Methane Leak Detected at Marcellus Fracking Well

The Pennsylvania Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion (DEP) is inves­ti­gat­ing a poten­tial methane migra­tion prob­lem in Union Town­ship, Pennsylvania in Tioga County. A Shell spokes­woman says the company’s tests show “a very low haz­ard risk to peo­ple, veg­e­ta­tion and fish in the imme­di­ate area,” but Shell has nev­er­the­less asked the hand­ful of peo­ple who live within a one-mile radius of the drilling site to tem­porar­ily evac­u­ate their homes. Shell has also sent a well con­trol spe­cial­ist team to the site.

DEP spokesman Daniel Spadoni con­firmed the probe in an email to StateIm­pact Penn­syl­va­nia. “DEP was noti­fied of the prob­lem by Shell on June 17,” he writes. “Shell is fully coop­er­at­ing with the response and investigation.” Accord­ing to Spadoni, a drink­ing water well located 4,000 feet from a Shell drilling site began over­flow­ing this week­end. “Shell has sev­eral well pads in the area in var­i­ous stages of com­ple­tion. They stopped all oper­a­tions in the area when noti­fied of a prob­lem,” he wrote, not­ing “bub­bling was also noted at mul­ti­ple loca­tions in a nearby stream.”

Read more...