On this West Virginia Morning, harm reduction advocates celebrate an anniversary and a discussion about the state’s role in supplying the global market of natural gas.
On this West Virginia Morning, harm reduction advocates celebrated the first anniversary of the installation of a Narcan vending machine in Charleston on Monday.
Also, Curtis Tate speaks with Charlie Burd, president of the West Virginia Gas and Oil Association, about the state’s role in supplying the global market of natural gas after a record year of production.
West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, which is solely responsible for its content.
Support for our news bureaus comes from Shepherd University.
Eric Douglas produced this episode.
Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning
Researchers at West Virginia University are set to study how methane leaks from liquid storage tanks happen, and ways to potentially stop them in the future.
Researchers at West Virginia University are set to study how methane leaks from liquid storage tanks happen, and ways to potentially stop them in the future.
The team, based out of the WVU Center for Alternative Fuels, Engines and Emissions is working with research and development company Aerodyne Research to sample and monitor plumes from storage tanks.
The project is being supported by $5.5 million in funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. West Virginia is the fourth-largest producer of natural gas in the country.
“As we continue to build the natural gas infrastructure, well sites, pressure sites, all of these things that infrastructure grows, there are more of these tanks out there, and they’re going to be there for a while,” project leader and WVU aerospace and engineering professor Derek Johnson said. “It does have climate implications. But also from what we’ve seen is that there are other emissions associated with that methane coming from these tanks. And those can have impacts on local air quality.”
Research suggests methane emissions are more potent than carbon dioxide in the short-term when it comes to climate change.
Johnson and his team plan to create new software to predict and report methane leaks. They will use data collected at sites in the Marcellus shale formation in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The formation accounts for around 21 percent of all gross natural gas production in the country, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
“A lot of just, unknowns or not so much data exists in this area,” Johnson said. “And some of the data that has been collected doesn’t paint a detailed picture. And some of the data is old.” Last Thursday, WVU’s Energy Institute hosted a panel on methane leaks from the state’s oil and gas wells, and creating more state jobs that would help mitigate leaks statewide.
A team of Harvard researchers found elevated levels of radioactivity on air particles measured downwind of fracking sites around the country.
The levels found were well below public health limits, but the authors warn they could induce “adverse health effects to residents living close” to fracking sites. The study was published this week in the journal Nature Communications.
The authors looked at 16 years worth of data from the EPA’s radiation monitoring system, from 2001 to 2017. They found increased radiation on particles 12 miles (20 km) to 31 miles (50 km) downwind of fracking sites. Those close to shallower conventional wells, meanwhile, showed virtually no increases.
The study’s lead author, Petros Koutrakis, professor of environmental sciences at the Harvard School of Public Health, said the radiation is likely coming from uranium and radon buried inside oil and gas-bearing rock formations.
“It’s a concern, but it’s not something (where) people should move out as soon as possible. I think it’s an additional risk,” Koutrakis said. “I think this is the reason we need to control these emissions.”
The authors found no evidence of a “statistically significant association” between fracking activities and an increase in radiation in the Marcellus and Utica shale region, which includes Pennsylvania. But the authors said that was probably due to a lack of monitors near gas drilling sites in the area. When they estimated how big an effect drilling would have on radiation levels there, they found the Marcellus region’s would be the biggest of all the U.S. regions studied.
“The largest effect was estimated for the (Marcellus-Utica) region,” Koutrakis said, in an email, “which is expected because of its high radon levels. However, it did not reach statistical significance most likely due to the small number of … monitoring stations in the area.”
Koutrakis said it’s unclear where in the extraction process the radiation is coming from.
“We don’t really know whether this is immediate, during the construction of the well, or during the production (process), or from the points that they use around the facilities to store wastewater,” Koutrakis said.
“We think that it is something that needs to be investigated to understand the process that produces releases of radon and to develop the engineering controls to control these emissions.”
Avner Vengosh, a professor of Earth and Ocean Sciences at Duke University, who was not involved in the study, said that while the actual levels of radiation detected were small, they warrant more investigation.
“Even though it’s a very small absolute concentration, it shows that (the radiation levels are) systematically higher than background,” Vengosh said. “This paper for me is saying there’s much more work to be done in a much more local scale to see the impact, especially where people are living.”
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, which has studied naturally occurring radiation in shale gas activities, is reviewing the paper, spokesman Neil Shader said.
The Pennsylvania Department of Health, which is studying the health impacts of fracking, is also reviewing the paper, spokesman Nate Wardle said.
In a statement, Marcellus Shale Coalition President Dave Spigelmeyer stressed that public health was “a top industry concern” and pointed to a 2016 Pennsylvania DEP study that found “little or limited potential for radiation exposure to workers or the public” from fracking operations.
