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NEWS IN BRIEF
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An Energy Transfer spokeswoman called the $10 million fund “not a fine or penalty of any kind but the product of a voluntary collaboration” with the state.
“While we understand Mr. Shapiro is running for office, it remains disappointing that he would mischaracterize the facts of this voluntary agreement to his political advantage rather than acknowledge the good faith efforts of Energy Transfer to resolve this dispute,” the spokeswoman, Laura Atchley, said in an email.
The company’s Mariner East 1, Mariner East 2 and Mariner East 2X pipelines carry propane, ethane and butane from the Marcellus and Utica shale gas fields to a refinery processing center and export terminal in Marcus Hook, a suburb of Philadelphia. Construction wrapped in February.
Mariner East has been one of the most penalized projects in state history. The owner has racked up tens of millions of dollars in civil penalties, and state regulators repeatedly halted construction over contamination.
The attorney general stepped in last October, charging Energy Transfer with releasing industrial waste at 22 sites in
11 counties and failing to report spills to regulators. The company fouled the drinking water of at least 150 families, prosecutors have said. Under the plea agreement, residents who live near the pipeline and have private water can request independent testing. More than 800 residents along the pipelines’ route have been notified of the testing, and residents have until Aug. 19 to sign up.
Residents were wary of the plea deal, given their fraught history with Sunoco Pipeline LP, the Energy Transfer subsidiary that operates Mariner East.
“I’m hopeful, but knowing Sunoco’s track record, I am skeptical,” said Karen Katz, of Edgmont Township in Delaware County.
She said Sunoco strong-armed residents into signing agreements to allow the pipeline, tore up the neighborhood during construction, and fouled the aquifer. She said she still does not drink her well water.
“How do you take contaminated aquifers and un-contaminate them? How many years does that take?” Katz said.
Energy Transfer’s state permits already require it to fix the damage its pipeline construction caused. But prosecutors said
the plea deal goes a step further by requiring the company to submit to water testing by geologists picked by the attorney general’s office. Previously, Energy Transfer itself had been testing water. The company must abide by the independent experts’ recommendations on how to restore the fouled water, prosecutors said.
Another part of the plea deal requires Energy Transfer to pay $10 million to address contamination of groundwater and streams. NBC
OIL
Deepwater Horizon spill
residue still present 10
years later
Traces of weathered crude oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill were still present in Louisiana’s shoreline environments a decade after the disaster, according to a
new study. The oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded and sank 40 miles off the coast of Louisiana in 2010. Eleven people were killed and over the next 87 days, 4 million barrels of oil leaked from the Deepwater Horizon. It was the largest spill in the history of marine oil drilling operations, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Scientists have been studying the spill ever since. One group of researchers tracked crude oil residue from the Deepwater Horizon for 10 years. In a paper published Tuesday in
the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, the team describes the chemical components
and changes - or weathering - of the oil in
the environment. “The better we understand the chemicals and their chemical reactive properties as well as their physical properties, the better we will be able to mitigate oil spills and understand and detect environmental damages from oil spills,” lead author Edward Overton, a professor in environmental sciences at Louisiana State University, said in a news release. Overton and his team found that 30% to 40% of the oil evaporated into the air. Water soluble chemicals in the oil dissolved quickly, and large portions of the spill were also degraded by the sun and microbes.
“Oil spills release lots of chemicals quickly and most damage from oil spills occurs fairly soon after the spill,” Overton said.
But some of the oil’s chemical residue persisted and was still present in small quantities on some shorelines and sea floors in 2020.
The research also notes that the chemically altered and longer persisting oil residue can have its own environmental impacts.
“Oil spills are acute events, having potential for causing environmental impacts in the air, on the water’s surface, in the water column and bottom sediments, and in organisms inhabiting these impacted areas,” the paper reads. “However, as oil weathers, the residue become resistant to further rapid compositional changes, and this means that, if not removed by response personnel, residue can remain in environments for extended time, causing long-term disruptions of impacted areas.”
WEATHER
SERVICES
Repsol deploys methane-
imaging lasers to ID fugitive
emissions
Spanish-owed Repsol owns 214,000 net acres
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Week 32 11•August•2022