EPA sets fracking controls

WASHINGTON – The Environmental Protection Agency issued its first regulations to curtail air pollution from natural gas wells that use a controversial production technique known as hydraulic fracturing, but gave the industry a three-year transition period to install technology to capture some of the worst pollutants.

The new regulations would limit emissions of volatile organic compounds, which react with sunlight to create smog. They would also limit emissions of carcinogens and methane, the main component to natural gas and a potent contributor to climate change.

The rules are expected to affect the approximately 11,000 new wells annually that undergo hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and another 1,200 or so that are re-fracked to boost production.

Much of the air pollution at gas sites escapes during the well-completion phase, after the well is drilled but before it is linked to pipelines to take it to processing plants and closer to market, said Robin Cooley, a lawyer for Earthjustice, which filed suit to get the new pollution standards.

Methane is exponentially more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas if it is simply vented into the air. Right now, companies let the methane escape, burn it, or capture and sell it as natural gas, a process referred to as “green completion.” Nearly half of all companies that now frack use green-completion technologies.

The new rules allow companies to burn, or flare, their methane or to use green-completion technology until January 2015. Then, all fracking sites will have to capture their methane.