Posts Tagged ‘drilling rig accidents’

With the increase in gas drilling rig gas production and gas drilling rig accidents and production affecting local communities throughout the Commonwealth reports in Harrisburg show increasing support for some type of “gas tax” in Pennsylvania.  Many politicians have voiced opposition to any tax on the gas industry.  DLP continues to monitor this issue while representing victims of Pennsylvania truck accidents. gas drilling rig accidents and other serious incidents.

BY STACI WILSON (Staff Writer)
Published: July 2, 2010

HOP BOTTOM – Linda and Bob Lewis didn’t sign up to be part of Susquehanna County’s natural gas plan, but the industry is coming to them anyway.

The Lathrop Twp. property owners live along Route 2002, outside Hop Bottom, where Chief Gathering, a subsidiary of Chief Oil and Gas, is constructing a 12-inch pipeline headed to a nearby compressor station.

The pipeline construction is taking place on private property along a state Department of Transportation right of way.

It is the construction along the road that has Mrs. Lewis alarmed.

“They’re going right through the yard,” she said. “I’m so upset about it. PennDOT has given out permits to run the pipeline through the right of way and they say there is nothing we can do about it.”

PennDOT spokeswoman Karen Dussinger confirmed that the agency granted the gas company permission to install the pipe in its right of way. Ms. Dussinger said the right of way varies from place to place and could range between 25 feet and 50 feet from the centerline of the road.

“Property owners often believe they own the land right up to the road itself, but that isn’t so,” said Ms. Dussinger.

She explained the right of way is an easement the state gives PennDOT in order to maintain the roads.

Mrs. Lewis is concerned about the proximity of the pipeline to her home.

“I don’t know how they can go so close to homes with a 12-inch pipeline,” she said. “If that thing blows, we’re off the map.”

She said she has known about the pipeline coming through the area since January, but only recently learned it would be built along the side of the road she lives on. She said she has tried to contact Chief Oil and Gas for months but her calls were not returned.

Officials at Chief Oil and Gas could not be reached for comment.

Department of Environmental Planning, Bureau of Oil and Gas spokesman Dan Spadoni said the agency requires erosion and sediment control plans along proposed pipeline routes. He said a storm water discharge plan may also be required on pipeline projects.

DEP would also require a construction and encroachment permit if the pipeline was going to cross any streams or impact a wetlands area. DEP does not regulate the material and construction standards or set a minimum depth the pipeline has to be laid below the ground.

“It’s scary to have a 12-inch pipeline right out in front of your home,” Mrs. Lewis said. “That’s a lot of pressure.”

Contact the writer: swilson@independentweekender.com

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Copyright:  The Scranton Times

BY STEVE McCONNELL (STAFF WRITER)
Published: June 28, 2010

With the boom in Marcellus Shale natural gas development throughout the region, area educational institutions are growing to keep up with work force demands.

New training, certification and degree programs are being created at local schools to ensure local job skills are tailored to white- and blue-collared job needs related to the natural gas drilling industry.

Already, Lackawanna College and Johnson College in Scranton, Keystone College in LaPlume and the Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport represent the growing trend of educational institutions offering course work and the hands-on training needed to become employable in one of Pennsylvania’s growing industries.

And, college administrators agree the reason for the trend is simple: There’s a demand for it by both the industry and potential workers who want the training and the jobs that come with it.

An industry-financed study conducted by Penn State’s department of energy and mineral engineering, which offers an undergraduate degree in natural gas engineering, expected Marcellus Shale natural gas extraction efforts to create more than 200,000 jobs in the state and have an overall $18 billion economic impact by this year.

“Marcellus Shale is going to be big business,” said Christopher Kucharski, Lackawanna College spokesman. “Problem is there is just nobody trained to handle the positions they want filled.”

It appears a change is under way.

Larry Milliken, director of Lackawanna College’s energy program and a natural gas instructor, just finished guiding the first class of 18 students through its first year of study to earn an associate degree in natural gas technology.

Based at the college’s New Milford campus in the center of the action near gas fields in Susquehanna County, the program is preparing students for well tender jobs – a position that requires monitoring and maintaining natural gas wells during their lengthy production phase.

There is generally one well tender employed for every 20 to 40 natural gas wells, Mr. Milliken said, and the entry-level annual salary is $36,000. Sixteen students have paid internships with natural gas drilling companies this summer in western Pennsylvania, he added.

