Senate President Craig Blair, R-Berkeley, said West Virginia is an all-of-the-above energy state and he introduced a resolution that calls on the state’s congressional delegation to reform the federal permitting process for a federal regulatory environment that encourages energy production.
“The federal government’s permitting processes a system of unnecessarily complex, redundant and uncertain, thereby discouraging investment and job creation in the energy sector,” he said. “Delays caused by permitting inefficiencies inhibit the essential components for low cost and modern energy that are needed to support economic competitiveness, and also threaten domestic exports towards national security.”
Blair said he is the chairman of the Council of State Governments Southern Office (CSG South) as well as the Southern Legislative Conference (SLC). He said he expects the remaining 14 states in the southern group of states to present similar resolutions.
“With CSG South and SLC we’re attempting to send a clear message to the federal government that the federal government exists for the purposes of the state, the states do not exist for the purpose of the federal government. This resolution gives us that flexibility,” Blair said.
A group of lawmakers, environmental advocates, and representatives of private property owners called for the state legislature to fully fund the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection’s Office of Oil and Gas on Thursday
The office handles inspections and permits for over 67,000 natural gas and oil wells across the state. Last summer, the office had to cut its staff from 40 to 25 due to a downturn in new drilling.
At a press conference on Thursday, Del. Evan Hansen, D-Monongalia, said the office’s recent budgetary shortfalls present both a public health and environmental issue.
“Worst case scenario, if these wells are not properly inspected and maintained there’s an explosion risk or other types of bad things can happen to people who live nearby or people who work on these sites,” he said.
Hansen said he plans to co-sponsor legislation that will impose an annual $100 fee on active wells and return the office to full staff.
Dustin White of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition says his organization is deeply concerned about the cuts and urges the legislature to find funding.
The office relies on permit fees for the bulk of its funding and due to the pandemic, new drilling has slowed down significantly.
State Senator William Ihlenfeld, D-Ohio, a member of the Senate Energy Committee also voiced concerns over staff cuts.
“These inspectors do really important work for us,” he said. “According to the DEP, we have over 55,000 active wells and over 12,000 inactive oil and gas wells. And we have thousands of abandoned wells so there’s a lot of work to be done, a lot of territory to cover.”
Dave McMahon of the West Virginia Surface Owners’ Rights Organization said more oversight of the oil and gas industry was needed and current staffing levels at the agency are not sufficient.
The state senate passed a bill last year to provide the office additional funds but it did not make it into law. The request for full funding comes ahead of the legislative session beginning Feb. 10.
The earliest record of the St. Joseph Settlement, a community of German Catholic immigrants, dates to June 5, 1853. The settlers originally came from the southern German states of Bavaria and Hesse—areas that opposed Frederick William IV’s absolute monarchy.
They emigrated to the United States and settled St. Joseph on the hills above the Ohio River on the Marshall-Wetzel county border.
The first school was built of hewn logs in 1854 and served as both a school and chapel until 1856, when the first church was built. The church and schoolhouse—along with a rectory, community building, and cemetery—are still the heart of the St. Joseph community.
St. Joseph reached its heyday during the Ohio River Valley oil and gas boom of the late 19th century. Small stores popped up throughout the area, and the settlement expanded to nearly 50 square miles.
Students at St. Joseph were taught both German and English well into the 20th century, and some German words and phrases are still in use. St. Joseph’s old church is still in use, and its schoolhouse is a public library and parish museum.
Seventy-five-year-old farmer Curtis Johnson doesn’t object to pipelines, but does take issue with some of their construction practices.
Johnson sold easements to the nearly completed 713-mile Rover Pipeline, which originates in the Ohio Valley and is designed to transport 3.25 billion cubic feet of natural gas to Michigan and Canada.
In May, he submitted a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the federal agency in charge of approving interstate natural gas pipelines. In his comments he described problems he encountered during pipeline construction where good topsoil got mixed up with sub-soils like clay on his Ohio farm.
“I do not think the pipeline should be given certificates to proceed without all the land owners knowing and agreeing to what is going to happen with the installation process,” he said in his letter.
