.

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

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:

http://www.shreveporttimes.com/article/20100325/NEWS01/100325018/Chesapeake-Schlumberger-fined-22-000-each-in-cows-deaths

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.

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

Guest post by Lynn Senick:

.

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

.

Well setbacks in New York State:  n o t  f a r  e n o u g h

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.

Buckeye Creek Update

Timeline and links to more

.

Let’s not have to learn the hard way

DEP says this will provide a “long-term solution.”  That seems optimistic.  How do you “replace” someone’s own clean, clear, safe spring or well water?  And, you have to wonder, eventually,  after northeastern PA and New York’s Southern Tier are pincushioned with  gas wells, where will the “replacement” water come from?  And what will we use to schlep it from hither to thither?  Oh, yeah, now I remember: diesel fuel made from foreign oil.  Yup, that stuff that natural gas was supposed to free us from depending on.

________________________________

Pennsylvania DEP Reaches Agreement with Cabot to Prevent Gas Migration,
Restore Water Supplies in Dimock Township

Agreement Requires DEP Approval for Well Casing, Cementing

MEADVILLE, Pa., Nov. 4 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Department of
Environmental Protection and Cabot Oil and Gas Corp. have executed a consent
order and agreement that will provide a long-term solution for migrating gas
that has affected 13 water supplies in Dimock Township, Susquehanna County.

The affected area covers nine square miles around Carter Road.

The consent order and agreement outlines a process that will give DEP more
oversight of Cabot’s new well construction work in the affected area. Prior to
drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or hydro fracking, the company will submit
well casing and cementing plans to DEP. Once DEP provides written approval,
Cabot may proceed.

“The goal of the consent order and agreement is to ensure a long-term
resolution to issues that have emerged in Dimock,” said DEP Northwest Regional
Director Kelly Burch. “The company will focus on the integrity of the wells in
the affected area in an attempt to determine the source of the migrating gas.”

This past week, Cabot has provided an interim solution for all of the homes
where water supplies have been affected. Cabot must develop a plan by March 31
to restore or replace the affected water supplies permanently.

Under the consent order and agreement, Cabot must additionally submit to DEP:

– Information on all parties who have contacted the company about water
quantity or quality issues; and

– A plan that specifically identifies how the company intends to prove the
integrity of the casing and cementing on existing wells and fix
defective casing and cementing by March 31.

If Cabot fails to fix the defective casing and cementing by the March
deadline, the company must plug defective wells or implement another
alternative as approved by DEP.

In addition, Cabot paid a $120,000 civil penalty for violations of the Oil and
Gas Act, the Solid Waste Management Act and the Clean Streams Law.

The consent order and agreement caps a DEP investigation that began early this
year when numerous Dimock area residents reported evidence of natural gas in
their water supplies. DEP inspectors discovered that the well casings on some
of Cabot’s natural gas wells were cemented improperly or insufficiently,
allowing natural gas to migrate to groundwater.

On Sept. 25, following a series of wastewater spills, DEP ordered Cabot to
cease hydro fracking natural gas wells throughout Susquehanna County. The
prohibition was removed after the company completed a number of important
engineering and safety tasks.

Cabot Oil and Gas Corp. is a Delaware-based company with a mailing address in
Pittsburgh.

For more information on oil and gas wells, visit www.depweb@state.pa.us,
keyword: Oil and gas.

From the Chesapeake Bay Foundation blog:

.

My Road Trip to Frackville, Heart of the Drilling Boom

.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/world/asia/19mud.html?_r=1&ref=world

Well, never let it be said that the energy industries won’t find a way to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear:

At http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,501061211-1565620,00.html