“The industry has been very supportive of wanting to get (our students) on board,” he said. The college also is hiring three additional instructors this year to accommodate the increase in students who have enrolled in the natural gas technology degree program for the 2010-11 school year.

At Lackawanna College’s new campus in Hawley, college administrators recently announced a new certificate course for fall centered on training accounting assistants, accounting clerks and administrative assistants specifically for the oil and gas industry.

Tracy Brundage, managing director of work force development at Pennsylvania College of Technology, said administrators decided to take the leap into offering natural gas drilling-related courses this year. The decision followed an in-house study that determined growing employment opportunities because of the prevalence of natural gas development under way in the region.

“The jobs are going to be around for a long time,” Ms. Brundage said. “We’re just getting started … to get our arms around what is happening … and how we need to respond.”

Pennsylvania College of Technology has just begun offering training and certification classes in welding specialized for the industry’s infrastructure and commercial driver’s license classes, and has tweaked some of its academic majors – including diesel and electrical technology – to include natural gas drilling-related coursework.

So far, about 350 students have enrolled in the non-degree programs.

The college plans to expand its offerings, perhaps to include training for natural gas well operators and emergency response technicians, Ms. Brundage said.

Keystone College, known for its focus on the liberal arts, is also jumping on board.

Robert Cook, Ph.D., the college’s environmental resource management program coordinator, said the college will be offering a handful of new courses early next year that include mapping underground natural resources tied specifically to natural gas.

The environmental resource management degree, a four-year Bachelor of Science, has had its “highest level of interest this year” in part because of the Marcellus Shale boom and an expectation that jobs will be available for graduates, Dr. Cook said. The degree, which includes environmental law courses, can also prepare a would-be environmental regulator, he added.

“It’s clear energy is going to be an important subject for decades,” said Dr. Cook, a professional geologist. “It’s thrilling to see our discipline become an important skill set.”

Keystone is also hiring a new instructor to teach undergraduate courses within a new natural gas and petroleum resource curriculum that is now under development.

Marie Allison, director of continuing education at Johnson College, said the college will be offering its first class in pipe welding next week tailored to techniques needed by the natural gas industry. The college also will offer a class for advanced welders to prepare for certification in a specific style of welding demanded by the industry.

The college’s welding program had been defunct since 2001, because of declining enrollment, but the multitude of pipes and fittings that will be laid by the industry in the coming years yields greater demand for skilled welders, she said.

“They need welders,” Ms. Allison said. “We want to give someone the fundamentals and give them the opportunity to find a job.”

Contact the writer: smcconnell@timesshamrock.com

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Copyright:  The Scranton Times

By Bob Kalinowski (Staff Writer)
Published: June 25, 2010

WILKES-BARRE – State Rep. Phyllis Mundy on Wednesday moved ahead with a plan to halt all new natural gas drilling permits in Pennsylvania and two other proposals aimed at protecting drinking-water sources from contamination related to drilling.

Ms. Mundy, D-120, Kingston, formally introduced two bills and a resolution in the state House, which include:

n House Bill 2609, which would establish a one-year moratorium on the issuance of new natural gas drilling permits to give state officials more time to analyze the Marcellus Shale drilling industry and make sure proper protections are in place.

n House Bill 2608 would prohibit natural gas drilling companies that use fracking, or horizontal drilling, from drilling wells within 2,500 feet of a primary source of supply for a community water system, such as a lake or reservoir. The current restriction is only 100 feet.

n House Resolution 864 would urge Congress to pass the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act. It asks Congress to repeal a provision in the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, known as the “Halliburton loophole,” that exempts oil and gas drilling industries from restrictions on hydraulic fracturing near drinking-water sources. The act also would require oil and gas industries to disclose all hydraulic fracturing chemicals and chemical constituents currently considered proprietary rights of the company.

There was no indication if or when the bills would come up for a vote by the House.

Contact the writer: bkalinowski@citizensvoice.com

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Copyright:  The Scranton Times

BY JEREMY G. BURTON (STAFF WRITER)
Published: June 24, 2010

Pennsylvania authorities found environmental and safety violations on more than 130 trucks hauling wastewater from natural gas wells during a three-day enforcement blitz last week, the state Department of Transportation said Wednesday.

