WATERVILLE - Preparing to fracture Marcellus Shale for the natural gas buried within, Pennsylvania General Energy President Doug Kuntz said Wednesday a foamy substance seeping down a sidehill near Waterville was residue left over from the drilling process.
He said much of the drilling is complete at his company's five-well pad located on a plateau of desolate state forest land atop a hillside sloping down a Cummings Township to Route 44 and eventually Pine Creek.
Drilling was discontinued and wells sealed last week to allow the natural spring thaw to occur and when it did, a substance Kuntz said was drilling soap seeped through natural earth fissures with the melting water run off.
"The soap is used to produce bubbles and make the water column lighter so you can evacuate it (subsurface water) and rock cuttings," Kuntz said.
State Department of Environmental Protection Spokesman Daniel T. Spadoni declined to term the substance as "soap."
He said geologists have been collecting water samples for his agency this week.
Samples have been sent to a Harrisburg DEP lab in hopes results will be known within a few days.
"We need to get some results of our samples of this material in order to make an ultimate determination," Spadoni said. "There doesn't appear to be anything you could do to keep it from seeping out of the ground."
He said it is not considered hazardous according to the accompanying Material Safety Data Sheet.
Kuntz said similar products include household products such as liquid soap and cosmetics.
Along the road about one mile south of Waterville, the substance was visible early this week - foamy discharge about 600 feet from the drilling site.
The suspicious substance is a surfactant known as Airfoam HD used to remove small bits of rock cuttings produced during well drilling, according to Dave Mashek of W.J. Green & Associates, a Pittsburgh public relations consulting firm contracted by PGE.
Mashek said evaporated summer water run off often is practically invisible; in winter it appears as icicles and in the spring, it flows down sidehills.
Weekend rainfall added to the downhill flow, which Mashek said carried with it bits of the surfactant that seeped through natural earthen cracks.
"Natural geologic fissures can result in the migration of a small amount of this material from the very top section of the wellbore during the initial stages of drilling," Mashek said. "This past weekend's rainfall of nearly 2 inches may have provided adequate saturation to force this residual drilling soap into natural fissures that reached the surface."
PGE and the DEP are working together to resolve the situation, and both Spadoni and Kuntz agreed residents need not take any tap water precautions.
They said residents should avoid drinking or otherwise using the suspicious discharge, which is only apparent at the one downhill slope.
Kuntz said in his 24 years of experience with the company, he's aware of similar surfactant flow quickly ceasing when it occurred elsewhere.
"We've had a couple incidents where this occurred," he said. "It usually disappears relatively quickly."
Such an occurrence is a rarity, as Kuntz said his Warren-based natural gas and oil company has owned and operated more than 1,200 Pennsylvania wells throughout 31 years, mostly in the northwestern part of the state.
Depending on the weather, Kuntz doesn't expect drilling to continue until late this month or early April.
The wells will remain sealed during the hiatus.
Shale covering the gas is buried more than 8,000 feet from the surface, and Kuntz said laborers have only burrowed down to 2,500 feet.
Kuntz expects hydrofracturing to commence this fall.
Spadoni said the DEP sent on Wednesday a notice of violation letter to PGE.
Within five business days, the company is required to respond in writing to the environmental department.
The letter is expected to include a list of drilling materials used by the company, which also is requested to describe past procudures, future plans and evaluate the potential of public and private water impact.
Within 10 days, the DEP expects another PGE submission including a determination and description of any long-term remedition needed and a plan for continued drilling operations at the well pad.
The DEP recommends drilling operations be discontinued until a solution is identified.
Fines remain possible, but Spadoni said none have been levied.