It’s tough to put a positive spin on the massive eruption of mud that has displaced more than 12,000 people and buried a large swath of eastern Java in roiling, putrid sludge. But PT Lapindo Brantas, the Indonesian mining company widely blamed for releasing the reservoir of pressurized mud following a drilling accident last May, has come up with a novel form of damage control: sponsoring a sinetron, or Indonesian soap opera, on Surabaya TV station JTV. The 13-part series, Gali Lubang, Tutup Lubang (Digging a Hole, Filling a Hole), is a love story set among refugees left homeless by the mud volcano. “We wanted to show a real story about human interest,” says JTV executive producer Awi Setiawan, who adds that Lapindo paid about $3,300 per episode.It may cost Lapindo far more to dig itself out of this particular corporate hole, however. On Nov. 22 at least 11 people were killed by a gas pipeline explosion caused when a dike built to contain the mud flow collapsed—the latest in a string of public debacles for the company, which is part of a conglomerate controlled by the family of Aburizal Bakrie, the country’s influential Welfare Minister. In the past two months, Lapindo’s corporate parent, PT Energi Mega Persada, has unsuccessfully attempted to unload the beleaguered mining business twice: first, to another Bakrie Group subsidiary for the princely sum of $2; then to the British Virgin Islands-based investment firm Freehold Group. The latter deal collapsed last week after a public outcry, with many Indonesians fearing that the sale might prefigure an attempt by a new owner to declare Lapindo bankrupt, potentially leaving the government to pay for a disaster that one environmental group estimates has already caused $3.6 billion in damage.

Thus far, the soap opera hasn’t been enough to dispel that worry, or polish Lapindo’s befouled image. But with the mud still erupting at a rate of 120,000 cu m per day and all efforts to stanch the flow failing, there may be plenty of time for a sequel.

…of the 17 families [whose water has been affected] I am aware of they are not all seniors-some are younger with children. They are not all within 1000 feet of the Gesford site which was the site where the gas company contaminated the aquifer with methane gas which did not come from the Marcellus but from gas above it- isotopic testing was done. The activities of the gas company have altered the water quality in our valley and above. Today I have bubbles. Others have a film on their dishes and their animals are extremely thirsty all the time. Some families get water from the gas company most buy and haul water in. The gas company has stated that unless DEP orders them to provide water they do not have to. Also DEP does not have an accurate record of who is not drinking their water and why. Water wells are private and not regulated by DEP. So unless the water well owner calls them with a complaint they are unaware of any problems. My question is how can the “on going investigation” be accurate if all the information is not compiled. The missing info could be the key.

The gas migration issue is still being investigated-the headlines were misleading stating no fracking fluids found in Dimock water supply….the violation was that the company contaminated the aquifer-fact-they did.

As far as the “promises” we were all promised great compensation- “you’ll see $90,000 a year on as little as 5 acres! or “you won’t be living in this trailer next year. You’ll have a nice new house.” Nothing was ever disclosed to most of us concerning the nature and scope of the industrialization of our community – ONE well was mentioned with the infamous little Christmas tree pipe to mark its location. Drive around our neighborhood- you will see tall vents on water wells, jugs of water behind homes, and disillusioned folks inside the same homes they had 3 years ago. The dwindling royalty checks will soon equal the amount of money some of us spend on buying water…

.
“Downstream Strategies, the company I used to analyze the water forwarded the WVDEP report to me and they said that all of their questions were not answered from the WVDEP which they requested under the FOIA.  The just sent a second FOIA request to get the info they originally asked.  Sen. Rockefeller’s office out of Fairmont called me last Thursday (I sent a letter and pictures to him in D.C.) and said they wanted to make sure the Governor had responded to me (he did) and that I had  received the answers I had been seeking.   After I found out they had to do a 2nd FOIA request I called them back and left a message, suggesting a phone call from them to James Martin would be helpful.
.
“The creek cleaning consisted of the drilling company spraying the rocks and gunk downstream into cachment areas and then being vacuumed up.  My concern was the high orange marks in the sandy soil going up the banks and being imbedded into the soil.  I don’t know if they addressed that or not, they may not have even seen that.  Also they had pulled the used filters out of the creek and had left them on the soil for some time also.  Those were recently picked up though.    I am coming back from Colorado and will be there Wednesday for a week and will spend some time going up and down the creek looking closely.  I guess the lack of rain and low water has hindered the process.  My new beef is that if a drilling company, the ones who produce this toxic waste, will be cleaning up their own mess, they really need to know what they are doing and have a plan in place.  According the report from officer Scranage, per the DEP report I just read, he found that a new crew was on the job the second day and was going about it backwards. If the water is low and there is a lack of rain to help move the water down into cachment areas, they need to be doing something else, rather than waiting for rain.  For the first  2 weeks the creek languished with oil covering the water and smelling acrid. I believe they improperly ‘limed the area’ on our property.  When I questioned the inspectors and also asked James Martin about all the lime put down along the stream banks, changing the ph of the water, he only said ‘there won’t be any more liming’.
.
“Thanks again for the support.”
.
Louanne Fatora