Overall, officials inspected 1,137 trucks between June 14 and 16 during the multi-agency operation, which was focused on Marcellus Shale drilling sites. Of the 210 commercial vehicles ordered out of service for violations, 131 were transporting wastewater used in the process called hydraulic fracturing.

The added enforcement has been made necessary by the growing gas industry’s heavy truck traffic, especially in rural counties, state police Commissioner Frank E. Pawlowski said in a statement.

Also participating was the state Department of Environmental Protection, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission and the federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

In Troop R – which covers Lackawanna, Pike, Susquehanna and Wayne counties – officials shut down 25 vehicles and issued 141 citations during 142 inspections.

Sixty-six vehicles were shut down and 358 citations issued in 166 inspections within Troop P, which covers Bradford, Sullivan, Wyoming and part of Luzerne counties.

One hundred nineteen vehicles were shut down in western and central Pennsylvania.

Inspectors especially looked for safety deficiencies that could lead to crashes, authorities said.

Contact the writer: jburton@timesshamrock.com

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Copyright: The Scranton Times

By Patrick Sweet (Staff Writer)
Published: June 15, 2010

NOXEN – Chief Oil and Gas may begin construction on a natural gas well just a few miles north of the border between Luzerne and Wyoming counties as soon as the second week of July.

Off Route 29 in Noxen, short stakes mark the future location of the drilling pad on Robert Longmore’s 97-acre farm. The state Department of Environmental Protection is currently reviewing the Texas-based gas company’s permit to place and operate a well it filed May 11.

The farm is near properties that are part of the Noxen Area Gas Group, a body of roughly 150 families with a combined 8,500 acres which is in the midst of negotiating a lease with Houston, Texas-based Carrizo Oil and Gas.

Just down the road from Longmore, Noxen group organizer Joel Field verified that the group is in the final stages of negotiation with Carrizo. Field and co-organizer Harry Traver declined further comment due to the sensitivity of the negotiations.

“Until things are settled down, they’d rather not give any statements,” Harry Traver’s wife, Dawn Traver, said Monday.

Longmore, 56, has owned the farm since 1998 and signed a lease with Chief roughly four and a half years ago. The landmen who approached Longmore about the deal, he said, made the three-page lease giving his family $25 per acre with the minimum 12.5 percent royalty sound like a good deal.

“We were kind of taken advantage of four and a half years ago,” Longmore said. “I know people getting $6,000 an acre.”

The lease had almost no provisions protecting Longmore’s farm. At the time, the landmen made it seem unlikely that drilling would ever commence during the terms of his lease, which ends May 15, 2011.

Chief Oil and Gas media contact Ben McCue attempted to reach operations employees for comment Monday afternoon but they were unavailable by press time.

Since Longmore signed, though, he said his experience with the company has been much more positive.

Earlier this year, the Longmores were given the opportunity to amend the lease.

“They proposed some amendments to the lease,” Longmore said, “so we countered with some amendments with some environmental stuff.”

Chief offered to reopen the terms of the lease in order to add protections for the company in anticipation of a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision that could have invalidated thousands of gas leases where gas companies were deducting production costs from the state minimum royalty.

The opinion on the case was an interpretation of the Pennsylvania’s Minimum Royalty Act which establishes the 12.5 percent royalty requirement for all oil or natural gas recovered from a well but doesn’t stipulate when to calculate the royalty.

The court ultimately decided in favor of the gas companies roughly a week after the Longmores and Chief finalized the revised lease.

The Longmores added amendments that protected ground and surface water, along with the 0.25-mile stretch of Bowmans Creek that runs through the property.

Longmore’s son, Josh Longmore, manages the Luzerne County Conservation District and helped his father amend the lease.

“Unfortunately, they signed a very basic lease that didn’t have some of the protections that the newer leases have,” Josh Longmore said. “Our biggest goal, our biggest hope is that the property maintains its natural beauty, its agricultural purpose.”

The younger Longmore doesn’t have any stake in his parents’ farm, but felt that it was necessary to help. He and his father combed through leases that they found online and pulled out the clauses that fit their needs.

“There was like three or four different categories of amendments,” Longmore said.

Chief accepted 90 percent of their roughly 20 amendments, Longmore said.

