More Water Concerns with Drilling

Starrucca Viaduct, Lanesboro PA

A week after the Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) suspended water withdrawals I decided to drive through the northern tier of Pennsylvania to check on the rivers. The water is so low that some smaller creeks are nearly dry and farmers are irrigating their fields and row crops. It looks like August, not the beginning of July - and while not "technically" a drought, it's getting close in some parts of the state.

That same day, July 3 the American Water Works Association released a statement calling for more regulatory oversight of hydro-fracking operations. They call on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to use the authority of the Safe Drinking Water Act to regulate oil and gas well construction and operation - including hydro-fracking- through the Underground Injection Control (UIC) Program. They also ask EPA to use its existing authority under the Clean Water Act to regulate discharges from oil and gas wells. While the group supports sound federal energy policies, it clearly states that oil and gas development (including fracking) "must provide appropriate protection of our nation's ground water and surface water resources."

Meanwhile, the residents in Leroy Township (Bradford County, PA) are dealing with another spill - 4,700 gallons of hydrochloric acid at the Yoder well operated by Chief Oil and Gas. So far it's been contained, say the folks from Chief and PA's Department of Environmental Protection, with no runoff getting into Towanda Creek.

Those Fracking Earthquakes

When a magnitude-4 earthquake hit Youngstown, OH on New Years Day this year, people started asking whether this – and the slew of other quakes hitting their region – was related to nearby injection well.

Yesterday officials from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources announced that, yes indeed, about a dozen earthquakes were most likely caused by injections into deep underground waste disposal wells. Wells that accepted waste drilling fluids and injected them into these deep – sometimes 9,000 or so feet – wells.

Ohio has about 200 underground injection wells. About 180 of those disposal wells accept waste from oil and gas operations, generating about $1 million for the state. Last year more than half  of that waste came from out of state, most from Pennsylvania. While the state charges 20-cents a barrel for out-of-staters, at least one private company charges $3/barrel for drilling waste disposal.

Clearly, taking drilling waste can be big business – especially when you consider how many truckloads of waste fluids are being hauled away just from the Marcellus gas fields. According to news reports, PA drillers sent almost 1.5 million barrels of waste to Ohio injection wells during the second half of 2011. And the drilling has yet to begin in NY.

Following up on their report, Ohio regulators announced new rules for underground injection wells:

• They are banning injection into Precambrian rock – those formations at 8,000 feet and below. Existing wells that reach into that formation must be plugged.
• Injection wells must have state-of-the-art pressure and volume monitoring; that includes automatic shut-off systems.
• The state will require an electronic tracking system to identify chemicals in all drilling waste fluids entering the state.

NY Governor Andrew Cuomo insists that science must guide drilling regulations. It’s pretty clear from OH – and other states experiencing injection well-caused quakes – that drilling has out-paced the science.

Is "Recycling Waste Fluids" Just Another Name for Disposal?

pumping water from Susquehanna at Ulster, PA

Three weeks ago I posted a brief review on how Range Resources is re-using flowback and frack waste fluids in their drilling process. The idea sounds great: re-use, recycle and reduce the need for pumping millions of gallons of water from our streams and rivers.

But while industry engineers rave about the technology, some people living near recycling operations aren’t so ecstatic. Since that post, I heard from one woman living in the Barnett Shale play who described a local recycling facility.

Fountain Quail, a partner in the Williamsport Eureka facility (which is the one Range currently uses to clarify their frack fluids) operates a similar facility located in the midst of drilling sites just north of the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

“It stinks,” said the Texas resident. She described the odor as an offensive mix of diesel and chemicals that smells like stagnant water. The idea of using well-site recycling might work in isolated, rural areas she said, but the odors are evident from as far away as 1,000 feet.

“You wouldn’t want to live nearby,” she said. Already many people have raised concerns about the cumulative impact of emissions from compressors and other facilities; we should add recycling facilities to that list.

Then there is the question of whether diluting and reusing flowback to drill wells is a legitimate use for drilling waste fluids. “Why isn’t re-injecting flowback fluids into a well regulated under UIC?” asks Dr. Anthony Ingraffea, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Cornell University.

UIC refers to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Underground Injection Control program which regulates disposal of oil and gas drilling wastes in deep disposal wells.

“Congress established the UIC program to protect drinking water,” Ingraffea emphasized in a recent phone conversation. Under the UIC program, drilling wastes are injected into class II disposal wells. EPA regulates these class II wells, limiting the pressure and volume of waste fluid injected into disposal wells.

More importantly, EPA requires the company to demonstrate that injected wastes will not come into contact with any groundwater. That means the company has to identify all abandoned wells in the area and make sure they are plugged properly – otherwise injected waste fluids may find a pathway to contaminate drinking water.

So here’s the conundrum, says Ingraffea: while the EPA strictly regulates how fluids are injected into a deep disposal well, no one is regulating how those same fluids are being reused in drilling.

“This is what happens when technology outpaces regulations,” says Ingraffea. “It’s the same process with a different name.”

Add recycling to the long list of things EPA needs to look at in their new hydro-fracking study.