Image: Abrahm Lustgarten/Pro Publica
-
The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
Read More »
In a first, federal environment officials today scientifically linked underground water pollution with hydraulic fracturing, concluding that contaminants found in central Wyoming were likely caused by the gas drilling process.
The findings by the Environmental Protection Agency come partway through a separate national study by the agency to determine whether fracking presents a risk to water resources.
In the 121-page draft report released today, EPA officials said that the contamination near the town of Pavillion, Wyo., had most likely seeped up from gas wells and contained at least 10 compounds known to be used in frack fluids.
"The presence of synthetic compounds such as glycol ethers...and the assortment of other organic components is explained as the result of direct mixing of hydraulic fracturing fluids with ground water in the Pavillion gas field," the draft report states. "Alternative explanations were carefully considered."
The agency's findings could be a turning point in the heated national debate about whether contamination from fracking is happening, and are likely to shape how the country regulates and develops natural gas resources in the Marcellus Shale and across the Eastern Appalachian states.
Some of the findings in the report also directly contradict longstanding arguments by the drilling industry for why the fracking process is safe: that hydrologic pressure would naturally force fluids down, not up; that deep geologic layers provide a watertight barrier preventing the movement of chemicals towards the surface; and that the problems with the cement and steel barriers around gas wells aren't connected to fracking.
Environmental advocates greeted today's report with a sense of vindication and seized the opportunity to argue for stronger federal regulation of fracking.
"No one can accurately say that there is 'no risk' where fracking is concerned," wrote Amy Mall, a senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council, on her blog. "This draft report makes obvious that there are many factors at play, any one of which can go wrong. Much stronger rules are needed to ensure that well construction standards are stronger and reduce threats to drinking water."
A spokesman for EnCana, the gas company that owns the Pavillion wells, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In an email exchange after the EPA released preliminary water test data two weeks ago, the spokesman, Doug Hock, denied that the company's actions were to blame for the pollution and suggested it was naturally caused.
"Nothing EPA presented suggests anything has changed since August of last year--the science remains inconclusive in terms of data, impact, and source," Hock wrote. "It is also important to recognize the importance of hydrology and geology with regard to the sampling results in the Pavillion Field. The field consists of gas-bearing zones in the near subsurface, poor general water quality parameters and discontinuous water-bearing zones."
The EPA's findings immediately triggered what is sure to become a heated political debate as members of Congress consider afresh proposals to regulate fracking. After a phone call with EPA chief Lisa Jackson this morning, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., told a Senate panel that he found the agency's report on the Pavillion-area contamination "offensive." Inhofe's office had challenged the EPA's investigation in Wyoming last year, accusing the agency of bias.
Residents began complaining of fouled water near Pavillion in the mid-1990s, and the problems appeared to get worse around 2004. Several residents complained that their well water turned brown shortly after gas wells were fracked nearby, and, for a time, gas companies operating in the area supplied replacement drinking water to residents.
Beginning in 2008, the EPA took water samples from residents' drinking water wells, finding hydrocarbons and traces of contaminants that seemed like they could be related to fracking. In 2010, another round of sampling confirmed the contamination, and the EPA, along with federal health officials, cautioned residents not to drink their water and to ventilate their homes when they bathed because the methane in the water could cause an explosion.
To confirm their findings, EPA investigators drilled two water monitoring wells to 1,000 feet. The agency released data from these test wells in November that confirmed high levels of carcinogenic chemicals such as benzene, and a chemical compound called 2 Butoxyethanol, which is known to be used in fracking.
Still, the EPA had not drawn conclusions based on the tests and took pains to separate its groundwater investigation in Wyoming from the national controversy around hydraulic fracturing. Agriculture, drilling, and old pollution from waste pits left by the oil and gas industry were all considered possible causes of the contamination.
In the report released today, the EPA said that pollution from 33 abandoned oil and gas waste pits 2013 which are the subject of a separate cleanup program 2013 are indeed responsible for some degree of shallow groundwater pollution in the area. Those pits may be the source of contamination affecting at least 42 private water wells in Pavillion. But the pits could not be blamed for contamination detected in the water monitoring wells 1,000 feet underground.
That contamination, the agency concluded, had to have been caused by fracking.
The EPA's findings in Wyoming are specific to the region's geology; the Pavillion-area gas wells were fracked at shallower depths than many of the wells in the Marcellus shale and elsewhere.
Investigators tested the cement and casing of the gas wells and found what they described as "sporadic bonding" of the cement in areas immediately above where fracking took place. The cement barrier meant to protect the well bore and isolate the chemicals in their intended zone had been weakened and separated from the well, the EPA concluded.
The report also found that hydrologic pressure in the Pavillion area had pushed fluids from deeper geologic layers towards the surface. Those layers were not sufficient to provide a reliable barrier to contaminants moving upward, the report says.
Throughout its investigation in Wyoming, The EPA was hamstrung by a lack of disclosure about exactly what chemicals had been used to frack the wells near Pavillion. EnCana declined to give federal officials a detailed breakdown of every compound used underground. The agency relied instead on more general information supplied by the company to protect workers' health.
Hock would not say whether EnCana had used 2 BE, one of the first chemicals identified in Pavillion and known to be used in fracking, at its wells in Pavillion. But he was dismissive of its importance in the EPA's findings. "There was a single detection of 2-BE among all the samples collected in the deep monitoring wells. It was found in one sample by only one of three labs," he wrote in his reply to ProPublica two weeks ago. "Inconsistency in detection and non-repeatability shouldn't be construed as fact."