The company did draw the line on an amendment that would have prohibited the company from disposing cuttings – the rock equivalent to sawdust – on the pad. The company argued it would be cost-prohibitive to haul it off-site, Longmore said.

“I really got the impression that they weren’t hiding anything from us,” Longmore said. “They were willing to answer every question we had.”

psweet@citizensvoice.com 570-821-2112

Copyright: The Citizens Voice

By Joe McDonald (Staff Writer)
Published: June 10, 2010

In a ruling with potentially far-reaching consequences in Pennsylvania’s lucrative and burgeoning natural gas industry, a federal judge in Scranton on Wednesday ruled a Susquehanna County landowner can sue Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. on the grounds it fraudulently misled him into a signing a lease at a lowball rate.

The suit, filed by John Kropa, is one of several cases across the state filed by landowners who claim natural gas drilling companies fraudulently induced them to sign leases that locked them into $25-an-acre rates. In a modern-day version of the California gold rush, companies have been rushing to make deals with landowners across Pennsylvania so they can tap into natural gas from the Marcellus Shale, a geological formation that runs under most of the state.

U.S. District Court Judge James M. Munley, in an eight-page memorandum and order, noted Cabot’s agents told Mr. Kropa that the company “would never pay more than $25 per acre for the lease,” yet his “neighbors were apparently paid more than $25 an acre for leases on their property.”

“They relied on this statement and signed the lease, only to discover later that these statements were false and that others had signed far more lucrative deals” with Cabot, Judge Munley said.

Cabot’s representatives also warned that if Mr. Kropa did not sign a lease, then Cabot would take it anyway by negotiating leases with neighbors and “capture the gas,” leaving Mr. Kropa “without a lease or gas on their land,” the memorandum stated.

Mr. Kropa signed an oil and gas lease with the West Virginia company in 2006 and received a $1,275 payment for allowing the company to explore his 51-acre spread in Brooklyn Twp.

Mr. Kropa’s claims are not unique, especially for many of the leases signed before 2008, said attorney Stephen Saunders, a Scranton energy attorney.

“I think the fraud type claims will most likely be significant in cases where individual plaintiffs own larger tracts of land, say more than 100 acres, or situations where small contiguous landowners control significant areas in the aggregate hundreds of acres or more and are litigating as a group,” Mr. Saunders said.

If Mr. Kropa is successful in proving he was the victim of fraud, he could theoretically renegotiate a new lease, assuming the company still wants the gas under his land.

Judge Munley’s court order also dealt with another volatile issue in the gas drilling business: royalty payments. Mr. Kropa along with other landowers had claimed they were shortchanged by the drilling companies because they were deducing expenses from the royalties.

Judge Munley said that issue had been dealt with by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which ruled the royalty agreement was valid under Pennsylvania law.

Contact the writer: jmcdonald@timesshamrock.com

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Copyright:  The Scranton Times-Tribune

VICKI SMITH Associated Press Writer
Published: June 7, 2010

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) — A crew drilling a natural gas well through an abandoned coal mine in West Virginia’s Northern Panhandle hit a pocket of methane gas that ignited, triggering an explosion that burned seven workers, state and company officials said Monday.

The blast created a column of flame that was initially at least 70 feet high, but the rig operator said the site was secure and the fire was about 40 feet high by late morning.

A team from Texas-based Wild Well Control, a company that specializes in rig fires, will decide whether to let the methane burn or try to extinguish the flames, said Kristi Gittins of Dallas,Texas-based Chief Oil and Natural Gas.

The explosion occurred about 1:30 a.m. in a rural area outside Moundsville, about 55 miles southwest of Pittsburgh, and presents no danger to any structures or people, said Bill Hendershot, an inspector with the state Department of Environmental Protection’s Office of Oil and Gas.

The operation was less than a week old: DEP records show a permit was issued June 2 to AB Resources PA LLC of Brecksville, Ohio.

Gittins said AB Resources is the operator of the well, while Chief has a “participation interest.” It is Chief’s responsibility to drill and complete the well, she said.

Chief’s site contractor, Union Drilling of Buckhannon, had drilled the first 1,000 feet of a second well on the property and was preparing to install surface casing when crews apparently hit and ignited the methane, she said.

Crews had drilled through the abandoned Consol Energy mine before without incident, she said.

