered species.

Below are a few of the video testimonials we captured from experts in the industry who attended the seminar to share their great depth of expertise and knowledge of the changing landscape of Ohio environmental regulations as they relate to natural resources development.  Among the expert panelists were civil engineers, wetland scientists, environmental scientists, environmental consultants, and a conservation biologist.

Mike Sponslor formerly served as Chief of the Division of Mineral Resources Management (DMRM) where his jurisdiction included coal mines and oil and gas operations.  Mr. Sponslor says that the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) has a balanced and professional approach to ensuring the safety of our state’s unique natural resources. “The ODNR has established resource mechanisms to support additional staff and training and are prepared for regulatory changes,” he said.

Scott Burnsworth, Senior Director at GAI Consultants, Inc. is an expert panelist at the Environmental Seminar.  He has worked as an environmental consultant for over 15 years and says Ohio is in good position to learn from the lessons of Marcellus Shale development.

Jody Jones, Manager of Regulatory Affairs at Chesapeake Energy

Seth Shafer, Project Manager at RETTEW, is excited about bringing new jobs to Ohio and learning more about Ohio’s regulatory structure.

Frank Armento, Project Manager at Fisher Associates

Eric Jespersen, Business Developer at Fisher Associates

As you can see the event was filled with significant insight regarding the many environmental protections in place to safeguard Ohio’s landscape during the safe and responsible development of natural gas.  Like all good professions and enterprises this is a constantly changing, and evolving, practice which implements that latest technological innovations and regulatory best practices to ensure Ohio’s economy thrives in concert with stewardship of our unique natural resources.

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Refuting Common Misconceptions about Natural Gas Production

Tuesday, November 29th, 2011 | 0 Comments

I stumbled across an article yesterday in the Youngstown Vindicator and was taken back by the author’s disparaging assessment of Vindicator: “I wonder if at these meetings anyone asks why harmful chemicals are injected with water and sand and whatever else, to fracture the shale rock. What are the chemicals, and what they will do to the land, air and water? My own personal opinion is that much land will be left unusable and our water tables will be damaged irreversibly.”  “What will we drink when the water is not fit to drink?” (“Thinking beyond the need to drill,” Joseph P. Hilko, Nov. 22)

The composition of fracturing fluids is no secret

More than 99.5 percent of the fluid is composed of water and sand, and the small fraction of what remains includes materials found in the food we eat, beverages we drink and household cleaning items we keep under the sink.  By both weight and volume, the most prominent of these materials is a substance known as “guar.” Sounds frightening, right? It’s actually an emulsifying agent more typically found in ice cream.  In fact, the ice cream industry hasn’t been too pleased with us recently, since, thanks to shale, we’ve been using a good bit of the stuff as of late (though the guar bean growers don’t seem to mind).

Ohio is a full-disclosure state.  The U.S. Department of Energy and the Ground Water Protection Council (GWPC) culminated in the creation of FracFocus.org. A searchable, nationwide database with specific well-by-well information on the additives used in the fracturing process.  You can literally go this site, search by address, well-site name, county, etc and pull up every constituent contained in fracturing fluid on a well-pad by well-pad basis.

Hydraulic fracturing has been deployed safely in the United States more than 1.2 million times over the past 60 years without a single incidence of water contamination

You don’t have to take my word for it. In June, 2011 theEPA administrator Lisa Jackson told the U.S. Senate that she wasn’t aware “of any proven case where the fracking process itself affected water.”

This statement is confirmed by over fifteen state environmental agencies that have been regulating the fracturing process for decades .  The engineering practices perfected over the last 60 years and effective state regulation in Ohio ensures the integrity of the water supply and the environment.

Obviously, just because fracturing’s record is clean doesn’t mean there’s never been a single issue with a single one of the more than 500,000 natural gas wells active in America today. Accidents, though rare, have occurred – and as long as human beings are doing the work, we’ll never be able to tell you that an accident in the future is impossible.

Drilling a natural gas well is not an endeavor without risk. Neither is riding a bicycle on the sidewalk. The key question is: are those risks manageable? And in the case of natural gas, are regulations in place to ensure those risks are being managed properly? Five-hundred thousand wells later, many of which are fractured, we’d suggest that they are.

See the following video to learn more about the hydraulic fracturing process.


Ohio Oil and Gas Association Executive Vice President, Tom Stewart weighs in on hydraulic fracture technology being employed in Ohio, as well as the regulatory structure here which safeguards Ohioans as part of natural gas production.

Instead of espousing a doom and gloom scenario based on non-factual, personal opinions Mr. Hilko would have been better served by informing himself on Ohio’s oil and natural gas industry, its long and successful history and the outcomes of numerous groundwater investigations to provide readers with a complete and informed discussion of the risks and rewards associated with oil and gas development here in Ohio.

 

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The Fact and Fiction of Hydraulic Fracturing

Thursday, November 17th, 2011 | 1 Comment

I recently attended a local town hall meeting sponsored by The Network for Oil & Gas Accountability & Protection (NEOGAP) and received a  handout titled “FRACKING DANGERS”, written by Linda Schiller-Hanna.  The writing, which features a ‘skull and bones graphic’ (shown below), employs scare-tactics and misinformation in an attempt to persuade citizens to join NEOGAP, an organization committed to shutting down the Ohio oil and gas industry.  I took several quotes directly out of Schiller-Hanna’s paper (labeled “myths”) and debunked this propaganda with facts.

Myth: “Fracking of deep shale, a technology less than ten years old, has not been proven safe.“

Facts: has conducted several water well investigation complaints. None of the investigations revealed problems due to hydraulic fracturing. Not a single case of drinking water contamination has ever been recorded. Not one.

Hydraulic fracturing makes the impossible possible by allowing us to reach oil and gas trapped in rock beds that would not otherwise naturally produce. This is why 90 percent of wells operating today have been fractured and more than 1 million U.S. wells have safely utilized fracing. To put it in perspective, 600 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 7 billion barrels of oil have been captured thanks to hydraulic fracture technology (energy that would not have been acquired without it).

See 

The following are quotes from oil and gas regulators across the country. Of course these are just a small sample.  Regulators in fifteen states and U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson have all stated hydraulic fracturing is a safe technology that does not impact groundwater.