PITTSBURGH (TNS) — Pennsylvania’s oil and gas regulators are rolling out a voluntary program meant to encourage fracking and pipeline companies to reduce their environmental impact in ways that go far beyond what’s typically required.

But will anyone actually use it?

The suite of 15 good deeds promoted in the program includes minimizing noise, plugging abandoned oil wells, powering equipment with renewable energy, improving water quality in historically polluted streams and planting trees to offset greenhouse gas emissions.

Commit to enough good deeds and your earthmoving permit application for building a well pad or pipeline corridor will move to the top of the stack for review, leapfrogging those in line for a standard review.

During years of development, regulators with the state Department of Environmental Protection have called the initiative an innovative, one-of-a-kind approach unlike any being pursued in other oil and gas drilling states — a way to help enhanced environmental practices catch on with all carrot and no stick.

So far, the industry seems uninspired.

In comments on the draft “prioritized review” process, the Pennsylvania branch of the American Petroleum Institute called it “a cumbersome bureaucratic quagmire.”

The Marcellus Shale Coalition said it surveyed its members — who produce and transport most of the state’s natural gas — and none were interested in using the program in its current form.

The Wexford-based Pennsylvania Independent Oil and Gas Association, which represents both shale and conventional companies, said its members also wouldn’t use the program as drafted. “The incentive is not worth the substantial additional effort and obligations required,” Dan Weaver, PIOGA’s executive director, wrote.

”If the goal of the prioritized review process is to encourage applicants to incorporate superior environmental enhancements into their projects, why make the process so difficult, time consuming and costly?”

A two-part approach

DEP officials say they are trying to find a balance so the program is ambitious but accessible.

The program envisions two classes of enhanced projects. One group would surpass typical practices for building or restoring oil and gas sites, like taking extra steps to protect wetlands, avoiding unnecessary fragmentation of forests, seeding with only Pennsylvania native plants, controlling invasive vegetation and improving habitat for threatened species.

Many of those options were informed by practices that the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources requires of oil and gas operations in state forests.

The second group includes an array of practices that aim to clean up environmental scars from past fossil fuel development — like plugging abandoned wells — or to reduce the environmental footprint of the current industry by cutting down on emissions of air pollution and climate warming greenhouse gases.

Projects in the first group are worth one point, and projects in the second group are worth two.

A successful application needs a total of nine points.

If the qualifications aren’t demanding enough, DEP fears being flooded with too many priority applications and slowing down review times for standard permits.

”We want this to be a success,” Scott Perry, the deputy secretary in charge of DEP’s oil and gas office, said at an advisory board meeting in September. “If, in fact, it is not being utilized, then we will certainly reengage folks to make tweaks to what qualifies and the point system.”

A second attempt

The new program emerged when it became clear that an earlier fast-track permit review, known as an expedited review, wasn’t working.

With expedited review, earthmoving plans prepared and certified by a licensed engineer were supposed to be approved within 14 business days instead of 60 calendar days under a standard review.

But environmental groups repeatedly challenged permits issued through the fast-track process in court and won, and DEP was on the hook for their legal fees. In response, the agency started to scrutinize the expedited permits more rigorously, which bogged down the turnaround times.

In addition, ineligible or inaccurate submissions from companies backed up the queue. A 2016 review by DEP found nearly 60% of applications for the expedited earthmoving permits between 2014 and 2016 had flaws that disqualified them from the speedier review process.

DEP decided to scrap expedited review in favor of the incentive program.

A key concern voiced by industry trade groups is that the carrot isn’t appetizing enough: There is little certainty that the new prioritized review process will actually result in faster permits.

Review times vary across regions, with the southwest district consistently taking more days on average to issue oil and gas earthmoving permits than the northwest and eastern districts, according to DEP statistics from 2017 through 2020. (DEP attributed a slowdown in the southwest district in 2020 to “significant compliance matters [that] required extensive engineering reviews.”)

The Marcellus Shale Coalition wrote that embarking on a prioritized review process without addressing the inconsistency in permit review times “is akin to building a permanent detour rather than fixing the roadway.”

Industry commenters also said it would be too hard to amass the number of points needed to qualify for a priority review. In some cases, the enhanced environmental projects could cost more than the erosion and stormwater control measures that are the purpose of the permit.

Not giving up yet

Still, neither the industry nor regulators want to give up, especially because the program was crafted with significant collaboration over the last three years.

”The intent of this venture is commendable and worth saving,” Weaver of the Pennsylvania Independent Oil and Gas Association wrote. “PIOGA is kindly asking that the department does not let all of this hard work, great ideas and concept sharing for enhancing the environment go to waste.”

Perry has promised DEP will adjust the program if not enough companies are using it.

”We are committed to keeping track of the success of this program so that we can hold it out as a model,” he said in September. “I really think it’s a model for all other oil and gas producing states.”

Now that the comment period on the draft is closed, DEP officials said they will review and respond to the comments and use them to make changes to a final draft.