Methane is a known risk when working near old mines, and the company typically takes a variety of precautions, including venting systems. Gittins could not immediately say what precautions were in place at this site.

“Luckily, our response team got there quickly, secured the area and evacuated the workers,” she said. “From all appearances, there weren’t any life-threatening injuries, so that’s a good thing.”

The seven workers were taken the West Penn Burn Center in Pittsburgh and were in fair condition, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Five were employed by Union and two worked for BJ Services Co. of Houston, Texas, said Jeff Funke, area director of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s Charleston office.

A spokesman for Union in Fort Worth, Texas, did not immediately return a telephone message.

The BJ Services workers were among four that had just arrived on site to place the casing, said Gary Flaharty, a spokesman for the parent company, Baker Hughes Inc. of Houston. The crew runs a safety check at the start of each shift and was just preparing to do that when the blast occurred.

Flaharty could not provide any details about the injured employees but said they’re being treated for burns and are expected to survive.

Funke said OSHA learned of the accident shortly after 8 a.m., and two investigators were being dispatched. However, they cannot enter the site and begin work until the fire is out, he said.

OSHA created a program to deal with gas drilling in the vast Marcellus shale fields about five years ago and has been proactively inspecting sites to ensure compliance with safety regulations, he said. The gas reserve is about the size of Greece and lies more than a mile beneath New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio.

OSHA knew there would be a lot of drilling in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, “and we did our best to get out in front of that curve,” Funke said. “So we’re well-equipped to respond to this.”

About 98 percent of the region’s drilling now involves Marcellus shale, he said.

Gittins, the spokeswoman for Chief, confirmed the company was tapping into the Marcellus reserves. The company has drilled about 75 Marcellus wells in West Virginia and Pennsylvania so far, she said, with about 15 of them in West Virginia.

This was the company’s first major accident, she said.

However, it’s the latest in a string of accidents related to the rapidly growing pursuit of Marcellus gas.

In Pennsylvania, environmental regulators are investigating what caused another well to spew explosive gas and polluted water for about 16 hours last week until it was brought under control.

A crew of eight was evacuated from the Clearfield County site Thursday, but no one was injured. That accident involved EOG Resources Inc. of Houston.

Copyright:  The Scranton Times-Tribune

By Steve McConnell (Staff Writer)
Published: June 2, 2010

CARBONDALE – Plans to develop an extensive railroad facility to serve the natural gas industry in Fell Twp. moved forward Tuesday.

The Carbondale Industrial Development Authority unanimously approved a motion to allow Honesdale-based Linde Corp. to purchase a nearly two-acre parcel in the Enterprise Drive business park. The company intends to use it for unloading materials from railcars for shipment via truck. It also would include storage facilities and on-site processing of drilling fluids.

The company is currently developing an adjacent property, purchased from the local railroad authority, that is part of its overall plan to have a suitable staging area for on-site processing of drilling fluids and a railroad facility capable of serving the industry, said company Vice President Christopher A. Langel.

Authority Chairman Bob Farber said there has been ambiguity as to what exactly Linde Corp. intends to develop on the new property since the company has been meeting with the board about it.

“You’ve never given us site plans,” Mr. Farber said.

Mr. Langel said the company has submitted plans and has been meeting with the board since at least October about the project.

Among plans discussed Tuesday, existing railroad tracks, which run through the heart of the city, will be extended to enable off-loading of materials at the site.

The company, which has invested more than $500,000 in the so-called Carbondale Yards Bulk Rail Terminal, is also partnering with Houston-based Baker Hughes to mix sand, water and chemicals into a concentration needed for prospective natural gas drilling sites in the area.

Mr. Langel described it as a nontoxic mixture.

The company also is eyeing the former Wells Cargo building, a large-scale facility inside the business park, as an additional storage and distribution point related to the overall operation, Mr. Langel said.

The authority board tabled a motion that would give Linde Corp. permission to purchase and develop the Wells Cargo property.

In addition, the company is in negotiations with the Susquehanna River Basin Commission to withdraw water from the Lackawanna River for potential use by the natural gas industry. The industry needs an abundance of water to help bust open underground rock formations to release natural gas, a process called hydraulic fracturing.

City administrators have said they support the project for its job-creation potential. It is expected to be completed by the end of the month.

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Copyright:  The Scranton Times-Tribune