Not enough
There’s nothing that can ever bring back the life of contract technician Ian McKee, 27, who was killed in a natural gas well explosion and fire on Feb. 11, 2014, in Greene County.
However, there was a certain sense of justice rendered this past week as the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) entered into an agreement with Chevron to pay a $939,552 fine for violations related to the fatality.
According to the DEP, the penalty stemmed from Chevron’s failure to construct and operate the well site to ensure that health, safety and environment were protected, as required by Pennsylvania’s Oil and Gas Act, which in turn resulted in McKee’s death.
DEP spokesman John Poister said that the agency doesn’t track fines, but said the Chevron fine is “one of the largest we’ve ever had.”
“Protecting people and the environment is a core value for Chevron, and we are determined to prevent an incident like this from happening again,” said Brenda Cosola, a spokeswoman for Moon Township-based Chevron Appalachia.
Poister said the DEP wanted to ensure that Chevron had better, more direct control over their wells in the future and is satisfied that the consent agreement and fine accomplish that.
It’s good to see Chevron admit its mistakes, and it’s even better to see the company promise to make the necessary changes so that an incident like this doesn’t happen again.
However, there was another aspect of this incident that should have been handled differently.
For whatever reason, Chevron blocked DEP officials from reaching the explosion site for nearly two days after the explosion. That’s simply unfathomable. The DEP set up an information center along with local lawmakers, but they didn’t have any details to release, because Chevron wasn’t saying anything.
Meanwhile, with all the secrecy, there was all sorts of gossip and rumors going around about what happened. Lurking in the background were questions about what would have happened if this had been a major disaster? Would the press and public still have been kept in the dark?
Chevron should have sent a high-level executive to Greene County the day the fire happened, and that person should have held a press conference as soon as possible to answer any questions. A town forum to address concerns of local residents would also have been advisable.
But none of that happened, leaving local residents to wonder and worry for days after the incident.
At the time of the incident, DEP officials said Chevron’s actions were in violation of the company’s permits, and the company could be fined.
However, when the settlement was announced this week. Poister said no fines would be forthcoming, concerning Chevron’s actions toward the DEP and the public. Poister told Katie Colaneri, a reporter for StateImpact, that, “We felt that we had sent a message to Chevron and to the industry that that’s not going to be acceptable behavior in the past, and we believe that message has been received.”
That’s unacceptable. Chevron certainly should have been penalized for not granting the DEP full access to the site and for not giving detailed information about the incident to the public.
In its report, the DEP did fault its own officials for not taking charge of the scene and said it would never allow a situation like that to happen again. The DEP also said it would develop a media communications plan for major emergencies, which will include making company officials available to speak to the media.
That all sounds great. While we all hope that nothing like this happens again, if it does, we can only hope that DEP officials will take control of the situation, and follow through on their own procedures.
But we’d feel better about that happening, if we knew that Chevron had been penalized in some way for completely disregarding DEP officials and the public in the aftermath of this tragic incident.