EPA calls out Dakota Access
THE director of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency on Monday blasted the pipeline company Energy Transfer Partners for a “pattern” of 18 spills of drilling materials and said the size of the biggest spill could reach 5 million gallons (19 million litres), more than double original estimates.
Craig Butler, the Ohio EPA director, said his agency has imposed about $400,000 in fines on Energy Transfer Partners, the same company recently embroiled in controversy over its Dakota Access crude oil pipeline.
But Butler said the company had brushed off his complaints, claiming the state EPA lacked the authority to interfere with its plans for the construction of a natural gas pipeline called Rover.
Butler, a 27-year veteran of the Ohio EPA, said the company’s response was “dismissive”, “exceptionally disappointing” and unlike any other response he has ever seen from a company.
While drilling mud used to cool and lubricate drilling equipment is not toxic, the biggest spill has poured fluid the consistency of a milk shake several feet deep in a previously pristine wetland and would “kill just about everything in that wetland”, Butler said. The company is trying to remove the material by vacuum and even by hand, Butler said.
Energy Transfer Partners, whose Dakota Access pipeline ignited weeks of protests by Native Americans and environmentalists, is now building a $4.2 billion natural gas pipeline that would link the shalegas-rich regions of Appalachia to Michigan and Ontario, Canada. The company received a permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in February and has told investors the first stage of the pipeline would be complete by July.
The Rover project is the first of two pipelines Energy Transfer Partners planned to build across Ohio. “As of yet I’m not convinced that they’re not more focused on getting the lines in rather than doing it safely, protecting the environment and public health,” Butler said.
A spokesman for the company, Daryl Owen, said Butler had “mischaracterised” what had been taking place and that the state regulators “have no jurisdiction to fine us”. He said the leaks, which he said were “inadvertent releases that come up through natural fissures in the soil and rock”, were “anticipated in the permit” from FERC.
Butler’s comments raised the confrontation between the state EPA and Energy Transfer Partners that began in April when the company notified the agency that it had twice spilled drilling fluids in pristine Ohio wetlands and that the larger of the two spills covered an area the size of 8 and a half football fields.
Energy Transfer Partners said at the time that the larger spill just south of the town of Navarre, Ohio, could be as much as 2 million gallons.
But Butler said that that was now the lower end of his range of estimates. The upper end, 5 million gallons, would make the volume of drilling mud nearly half as great as the volume of crude oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez accident off Alaska in 1989.
Energy Transfer Partners also said in its filings that on April 14, it had spilled 50,000 gallons of the same fluids, affecting a smaller area of 2,700 square metres near Mifflin Township, more than 160 kilometres away. Butler said there was no change in that estimate.
The spills generally take place while Energy Transfer Partners is drilling 18 to 21 metres below waterways to avoid contamination, but the company has said that drilling mud can seep, or gush, to the surface through fissures in the soil.