Gov. Tom Corbett at a press conference in Marcus Hook, Delaware County with the shuttered Sunoco refinery in the background.
Pennsylvania’s shale boom has drill rigs popping up all over rural parts of the state. Pipeline projects, truck traffic, and hotel construction has followed. Now, industry plans to build large-scale natural gas processing plants. State officials hope to create jobs. Industry wants a larger industrial infrastructure to develop the state’s shale gas reserves. Environmentalists wonder how those projects may impact air quality.
On the western side of the state, in Beaver County, Shell wants to build an ethane cracker. On the other side, close to Philadelphia, the Corbett Administration is promoting the conversion of former oil refineries into natural gas processing plants. And Governor Corbett recently cheered as the Brazilian company Braskem purchased a shuttered natural gas splitter in Delaware County.
“Between here and the western part of the state, in ten to 15 years,” said Corbett, “Pennsylvania is returning to a manufacturing state. And that’s where we want to go.”
Applause rose from the crowd of factory workers, local politicians, and industry representatives.
Employment estimates for the proposed Beaver County cracker include 10,000 construction jobs, and 400 to 600 permanent jobs. As for the Philadelphia area refineries, the goal is to primarily save jobs.
Gov. Tom Corbett stands in front of the shuttered Sunoco refinery in Marcus Hook, Delaware County.
Republican Governor Tom Corbett certainly can’t be accused of being a big spender. The 2011 budget he signed into law cut more than $1 billion in state spending, reducing funding for nearly every state department.
This year’s budget, finalized last month, kept funding relatively level, but reduced spending for county-level public health programs, among other items.
There’s one exception to this bare-bones philosophy, though: the grants and tax breaks the Corbett Administration has directed to energy companies.
Gov. Tom Corbett stands in front of the shuttered Sunoco refinery in Marcus Hook, Delaware County.
Sunoco may no longer turn crude oil into gasoline at their Marcus Hook plant, but plastics manufacturing will continue in Delaware County. The Corbett Administration has invested $15 million dollars to keep parts of the Sunoco refinery operating. The plant shut its doors earlier this year, laying off about 400 workers.
The Brazilian petrochemical company Braskem bought parts of the plant in June. The Braskem polypropylene plant sits right across the street from the Sunoco refinery in Marcus Hook. For years it used the refinery byproduct, propylene, to make nuggets of polypropylene, which get turned into everything from plastic water bottles to credit cards.
But with the refinery gone, 119 people at the Braskem plant could have lost their jobs too, people like Dan Crawford.
“It’s a good feeling to know I’m on the inside looking out instead of the outside looking in,” said Crawford. “It’s very much hard times and I don’t want to be part of it.”
The borough of Marcus Hook has hit hard times with the closing of the Sunoco refinery. State and county officials want to convert it to a natural gas processing facility.
The borough of Marcus Hook may be one of the oldest European settlements in the state, stretching back to a Swedish trading post in the 1640’s. But it has a long history in the refining business. In 1892, to serve Pennsylvania’s oil rush, the borough’s first refinery was built, followed by a 300-mile pipeline from the borough’s port to oil fields in western Pennsylvania. Walking down the streets today, the tidy homes are dwarfed by the giant pipes and towers of the Sunoco refinery, which has operated here for more than one hundred years.
Whether it’s mental, written on an envelope or meticulously documented in a spreadsheet, a list of pros and cons often plays a role in the purchase of a new car.
What’s the mileage like? How safe is it? How’s it look?
If a shopper was weighing whether or not to buy a natural gas-fueled car, the top item on the “pro” side would without a doubt be the cost of fuel: right now the gallon-equivalent of compressed natural gas costs less than half as much as a gallon of gasoline.
That is, if you can find a place to fill up. Because the top “con” would be the fact there are only a dozen publicly-accessible natural gas fueling stations in Pennsylvania. That $1.75-a-gallon price tag doesn’t look so great when you’re stranded on the side of the Turnpike with an empty fuel tank.
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Tom Stroup, Tom Savko and Bill Peiffer are fighting the deep injection well.