For Johnson, his farm, which was settled by his great-great-grandfather and has remained in the family since, is a major part of his identity. He invited FERC to come to his farm and meet with farmers.
“Some people just think it’s dirt out there. But to me it’s in my heart,” he said in a subsequent interview. “I’m not a vacationer guy. I spend my time on my back porch now the crops are growing. Some people like to be at the lake and watch the waves and stuff out there. But I can watch the waves here with my grain.”
Johnson is one of more than 600 people and organizations that have submitted comments to FERC since April when the agency began asking for input on its policies related to natural gas pipeline approvals.
Credit Nancy Andrews
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Pipe laydown yard on Route 19, near I-79 in Sutton, West Virginia on February 2, 2018. Thousands of miles of new natural gas pipeline are coming out of Appalachia.
A Call for Input
In a 58-page notice, FERC asked for suggestions on how to determine if a pipeline is needed, how to consider the use of eminent domain, how to evaluate environmental issues, and advice on “specific changes” to improve “efficiency and effectiveness.”
The extent to which federal regulators scrutinize new natural gas pipeline projects is an especially potent issue in Appalachia where thousands of miles of new natural gas pipelines are going in the ground.
Now, federal regulators are in the final days of taking comment on policies evaluating and approving new natural gas pipelines. FERC will collect public input through July 25.
In a review of comments so far, a few key themes have emerged. Industry supporters tend to suggest few policy changes, but urged FERC to speed up new pipeline approvals. Some commenters called for FERC to take a more programmatic approach, including looking at both environmental impacts and end-use public need for new pipeline projects across a region.
More than 400 of the responses were generated by individual members of industry-sponsored Texans for Natural Gas. “I support a fair and robust permitting process, not a bureaucratic mess that prevents critical infrastructure from being built,” each wrote by way of a form letter.
Another comment was a handwritten note from a Nevada man asking for that climate change to be taken is taken into account when considering new pipelines.
Credit Nancy Andrews
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Earlier this year protesters sitting in trees held off work on the Mountain Valley Pipeline near the the Appalachian Trail. Crews from Allegheny Surveys survey the location of the tree sitters in the Jefferson National Forest and along the right of way for the Mountain Valley Pipeline just a few hundred feet from the Appalachian Trail.
Determining Need
The Appalachian Trail Conservancy, which represents the 30 clubs that take care of the Appalachian National Scenic Trail, took notice of the pipeline expansion.
Laura Belleville, the organization’s vice president of conservation and trail programs said at one point staff members at her organization were reviewing upwards of 10 different pipeline proposals that planned to cross the Appalachian Trail.
The increase in pipeline proposals caused the staff to question how many of these pipelines were really needed to sustain the energy resources in demand.
Currently FERC determines and justifies the “public need” only by determining if companies are willing to sign up to use the pipeline. These pledges, called ‘precedent agreements,’ can essentially be from the pipeline company itself in the form of affiliate companies.
The agency’s current process for determining “public need” also does not factor in where the gas might be going — whether it’s heating homes in the U.S. or fueling a factory in China.
“Should the United States be sacrificing its own public land and in some cases private lands for energy needs overseas?” Belleville wondered. “That’s a much bigger picture question that I think the American public has the right to to weigh in on.”.
It’s not just the number of pipelines that concern Belleville, it’s the size too. New pipelines can be 42 inches in diameter (big enough to fit a refrigerator inside). Belleville worries about this large pipe safely traversing steep Appalachian slopes.
Faster, faster…
Comments from industry perspectives generally call for FERC’s policies to stay the same, but move faster.
“The current FERC process does work,” Atlantic Coast Pipeline spokesperson Aaron Ruby said in a recent interview. The 604-mile long Atlantic Coast Pipeline was publicly announced in 2014, and is in now FERC-approved and in construction phases.
Ruby said the ACP was able to navigate the multi-layered federal permitting process, but he thinks more interagency coordination could speed up the process.
“There are aspects of the process that could be done in a more reasonable timeframe,” Ruby said. “I think a lot of that has to do with interagency coordination. This may not even be an issue that the FERC is able to resolve in the policy statement.”
