Air pollution added to list of complaints against natural gas drilling

Most of the focus regarding potential pollution problems resulting from natural gas drilling in shale formations has been focused on water, but fears of pervasive air pollution from Barnett Shale operations in Texas are affecting the industry as well. While the natural gas industry has been marketing itself as a cleaner alternative to coal, that description is being "shoved aside by critics who say addressing public health issues tied to gas production is no longer optional," Joel Kirkland of Environment & Energy Daily reports. "They want gas drillers to face the same scrutiny for their air emissions as 'major' emitters such as gas processing plants or oil refineries."

"Just because coal mining is worse, or that coal burns dirtier than gas, doesn't make this all safe," Tim Ruggiero, who houses a Aruba Petroleum Inc. well on his horse farm outside of Fort Worth, told Kirkland. "It burns clean compared to other fossil fuels. OK, I give you that. But if you look at the process by which they obtain the gas, I'm not so sure that all told, beginning to end, it's any cleaner than coal." In recent months the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has increased its monitoring of pollution sources operating in the Barnett, Kirkland writes, but critics say that move came only in response to mounting public pressure to do so.

Even amid the national conversation about greenhouse gas emissions, some locals' air pollution fears are on a much more basic level. "They ask, 'Do you believe in the greenhouse, Tim, do you believe in global warming?'" Ruggiero told Kirkland. "I go, 'You know what, when you've got this thing blowing in your backyard, and you can stand on your front porch and smell propane, global warming isn't the first thing that comes to mind.'"

Al Armendariz, the Environmental Protection Agency's top regional official based in Dallas, projected in a 2009 study that summer "emissions of nitrogen oxide and cancer-causing volatile organic compounds from gas sources in the Barnett Shale would exceed emissions from cars and trucks in the Dallas-Fort Worth area," Kirkland writes. The political environment over the saftey of hydraulic fracturing operations has also thrown the future of Barnett Shale operations into doubt. "Right now they [gas companies] like that they have a geologic formation where they can make a profit. They like the fact they have a stable political environment," Republican Rep. Michael Burgess told Burgess. "But if they damage it because of their own actions, they have nobody to blame but themselves." (Read more, suscription required)