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Q1. If a tanker-load of chemicals is spilled in the forest, and no officially accredited observers are there to document it, did the spill ever occur?
A1. Not if it happened on a gas well pad!
Q2. If a lateral crack forms in the side of an underground aquifer while a gas well is being drilled a mile away, did the drilling activity cause the ruin of that aquifer?
A2. No; the pathway will never be proven because no one has both the resources and the desire to carry out that kind of investigation.
Q3. If the carcinogen 4-nitroquinoline-1-oxide (4-NQO) suddenly turns up in a river near the discharge pipe of a municipal waste treatment plant which accepts gas well flowback fluids, did the carcinogen come from those flowback fluids?
A3. No. Energy companies don’t use 4-NQO as an additive, and they’ve never studied how it is formed underground from the chemicals they do use. And they won’t disclose what those chemicals are.
Q4. When people living downwind of a “holding pond” develop nosebleeds, rashes, labored breathing, nausea, unexplained weight loss and mental confusion, could their symptoms be due to the volatile organic compounds wafting from the pond’s surface?
A4. No. There’s nothing in those ponds but “water, cuttings, sand, soap and canola oil”.
Each of these four questions represents a group of real-life incidents, and they point to extreme avoidance of full-body contact with the truth by energy companies and the regulators who coddle them.
I and scientists like me are trying to strip away the fog, but we should all recognize that the fog is still there. I have yet to witness full disclosure — or anything even close — of chemicals used, incidents which should have been reported, or accurate handling of the statistics regarding those that were reported.
Until some of this clears up, no scientist, no matter how diligent, can claim to have “the objective science”. My $0.02 worth…
Ron Bishop
Tags: science
Shreveport Times (Louisiana) report:
Chesapeake, Schlumberger fined $22,000 each in cows’ deaths
By Vickie Welborn • vwelborn@gannett.com • March 25, 2010
KEITHVILLE – Chesapeake Energy Corp. and its contractor Schlumberger Technology Corp. each must pay $22,000 for violating state law in connection with the deaths almost a year ago of 17 cows at a natural gas well site.
Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality mailed identical letters spelling out the settlement agreement with both companies on Tuesday. Each was informed that it must advertise the agreement and invite public comment.
Both companies deny the material discharged from the natural gas well site killed the cows, deny violations were committed and neither makes an admission of liability, according to the settlement document signed by LDEQ Assistant Secretary Paul D. Miller. Included in each fine is $1,300 in enforcement costs.
In a joint statement from Chesapeake’s Kevin McCotter and Schlumberger’s Stephen T. Harris, both companies acknowledged today entering into a proposed settlement agreement.
. . . . .
Citizens noticed the dying cows April 28 in a pasture owned by Cecil and Tyler Williams on state Highway 169 near the corner of Keatchie-Marshall Road in south Caddo Parish. Witnesses reported hearing them bellowing and seeing them bleeding before they fell over dead.
At the time, Schlumberger, as a contractor of Chesapeake, was performing routine fracturing of the natural gas well. LDEQ determined during its investigation that fluid leaked from the well pad then ran into an adjacent pasture after a rain.
Read full story at:
Tags: cattle, Chesapeake, deaths, hydraulic fracturing, Louisiana, Schlumberger
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Posted in Bad Neighbors, Community Effects, Fraccidents, Gas Drilling Accidents, Mean Energy
Jerry Lobdill comments on a situation in Virginia:
While this well may be a vertical well, if their results are positive they will come back for horizontal well drilling permits. Secondly, you should consider that once an aquifer is polluted, remediation is not possible. So the idea of monitoring the work and the condition of the ground water will only deliver prompt information that the water is no longer clean if things don’t go well. The drinking water source will be lost forever, essentially. So how do you justify a proposed fine for that?
Regarding fracking the shale, thousands of feet below the surface, it may or may not directly cause pollution of drinking water sources close to the surface, but there is one aspect of the wells that most likely is responsible for some of the many, many reports from all over the US of tap water containing combustible gas. It is the problem of failed cementing in the well bore.
In Texas drillers are required to cement gas wells from the surface to a depth somewhat exceeding the depth of the water table. Here, drillers point to this fact and the fact that the Barnett Shale lies about 7000 feet below the surface to back up their claim that the contamination could not possibly come from their wells. Actually, these facts are essential to the explanation of the presence of gas in tap water.
