Changes at DEP could delay new oil and gas rules

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.

February 23, 2015 | 3:01 PM

Lindsay Lazarski / WHYY

A gas production unit (foreground) cleans, depressurizes, and moderates gas temperatures at a Cabot Oil & Gas drill site in Kingsley, Pa.

Long awaited changes to the state’s oil and gas rules may run into some snags with new faces in Harrisburg. But DEP secretary for oil and gas, Scott Perry, told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that missing the March 2016 deadline to upgrade regulations would be a “failure.”

The state’s new oil and gas law, known as Act 13, required an update to Chapter 78 of the Pennsylvania Code. The rules guide construction and operation of oil and gas wells, including waste, spills, and pipelines. The DEP has received thousands of public comments to the proposed revisions. In a surprising move last week, the agency announced changes to the oil and gas Technical Advisory Board, which helps guide DEP on the rules. More from the Tribune-Review:

Current members were waiting to be told whether their service is still wanted.

“No other administration has really touched the makeup of the board,” said Gary Slagel, the government relations coordinator at the Cecil office of the law firm Steptoe & Johnson who has served on the board since 1989.

Perry said the department wants new members focused solely on shale drilling since it announced last week the formation of a board for advice on rules for conventional oil and gas drilling.

The department is adding three nonvoting members to the five engineers and geologists on each board, Perry said.

To accommodate the changes, a planned March 5 meeting of the existing board was postponed to March 20, and the new conventional board will meet March 26.

The boards’ new members will consider revisions to proposed rules that initially went out for public review a year ago and garnered 25,000 comments. Perry said those comments dictated the latest changes, as did a review by Wolf administration officials who took office last month, including acting DEP Secretary John Quigley and former department leaders John Hanger and Katie McGinty.