Halloween Trick: Wastewater Spill in Hopewell

photo courtesy R. Donnan

Yesterday morning (yes, Halloween) Range Resources reported a spill of “treated” wastewater near a drill site in Hopewell Township, Washington County, PA – just a bit west of Pittsburgh. The 16,800-gallon spill (400 barrels) happened at 9:20 am when a contractor tried to move a temporary water line using an excavator.

The pipeline was installed to deliver treated flowback fluids to the impoundment at the well site. There it would be mixed with fresh water, stored, and recycled in future fracking operations. Though no fluids were being pumped through the pipeline at the time of the accident, there was residual fluid from a previous transfer.

The PA Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) told the press that the spill area was ditched and contained… then added that some recycled fluids entered a high-quality stream. Although DEP didn’t know how much waste fluid  had reached the creek, a spokesperson said that preliminary tests showed no impact on aquatic life in the water.

Range spokesman Matt Pitzarella called the incident “unacceptable”. But he’s said that before, because this is the third spill Range has had in as many years.

Back on May 26, 2009 Range spilled nearly 5,000 gallons of wastewater, including hydraulic fracturing fluids, into a tributary of Cross Creek Lake. DEP reported that the creek, a protected watershed near Pittsburgh, was “impacted by sediments all the way down to the lake and there was also evidence of a fish kill as invertebrates and fish were observed lying dead in the creek.”

That spill happened when the company was pumping fluids from the hydraulic fracturing of three wells through a six-inch pipe to a “DEP-approved” impoundment. Along the way, two screws along the pipe came loose. Pitzarella chalked it up to vandalism.

Range spilled another 10,000 gallons or more of flowback fluids in yet another accident that same year. That spill also resulted in a fish kill.

Pitzarella said that Range found “…both of these to be unfortunate and unacceptable.” But, he added, neither spill had any negative impacts on health or property.

What to do With Flowback? Just Pump it Back Downhole.

photo of Range Resources impoundment, courtesy SRBC

It takes anywhere from 3 to 5 million gallons of water to frack a Marcellus well, water that companies are pumping from local rivers or purchasing from municipalities. But, says Dave Yoxtheimer at Penn State University, drillers are looking into alternatives: treated wastewater, cooling water from power plants, and abandoned mine drainage. They’re also exploring ways to reuse their flowback and waste fluids.

A number of companies have engineered recycling technologies, including Aqua Pure and GE. But, says Tony Gaudlip, water operations manager for Range Resources, recycling flowback may be as simple as pumping it back down the hole. In an October 21 webinar Gaudlip said that Range Resources has been recycling 100 percent of their flowback for the past year. Reusing the water has resulted in a savings of $200,000 per well, about 5 percent of the total drilling cost.

We’re not talking a lot of flowback – only 10 percent of what’s injected comes back out. Still, the company’s engineers needed to consider a few things before pumping wastefluid back down the hole: pumping pressure – horizontal wells require about 80 to 100 barrels of water per minute to fracture the rock; and the chemicals they used. Fracturing Marcellus requires different chemicals than shale wells in other parts of the country.

“Initially we took the flowback and the brine, mixed it all together and pumped it downhole,” Gaudlip said. They watched the dials and gauges, looked at bacterial growth and scaling, and analyzed fluid stability. “We saw some increase in friction, but that was manageable,” Gaudlip said. What they didn’t see was scaling. Nor did they see an elevation of the total dissolved solids (TDS) levels. Conventional wisdom expected those levels to climb higher with each reuse.

What this meant for Range Resources was that they could reuse their fluids with minimum – or no – treatment. So for the past year they’ve been diluting the flowback in a new mix that’s three-quarters fresh water combined with one-quarter reused waste fluids.

Where do they store this flowback until they need it? In pits. Gaudlip admitted that Range Resources has had some issues with bacterial growth on the surface, which he attributed to the levels of polyacrilamides and solids in the flowback. So now, they truck their

flowback fluids to Eureka Resources, in Williamsport. After raising the pH, adding flocking agent to settle the solids and tossing in chlorine to control bacteria, the “clarified” waste fluid is hauled back to the well pad where it is stored until it’s reused in fracking.

