State updates pipeline standards
The Columbus Dispatch - December 20, 2013 02:10 PM
Ohio Department of Natural Resources officials have updated their standards for pipelines and pipeline construction.
The 22-page document was last updated in 2009, shortly before a new wave of horizontal drilling and fracking began in Eastern Ohio, part of a large-scale effort to draw natural gas and oil from this state's Utica shale.
According to a press release, "the standards provide guidelines and recommended best management practices to help rural landowners and farmers restore soil productivity and agricultural drainage after the installation of a pipeline."
The standards are not mandatory but are instead offered as guidelines to landowners and pipeline companies in part to help reduce the damage pipeline construction can wreak on soil.
The agency states they can also help landowners who are in the midst of negotiating the terms of easements that allow pipelines to cross their properties.
Pipelines and the trenches dug to contain them are now a common site in many eastern Ohio counties where drilling and fracking are concentrated.
Each new shale well site needs a new "gathering line," a pipeline to transport raw shale gases to processing plants. The plants are essentially refineries that split natural gas from other gases, such as methane, butane and ethane.
The processing plants also need new pipelines to ship finished natural gas to market and to transport the butane, propane and ethane, collectively called "natural gas liquids" for further processing and sales.