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The Obama administration on Wednesday set the first national standards to control air pollution from gas wells that are drilled using a method called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking — but not without making concessions to the oil and gas industry.

President Barack Obama in his State of the Union address strongly backed natural gas drilling as a clean energy source, and he recently announced an executive order calling for coordination of federal regulation to ease burdens on producers. But the industry and Republicans have criticized him for policies they say discourage energy development.

Top Environmental Protection Agency officials said Wednesday the new regulations would ensure pollution is controlled without slowing natural gas production.

“By ensuring the capture of gases that were previously released to pollute our air and threaten our climate, these updated standards will protect our health, but also lead to more product for fuel suppliers to bring to market,” EPA administrator Lisa Jackson said in a statement.

Much of the air pollution from fracked gas wells is vented when the well transitions from drilling to actual production, a three- to 10-day process that is referred to as “completion.”

An earlier version of the rule limiting air pollution from gas wells would have required companies to install pollution-reducing equipment immediately after the rule was finalized.

Drillers now will be given more than two years to employ technology to reduce emissions of smog- and soot-forming pollutants during that stage. The EPA will require drillers to burn off gas in the meantime, an alternative that can release smog-forming nitrogen oxides, but still will slash overall emissions.

Industry groups had pushed hard for the delay, saying the equipment to reduce pollution at the wellhead during completion was not readily available. About 25,000 wells a year are being fracked, a process where water, chemicals and sand are injected at high pressure underground to release trapped natural gas.

Don Briggs, president of the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association, called the regulations an unnecessary intrusion.

“The industry already has in place so many of the different things they’re suggesting,” he said. “It’s a continuation of a great deal more control over the oil and gas industry.”

Briggs and other industry members fear federal oversight of hydraulic fracturing. The industry worries the EPA will use air quality regulations and the findings of an upcoming report on hydraulic fracturing to restrict the practice, which is what led to the huge increase in domestic natural gas and oil production.

“It will only take one accident or mishap for the EPA to step in and halt all hydraulic fracturing in the United States,” Briggs said in a column released Wednesday. “If this were to happen, 85 percent of all wells in the United States would be shut down.”

Wilma Subra, who provides technical assistance to the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, applauded the standards.

“This is a good first step,” she said. “It doesn’t go far enough, but it does begin to get emissions from these facilities under control.”

Subra said she was glad to see the EPA didn’t grant the exemptions industry was looking for. Asked whether she thought the two-year delay was a reasonable request to grant, she replied, “Those emissions make the people in the area really, really ill, so the people who live around these ares will be upset at these delays.”

Besides the new standards for oil and gas wells, the EPA also on Wednesday updated existing rules for natural gas processing plants, storage tanks and transmission lines that will reduce amounts of cancer-causing air pollution, such as benzene, and also reduce methane — the main ingredient in natural gas, but also one of the most potent global warming gases.

There were other changes made since the EPA proposed the rule last July under a court order that stemmed from a lawsuit brought by environmental groups.

Wells drilled in low-pressure areas, such as coalbed methane reserves, would be exempt because they release less pollution during completion. And companies that choose to re-fracture wells using the pollution-reducing equipment prior to the January 2015 deadline would not be covered by other parts of the regulation.

Because companies could capture the natural gas and sell it, the EPA estimates that they would save about $11 million to $19 million a year starting in 2015.

The American Petroleum Institute, the main lobbying group for the oil and gas industry, said much of the industry was already doing that.

“We don’t need (the EPA) to come and tell our members we will save you money,” said Howard Feldman, the institute’s director of regulatory and scientific affairs. “Their business is natural gas. They get it that they are trying to capture as much gas as they can.”

The reaction from environmental groups was mixed Wednesday, in large part to the two-year delay on requiring companies to perform so-called green completions.

“This concession only promotes wasteful drilling,” said Jeremy Nichols of WildEarth Guardians, an advocacy groups which sued the EPA in 2009 to force regulation. But, he said, “these rules promise to safeguard our communities and keep the dirty process of drilling in check.”

Hydraulic fracturing is largely responsible for a natural gas drilling boom, but the technique has raised environmental concerns for its toll or air and water.

Last March, pollution from natural gas drilling in the Upper Green River Basin in western Wyoming triggered levels of ground-level ozone, the main ingredient in smog, worse than those recorded in Los Angeles, one of the smoggiest cities in the U.S.

In Dish, Texas, a rural town northwest of Dallas, the state’s environmental regulators detected levels of cancer-causing benzene, sometimes at levels dangerous to human health, likely coming from industry’s 60 drilling wells, gas production pads and rigs, a treating facility and compressor station.

