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DEP Has Ordered A ‘Top To Bottom Review’ Of How It Regulates Underground Natural Gas Storage Areas As A Result Of The Equitrans Gas Leak In Cambria County In Nov.

On December 1, Kurt Klapkowski, Acting Deputy Secretary for Oil and Gas Management, said he has ordered a “top to bottom review” of how DEP regulates underground natural gas storage areas as a result of the leak of 1 billion cubic feet of gas from the Equitrans Rager Mountain Gas Storage Area in Cambria County November 6 to 20.

He made the comments to members of DEP’s Oil and Gas Technical Advisory Board at a December 1 meeting.

[Note: On December 2, Bloomberg reported the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration was also investigating the leak. Read more here.

[On December 2, Reuters reported Equitrans resumed taking natural gas out of the Rager Mountain facility, after receiving approvals from regulatory agencies. Read more here.]

“I've basically instructed staff that we should be doing a top-to-bottom review of the gas storage program,” said Klapkowski.

He said the evaluation will include not only the storage areas themselves, but also closely related issues like regulating coal mining over and near gas storage facilities.

“What is probably going to come out of this incident in 2023 will be significant development of potential proposed rule makings, potential proposed statutory changes, potential proposed administrative implementation changes,” said Klapkowski. “What we're going to be looking at is a significant interaction between the agency and the [storage area] operators, and I would think that the [Oil and Gas] Technical Advisory Board and CDAC [DCED Crude (Oil) Development Advisory Council] would be part of that discussion.”

“Everything is on the table for consideration in terms of making sure that this industry is regulated appropriately and that the public gets protected and the environment is protected from potential incidents like this happening again in the future,” said Klapkowski. “Because these [storage area wells] are defined as conventional wells, these changes to regulation will take place in Chapter 78.”

Klapkowski said DEP will be doing an after-action report on the incident evaluating the response of the company and the agency. He said he hopes it can look like the report that was done for the Aliso Canyon leak in California in 2015-16. [Read more here]

“We're reviewing what the company did and what the well control company did in response to this. We're also, frankly, reviewing our own response in terms of the DEP staff,” said Klapkowski. “The Office of Oil and Gas Management was out there 24/7 along with our emergency response teams, until the well was under control on November 20th.”

“Our understanding is that there was somewhere in the neighborhood of a billion cubic feet of natural gas released in this situation,” he said.

“There was a period of about two weeks when the well was not under control and vented methane. An initial kill attempt reduced the volume of flow of methane out of [the well],” Klapskowski said. “There were several kill attempts. There were some technical problems with obstructions in the well that had to be milled out before the kill attempts could be successfully completed. And the well was brought under control on November 20th.”

“The “good news” is that this was a relatively remote facility in Cambria County. And so it's my understanding that there were no evacuations that were necessary as a result of this release.

“We took steps to make sure that we were properly monitoring our [DEP] air quality folks and working with our emergency response teams, were doing air monitoring around the facility to make sure that that was the case and that there were no evacuations that were needed after they mobilized.

“And so, I think from that perspective, honestly, we got lucky in a way here in Pennsylvania,” said Klapkowski. “And I will say, to be frank about it, there are gas storage facilities that are not in as remote areas and are a significant cause for concern.

“But we have prioritized those facilities for inspection, for oversight, for update. And so I think if we can take anything good out of this is that this happened in a place and will bring attention to this issue, that did not result in significant injury to the public or to in some ways even the environment.

“There's a bigger question there about obviously climate change and methane releases.”

He said there is still remediation going on at the Rager Mountain well site because of the way the release happened at the site.

When asked for more about the cause of the Rager Mountain Storage Area release, Klapkowski said, “I think there was a mechanical failure. And that's all I know at this point. Like I said, we're doing an after action [report] on this one.

“I will say this well was one that we would describe as a single point of failure well, which basically means that there are not multiple casing strings in place to make sure that control can be retained if one protective barrier fails. The reality of the gas storage industry is that [they have] many of these.”

“And so, a lot of these facilities, not surprising, were initially developed many years ago. And so, if you drill a well in the 1960s, maybe you didn't have modern casing and cementing standards in place in order to construct that well, and then produce those hydrocarbons.”

“It's definitely one of the issues that we're going to be looking at as we review this incident and decide what changes need to be made to the program.”

Klapkowski said they will also be reviewing other issues, like how well they did in providing information to the public about the issue.

Klapkowski said, generally, the Pennsylvania program to regulate underground natural gas storage areas compares favorably with some existing national standards.

“The Groundwater Protection Council on the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission developed a document in 2017 called the Underground Gas Storage Regulatory Considerations, A Guide for State and Federal Regulatory Agencies,” said Klapkowski. “Again, I think that the good news from my perspective is that when you look at that document and you look at Pennsylvania's program, I think we're right where they said we ought to have been.

“And so from a regulatory perspective, an oversight and implementation perspective, I think that I'm actually pretty satisfied in a lot of different ways about where we are.”

In response to a question about the need to look at the issue of coal mining over and near natural gas storage areas, Klapkowski said, “I think of the gas storage and coordination issues is one where I feel like there's room to make some changes to that side of the program to make things work more smoothly so that there's more communication, that there's better notice that's given when mining approaches one of these facilities.”

As part of the discussion of conflicts between gas storage areas and coal mining, Klapkoski mentioned the Swarts Gas Storage Reservoir case in Greene County as an example.

DEP fined Equitrans Midstream Corporation $650,000 for failure to locate and plug abandoned oil and gas wells around its gas storage area which was below an underground coal mine owned by Consol. Read more here.

Follow-Up At Dec. 15 Meeting

Klapkowski said there will also be more discussion of the natural gas storage facility issue at the December 15 meeting of DCED’s Crude [Oil] Development Advisory Council meeting.

PA Gas Storage Fields

Pennsylvania has 51 active underground natural gas storage fields regulated by the Department of Environmental Protection.

The majority of the fields are contained within depleted hydrocarbon reservoirs (host rocks, typically sandstones, in which the economic oil and/or natural gas has been removed). As such, these locations coincide with historical oil and gas production, which is predominantly in the western half of Pennsylvania.

Click Here for a DEP factsheet on natural gas storage fields.

(Photo: Methane plume from the leak captured by the Sentinel-2 satellite on 9 November (data processed by UNEP/IMEO), courtesy Environmental Defense Fund.)

NewsClips:

-- Bloomberg: Equitrans Natural Gas Storage Area Leak In Cambria County Probed By Federal PHMSA Investigators

-- Reuters: Natural Gas Flow Resumes From Equitrans PA Site After November Leak

Related Articles:

-- UPDATED: After 14 Days, Efforts To Stop A Natural Gas Leak At A Cambria County Underground Gas Storage Area Have Apparently Been Successful [PaEN]

-- EDF Blog: What A Catastrophic Natural Gas Leak In Pennsylvania Means For Our Climate And Health [PaEN]

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