Though the DEP report did find “potential for radiological environmental impacts” from spills of drilling waste, it generally found little public health risk from airborne radiation in the industry.
Koutrakis acknowledged that, as a replacement for burning coal, fracking has led to lower emissions from the power sector.
“I understand that this industry is very important to the U.S. economy and to people that have jobs in it,” he said. “So it’s important for this industry to continue in the near future. However, I think we need to understand what kind of emissions are released.”
West Virginia’s top official says the state is prepared to do “anything” to help the state’s struggling oil and natural gas industry.
Speaking at the annual winter meeting of the Independent Oil and Gas Association of West Virginia on Wednesday, Jan. 22, Gov. Jim Justice told the crowd of drillers and producers that his administration believes the industry is vital to the state’s economic health and that he’s in lockstep with the industry in supporting legislative relief.
“I can’t be any more sympathetic,” Justice said. “I do really believe that we’re doing things to make things better.”
Justice assured the audience he intended to sign House Bill 4091. The bill, which creates an expedited permitting process for drillers, passed in the House and is under consideration in the Senate.
He also expressed support for H.B. 4090, which reduces the severance tax on low-producing wells and siphons some of the proceeds toward plugging orphaned wells. Justice vetoed a version of the bill that passed last session.
The governor urged natural gas producers to ride out the current record-low gas prices.
“If you can survive for two or three more years, the opportunity to the upside for you, for this is off the chart. It’s off the blooming chart,” he said. “Because the stars have aligned. Now, it maybe took me a little while to catch up, but I’m there. I’m all in.”
Justice was light on specifics. He mentioned recently speaking with President Donald Trump and representatives from China regarding energy issues and reiterated his support for bringing downstream manufacturers to the region. Last fall, Justice signed an executive order creating a task force aimed at bringing petrochemical manufacturers to the state.
Justice, a businessman whose family operates coal companies across Appalachia, also dismissed the notion the “coal guy” didn’t support the state’s natural gas industry.
“In some way I’ve been painted into this thing that ‘Well, Justice is a coal guy, he doesn’t really care about gas,’” he said. “It’s so ridiculous. It’s unbelievable.”
He also urged drillers to take their concerns to the Legislature.
“There are things that are going through our Legislature today. There are things that will help,” he said. “But the biggest thing that you have got, and I will help you in every way, is we have got to convince them of the number of opportunities, jobs and everything that are at stake and how close on the bubble you are to an economic catastrophe.”
Drillers paid $146 million in severance taxes to the state in 2019. Projections for 2020 are $98 million, according to the state tax department.
‘Running For Our Life’
Some of the state’s largest oil and gas producers also presented at the meeting. Top of mind: low natural gas prices.
“There are days I wonder if I’m working for Blockbuster and don’t know it,” said Al Schopp, regional senior vice president for Antero Resources.
He said in the current low gas price environment, Antero is banking on growing its liquid natural gas exports. He praised the Legislature’s previous work on co-tenancy and urged lawmakers to drop the severance tax on low-producing wells entirely.
“That’s how we’ll keep the state strong,” he said. “That’s how we keep working.”
Derek Cutwright, senior vice president for Southwestern Energy, expressed similar dismay over the tough economics facing the industry, but said Southwestern is focused on becoming more efficient to stay competitive.
“The analogy that we’re running for our life in this price environment is pretty accurate,” he said. “It looks grim, but we’ve made progress as an industry.”
A massive natural gas storage tank fire in West Virginia is out.
News outlets report the West Virginia Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management said in a statement that the blaze was extinguished around 5 a.m. Sunday after all-night efforts by local fire departments and state agencies.
The tank is owned by Dominion Resources and is near the town of Friendly in Tyler County.
No injuries were reported and Dominion Energy says there’s no threat to public safety.
Justice’s office says the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection will assist with cleanup.
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West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice has ordered that all necessary state resources be used to battle a natural gas storage tank fire.
In a news release, Justice’s office said the fire began Saturday afternoon when lightning struck a storage tank that holds 1 million gallons of natural gas condensate.
The tank is owned by Dominion Resources and is near the town of Friendly in Tyler County.
Although the tank is on fire, the natural gas product had not been released as of Saturday evening.
Fire departments have been working to extinguish the flames.
Justice ordered the West Virginia National Guard and West Virginia Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management to assist. No injuries have been reported and Dominion Energy says there’s no threat to public safety.
More than 100 people braved freezing temperatures to both listen and have their say in front of Ohio environmental officials at a recent hearing in Belmont County, Ohio. For the three dozen or so people who testified, the stakes were high.
The hearing at Shadyside High School focused on a nearly 300-page, densely technical, draft air quality permit. The permit is one more step towards a massive, multi-billion dollar petrochemical plant proposed for the banks of the Ohio River just a few miles away from the auditorium.