At the same time, a state study in Pennsylvania of air quality near Marcellus Shale drilling sites in four counties found no emissions at levels that would threaten the health of nearby residents or workers.

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Over the coming days, the top four Republican presidential candidates will make stops in Louisiana pleading their case of why they should become the nominee to face President Barack Obama. Each contestant has slightly different views that differentiate him from the president.

Regarding energy, Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul each take a different approach to their energy policy, yet each of their positions have common threads.

Santorum’s energy policy pushes for the removal of drilling bans on and offshore. Romney, Gingrich and Paul all agree on this issue as well — more drilling equals less dependence on foreign oil.

Santorum is promoting the use of natural gas on the basis that more than half of U.S. homes are heated by it. Santorum is calling for the immediate approval of the Keystone Pipeline. However, Santorum is calling to end what he and Obama call “energy subsidies.” The oil and gas industry is in direct opposition to Obama on this very issue.

Romney focuses on

regulatory reform within the energy industry. He desires to see fixed timetables for all resource development approvals, the creation of a one-stop shop to streamline the permitting process and the implementation of fast-track procedures for companies with established safety records. Romney, like Santorum, is also in favor of the Keystone Pipeline project.

Gingrich is making waves amongst the candidates by campaigning for the closure of the Environmental Protection Agency. Gingrich has made it clear that reform must take place surrounding frivolous lawsuits, or what Louisiana knows as Legacy Lawsuits.

Along with Gingrich, Ron Paul is pushing for the closure of the EPA. He feels that those causing pollution issues should answer to property owners in court. Paul’s energy stance calls for the repeal of the federal gasoline tax, which would save consumers 18 cents per gallon. Paul would then make tax credits available for the purchase and production of alternative fuel technologies.

While these candidates engage in an important part of the electoral process, the oil and gas industry will continue in the fight to end Legacy Lawsuits, oppose the removal of investment tax credits by the Obama administration, and remain diligent in the U.S. production of oil and natural gas.

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Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich railed against President Obama’s “anti-energy” policies that he said are keeping America dependent on Middle Eastern oil, delivering the message at Louisiana College on rainy Wednesday morning.

The partisan crowd to see Gingrich numbered more than 400 in the Baptist college’s Granberry Conference Center, a mix of older and middle-aged voters and young LC students.

Gingrich told them that if Obama is elected again this fall, “you can’t imagine how radical he’ll be” in a second term.

Throughout the 45-minute address, the former speaker of the House used the term “radical” and “radicalization” in describing Obama, the president’s cabinet members and the policies put in place since Obama took office in January 2009. He called Energy Secretary Steven Chu the “secretary of anti-energy.”

Gingrich didn’t mentioned the three other leading Republicans vying for the nomination — Rick Santorum, Ron Paul and delegate-count leader Mitt Romney. Instead he concentrated his message on what he called Obama’s leftist and hurtful policies.

Gingrich is third in delegate votes and is considered a long shot for the Republican nomination. He said after addressing supporters at LC that he would stay in the race up to the Republican Convention in Miami in August.

Louisiana Republicans head to the polls Saturday to vote in a statewide preference primary where the winner could receive up to 20 delegates, depending on the percentage of votes won. Only registered Republicans will be able to vote for the GOP contenders Saturday.

Gingrich revisited his $2.50-a-gallon gasoline pledge, saying “there is a silver bullet” to the nation’s energy needs, “it’s called drilling.”

No American president, he said, “should ever bow to a Saudi king” by asking an Arab nation to increase oil production there to lower gasoline prices here. Gingrich said Obama made the request to the Saudis while there’s plenty of oil here that Obama is not allowing drillers to get at.

The statement about the Saudi king drew the longest applause of the morning.

“We’re nowhere near ‘peak oil,’” Gingrich said, a reference to estimates over the years that concluded U.S. output of oil and natural gas had reached its zenith and was moving into diminishing production.

“I like him (Gingrich) a lot “» and I hate it that people are not seeing his potential,” said Leonard Nash of Forest Hill.

“Obama is the most destructive president we’ve ever had,” said Nash, who is 58 and works on a drilling rig for Noble Drilling.

Nash wore a red T-shirt that said he was a “Watcher” for “Cenla Patriots.”

Oil and gas advocacy groups have warned it’s possible the federal Environmental Protection Agency would take over regulation of hydraulic fracturing in land drilling. They said added federal regulations imposed by the EPA would bring drilling to its knees.

The process, called “fracking,” currently is regulated by states. It’s a relatively new method of extracting oil and gas from dense shale rocks, and it’s controversial.