.

Drilling Contamination Spreads as Polluter’s Bankruptcy Looms

Joint Release: Powder River Basin Resource Council * EARTHWORKS

Clark, WY, 10/01 — Clark Resource Council has learned that Windsor Energy Group, LLC recently put its assets up for bid. At a public meeting in September Windsor representatives explained that benzene is also above regulatory levels east of Line Creek  where Windsor had guaranteed it would not go. Assuming no buyer is found, the logical next step is bankruptcy: leaving the community’s groundwater, and cleanup of the pollution, in doubt.

“Every thing Industry told us would not happen, has,” says Deb Thomas local resident and organizer for the Clark Resource Council. “Before the first operators of this project bankrupted, we were told that drilling was safe and no toxic chemicals were used. Since Windsor bought the development, we’ve had years of leaking waste pits, illegal dumping of drilling fluids, inadequate engineering, and finally, the blow out, which left us with contaminated drinking water aquifers. Windsor said the contamination plume wouldn’t move into private water wells or jump the Creek, and it did both. Now we fear that Windsor will join their predecessors by bankrupting and simply walk away from their mess.”

Windsor Energy Group’s Crosby 25-3 gas well blew out in the small community of Clark, Wyoming three years ago. Contamination plumes have continued to move since then, and how clean up will occur remains undecided. The blowout resulted in a 10 million cubic foot plume of groundwater contamination or more than 100 Olympic-size swimming pools worth.

The plume has contaminated drinking water aquifers, 2 private water wells and natural springs with benzene, diesel range organics, and an extensive list of toxic chemicals. The plume is also putting more than 20 downstream drinking water wells at risk. As much as 300,000 gallons of contaminated water has dumped daily into the Line Creek drainage, which then flows into the Clark Fork of the Yellowstone River.

Clark Resource Council, Powder River Basin Resource Council and Earthworks’ Oil and Gas Accountability Project emphasize that the experience in Clark shows that State agencies are not adequately equipped to address the impacts and risks associated with drilling projects.

“I want other communities who are facing development to understand that they’re at risk from the oil and gas industry’s cavalier regard for the environment and human health, ” says impacted resident, Dick Bilodeau. “When oil and gas companies screw up, the results are neither simple, nor cheap, to clean up. We need adequate federal oversight to protect areas under development, and complete disclosure so that impacted people can determine what health problems they’re facing now and will be in the future.”

In Wyoming the State’s Voluntary Remediation Program allows polluters like Windsor to remediate contamination and then be released from liability. With Windsor Energy Group’s bankruptcy looming, Bilodeau and other community members fear that the extent of the contamination will never be adequately assessed and clean up will never happen.

The news of contamination crossing under Line Creek and Windsor’s asset sale comes just after the EPA released it’s investigative finding on water contamination in Pavillion, Wy, which residents fear is associated with EnCana’s deep gas operations.

“These cases demonstrate the clear and present danger posed by drilling operations under current regulation,” says Bruce Baizel, staff attorney for EARTHWORKS’ Oil & Gas Accountability Project. “They clearly show the urgent need for incremental federal regulation, like the FRAC Act now before Congress, and they also show that the FRAC Act only begins to address the need for stronger oversight.”

http://www.earthworksaction.org/PR_ClarkWindsor.cfm