Shell Pipeline Co. and Minnesota Limited, a contractor that built Shell’s ethane pipeline leading to its new cracker plant in Potter Township, have agreed to pay $670,000 for a string of environmental violations between 2019 and 2021.
The Falcon Pipeline, which runs from natural gas fractionation plants in Houston, Pa., and Scio and Cadiz in Ohio to the Beaver County petrochemical complex, began construction in December 2018. In Pennsylvania, it spans about 45 miles, crossing parts of Allegheny, Beaver and Washington counties.
Ethane, a natural gas liquid, is the main feedstock for the Shell cracker, which is close to becoming operational. There, the ethane will be cracked in furnaces and further processed into small plastic pellets.
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, over the course of 67 inspections when the pipeline was being built, found that sediment and drilling fluids leaked into creeks, streams and wetlands, including the Ambridge Reservoir, Raccoon Creek, the Ohio River, and more than dozen smaller water bodies.
The drilling fluid spilled when the companies were involved in horizontal directional drilling, a method of installing pipe where first a tunnel is drilled underground and a pipeline is strung through it. This is done to avoid digging a trench on the surface and is a method often used to cross under roads or sensitive environmental areas. Ideally, the drilling mud pumped into the ground is supposed to return to the surface. When it doesn’t, it can cause sinkholes or other types of subsidence or pollution issues.
The DEP has been alert to these issues after its experience permitting and overseeing the construction of the Mariner East pipelines, developed by another pipeline company, Energy Transfer. That project resulted in a record number of spills from horizontal direction drilling and prompted the environmental regulatory agency to put out guidelines for this type of construction.
In November 2019, the DEP asked Shell to stop all horizontal drilling until it can ensure that it has real-time instruments to measure the conditions inside its drilling path and keep track of the volume of drilling fluid going in and out.
The DEP also cited the companies for several instances of not reporting spills as they were supposed to and not stopping operations as required following a drilling fluid spill.
In addition to the $670,000 penalty that Shell and Minnesota have agreed to pay to the DEP, the companies will also submit about $27,000 in “cost recovery” payments to the department and the three county conservation districts that help the DEP with inspections. Most of the money will go into the state’s and the district’s clean water funds.
First Published: October 13, 2022, 7:09 p.m.
Updated: October 14, 2022, 10:04 a.m.