Marcellus Shale Drillers Under-Reported Waste

- by Anya Lit­vak and Maxwell Rad­win, August 31, 2014, The Post-Gazette

EQT Corp. told the Penn­syl­va­nia Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion that it sent 21 tons of drill cut­tings from its Mar­cel­lus Shale wells to area land­fills in 2013.

But land­fills in south­west­ern Penn­syl­va­nia told a dif­fer­ent story.

Six facil­i­ties in this part of the state report­ed receiv­ing near­ly 95,000 tons of drill cut­tings and frack­ing flu­id from the Down­town-based oil and gas oper­a­tor last year.

The land­fills’ records are the cor­rect ones, said Mike For­beck, waste man­age­ment direc­tor with the DEP. He said the agency has opened an inves­ti­ga­tion into drillers’ under-report­ing of land­fill waste.

The EQT case — 21 tons vs. 95,000 tons — may be the most dra­mat­ic exam­ple of how data sub­mit­ted by oil and gas oper­a­tors don’t match up to report­ing required of land­fills. The DEP said it has been aware of the prob­lem for “a num­ber of months” and is look­ing into why the dif­fer­ent report­ing chan­nels aren’t yield­ing the same results.

When the EQT fig­ures were brought to its atten­tion, the DEP launched an inves­ti­ga­tion into the com­pa­ny’s report­ing prac­tices, said John Pois­ter, a spokesman for the agency.

“We don’t under­stand why there’s that dis­crep­an­cy,” Mr. For­beck said.

Asked for com­ment on incon­sis­ten­cies in waste sent to land­fills by Range Resources last year, the DEP start­ed anoth­er inves­ti­ga­tion and found that Range’s num­bers were off by 22,000 tons com­pared with what land­fills report­ed receiv­ing from the Texas-based driller in 2013.

“We’re also hav­ing dis­cus­sions with the com­pa­ny to try to find out what’s going on there,” Mr. For­beck said.

Range’s spokesman Matt Pitzarel­la said the com­pa­ny did its own review and “not­ed doc­u­ment dis­crep­an­cies that we are cur­rent­ly work­ing with our ven­dors and the DEP to correct.”

“It appears as though, through basic human error per­haps, that we only sub­mit­ted the paper­work for one land­fill ven­dor and not the rest, which makes up the major­i­ty of our gap,” Mr. Pitzarel­la said.

He added the com­pa­ny has “reaf­firmed that all mate­ri­als were safe­ly dis­posed of and in com­pli­ance with reg­u­la­tions and prop­er­ly manifested.”

EQT declined to “spec­u­late on the land­fill reports” and said try­ing to match where oper­a­tors say their waste goes with the facil­i­ties that receive it is not an “apples-to-apples” com­par­i­son, accord­ing to spokes­woman Lin­da Robertson.

The DEP would not say if oth­er com­pa­nies are being inves­ti­gat­ed as part of the agen­cy’s probe into the issue.

Across the board, nine south­west­ern Penn­syl­va­nia land­fills ana­lyzed for this sto­ry report­ed accept­ing three to four times the amount of waste that oper­a­tors said they sent there.

Two land­fills that accept a lot of Mar­cel­lus Shale waste — Yukon in the West­more­land Coun­ty com­mu­ni­ty of the same name and Burg­er in Wash­ing­ton Coun­ty — aren’t required to file quar­ter­ly reports with the DEP as part of a con­sent agreement.

How­ev­er, their man­ag­er, Carl Spadaro, said Yukon took in 135,980 tons of oil and gas waste last year. Oil and gas drillers report­ed dis­pos­ing of 26,485 tons there.

Some land­fills, such as Impe­r­i­al — named after its host com­mu­ni­ty in Alleghe­ny Coun­ty — report­ed accept­ing waste from a hand­ful of oper­a­tors that nev­er indi­cat­ed the facil­i­ty as a des­ti­na­tion in 2013. Drill cut­tings and frack­ing flu­id waste from Range Resources, Roy­al Dutch Shell, Con­sol Ener­gy, Rex Ener­gy and Ener­gy Corp. of Amer­i­ca end­ed up at the land­fill last year, but only Den­ver-based Ener­gy Corp. of Amer­i­ca list­ed Impe­r­i­al as a dis­pos­al target.

Often, com­pa­nies report send­ing their waste to facil­i­ties cat­e­go­rized as cen­tral­ized treat­ment plants for recy­cling, such as Weaver­town Trans­porta­tion Leas­ing or McCutcheon Enter­pris­esInc. Then those com­pa­nies bring some of that trash to land­fills, as is evi­dent from land­fill reports that some­times iden­ti­fy both the ori­gin of the waste and the trans­porta­tion com­pa­ny that hauled it.