Like many at the hearing, Glenn Giffin, president of IBEW Local 141 in Wheeling, West Virginia, used his three minutes to voice a position not merely on the permit at hand, but what this facility could mean for the region.
“It is a project such as this that will revitalize the Ohio Valley,” he said.
Credit Brittany Patterson / Ohio Valley ReSource
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Ohio Valley ReSource
Shadyside weathered coal’s decline, now the rise of gas fracking brings major changes.
Giffin and other supporters see a potential economic boom in the plant, called an ethane “cracker.” Its natural gas furnaces literally crack apart ethane — which is brought up during natural gas fracking — into smaller molecules used in plastics and chemical manufacturing.
But Belmont County resident Jill Hunkler sees this plant as the beginning of something else: an environmental nightmare.
“We want better options than a massive petrochemical plant,” Hunkler told the audience.
Officially, the hearing was about a permit. But everyone gathered understood that much more is at stake. The growing abundance of natural gas could fuel a new petrochemical industry in the upper Ohio Valley, with all the economic gains and environmental risks that might bring. The decision on the cracker plant permit presents a crossroads moment for those who live here.
Cracker Background
A few years ago, Thailand-based PTT Global Chemical began scouting the Ohio Valley for a location to place a cracker plant.
JobsOhio, a private economic development corporation created by Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) in 2011 to help woo jobs to the state, worked closely with the company. Matt Cybulski, sector director of energy and chemicals for JobsOhio, said the group helped PTTG select the Belmont County location and put together an incentive package. That included remediation on the site of FirstEnergy’s old R.E. Burger coal-fired power plant that once stood at the proposed cracker’s location.
Credit Courtesy PTTGCA.
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Courtesy PTTGCA.
An ethane cracker plant in Thailand, home to PTT Global Chemical.
Cybulski said incentives offered by JobsOhio did not use state tax dollars, but there are tax credits that “can and often are offered to projects like this.”
He and many other state and county officials argue the PTTG project would create jobs.
“Once the plant is built, you have hundreds of good paying jobs that are operating the plant,” Cybulski said. “So, we see this as a long term economic benefit for the local community and the region.”
School district officials have said property taxes paid by the company could bolster local schools.
This year, it was announced that PTTG had partnered with South Korea’s Daelim Industrial Co. on the project and had purchased 500 acres of land in Dilles Bottom, just a few miles from both Shadyside, Ohio, and Moundsville, West Virginia, just across the Ohio River.
A few homes, an apartment complex, a graveyard and a long-shuttered post office dot the unincorporated hamlet of Dilles Bottom.
PTTG’s project is not the first cracker in the region. About 30 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, Shell’s massive Monaca plant is already under construction. The massive petrochemical plant will produce 1.6 million tons of ethylene each year and permanently employ about 600 workers when done, according to the company.
Gas-Powered Growth
If built, the cracker plant in Belmont County could have far-reaching impacts for the entire Ohio Valley, according to energy analysts.
“It’s going to create some real momentum,” said Taylor Robinson, president of PLG Consulting. “There’s going to be some other large petchem companies that will follow suit.”
With that momentum will also come additional infrastructure.
“You’re going to need to have enough wells producing the gas,” Robinson said. “Then you’re going to have to have more gas processing facilities that will separate the ethane out. And then you need storage. Of course you need pipelines between all these things. It’s a complex supply chain that needs to be built for 40 years.”
Credit Alexandra Kanik / Ohio Valley ReSource
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Ohio Valley ReSource
A cracker plant converts natural gas constituents into manufacturing products.
The Ohio Valley is a prime candidate for petrochemical production because of its geology. The Marcellus and Utica shale formations are loaded not only with methane, the primary component of natural gas, but with more complex hydrocarbons like ethane, propane and butane. In the industry this is referred to as “wet,” and the gas being extracted so readily from the region is often referred to as “wet gas.”
While natural gas is desirable for power generation, the natural gas liquids, or NGL, are separated from their cousin methane to become valuable feed stocks for other industries.
According to a 2017 U.S. Department of Energy report, U.S. NGL production in the region is projected to increase over 700 percent in the 10 years from 2013 to 2023. The report adds, that while the region has made “significant investments” in NGL infrastructure to capitalize on the natural gas boom, more can be done.
“New investments to take advantage of the NGL resources in the region have been identified by industry, and forecasts for production over the decades to come highlight the opportunity for additional investments across the NGL supply chain,” the report states.
One investment is in cracker plants.
The Ohio Valley is ethane-rich, and most plastics and chemicals manufacturers are located in the Midwest. Traditionally, the bulk of the nation’s cracker plants are located on the Gulf Coast.
If Midwestern plastics and chemical manufacturing plants could source ethylene from the Ohio Valley that could reduce cost in an already competitive market, according to Robinson.
