Gas company fined for building pipelines in the wrong place

• 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.

A natural gas company and a pipeline builder in southwestern Pennsylvania will be paying a combined $184,000 for constructing gathering lines outside the bounds of their permits. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection says in one case, the pipeline was constructed several hundred feet from where the line was supposed to be installed. In another case, the pipeline crossed a waterway several hundred yards away from the permitted stream crossing. These gathering lines are the smaller pipelines that carry gas from the wellhead to larger transmission lines, or gas processing facilities.
DEP fined CNX Gas Company, a subsidiary of Consol Energy, $139,000, while CONE Midstream Partners has been assessed $45,000 for violating the state’s Clean Streams Law and the Oil and Gas Act.
DEP employees discovered the violations during a routine inspection in December 2015. Not only did the inspector find pipelines where they were not permitted to be, but DEP also discovered a gravel road and a pad for a pipeline valve that were not permitted at all.
Gathering lines in rural areas are not regulated by the state or federal governments, nor do the companies operating them have to comply with PA One Call. But gathering lines do need erosion and sediment control permits, as well as water crossing permits from DEP. The agency found 20 of these lines operated by CNX, and another 7 owned by CONE Midstream Partners in Greene, Washington, Indiana, and Jefferson counties, were out of compliance.
CNX and CONE Midstream have until November 15, 2016 to complete a review of their pipelines. Neither company could be reached for comment. DEP says CNX and CONE are working to bring their lines into compliance.

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