From NorthCentralPA.com
Open up most papers this week and you will find a rather startling headline. In all of its forms, it reads along the lines of: natural gas developers cited for 3,355 violations in four years. Unfortunately, that is where the story ends in most media accounts. It’s far from the worst reporting we’ve seen, but it certainly lacks context. Here we provide that context so folks who live in the heart of the Marcellus Shale can understand exactly what is happening. It’s nothing like the simplistic story told by the report.
Penn Environment authored the report. It seems it was prepared to generate just the splash it received. With that, let’s take a closer look at the numbers. 3,355 violations breaks down, on average, to about 835 per year. Stopping here would still leave half the story untold. To gain full understanding its important to understand the number of Marcellus wells developed over the same period. That number, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, is approximately 4,671 (slightly higher than the 4,596 PennEnvironment reports). Dividing the violations over the number of wells results in a total of 0.72 violations per well. Let me repeat that, we get a total of 0.72 violations per well! Interestingly, PennEnvironment left that part out. The below graphic provides a good understanding of how it all stacks up:
Read the article, “PennEnvironment Marcellus Shale Violations Report Half-Baked” .