Self-regulation doesn't work, Part XVII
by David Atkins
Big fossil fuel producers are always going on about how they can regulate themselves, and that if any external regulations are enforced, they should be conducted by state and not federal government. No, they can't:
Half the spills at Marcellus Shale well sites that resulted in fines weren’t spotted by gas companies, which are required by state law to look for and report spills of drilling-related fluids.
That is one of the main conclusions of a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette review of hundreds of thousands of state and company documents for every incident at a Marcellus well site that led to a fine against a driller through the end of 2012.
The documentation showing that companies often failed to detect spills on their own sites offers a look at self-regulation in the shale gas industry.
State regulation of the industry was the subject of a withering state auditor general review of the Department of Environmental Protection’s oversight issued July 22. The audit detailed the agency’s shortcomings, including failing to consistently issue enforcement orders to drilling companies after regulators determined that gas operations had damaged water supplies, even though the state’s oil and gas law requires it.
Fossil fuel corporations cannot regulate themselves. Self-regulation has never worked in the past, and it will never worked in the future. Until the use of fossil fuels becomes as antiquated as the use of whale oil, its extraction needs to be subject to strict governmental oversight, preferably at the federal level.
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