Fracking: Round Two

In June, New York state put to rest a nearly seven-year-long debate about high-volume hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” when it banned the controversial process of drilling horizontally into the gas-rich Marcellus Shale formation, located largely in the state’s Southern Tier.

Now, a recent submission of two applications to the state Department of Environmental Conservation to drill a well using gelled propane instead of water could revive the fracking debate in New York.

Tioga Energy Partners LLC has proposed drilling a single well to first look at the geology of both the Marcellus and Utica formations. Once that is completed, that well will be closed and the drill will be turned sideways to drill through the Marcellus Shale to produce natural gas.

“It’s basically known as waterless fracking,” said Karen Moreau, executive director of the state Petroleum Council. “The whole study that was done in New York was a study of fracking using water and there’s certain issues that go along with using water. People don’t realize that fracking in general was not banned. The high-volume hydraulic fracturing requires the use of higher volumes of water than had done in the past.”

Adam Schultz, Tioga Energy Partners’ legal counsel in this case, argues gelled propane fracking falls under the 1992 Generic Environmental Impact Statement on the Oil, Gas and Solution Mining Regulatory Program, which is the state DEC’s program for regulating oil, gas, underground gas storage and solution mining wells of any depth, and brine disposal, stratigraphic and geothermal wells deeper than 500 feet.

“We’ve proposed to use gelled propane as the fracturing fluid and that technology, that completion method, is evaluated under the 1992 GEIS that the (state) DEC completed and is not subject to the 2015 GEIS that was recently completed (that banned high-volume hydraulic fracking),” Schultz told City & State. “This project is entirely consistent with the 2015 study. Some people have talked about going around the ban or that it’s a loophole—it’s not.”

The alternative method has not appeased opponents of high-volume hydraulic fracturing.

“We’ve learned through the emerging science on hydraulic fracturing over the last number of years—so much about the dangers and the risks it poses to people and communities,” said John Armstrong, statewide grass-roots coordinator at Frack Action. “While not hydraulic fracturing, propane fracking shares many of those same dangers and harms to people in those communities.”

Environmentalists argue gelled propane fracking still causes air pollution and increases the risk of earthquakes and water pollution.

“Fracking in general has been determined unsafe. It’s not just the water issue,” said Peter Iwanowicz, executive director for Environmental Advocates of New York. “Our concern would be across a panoply of issues that the governor and the health commissioner looked at when they deemed this unsafe for New York.”

Now that the permit applications have been submitted, Schultz outlined two likely possibilities for what will happen next.

One possibility is that the state DEC could determine that, based on the application’s compliance with the 1992 GEIS and the additional information that was submitted with the permit application, no further environmental review is necessary and gelled propane fracking is allowed.

The second possibility would be that the state DEC determines there are issues with the new process they’d like to see more closely examined, which would be done through an environmental impact statement. The DEC has no time frame to make its preliminary decision.

“There may be one or two issues that the state wants to look at and we have addressed those issues in the application, but what they need to figure out, is that sufficient or if there’s other relevant material that they’d like to consider,” Schultz said. “We believe we’ve addressed it, but it’s always good to have another set of eyes on these things."

Iwanowicz also said a full environmental impact study should be conducted before the state makes a decision.

“One thing that is certainly clear is that if someone is proposing something like this it should go through a full environmental impact review, it shouldn’t be allowed to exist under generic drilling environmental impact,” he said. “This is a new technology and a new way of doing things. I think people need to know the full range of issues and how it stacks up against water-based fracturing, which is clearly banned.”

Although the two sides disagree about the use of fracking in New York, even opponents of gelled propane fracking agree it does not fall under the 2015 study that banned high-volume hydraulic fracturing.

“It appears the (state) DEC needs to undergo a further review, which if they consider all of the same science that would apply to many of the shared impacts for propane and hydraulic fracturing, certainly must conclude this form of fracking should be banned as well,” Armstrong said.

It remains to be seen how the state DEC will resolve the gelled propane fracking debate, but the state’s natural gas industry remains hopeful.

“This is an alternative method that has been used in over 800 wells in the country successfully and it’s not subject to the ban in New York,” Moreau said. “The decision here in New York was a political one and it remains to be seen whether or not this will be a political decision or not.”