Marcellus Shale Health Data To Be Tracked

- Marcellus Shale Health Data To Be Tracked

Thursday, June 16, 2011
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
by Paul McMullen, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

The state Department of Health wants to initiate a system of tracking health and environmental data related to gas drilling in the Marcellus shale.

The department, which made several recommendations to Gov. Tom Corbett's Marcellus Shale Commission, aims to work with the panel to develop research that will make it easier to investigate complaints of illness that may be associated with gas drilling, said Brandi Hunter-Davenport, deputy press secretary for the department.

"If the department would find that the health of the citizens of this commonwealth were in jeopardy due to drilling or any other activity within our borders, steps will be taken to alert the public and advise on appropriate health responses," she said. "In the meantime, the department continues to do its due diligence to thoroughly investigate any concerns it receives."

Recommendations made to the commission include allowing the department to investigate concerns raised by citizens, routinely evaluate environmental data about Marcellus shale-related activities and educate the public and providers on the drilling process and whether or not they have the potential to cause human illness. It also wants to oversee the creation of a registry to follow people who live in close proximity to drilling sites or are occupationally exposed.

Dr. Bernard Goldstein, interim director of the Center for Healthy Environment and Communities at the University of Pittsburgh, agrees with the recommendations, which express the need for more investigation and collection of centralized resources.

He recommends performing prospective rather than retrospective investigations in order to keep up with any possible health or environmental concerns that could arise. By doing this, evaluations will be more accurate because they will pinpoint specific negative elements as they happen rather than finding them later on and attributing them to the Marcellus shale, he said.

Copyright (c) 2011, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Oil & Gas Post

Promote Your Page Too

UK Govt: Deepwater Oil Drilling Safety Rules Fit for Purpose

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Dow Jones Newswires

by  James Herron

 

The U.K. government gave its regulatory regime for deep water offshore oil and gas drilling a largely clean bill of health, saying that existing rules address most of the concerns raised by a parliamentary committee studying the impact of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

U.K. lawmakers on the Energy and Climate Change Committee had raised serious doubts in January about whether the oil industry is prepared to tackle a deep water blowout and oil spill should it occur in the North Sea, but the government's response to these concerns published Tuesday said existing rules are adequate.
"The U.K. government has already taken a number of actions (such as increasing the number of environmental inspectors and inspections to mobile rigs) to further bolster the already robust U.K. regulatory regime," the government report said.

One of the Committee's principal concerns--that the oil industry couldn't handle an oil spill in the rough seas west of the Shetland Islands--has already been dealt with, the government said. Chevron has developed a cap that can be used to seal a blowout in this area that will be available for anybody to use, the government said. Additional capping devices are also in development, it said.

The government did promise to assess in partnership with the oil industry whether oil rigs' blowout preventers--the crucial piece of equipment that failed aboard the Deepwater Horizon--should be upgraded to include extra failsafes, called blind shear rams. This assessment won't be concluded before summer, it said.

"We will also be considering the requirement of [compulsory] insurance as part of our review," it said.
Existing rules cover the other main concerns of the U.K. lawmakers--that companies spill response plans aren't adequate for the least likely but highest risk accidents; that existing financial provisions wouldn't cover the cost of a large spill; and that workers aboard offshore rigs fear reprisals if they raise safety concerns--the government said.

Link