PA DEP’s Gas Well Records Contain Major Flaws says Post-Gazette

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette offers a web resource called Pipeline that ran a story on Sunday about the state of disarray of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s gas well records.  It was in the course of updating the interactive Marcellus map with well production data that a staffer found disturbing discrepancies in the data.  Per the story:

When PG Web content producer Laura Schneiderman downloaded DEP’s production data, she discovered it says there are 495 more wells producing gas, or ready to produce gas, than DEP has recorded as ever being drilled, and 182 of those wells don’t even show up on the state’s Marcellus Shale permit list.

Given that the DEP records showed 4200 gas wells drilled since 2007, the omission of 495 wells drilled is an error factor just shy of 12%.  This is significant to the many entities that rely upon the DEP data.  For example, the discrepancies caused headaches for state Senate staffers who were attempting to craft policy regarding an impact fee.

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DEP’s Secretary Krancer Calls for EPA to Dismiss Clean Air Coalition Petition

In other news involving Pennsylvania’s DEP,  in a January 5th press release, DEP Secretary Mike Krancer sent a letter to EPA administrator Lisa Jackson urging the EPA to dismiss a petition that the Clean Air Council (CAC) filed with EPA in November 2011. The petition claimed that Pennsylvania is failing to implement requirements in its State Implementation Plan and asked EPA to impose sanctions on Pennsylvania.   At issue here is the streamlined permitting process for minor sources which is in accordance with the State Implementation Plan (SIP) that was revised and submitted to the EPA in 2009, but never approved by EPA.  Krancer fires at the EPA saying in the letter, “We are as disappointed with EPA and share in CAC’s concern that EPA has inexplicably not yet approved the 2009 Pennsylvania SIP submittal, a submittal that has been sitting on EPA’s desk for almost 3 years.”   Then Krancer pointedly reminds Jackson that the EPA is being sued by the Sierra Club and WildEarth Guardians for an unreasonable delay in approving state SIP’s.

You can read the response of the Clean Air Coalition to Krancer’s letter here. The CAC argues that the 2009 state revision to the SIP  is essentially illegal until it is endorsed as federally Clean Air Act compliant by the EPA.  Per the post on the CAC website:

“Secretary Krancer’s letter to the EPA appears to argue that the state law trumps the federal requirements. This argument is nonsensical and would render the entire SIP process meaningless.”

The CAC response concludes that it is the expectation of the CAC that the EPA will deny the 2009 revision and revoke the minor source streamlining permitting program.