Quarterly Update March 2025

The overall goal of this study is to evaluate potential linkages between unconventional oil and gas development (UOGD) and groundwater contamination in a tri-county region of Pennsylvania with many overlapping potential sources of contamination. The analysis will be informed by focus groups in the region to help identify areas of community concern. The team plans to produce a broadly applicable framework to study the relationship between specific UOGD processes and potential groundwater contamination. The investigators will apply the following methods to achieve their goals:

1. Combine an existing data set of chemical measurements in groundwater with machine learning to isolate the influences of natural and anthropogenic processes on groundwater chemistry and to identify chemical signatures of UOGD.
2. Evaluate linkages between UOGD and potential water contamination.
3. Develop an approach to map locations of potential contamination from UOGD activities for application to future investigations of potential human exposures and health effects associated with UOGD.

The research team will build and test a model for understanding residential well water vulnerability to contamination from unconventional oil and gas development (UOGD) across the Marcellus region. This analysis will increase the understanding of risk to groundwater quality using publicly available data describing UOGD spills. The investigators will achieve their goal by:

1. Modeling residential drinking water well vulnerability to contamination from UOGD sources over time across the Marcellus region. The model will describe how contaminants move in the subsurface.
2. Using the model to understand the likelihood that specific UOGD spills will contaminate the water in residential wells.
3. Refining the model and assessing its performance with statistical analyses using the characteristics of documented cases of UOGD spills and known contamination at well locations.

The goal of this study is to develop community exposure profiles in the Colorado North Front Range for chemicals in the air as well as noise over the UOGD lifecycle, from site preparation through production of multi-well pads. This study will assess potential exposure pathways connecting UOGD chemical emissions to nearby communities and use the results to better understand the public health implications. The investigators will apply the following methods to achieve these goals:

1. Use a combination of existing air quality data, innovative air quality measurements, and source apportionment models to quantify potential exposures.
2. Collect noise measurements from UOGD operations to quantify potential exposures.
3. In collaboration with the Hildebrandt Ruiz team, develop the "TRAcking Community Exposures and Releases" (TRACER) model for use in the Denver-Julesburg region to predict chemical emissions from specific UOGD processes. The teams will combine the predicted emissions with an air quality model to estimate concentrations of chemicals in the air.
4. Evaluate model performance by comparing air quality monitoring data collected by this and the Franklin team with model predictions in the Denver-Julesburg region.

The goal of this study is to understand potential community exposure to UOGD-associated chemicals and radioactivity in air as well as noise. The investigators will apply the following methods to achieve their goals:

1. Monitor air quality and noise in the Permian region of New Mexico and the Eagle Ford region of Texas to understand how potential exposures vary across the regions and over different time scales.
2. Combine existing air monitoring data in the Denver-Julesburg region of Colorado and original data collected in the Permian and Eagle Ford regions with statistical models to distinguish UOGD from other sources of chemicals in the air and noise sources.
3. Leverage satellite data to examine the association between natural gas flaring and air quality.

4. Collaborate with the Collett and Hildebrandt Ruiz teams to evaluate the "TRAcking Community Exposures and Releases" (TRACER) model performance in the Denver-Julesburg and Eagle Ford regions.

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Online database with preliminary air concentration data collected by Dr. Franklin’s team. The data have not yet undergone HEI Energy’s rigorous peer review.

This study aims to assess trends in air quality and community exposures in the Marcellus Shale region and whether any might be explained by changes in oil and gas development-related operations or governance. The analysis will focus on local and regional exposures to criteria and hazardous air pollutants from 2002-2021, with special attention toward historically disadvantaged communities. The investigators are achieving their research aims with the following steps:

1. Perform a long-term emissions trend analysis by integrating bottom-up oil and gas emissions and ambient measurements of criteria and select hazardous air pollutant concentrations.
2. Conduct a long-term air quality trend analysis by applying a chemical transport model to simulate the criteria and select hazardous air pollutant concentrations over the region. 
3. Use a more advanced chemical transport model that employs machine-learning to investigate sources of and control strategies for oil and gas emissions. 
4. Apply a county-level community health vulnerability index approach to identify disproportionately exposed communities.

This study aims to understand how oil and gas development might contribute to any local or regional trends in air quality and associated population exposure across the Marcellus-Utica Shale region from 2004-2023. The team is assessing whether changes in operations or governance may have contributed to any observed trends. The investigators are achieving their research aims with the following steps: 

1. Organize daily air quality monitoring data for criteria air pollutants and volatile organic compounds into a single dataset for the study region from 2004-2023. 
2. Develop a dataset of daily oil and gas operational activity (including drilling, fracturing, transport, and gas compression) and an inventory of expected emissions across the study region for the same period as the air quality dataset (2004-2023).
3. Estimate population exposure to the criteria air pollutants and volatile organic compounds, including exposures experienced by economically disadvantaged areas using the US Census American Community Survey data. 
4. Estimate the fraction of emissions in the region that come from oil and gas development and how changes in industry practice and governance might have led to changes in air quality. 

The overall goal of this study is to determine trends in the atmospheric concentrations of methane and non-methane hydrocarbons at eleven locations in the Haynesville, Eagle Ford, Barnett, and Permian regions of Texas and six locations in the Denver-Julesburg region of Colorado. The research team is using air quality monitoring data that date back as far as 1997 at one of the Texas locations, including:

1. Texas Commission on Environmental Quality ambient air quality data collected in proximity and downwind of oil and gas production. 
2. Air quality data from the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environmental, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
3. Administration, and from a Northern Colorado Front Range Regional Government Coalition.
4. Satellite-based measurements of formaldehyde above the Permian basin as a proxy for non-methane hydrocarbon emissions in the last 10 years.

The research team is separating long-term trends from seasonal and other short-term variations and is seeking to understand whether any observed trends are the result of changes in oil and gas operations or significant disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns in 2020.