Infrastructure Needs
Even if the PTTG project is approved, challenges remain, namely that the Ohio Valley would need to develop more underground storage.
“That is extremely important when you start adding multiple crackers, because as you can imagine, there’s several steps to get the ethane to the plants,” Robinson said. “You need storage along the way, and those storage caverns are a key enabler to have enough flexibility to keep these crackers running 24/7, 365.”
Some storage capacity is under development in the region.
Energy Storage Ventures LLC. is developing the Mountaineer NGL Storage project. When completed, the project would store 2 million barrels of ethane, butane and propane in four underground salt caverns on a 200 acre site, about one mile north of Clarington, Ohio, on the Ohio River.
Another high-profile public-private NGL storage project is also in the works. The Appalachia Storage and Trading Hub cleared its first major hurdle earlier this year, when it got approval for the first of two phases for a $1.9 billion U.S. Department of Energy loan.
China’s largest partially state-owned energy company, China Energy, has pledged an additional $84 billion investment in the region to facilitate the development of a petrochemical industry. The company signed a nonbinding agreement, known as a Memorandum of Understanding, with West Virginia state officials to build a series of facilities that would process natural gas liquids and byproducts. But the escalating trade dispute with China appears to have temporarily slowed progress.
‘Cancer Alley’ 2.0
For a growing number of people, this petrochemical future is not one they want for their communities.
Hours before the Ohio EPA air permit hearing, Martins Ferry resident Barbara Mew was powering through biting cold temperatures and snow flurries to go door-to-door in a neighborhood of Moundsville sharing information about the proposed project.
“I think I’ve pushed through to the other side,” she says laughing. “It’s not cold anymore.”
She worries about what types of pollution the huge plant will emit into the air and water. The draft air permit before Ohio EPA estimates the cracker will release almost 400 tons of volatile organic compounds each year. The plant would also produce the equivalent carbon dioxide emissions of putting about 365,000 cars on the road.
“It’s just it’s an environmental nightmare from top to bottom,” Mew said. “There are really no upsides to it.”
Credit Brittany Patterson / Ohio Valley ReSource
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Ohio Valley ReSource
Environmental groups posted signs in Shadyside, OH.
Opponents to the plant expressed concerns at the Ohio EPA hearing that the proposed air permit does not do enough to protect public health, despite assurances from agency officials that the plant would install top-of-the-line technologies to limit emissions.
According to the permit, nitrogen oxide and carbon dioxide emissions will be continuously monitored, but other pollutants will only be tested intermittently. Many people expressed concerns that PTTG is not required to do fence line monitoring, or to actively track what is being emitted from the plant. They are also concerned that the one air quality monitor that is installed in the county would not be sufficient to alert local communities of any pollution above permitted levels.
Many asked for a health impact assessment to determine the potential public health effects of the facility and for Ohio EPA to conduct a cumulative assessment of air emissions that would account for future natural gas industry infrastructure spurred by the PTTG plant.
Ohio EPA hearing officer Kristopher Weiss said the agency’s jurisdiction is fairly narrow and requires the agency to take action on permits within a set period of time. If the PTTG plant goes into operation and spurs additional developments, he said Ohio EPA would evaluate each new project on an individual basis.
“If PTT were to get its permit, and then other ancillary business were to come in, if those businesses need permits they would apply for whatever permits they might need and the agency would take the action they are required to take,” he said.
Leatra Harper, managing director of the nonprofit FreshWater Accountability Project, which organized the canvassing effort, said the volunteers knocked on hundreds of doors and found most people have concerns. A big one is that the Ohio Valley could turn into the next “cancer alley.” The term refers to the huge and heavily polluted belt of chemical manufacturing facilities in Louisiana.
“I don’t understand why fossil fuel extraction, why that’s the only kinds of jobs this area is offered,” she said. “We want jobs that won’t kill us.”
Credit Brittany Patterson / Ohio Valley ReSource
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Ohio Valley ReSource
The possible site of Thailand-based PTT Global Chemical’s ethane cracker plant along the Ohio River, as seen from Moundsville, WV.
Cumulative Effects
Retired public health practitioner Susan Brown sat in Van Dyne’s, a diner located on the outskirts of Shadyside known for its all-you-can-eat spaghetti. She says she worries about what will happen to her community.
“The fracking plant came in. Then we’re talking about the cracker plant. They’re talking about the underground tanks,” she said, sipping an unsweetened tea. She’s concerned that her town is approaching a point where it will be “an area that nobody wants to live.”
Brown says most people she talks to about the cracker plant feel like it’s a done deal. Still, she says it’s important to speak out.
A public hearing regarding the plant’s water permit hosted by Ohio EPA is scheduled for Wednesday, December 12, at Shadyside High School.
