Chesapeake Claims April Spill Caused No Long-Term Damage

Scott Detrow / StateIm­pact Pennsylvania

Chesa­peake CEO Aubrey McClen­don addresses a Sep­tem­ber nat­ural gas drilling conference

We’re a few days behind on this, but Chesa­peake Energy has released infor­ma­tion about an inves­ti­ga­tion it funded, look­ing into April’s major Brad­ford County well spill.

A pri­vate con­sult­ing firm hired by Chesa­peake has found no last­ing dam­age caused by the spill of 10,000-plug gal­lons of frack­ing fluid in Leroy Township.

The Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion is still inves­ti­gat­ing the acci­dent; it’s unclear if or when DEP will issue a penalty. The depart­ment slapped a $1 mil­lion fine on Chesa­peake ear­lier this year, for a Wash­ing­ton County well pad fire, and sev­eral methane migra­tion inci­dents in Brad­ford County.

Here’s the Times-Tribune’s look at the Chesa­peake study:

A review of a nat­ural gas well that failed in Brad­ford County six months ago shows no last­ing dam­age to the envi­ron­ment, accord­ing to infor­ma­tion released late Sat­ur­day by Chesa­peake Energy Corp.

A mechan­i­cal fail­ure at an Atgas 2H well owned by Chesa­peake in LeRoy Twp. caused thou­sands of gal­lons of tainted waste­water to flow into Towanda Creek, a trib­u­tary of the Susque­hanna River, on April 19. The state Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion then issued a vio­la­tion notice order­ing Chesa­peake to pro­vide more infor­ma­tion about the spill, includ­ing what chem­i­cals and other mate­ri­als were being used at the well site and what may have spilled into the environment.

Chesa­peake released infor­ma­tion late Sat­ur­day from SAIC, an Okla­homa con­sult­ing com­pany Chesa­peake hired to review the incident.