“Newt Gingrich is making waves amongst the candidates by campaigning for the closure of the (EPA)” Don Briggs said in a statement released Wednesday. Briggs is director of the Louisiana Oil & Gas Association.

“He believes the EPA to be a ‘job-killing regulatory engine of higher energy prices,” Briggs said.

Gingrich recommended opening up exploration in Alaska and off the Gulf of Mexico coast of Florida, where it’s banned. He also said Obama should have allowed the Canadian pipeline to be built so it could bring in needed crude oil from the north and also allow oil produced in North and South Dakota to be transported to the Gulf Coast to refineries.

“(Gingrich) seemed very conservative and very concerned about oil prices,” said Torrey Boggs, a 21-year-old sophomore at LC.

On another issue, Gingrich said a provision in Obama’s national health-care law that requires making employers have health insurance that would pay for contraception is another instance of the president’s “radicalization of America.”

The remark was made after LC President Joe Aguillard said “we will close the institution” before LC is made to pay for after-conception medication that aborts the fetus.

LC filed a lawsuit in Alexandria federal court in February contesting the provision in the law.

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The Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday it plans to re-test the water in Pavillion, Wyoming, after releasing a report last year suggesting that the region’s water supplies had been contaminated by natural-gas production and the drilling method known as hydraulic fracturing.

In a statement Thursday, the EPA said it was partnering with the U.S. Geological Survey and Wyoming officials to take new samples and “to clarify questions about the initial monitoring results.” The EPA said it was also delaying a review of its earlier findings in order to conduct and examine new samples.

Encana Corp. (ECA, ECA.T), which owns the gas fields in Pavillion, said it welcomed the EPA’s efforts to re-test the water. “Today’s announcement really demonstrates that EPA’s draft report was rushed … that the assertions weren’t supported by the data,” Encana spokesman Doug Hock said.

The EPA attracted controversy in December when it released a draft report saying that water samples in Pavillion contained chemicals “consistent with gas production and hydraulic fracturing fluids” and that detected levels were “well above” drinking water standards.

The agency, which had been asked by Pavillion residents to examine the water, said results were particular to Pavillion, where natural gas production differed from other parts of the country. Its tests still served as a flashpoint in a broader debate over natural gas drilling.

Environmental groups seized on the results as evidence that hydraulic fracturing has the potential to contaminate drinking water, reviving calls for heightened scrutiny and tougher standards.

The oil and natural gas industry disputed the findings. Encana released a lengthy reply in which it said the EPA’s findings “are conjecture, not factual and only serve to trigger undue alarm.” Encana said natural gas was known to exist in Pavillion’s groundwater before natural gas production got underway.

The EPA said in a statement Thursday that it was committed to collaborating with state and local leaders and that “use of the best available science are critical.”

President Barack Obama has endorsed the production of natural gas, found in ample amounts in the U.S. after recent advances in drilling technology. He has acknowledged that the industry creates jobs and that natural gas burns cleaner than coal. But lingering questions over the safety of “fracking” has forced the president to consistently confirm his commitment to safe drilling practices.

The EPA is currently studying the potential impacts of fracking on drinking water and the results of that review should be released in 2014.

Hydraulic fracturing involves the use of water, chemicals and sand to break open seams in the earth and extract natural gas.

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The head of the state’s oil-and-gas trade group gave a “state of the industry” address to more than 200 businesspeople at the South Central Industrial Association’s monthly luncheon Tuesday.

Don Briggs founded the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association in 1992, after nearly 30 years in the business, to address the larger needs of the state’s energy companies.

“He knew that if the industry was going to survive under the onslaught of regulations, it had to get organized,” said Lori Davis, president of Rig-Chem, who introduced Briggs at the luncheon. “He strives to make Louisiana a state where oil and gas can continue to prosper.”

Briggs said during his presentation that the industry still faced challenges, playing for the assembled crowd a clip from President Barack Obama’s January State of the Union address that cast a hush over the diners in the ballroom of the Courtyard by Marriott in Houma.

“Our experience with shale gas, our experience with natural gas, shows us that the payoffs on these public investments don’t always come right away. Some technologies don’t pan out; some companies fail. But I will not walk away from the promise of clean energy,” Obama said in the video. “I will not cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China or Germany because we refuse to make the same commitment here. We’ve subsidized oil companies for a century. That’s long enough.”

Briggs also criticized the administration for reacting to the BP oil spill with a six-month moratorium on offshore drilling. And while Briggs called technological advancements such as hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling “a revolution for the industry,” he worried about the perception of hazards involved in those extraction processes.