“It’s more an issue where you have more than a dozen state and federal agencies and if one of those agencies is not making decisions in a reasonable timeframe,” he added, “you get into a situation where you’ve got essentially regulatory inertia that’s not in anyone’s interest.”
Credit Nancy Andrews
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Glenn Koch, Vice President of Engineering & Construction at Williams, explained during a Q&A at a recent Pittsburgh petrochemical conference: “I think resolving that issue where individual states can unilaterally decide to allow infrastructure or not allow infrastructure is something that we’d like to address.” Williams has seen construction on its 125-mile Constitution Pipeline stopped because it failed to get a key water permit from the state of New York. Williams is still appealing the decision.
Glenn Koch, vice president of engineering and construction at Williams Companies, Inc., an Oklahoma-based energy infrastructure company, would take it a step further.
“In a highly charged political environment states are in a position to essentially decide from a political perspective not to allow pipeline because they have control over one of the permits associated with that project,” Koch asserted at a recent Pittsburgh petrochemical conference.
“I think resolving that issue where individual states can unilaterally decide to allow infrastructure or not allow infrastructure is something that we’d like to address,” he said.
Williams has seen construction on its 125-mile Constitution Pipeline stopped because it failed to get a key water permit from the state of New York. The company is appealing the decision, and so far has had little success.
Credit Nancy Andrews
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Robert and Anne Stack say they have put their retirement dreams on hold because of the thus-far unbuilt Constitution Pipeline. The company used eminent domain to get an an easement to their property where they had staked out their dream home near Davenport, New York. The couple filed a four-page letter with FERC, urging the commission to change its evaluation process. “The Commission’s current certificate process does NOT adequately take landowner interests into account.”
Eminent Domain
In West Virginia, Robert Mark Jarrell’s Pence Springs property is being taken by Mountain Valley Pipeline through eminent domain. MVP, a 303-mile line stretching from northern West Virginia to southern Virginia, received its certificate from FERC in October of 2017 and is currently in construction phases. Jarrell is among thousands who’ve been sued in eminent domain condemnation suits in past several years.
In his letter to FERC Jarrell advises, the agency “should wield their power of eminent domain as seriously as a judge in a death penalty case.”
He said he and his neighbors have deep ties to their land, dating back to the Revolutionary War.
“I myself have at least seven ancestors who fought the Revolutionary War within 25 miles of my property. And I know they would be rolling over in their graves to think the government they helped establish had such little regard for private property rights,” he wrote. “Eminent domain for private gain is wrong.”
Finding Information
Mixed in with broader policy questions FERC also asked for specific examples how to improve the pipeline approval process.
Sara S. Gronim submitted six letters giving detailed comments on specific processes based on her experience was researching the Northeast Supply Enhancement Project in New York.
The retired history professor, she said the FERC system “was so hard to use.”
“For most people this is just a barricade,” she said. “ It’s really, really, really hard to go in and find out what someone wants to do in your backyard.”
Finding information is key.
“People can’t persuasively go into hearings or write letters and just wave their arms in the air,” she said rattling off hard-to-find examples of environmental impacts from toxins on harbor floor, whale migration pattern disruptions, and methane gas releases.
“If you can’t find those details how are you going to make your arguments?”
Better Analysis
Ryan Emanuel, a member of the Lumbee Tribe in North Carolina, offered comment about how the agency needs to collect better data in order to adequately analyze the impacts pipelines may have for environmental justice. He’s written articles on the subject.
“Something like 93 percent of all federal environmental impact statements find no environmental justice concerns,” the college professor said in an interview. “So, that tells me one of two things – either project proponents are really good at designing projects that don’t impact vulnerable communities or we’re all using tests and analyses that give false negatives.”
Similarly, some commenters suggested the agency do more outreach in the communities affected by proposed natural gas pipelines.
Credit Nancy Andrews
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Belinda Joyner went door-to-door in Garysburg, North Carolina to educate residents about the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the compressor station planned for the county. Joyner says her county, and the majority African American communities around Garysburg are used as a “dumping ground.”