Susan Phillips / StateImpact Pennsylvania permalink
A view of a beaver pond, in the Tamarack Natural National Landmark Swamp.
Susan Phillips / StateImpact Pennsylvania permalink
This former gas well in Bear Lake Township has been permitted by the EPA to become a deep injection well. The landowner's hunting cabin is located near the well.
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This home sits near a proposed deep injection well site.
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Bill Peiffer checks out an abandoned oil well in the Tamarack Swamp in Warren County. Tom Savko sits in the distance.
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This road leads to another old gas well that the EPA has permitted to be turned into a deep injection well. The permit was challenged by area residents.
Susan Phillips / StateImpact Pennsylvania permalink
An abandoned oil well dating back to the early 19th century spills oil into the Tamarack Swamp in Warren County.
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The Tamarack Swamp at sunset.
When you drill for natural gas, for every gallon of gas produced, some amount of wastewater gets created as well.
Sometimes it can be simple brine that can be disposed of in simple ways, such as using it to melt snow on Pennsylvania’s roads in winter. Or to keep the dust down in summer.
But the wastewater can also be pretty nasty stuff, which can’t be cleaned up by water treatment plants. One option is to dump it down an old gas well, shooting it deep into the earth. It’s a method used in thousands of wells across the country. Only five of those currently operate in Pennsylvania.
Click on the above map to get more information on Pennsylvania's deep injection wells.
A proposal to add to that number is stirring concern among some who live in Warren County, Pennsylvania, near the New York state border.
Fueling those concerns are the headlines such deep injection wells, or underground disposal wells, recently made when one such well in Youngstown, Ohio, caused several earthquakes. But residents are also worried about the impact on water supplies and natural areas. With the Marcellus Shale boom, the EPA has received several new applications for deep injection wells in Pennsylvania. Continue Reading →
Over the last few years, the Environmental Protection Agency has taken an increased interest in regulating and monitoring hydraulic fracturing. And when the EPA steps into an area that Pennsylvania’s state agency is already overseeing, Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Michael Krancer appears to take it personally. That personal reaction often comes in the form of a blistering letter written to the EPA.
When the EPA began an investigation of whether or not the water in Dimock, Susquehanna County was safe to drink, Krancer essentially told EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson she didn’t know what she was talking about.
“We realize and recognize that EPA is very new to all of this and the EPA’s understanding of the facts and science behind this activity is rudimentary,” he wrote. “Fortunately, Pennsylvania is not new to all of this and we have a long history of experience at overseeing and regulating oil and natural gas extraction activities in our state, including hydraulic fracturing.”
A drill rig rises above a farm in Susquehanna County, Pa.
StateImpact Pennsylvania’s Susan Phillips spoke to host Tracey Matisak on WHYY’s Radio Times this morning, along with ProPublica’s Abrahm Lustgarten. The discussion touched upon new air pollution regulations the EPA has created for natural gas drilling, and the Department of Interior’s proposed rules that would force companies to disclose the chemicals used in the fracking process and test well integrity. Phillips also discusses portions of the state’s new drilling law, Act 13. And Lustgarten talks about a new study that models how frack fluid could migrate to aquifers in a shorter amount of time than previously thought.
Skylar Sowatsky sits at the kitchen table, surrounded by water jugs. Sowatsky's mother Kim McEvoy says once gas drilling began, her water turned gray and cloudy. Now, her well is running dry.
Gas drilling has turned some quiet rural areas of Pennsylvania into growing industrial zones. Residents complain of increased truck traffic, bad air, and contaminated well water. Some of those residents have turned to activism. Others have filed lawsuits. But a growing number of Pennsylvania residents living near Marcellus Shale sites are also packing up their bags and moving.
Boxes full of books are piling up in Kim McEvoy’s dining room in the house where she lives with her three-year-old daughter Skylar and her fiance, Peter Sowatsky. It’s a small one-story, three-bedroom house at the end of a dirt road in Butler County. Along with a swing-set, a collection of toys, and a dog-house, a for-sale sign sits in her front yard. A large black dog is tied up near a tree, a smaller dog chases a bunny around the living room. Skylar Sowatsky is eager to show a visitor around the house.
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