Environmentalists say it’s possible for fracking fluids and any other contaminants to pollute underground sources of drinking water. The Environmental Protection Agency has reported that this occurred decades ago in West Virginia, and the agency is investigating a similar case in Wyoming.

Briggs said the concern is overblown. He cited a scene from the documentary “Gasland,” which shows a man lighting the water from his faucet on fire, and argued that it has always been true that naturally occurring methane gas can get into water aquifers and the phenomenon was not necessarily caused by fracking.

“My concern is that someone’s going to someday do something they shouldn’t do, and the president is going to say we have to shut it down and that we need to look into this for the safety of the American people,” Briggs said. “I never thought I’d say that, but I never thought a president would shut down all the work being done in the Gulf of Mexico, all that investment.”

Still, Briggs admitted, though the permitting process takes more than three times as long as it used to, the rig count in the Gulf is slowly recovering, and natural-gas drilling is taking off.

“I believe it’s getting better, though I’m very concerned about smaller companies that do shallow-water drilling,” he said.

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On Thursday, December 8, 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recklessly reported that its investigation of groundwater in Pavillion, Wyoming, revealed chemicals associated with natural gas production and hydraulic fracturing fluids.  The event marks the first time that the agency has implicated hydraulic fracturing as a direct cause for groundwater contamination.

Many questions have been raised regarding the methodology and science behind the EPA’s preliminary draft report, which was released before it had been properly peer-reviewed.  The following are some of the key issues with the federal agency’s data and analysis:

The EPA report ignores well-known historical realities with respect to the Pavillion field’s unique geology and hydrology.  Pavillion is a shallow natural gas field where naturally occurring methane exists throughout its subsurface geology.  Well before any natural gas drilling had taken place, the presence of natural gas has been commonly found in the area’s groundwater.
A USGS report conducted in 1959 documented Pavillion water as unsatisfactory for domestic use due to high concentrations of naturally occurring sulfate, total dissolved solids and pH levels which commonly exceed state and federal drinking water standards.
The EPA drilled two deep monitoring wells (depth range: 783 – 981 feet) into a natural gas reservoir and found components of natural gas, which is an entirely expected result. The results in the EPA deep wells are radically different than those in the domestic water wells (typically less than 300 feet deep), thereby showing no connection.
There is unacceptable inconsistency between EPA labs’ analysis for numerous organic compounds reported to have been found in the EPA deep monitoring wells.  The EPA’s conclusions are based on a mere four samples collected over the last two years.  Evidence proves that different labs reported different results in analyzing these samples.  In one lab, “blank” clean samples used for comparison were reported as contaminated, which raises serious questions about the credibility of the examination.
Several of the man-made chemicals detected in the EPA deep wells have never been detected in any of the other wells sampled. They were, however, detected in many of the quality control samples – which are ultra purified water samples commonly used in testing to ensure no contamination from field sampling procedures. These two observations suggest a more likely connection to what it found is due to the problems associated with EPA methodology in the drilling and sampling of these two wells.
The EPA’s reported results of all four phases of its domestic water well tests do not exceed federal or state drinking water quality standards for any constituent related to oil and gas development.
The EPA’s preliminary report contradicts the agency’s previous statements on hydraulic fracturing.  At a U.S. House Oversight Committee hearing in May 2011, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson stated, “I’m not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water.”

In its 2004 study, the EPA found that the hydraulic fracturing process poses no discernable risk to fresh water aquifers.  There is no question that the current leadership within the agency is politically, not scientifically, driven to hamper the safe and responsible extraction of U.S. natural gas resources.

Hydraulic fracturing is key to unlocking our nation’s energy future, and the EPA’s recent report findings fly in the face of decades of responsible drilling.  For more than sixty years, America’s energy producers have relied on the process of hydraulic fracturing to enhance the production of oil and natural gas.  Hydraulic fracturing was first utilized in 1947, and by 1988, the practice had already been employed nearly one million times.  According to the National Petroleum Council, 60% to 80% of all wells drilled in the United States in the next decade will require fracturing to remain viable.

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by Jennifer A. Dlouhy

The Environmental Protection Agency is briefly delaying proposed regulations that would curb pollution from oil and gas drilling, after objections from industry leaders.

Under the move, the EPA is giving energy companies and the public another 30 days — until Nov. 30 — to weigh in on the possible regulations, which were first proposed in July. The agency had said it would issue a final rule by Feb. 28, 2012, but the EPA’s change is also delaying that timeline by roughly a month.

The proposed regulations cover the natural gas industry from initial drilling of wells, through production at the sites and the eventual transportation of the fossil fuel.

