Earlier this month, fracking company CNX released the first round of data from its “radical transparency” program. This initiative is a public-private partnership between Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and a fossil fuel company that the Governor previously brought charges against while serving as the commonwealth’s attorney general. Since the announcement of that partnership, frontline community members and environmental advocates have continuously raised concerns, specifically on the issues of voluntary self-reporting from a company that has faced criminal charges for falsifying data.
Many feared that CNX would use this partnership to artificially salvage its image. Less than a year later, those fears are becoming a reality. This sanctioned rebranding of a serial and criminally charged polluter could potentially set precedent for the expansion of fracking next to homes, schools, and playgrounds, and the possible construction of a dangerous hydrogen hub in Appalachia.
The Shapiro administration has made a grave error in partnering with CNX on a program that is little more than a public relations campaign. This initiative is flawed and the Governor’s office should acknowledge it.
Any policy decisions made using this data is highly problematic. Air and water quality monitoring through this collaboration is questionable. Too few facilities were used in the sample. And, worst of all, those facilities were hand-selected by – and we’ll say it again – a chronic and criminally charged company, CNX.
There are serious flaws in methodology in this first round of “data.” There are mountains of actual peer-reviewed evidence to the contrary. When it comes to sample size, which only include 11 well pads and 2 midstream facilities, it only represents 0.6% of the 1,850 wells CNX owns across Pennsylvania.
So, what is so radically transparent?
So, what is so radically transparent about this curated, paltry dataset – and what is happening at CNX’s other sites?
There is plenty of evidence that some CNX well pads are polluting significantly more than what this initiative is showing.. Less than a year ago, an ITC-certified Earthworks thermographer filmed a CNX well pad in Washington County, PA. This well was NOT selected for the “radical transparency” program. An industry-standard optical gas imaging camera captured an enormous plume of pollution, including health-hazardous volatile organic compounds such as BTEX and the climate super pollutant methane, spewing from the facility. This was not a unique event. Publicly available methane emissions data from Carbon Mapper shows at least four methane “super emitter” events near the locations of CNX well pads in 2023.
There is also evidence to suggest that the kind of equipment CNX is using to measure air quality can miss pollution from oil and gas facilities. A report released by Earthworks and Oil Change International in 2023 and revisited in 2024 showed that continuous emission monitors, like those used by CNX, are not reliable due to a variety of human and mechanical errors. These include placing monitors too far away from emissions sources, positioning them too low to the ground to adequately detect pollution, or using too few monitors to effectively detect pollution.
Long Term Consequences: more fracking & more pollution
The announcement of this “Radical Transparency” partnership between Governor Shapiro and CNX came in November 2023 shortly after both the company and the commonwealth were awarded funding from the Department of Energy (DOE) Regional Hydrogen Hub program through the ARCH2 and MACH2 hydrogen hubs respectively.
The ARCH2 hub, of which CNX is a project partner, is a blue hydrogen hub, which would use fracking as a feedstock to create hydrogen. Despite being called a clean energy source the truth is that this is yet another lifeline to preserve the fracking industry in Appalachia.
The ARCH2 project poses the threat of the continued buildout of fracking infrastructure, more pipelines, underground CO2 injection, and the construction of multiple new chemical facilities. ARCH2 must be held to a higher standard of community engagement and scrutiny if the DOE is going to sink $30 million of our tax dollars into it – especially when dealing with CNX.
The well-documented history of CNX harming communities and climate will continue if this initiative is to be recognized as a real test of this operator’s pollution problem. The claims CNX makes from its cherry-picked data make a mockery of the actual scientific process, which has produced hundreds of peer-reviewed studies showing health harms from fracking. This company’s “radical transparency” program should not be given unwarranted legitimacy by Pennsylvania’s governor. The future of our planet and the safety of communities should not be determined by flawed data and misleading statements orchestrated by criminally-charged fossil fuel corporations.
The Shapiro administration has made a grave error in partnering with CNX on a program that is little more than a public relations campaign. This initiative is flawed and the Governor’s office should acknowledge it. More than that, Governor Shapiro should follow through on recommendations backed by peer-reviewed evidence and his own 2020 grand jury report, which calls for expanding no-drill zones to protect the health of communities.
No one wants a politician helping a public relations effort by a company that has shown time and again that it cannot be trusted. Frontline residents want and deserve an elected leader who respects science, follows the facts, and puts the health of communities above all else.