Have you ever seen a flagstone sidewalk that didn’t have cracks in some places between the mortar and the stones? This common situation is caused by weather and small ground motion effects that put stress on the interface between the stones and the mortar. In a well bore if the walls of the bore are not completely clean when the cementing is done the bond will be poor. Additionally, the interface between the casing and the cement is a weak point as the well ages because of the difference in the mechanical properties of cement and steel. Over time both of these interfaces of the cement with the casing and well bore will deteriorate.
When the bond fails the gas pressure in the well will cause the raw gas with its entrained liquids to find its way up the bore to geologic formations that contain the water that is used for drinking in homes.
How often do drillers achieve a good cement job? Dale Henry says not often. Dale Henry ran for TX RRC and lost in the last election. Dale (now retired) is the Red Adair of the well cementing problem world. He had a company that repaired wells with leaky cement jobs. He also cemented new wells. He says that drillers do not generally pay close attention to preparing the well bore. It is apparently a big problem.
In my opinion, the best policy is “Just say NO.”
Just my $0.02.
Jerry Lobdill
Ch. E. and physicist (ret.)
Fort Worth, TX.
Tags: cement, cementing, contamination, well casing
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Report from WFAA, Friday, 3/19
(Thanks, WFAA for the embeddable video.)
There has been an explosion at a gas well near Decatur, say police.
The Decatur city manager said [batteries of storage tanks] blew up on Farm-to-Market Road 51, about four miles outside of town.
Four tanks were on fire; the blaze, at one point, spread from tanker to tanker. A fifth storage tanker was blown well away from the site. Around 1 p.m., firefighters got the flames under control.
There are reports of two burn victims.
“Initial information is that there is a work project going on, installing four tanks. A worker was welding and there was an explosion that occurred. Two of them were burned, minor burns, first degree, like a sun burn. One started having respiratory difficulties, so they flew him to Parkland hospital. The other one went by car to the local hospital,” said the Wise County fire marshal, Marc Dodd.
“One guy was on a ladder and he got blown off,” said Brandon Evans from the Wise County Messenger.
Crews had to transport water to the site to extinguish the fire.
. . . . .
After a well is drilled, [batteries of storage tanks] are installed, to hold oil that comes out of the well. There is not an active well being drilled at this location.
– complete story at WFAA
Tags: explosion
*Substitute your state environmental regulating agency
Guest post by Lynn Senick:
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On Feb. 2, DEP fined Talisman Energy $3,500 for violations at its “Cease” well pad in Troy Township discovered during inspections in 2009. A February 2009 inspection revealed that the company had not publicly posted the permit number and other required information at the entrance of the well pad. During a follow-up inspection in June 2009, a DEP statement explains, “flow-back fluids — or the fluids that are used to break up underground rock and then return to the surface — were found discharging into a drainage ditch, an adjacent sediment basin, and eventually through a vegetated area into an unnamed tributary of the south branch of Sugar Creek.” The Daily Review
“A vertical drilled well in The Marcellus Shale zone costs $810,000 to drill while a horizontal drilled well will cost you roughly 3-5 million dollars.” oilshalegas.com In the Marcellus shale, Talisman drilled nine gross (nine net) wells during the quarter, for a total of 12 gross (12 net) in the first half of the year. The development plan is ahead of schedule and the company is now producing at rates in excess of 30 million cubic feet of gas per day. ugcenter.com .
COST OF DRILLING ONE HORIZONTAL WELL; $ 4 MILLION
A FINE OF $3500 is 0.0875% – the value of a a used Chevy Caravan.
VALUE OF CLEAN AIR, LAND, & WATER?
PRICELESS
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Tags: DEP, fine, spill, Talisman, violations
Have you noticed how often the industry and its sympathizers repeat the refrain that fracking happens so far below the water table from which drinking water is drawn that there’s no danger of frack fluids getting into drinking water? This despite the evidence that stuff really does get around, even if they don’t understand how.
There’s another way drinking water gets contaminated: surface spills. Spilled substances can seep down to groundwater. Or, as at Buckeye Creek, a town’s drinking water can be contaminated by spills that find their way into surface waters.
In late November the Sootypaws website and blog posted an extensive update on the mysterious spill at Buckeye Creek, in Doddridge County, WV.
Make yourself a cup of coffee and settle in for an excellent and thorough account of what is known.
Timeline and links to more
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Tags: Buckeye Creek, Doddridge County, WV
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