The mandates would represent the first federal air standards for wells that are hydraulically fractured. The technique, which involves blasting mixtures of water, sand and some chemicals deep underground to release natural gas and oil from dense shale formations, has been linked to increased smog in some western states.

Oil and gas industry leaders said Tuesday they welcome the additional time.

Matt Todd, with the regulatory and scientific affairs department of the American Petroleum Institute, said the trade group supports “reasonable methods for controlling air emissions” at oil and natural gas production operations. He noted that many companies have already voluntarily adopted the practices the proposed rule would mandate.

But, he added, “we are concerned that, unless properly crafted, (new rules) could hamper our ability to safely meet the nation’s energy needs.”

The EPA’s proposal would cut smog-forming volatile organic compounds at oil and gas sites by a quarter, including a roughly 95 percent reduction in the volatile organic compounds released from new and updated gas wells that are hydraulically fractured.

The mandates would apply to the roughly 11,400 wells that are fractured — and the estimated 14,000 wells that are refractured — each year, as well as storage tanks and other equipment used by the oil and gas industry.

Currently, during one stage of the hydraulic fracturing process, a mix of fracturing fluids, water and reservoir gas surge to the surface _ with this flowback typically lasting from three to 10 days. The mixture generally includes methane, volatile organic compounds and other chemicals.

But EPA says companies could capture the natural gas that escapes into the air at the drilling sites and then sell the harnessed fossil fuel.

In proposing the rule, agency officials said the change would result in a net savings of nearly $30 million annually, while at the same time slashing air pollution from an oil and gas production method that is being used nationwide.

The Clean Air Act requires such updated emission rules for the oil and gas industry. Environmentalists sued the EPA to force the update.

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By DEBORAH SOLOMON And TENNILLE TRACY

Wall Street Journal

The Obama administration on Thursday proposed the first national air standards for gas wells that are drilled using a controversial practice known as hydraulic fracturing or “fracking.”

The move comes as companies seek to tap into newfound natural-gas reserves lodged in shale rock, triggering concern about the impact of the drilling process on air and water quality. The government is taking a broader look at hydraulic fracturing, including studies on whether harmful substances leach into drinking water.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed rules are aimed at reducing the amount of pollutants released in the air when oil and natural gas is produced. The restrictions would require energy producers to capture emissions that escape into the air when natural-gas wells are drilled.

The rules are part of a broader EPA effort to improve air quality by combating smog-forming ozone. Earlier this week, the EPA postponed for a fourth time the release of new smog standards, saying they are still being reviewed by the White House. Business groups have challenged the new rules, saying they will kill jobs and hurt the fledgling economic recovery.

Thursday’s proposals stem from a lawsuit filed by a pair of environmental groups who successfully sued the agency to update clean-air standards for the oil and natural-gas industry. The agency is under a court-ordered deadline to finalize the rule by February.

Jeremy Nichols, director of the Climate and Energy Program at WildEarth Guardians, one of the groups that sued the EPA, said the proposals show the agency recognizes hydraulic fracturing poses some environmental risks.

“EPA’s proposal recognizes natural gas fracking is not going to go away tomorrow and says let’s at least make sure we have…safeguards in place,” he said.

Ramon Alvarez, senior scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund, said the rules are “a vital step toward reducing air pollution from the oil and natural-gas industry.”

The American Petroleum Institute, a group representing the oil and gas industry, said it would review the rules and ask the EPA to postpone finalization by six months.

“EPA has already imposed stringent emissions limitations on engines used in oil and gas operations,” said Howard Feldman, API’s director of scientific and regulatory policy. “API will review these proposed rules to ensure that they don’t inadvertently create unsafe operating conditions, are cost effective and truly provide additional public health benefits, and don’t stifle the development of our abundant natural resources.”

Many of the emissions the EPA has targeted escape into the air when natural-gas wells, drilled using hydraulic fracturing, are being prepared for production.

The EPA is proposing to reduce the emissions by requiring the use of special equipment to separate oil and gas from a mix of fracking fluids and water that flows to the surface during one stage of well completion. The proposed rules would apply to more than 25,000 wells a year, as well as to storage tanks and other pieces of equipment used by the oil and gas industry.

The EPA estimates the proposed rules will reduce smog-forming volatile organic compounds emitted by the oil and gas industry by 25%. They also should reduce methane emissions by 26% and air toxics such as benzene by nearly 30%.

Certain states, such as Wyoming and Colorado, already require the use of this equipment, and EPA officials said 3,700 wells already have the technology in place.

The EPA says these proposed standards will eventually save the oil and gas industry about $30 million a year because drilling companies will be able to sell the fossil fuels they will be required to capture during the fracturing process.

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