EPA Releases New Air Pollution Rules for Fracking

• Susan Phillips
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  Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

The Environmental Protection Agency has issued the first federal rules governing air quality for hydro-fracked oil and gas wells. The new regulations stem from a lawsuit filed in 2009, which alleged the agency failed to oversee toxic emissions stemming from the growing oil and natural gas industry. EPA Assistant Administrator from the Office of Air and Radiation, Gina McCarthy, says the new rules will reduce volatile organic compounds, or VOC’s, from fracking sites by 95 percent.
“This reduction would be accomplished primarily through the use of a proven process known as reduced emissions completion or green completion,” said McCarthy during a press teleconference call.
VOC’s and methane escape during the fracking process, which is also referred to as “completion.” The “reduced emission completion” refers to flaring of wells, or burning off the gas as it escapes from a well. The “green completion” process involves capturing the gas that often escapes in the early part of the well completion. McCarthy says the technology does exist, and in fact some drillers are doing green completions today. But she says the rules do not require drillers to do green completions until 2015, in order to let the technology catch-up and become widely available.

“We really wanted to make sure we understood the value of geeen completion,” said McCarthy. “But not require its use before the was technology was widely available.”
Allowing the drillers three years to comply is a change from what had been originally proposed. Industry had lobbied for greater flexibility, saying the rules would slow down production.
McCarthy says the new rules will apply to an estimated 11,000 newly fracked wells each year. Smog-causing VOC’s, methane, and cancer-causing air emissions are all released during the fracking process.  Methane is a greenhouse gas that McCarthy says is 20 times more potent and C02.
Environmentalists praised the action. But the oil and gas industry says these types of regulations should be left to the states.

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