Pennsylvania

Energy. Environment. Economy.

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

October 19, 2011 | 10:01 AM
By Scott Detrow

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.

Comments

  • Jslesing

    Nei­ther Cabot or the DEP can be trusted to make a deter­mi­na­tion on anything. 

    • Car­los

      Yes you are right, lets not trust sci­en­tist, let’s trust homeowner’s who likely have no sci­en­tific back­ground or envi­ron­men­tal­ist out to make names for them­selves or their causes.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_T5AQOTQAX3TMF7AVYYRUW3THMY Julieann Woz­niak

    Research has proven that when you cut cor­ners on your drill cas­ings, to whit: cheap steel and con­crete that can­not with­stand the high pres­sures employed in the frack­ing process, you have dele­te­ri­ous side effects like methane migra­tion and frack­ing flu­ids find­ing their way into ground­wa­ter, despite the industry’s slick pro­pa­ganda which claims that such things never hap­pen. PADEP own inves­ti­ga­tions have indi­cated that Cabot uses sub­stan­dard (read: cheap) drill cas­ings, eats the fines, and offends again. Reck­less dis­re­gard, I believe the per­sonal injury lawyers call this. In the par­lance of envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tion, Cabot is a “bad actor.” PADEP doesn not have nearly enough inspec­tors to pro­tect us from com­pa­nies exactly like them, and tra­di­tion­ally lacks the polit­i­cal will.

    • Cjtrexler

      Real research has proved that quot­ing from the story directly “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.”

    • mis­ter Z

      Why should Cabot pay home­own­ers whose water wells are con­t­a­m­i­nated with nat­u­rally occur­ing methane that is unre­lated to Cabot’s oper­a­tions (as sug­gested by the fact that 80% of 2,000 water wells near Dimock had methane in them before Cabot showed up).  And to argue that Cabot might use cheap steel or con­crete just to save a nickel belies the fact that Cabot has a huge finan­cial incen­tive to sell gas, not allow it to migrate out of their wells.

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