Cabot Claims New DEP Info Proves It Didn't Cause Dimock Methane Migration

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

October 19, 2011 | 10:01 AM

Interesting timing here: Cabot Oil and Gas has submitted a report to the Department of Environmental Protection arguing it’s not responsible for methane migration in Dimock, Susquehanna County.
This comes a few days after DEP released information showing continued high levels of methane in Dimock wells. The company argues the information proves the methane pervading ground water naturally, and has nothing to do with its drilling operations.
The Times-Tribune’s Laura Legere reports:

The DEP released data for only six of the 18 water supplies state regulators have found impacted by methane linked to Cabot’s Marcellus Shale drilling operations in Dimock. It did not release sample results for any of the 11 affected homeowners suing Cabot over alleged damage to their health and property.
The sampling data was released on the same day Cabot issued a report to the department outlining its findings that its operations did not cause methane contamination in Dimock, that its natural gas wells are not defective and that methane seeps naturally into Susquehanna County water wells commonly drilled into a shallow gas-bearing rock layer.
The company asked the department to allow it to stop delivering replacement bottled and bulk water to the affected homes by Nov. 30 and to resume drilling and hydraulic fracturing operations “immediately” in a 9-square-mile area around Carter Road that has been off-limits to the driller since April 2010.
…Cabot spokesman George Stark said the elevated levels of methane revealed by the tests illustrates that the county has “naturally occurring” methane “that is neither fixed nor predictable” and fluctuations occur because of water use, barometric pressure and water well maintenance and construction.