North Carolina activist Belinda Joyner went door-to-door in her home of Northampton County to tell people about Atlantic Coast Pipelines plans. She said the agency should develop a citizens advisory board.
“Listen, and even sometime you have to come out from those offices and just look for yourself to see what’s going on,” she said in an interview.
Accepting Change
ACP’s Ruby said in any regulatory process it is impossible to satisfy everyone, but he said it’s important that process remain divorced from desired outcomes, of which there are many.
“Just because you are disappointed with the outcome of a process does not mean that the process is inherently flawed and it does not mean that the process is insufficient,” he said. “It just means that the agency came to a different conclusion than you did.”
Many commenters called on FERC to hold public meetings on the policy change. There are none scheduled. Many are also skeptical there will be any policy shifts.
For Jarrell who is still fighting to keep his land, it’s important to keep trying.
“If you don’t try you are never going to effect any change,” he said.
To comment to FERC by mail: (Be sure to reference docket PL18, FERC’s Notice of Inquiry)
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission,
Secretary of the Commission,
888 First Street, NE, Washington, DC 20426
Nancy Andrews is a Pittsburgh based journalist and 2018 Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellow studying natural gas pipelines in Appalachia. Follow her on Twitter @NancyAndrews or @NancyAndrews on Instagram.
Anti-Mountain Valley Pipeline activists erected an aerial blockade in the middle of an access road in the Jefferson National Forest in Giles County, Virginia.
A pole planted in the middle of an access road is halting any progress on construction of a seven-mile road leading to the path of the Mountain Valley Pipeline. An activist perched on top of the 50-foot log displays a banner that reads “The Fire is Catching, No Pipelines.”
Dozens of supporters also gathered.
Tree sitters remain as they have for a month now, camping in all weather in the tops of trees on the top of Peters Mountain to prevent felling of more trees along the route. Mountain Valley has only three more days to clear acreage before a federally mandated March 31 deadline to protect endangered species.
Credit Appalachians Against Pipelines
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Appalachians Against Pipelines
In a news release from the protesting group, the pipeline fighter said the hope is that this action might inspire others to take action to prevent construction of the pipeline.
EQT, the main company behind the roughly 300-mile, 42-inch high-pressure pipeline project, has not yet responded to a request for comment made earlier today.
The action also comes on the heels of Virginia environmental regulators approving erosion, sediment and storm water control plans for the natural gas pipeline, effectively meaning Mountain Valley can begin full-scale construction.
Last week in a court hearing, Monroe County Circuit Judge Robert Irons denied the request for a preliminary injunction.
Dozens of chemicals that can affect the fertility of humans and animals are being found in the air near unconventional oil and gas development, according to a new study.
More than 200 chemicals have been found near unconventionally drilled sites, most-commonly fracked wells, according to a paper published today in the journal Environmental Health.
Carol Kwiatkowski, executive director of a nonprofit called the Endocrine Disruption Exchange, said that of those chemicals, 34 are known to be endocrine disruptors, or chemicals that interfere with hormone systems in mammals.
“Well-known hazardous air pollutants are being found near fracking sites and may be contributing to health outcomes that are being experienced by people living near fracking sites,” said Kwiatkowski, a co-author of the study. “The endocrine disrupting chemicals that are found at these sites may be contributing to health outcomes that won’t be realized for decades.”
Researchers reviewed more than 4,000 peer-reviewed papers. In total, they found 48 air sampling studies were conducted between 2003 and 2016. Texas’ Barnett Shale formation was studied the most. The Marcellus Shale formation in the Ohio Valley, was the fourth-most-studied area.
Chemicals known to cause cancer, and heavy metals such as mercury, were also found near oil and gas development.
Researchers said more information is needed to know what the long-term health impacts of these chemicals are. An estimated 17.6 million Americans live near unconventional oil and gas wells.
For this paper, the researchers did not do any original experiments, rather they looked only at the already-published science. The study also does not draw a direct link between hormone-disrupting chemicals and oil and gas development. Instead, it shows studies have found these chemicals are often found near oil and gas development.
