Inspectors

North Dakota officials on Tuesday issued a plea for three additional oil/natural gas inspectors to keep an eye on gathering pipeline systems that are sprouting up to support record production from the Bakken and Three Forks formations in the Williston Basin.

The head of the U.S. Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lamented a shortage of BLM inspectors that has caused the agency to miss timely inspections on about 40% of the nation’s high-priority oil and gas sites.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Region 6 followed the rules three years ago when it issued an emergency order against Range Resources Corp., alleging that its Barnett Shale drilling activities caused methane contamination of water wells, according to recent findings of EPA’s Office of Inspector General.

Colorado officials said Tuesday they have found no evidence of contamination from oil or natural gas spills in water samples taken from rivers and streams affected by last month’s flooding.

Two additional spills related to Colorado’s record flooding in September were reported Monday by the state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (OGCC) as part of its ongoing monitoring of the oil and natural gas industry’s recovery (seeDaily GPI,Sept. 26).

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has told key state legislators that no additional requirements are needed to protect the air quality from horizontal oil and gas drilling.

Amid cries for Stronger safeguards regarding the public disclosure of chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing (fracking), the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) on Monday put off for a week or more finalizing the state’s proposed new rules on disclosing fracking chemicals used in oil and gas shale fracking operations. COGCC heard more than 11 hours of testimony in Denver.

In the early days of Barnett Shale drilling in North Texas it would have been nice to have better communication among area residents, municipal governments, regulators and energy companies, Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) Commissioner David Porter told NGI’s Shale Daily. To make that happen in the fast-emerging Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas, Porter would like to see a task force focused on the play.