Natural Gas Development in the Marcellus Shale: Environmental Footprints and Mitigations

The process of gas development is intensive and involves risk to the environment. Statistics confirm that 0.5-1% of wells drilled result in a blowout. Causes of these exploration risks are identified as; (a) Violations (b) Operational Pollution (accidental spills and leaks (c) Operators policy. In addressing this concern, a risk assessment methodology was employed to evaluate all violations by operators in Pennsylvania from January 2008 to November 2010, using Statistical Analysis Software (SAS). The most significant causes of environmental damage and risk were determined using the doubly repeated measure Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA). The category effect and interaction effect were used to proof the usefulness of the developed model, which helps explain the safety level of the locality. Out of the 65 operators involved in the area, only 27 of them were found to have p-values < 0.05, which shows they are significantly different in comparison. The most significant incidents are ranked (based on Border count) 3,5,9,10, which account for 67% of all the violations. These data reflect several environmental concerns that are currently prevalent in the Marcellus shale area. This research identifies environmental incidences, causes and effect of exploration risk and safety impediments in the Marcellus gas play. It also presents guidelines for feasible options to minimizing environmental risks and consequently increasing the degree of safety in the area. Recommendations on how to mitigate these impending problems were proffered.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90142 © 2012 AAPG Annual Convention and Exhibition, April 22-25, 2012, Long Beach, California