A new report out today from the group Global Community Monitors is raising questions about potentially harmful air pollution from large-scale oil and gas drilling operations.

Working with local citizens, the organization collected 9 air samples in communities near drilling operations in Colorado and New Mexico. Lab testing turned up 22 toxic chemicals in those samples, including four known carcinogens. According to the group:

The chemical detected ranged from 3 to 3,000 times higher than what is considered safe by state and federal agencies.

And as the group noted:

Complaints about air quality have also surfaced in other states around the country, including West Virginia, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wyoming … Little information exists to educate and inform citizens about the chemicals being stored, emitted into the air, ground or water in close proximity to their homes.

… Loopholes in the Clean Air Act allow major corporations to circumvent basic protections that put public health first. U.S. EPA is currently drafting new regulations to control and monitor air pollution from natural gas development. Congress is debating new legislation, such as the Bringing Reductions to Energies Air  Born Toxic Health Effects (BREATHE) Act.

Here in West Virginia, the state Environmental Council has made monitoring and regulation of air quality at drilling sites one of its priority issues for any new oil and gas law.

In today’s Gazette, Dr. Paul Nyden has details on yesterday’s rally at the Capitol, calling for a moratorium on new Marcellus drilling until new state regulations are in place to govern the practice.  In the Daily Mail, Ry Rivard reports what we first reported here on Sustained Outrage yesterday — that Senate President Earl Ray Tomblin, acting as governor, will later today announce plans for the state Department of Environmental Protection to issue a limited set of emergency rules on Marcellus drilling.

Following the failure of any Marcellus legislation during this year’s regular legislative session, Tomblin seemed happy to basically do nothing on the issue. But then, Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Maloney last week called for more regulation on Marcellus drilling (subscription required), saying the rules were needed to ensure future investment by the industry.

About 100 people gathered on the state Capitol’s north steps on Monday to protest Marcellus Shale drilling practices in West Virginia. Gazette photo by Chip Ellis.

Also yesterday, state political leaders continued their quest to lure a “cracker” plant to West Virginia, a move supporters say would create hundreds of jobs and help turn the Marcellus into an even bigger economic win for the state.

We’ve yet to really hear any state political leaders ask any serious questions, though, about whether this Marcellus boom is really a good thing for the state.

That’s despite concerns already spelled out here and here about whether the jobs and economic gains would really be that great or that long-term.

And no one in West Virginia seems at all interested in talking about whether a huge increase in oil and gas drilling is really that good of a thing if the world is trying to find a way to deal with the climate crisis (see here, here and here).

But beyond even that, shouldn’t West Virginia leaders who are pressing with all their might to boost drilling consider the recent reports by The New York Times that perhaps the Marcellus reserves aren’t exactly as they’re being sold the investors, politicians and the public? Check out those reports here, here and here.  Among other things, the Times reported:

Natural gas companies have been placing enormous bets on the wells they are drilling, saying they will deliver big profits and provide a vast new source of energy for the United States.

But the gas may not be as easy and cheap to extract from shale formations deep underground as the companies are saying, according to hundreds of industry e-mails and internal documents and an analysis of data from thousands of wells.

In the e-mails, energy executives, industry lawyers, state geologists and market analysts voice skepticism about lofty forecasts and question whether companies are intentionally, and even illegally, overstating the productivity of their wells and the size of their reserves. Many of these e-mails also suggest a view that is in stark contrast to more bullish public comments made by the industry, in much the same way that insiders have raised doubts about previous financial bubbles.

“Money is pouring in” from investors even though shale gas is “inherently unprofitable,” an analyst from PNC Wealth Management, an investment company, wrote to a contractor in a February e-mail. “Reminds you of dot-coms.”