American Oil and Gas Reporter - August 2015 - 28

IndustryDigest
Athens County was first and Trumbull
County was third in the state for the
amount of wastewater injections.
Bennett adds that OOGA continues
its efforts to educate Ohio residents on
the negative impacts of local legislation.
"What we have in Trumbull County
is an isolated incident that does not
require any further action," he says.
"ODNR and the Ohio Environmental
Protection Agency addressed the
problem. I think it is an education issue,
to let county officials now how wellregulated the state is. Ohio has one of
the premier underground injection
control programs in the nation." ❒

API Releases Guidance
To Help Pipeline Safety

WASHINGTON-A new pipeline
safety management system standard has
been released by the American
Petroleum Institute to help prevent
accidents and ensure risk management.
API says it created Recommended
Practice 1173 in collaboration with the
National Transportation Safety Board,
the Pipeline and Hazardous Safety
Administration, and other stakeholders.
API Midstream Director Robin
Rorick says this standard will build on
existing safety requirements to further
monitor and measure pipeline activities'
effectiveness with a "plan, do, check,
and act" philosophy.
API spokeswoman Sabrina Fang
states that, while safety efforts may be
applied individually to each pipelinerelated activity, more effective safety
performance is achieved when viewing
the related activities holistically.
"The elements of this recommended
practice are structured to minimize
nonconformity with other pipeline
safety processes and procedures," she
comments. "This practice may be used
either in conjunction with or
independent of other industry-specific
documents. It merely builds on and
augments existing requirements, and is
not intended to duplicate them."
According to Fang, the new
recommended practice provides
pipeline operators with a framework to
reveal and manage risk, promote a
learning environment, and continuously
improve pipeline safety and integrity.
The framework identifies the elements
needed to preserve a pipeline's life
cycle safely, she says, adding that it
28 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

then leaves the details of implementing
and maintaining a safety program to the
individual pipeline operator.
"Pipeline safety management
includes determining the pipeline's
cyclical needs, ensuring sufficient
human and financial resources,
monitoring and measuring the
activities' effectiveness, and applying
changes or corrections as needed," Fang
comments. "This practice provides a
foundation from which operators can
pursue the industrywide goal of zero
accidents." ❒

SRBC Finds No Damage
To Water From Drilling

HARRISBURG, PA.-Marcellus
Shale development has had no apparent
impact on water quality in streams and
rivers within northern Pennsylvania and
southern New York, according to a
report released by the Susquehanna
River Basin Commission.
In early July, SRBC released its third
report on water quality conditions in
select watersheds in the Marcellus Shale
region of the Susquehanna River Basin.
The report contains data collected by
SRBC through its state-of-the-art
remote water quality monitoring
network (RWQMN) covering 58
Susquehanna River Basin watersheds,
the commission says.
"The commission takes very
seriously one of its core functions of
monitoring water quality conditions,"
remarks Executive Director Andrew
Dehoff. "This report provides more
information on the data collected as part
of SRBC's effort to evaluate whether
water quality conditions in streams are
reflecting impacts associated with
natural gas drilling."
The report reveals:
* With continuous monitoring from
2010 to 2013, data collected did not
indicate any changes in water quality.
* With few exceptions, the water
chemistry at the monitoring stations
indicates good water quality.
* The results of aquatic insect
monitoring were not affected by the
density of upstream natural gas wells or
pads.
SRBC points out that each RWQMN
station is equipped with sensors that can
detect changes continuously in water
quality. Water quality parameters are
measured at five-minute intervals.

According to the reports' executive
summary, one published report notes,
gas well density within the RWQMN
region ranges from 0 to 3.7 wells per
square mile. SRBC says that for the
period covered by the report, there was
not a strong correlation between gas
well density and the Index of Biotic
Integrity (IBI) score SRBC uses to
indicate the health of
macroinvertebrates.
Noting that much shale gas
development is done on multiwell pads,
the executive summary adds that
"neither well density now well pad
density appear strongly related to the
macroinvertebrate IBI score."
Elsewhere, the report states,
"Macroinvertebrate IBI scores do not
show a correlation to drilled wells or
well pad densities, but rather to instream habitat. Well distances from the
monitoring station also were not a good
predictor of IBI score." ❒

Utica Shale Resources
Estimated At 782 Tcf

MORGANTOWN, W.V.-The Utica
Shale contains technically recoverable
resources of nearly 800 trillion cubic
feet of natural gas and almost 2 billion
barrels of oil, according to a West
Virginia University study.
Utica Shale Play Book Study is a
two-year geological review conducted
by the Appalachian Oil and Natural Gas
Research Consortium, a program of
WVU's National Research Center for
Coal and Energy. It estimates the Utica
region contains 782 Tcf of gas and 1.9
billion barrels of oil.
According to the study, the Utica
Shale-which spans West Virginia,
Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio and New
York-is much larger than originally
estimated, and its size and potential
recoverable resources are comparable to
the Marcellus play, the largest shale oil
and gas play in the United States and
the second largest in the world. In 2013,
WVU notes, the U.S. Energy
Information Administration reported
that Marcellus Shale operators produced
2.9 Tcf of gas.
WVU points out that a 2012 study by
the U.S. Geological Survey estimated
technically recoverable resources in the
Utica were 38 Tcf of gas and 940
million barrels of oil.
American Oil and Gas Reporter - August 2015

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