The idea behind reusing drilling waste fluid was two-fold: to reduce the amount of water withdrawn from the rivers and streams, and to reduce the amount of truck traffic hauling both fresh and wastewater on the road. Gaudlip admits that trucking the flowback 35 miles to the treatment facility is not an ideal situation. Not for Range and not for the local residents.

Long term plans call for Range Resources to incorporate mobile water treatment units at their drilling sites. But that’s still a few months off, says Matt Pitzarella, Range Resource Public Affairs Director for the Marcellus region. The company’s ultimate goal, he said, is to maintain zero liquid discharge in Pennsylvania’s surface waters.

You can hear Gaudlip’s webinar presentation here. The longer article that was published in Broader View Weekly last week should be available here sometime next week.

Range Resources Follows Through on Promise to Disclose Fracking Chemicals

Back in July, Range Resources promised to voluntarily disclose the composition of each of the hydraulic fracturing components for all their Marcellus wells on their website. It took them about a month, but in late August Range posted the first 8 completion reports: five in the Goettel Unit and three in the Baker Unit in Washington County, PA.

Range explained in their press comments, and again on their website, that their disclosure will “provide regulators, landowners and citizens of the Commonwealth an accounting of the highly diluted additives used at each well site, along with their classifications, volumes, dilution factors, and specific and common purposes.” Range is submitting this same information to the DEP as part of their well completion reports.

Time and again Range has explained that they believe the hydraulic fracturing process is environmentally safe. Their reasons: the Marcellus shale is generally located more than a mile below the water table and is isolated by more than three million pounds of steel and concrete casing. Also, the chemicals are “extremely” diluted, making up less than a half a percent of the total fracking fluid, they say.

True, but those small amounts add up. The average frack job uses about 4 million gallons of water. Even if only 0.14% of that is chemical additives, as listed in one of Range’s completion reports, that still represents 5600 gallons of chemical injected into the ground. Not a lot for a single well, but multiply that by the number of wells in any given area, or on any given well pad, and it adds up.

But, I digress. The point here is that Range Resources is following through with their promise to post completion wells, and you can read them at their website.

One thing you will notice is that Range is not using a long list of chemicals at each well – often five to seven products. The only problem I have with their reports is that they continue to list the only the hazardous compounds listed on MSDS, not a complete listing of chemicals in the compounds. Their friction reducer, for example, they list as containing no hazardous compounds, so they are not disclosing any of those chemicals in their drilling reports to DEP, or to the citizens of PA.

Range Resources Promises they "Really Will" Disclose Fracking Chemicals

photo of Barnett shale well provided by Tim Ruggiero.

story updated Thursday afternoon

Two weeks ago Range Resources announced that they would voluntarily disclose hydraulic fracturing chemicals used in drilling Marcellus Shale. At that time they provided a link to a "sample Marcellus Shale Completion Report" and seemed to imply that interested people would be able to find a list of all the fracturing chemicals they use somewhere on their website.

While it's true that Range Resources has a link to the information on their home page, some people were hoping for a handy list of all the fracking chemicals used in Marcellus. At this point in time all that's posted is the initial press release, a description of casing design and one sample completion report.

But that will change, says public affairs director, Matt Pitzarella. In a phone conversation this morning, Pitzarella reiterated Range Resources' commitment to increased transparency.

"Beginning now, completion reports will have an addendum attached that lists the fracturing chemicals, as well as their amounts, used in drilling each well," Pitzarella said. These will be posted to the Company website as well.

Where, exactly? Pitzarella wasn't sure. "We're re-vamping the website and hope to make it easier for people to find information," he said. Soon, meaning sometime within the next 4 weeks (but earlier, he hopes), there should be a button on the left column guiding people to "completion reports" or "hydraulic fracturing".  He's still working out the details.

After reminding me again that it was voluntary, Pitzarella said, "We're hoping that these reports give people the facts they need to make their own decisions. Some people are concerned that fracturing chemicals will get into their aquifers. So we want to make sure they know what we're using and the [very small] amounts."