The EPA's draft report will undergo a public review and peer review process, and is expected to be finalized by spring.
From ProPublica.org (find the original story here); reprinted with permission.
See what we're tweeting about
19 Comments
Add CommentOdd what low standard those citizens that go by that name "CORPORATION" have while the oxygen breathing citizens are pepper sprayed for protesting abuse at the hands of those nonbreathing citizens!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaybe they should try serving the water from this contaminated wells to the CEOs of the "Fracking Companies" and to all the members of Congress that are beholden to them for a month. Then maybe they can feel some kind of empathy with the people of these communities who have to use this contaminated water daily.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSen. James Inhofe, R-Okla. doesn't even know, or even seem to care about what is happening in Oklahoma. What happens when you pressurize the strata around 300 million year old impact craters?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou get earthquakes. The debris filling the craters is poorly integrated with the original strata. A bowl shaped structure that breaks loose when pressurized.
Not only is that material on the edge of the bowl weak, it also leaks. So if you pump a bunch of waste into what you thought was a sealed strata, never to see it again. You will be very wrong.
The Meeker crater is the asteroid impact crater causing most of the problems is about 13.5 miles across centered at approximately 35.557N, -96.871W.
The smaller one I have (tentatively) named the Meeker Crater since the town of Meeker is resting on the rock 3500 feet above the crater. Using the impact calculator at
http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/
The calculator shows a transient crater 3.3 miles deep 17000+ Ft. You can consider this the minimum depth for considerable rock fracture. A lot of the strata will appear to be relatively undisturbed until you reach the level where the fractured material falls back in. The depth of the outer ejecta blanket in the well logs can tell you if you are (hot or cold) getting closer or farther from the crater. It takes a bit of time to figure out the marker layer or depths in the well logs where you need to look. My best guess is that it generally appears above the Oswego Lime.
Some earthquakes that I couldn't associate with the Meeker Impact crater had me looking west of the Meeker Crater. I was seeing thick debris layers at considerable distance from the Meeker Crater, and at unusual depths. I was seeing the same thing over a wide area. I opened up my search area (who says I didn't learn from the game Battleship) in the well logs until I had bracketed another structure.
While Meeker Crater at 13.5 Miles (21.7 km) in diameter was large the Choctaw Crater is huge at approximately 66.0+ (106 km) in diameter and centered at about 35.060N, -97.315W. I followed some earthquakes north of Choctaw Oklahoma to their source. I am guessing that they are between 250 and 300 million years old.
The 1952 previous record 5.5 Earthquake was on the Northwest edge of the Choctaw Crater.
The oil well logs also show a structure. An old well log 1929 T. B. Slick has mirror image strata for 1400 ft on either side of the shale at 4956-4981. The well location is Section 1313N01W. Depth 6971 Ft. Oklahoma County Oklahoma.
(Frack ,Baby, Frack) Inhofe.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you for the finely detailed post--nothing like facts to make the picture clearer!
Okay, Sen. McCarthy, you can fire up your UnAmerican Activities Committee and out all the Reds you see in government...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHave you no decency, sir?
And you still want to put republicans back in power positions; the same people who think that the EPA, an investigating EPA that gets to the truth, should be shut down. The same people who think that you do not have the right to drink clean water, breathe clean air or live on safe clean land...or even the right to an education.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow come these companies are exempt from all the disclosure laws and don't have to disclose the chemicals they use in fracking? Wait! Let me take a guess at that question and answer it for you. Could it be because the republicans care more for the "bottom line" than they do for a human life, or any life for that matter. The Republicans seem to be the only and true "Axes Of Evil" and "Hell Bent" on destroying America in the name of the bottom line...their bottom line.
So fracking isn't 100% perfect. What a surprise! Obviously the answer is to go back to burning coal. We can't allow any energy solutions that aren't 100% perfect.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHave you heard from uncle John Birch lately. There are cases of water coming out of the tap and it can be lit/explosive. If you are worried about the communist check out China. They are true communist and they deal with scandals by firing the guy at the top. Usually with military grade bullets. The words your services are no longer required have a deeper meaning.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe deregulated quite a bit under the Clinton administration under the guise of keeping the republican congress happy and if you haven't noticed the country has gone to hell in a hand basket and is bankrupt by two wars (mostly off the books) and a tax give away. Our infrastructure is held together with gum and Popsicle sticks and the people with your mentality refuse to let a 10 year tax plan that failed to create jobs and did create a trillion dollar debt with our only real advisory.
John Birch had his day in the 50's and 60's it is time to open your eyes and realize why free enterprise requires regulation. Stockholders are very capable of blaming the other guy rather than take responsibility for there flagrant abuse of natural resources.
Okay, Sen. McCarthy...why don't you stick your mouth on the tailpipe of an idling bus and inhale deeply. If you don't know the fumes are dangerous, then I guess they won't hurt you, right? Is this some sort of belief from Scientology or some other nonsense? I've heard of believing in yourself (or the reverse placebo effect?), but thinking you can drink FLAMMABLE WATER and not get hurt by it just because you don't know it's bad for you is just silly!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the end, it's time we stop handing out political favors like this that distort the Free Market. Fracking is exempt from the Clean Water Act solely because of the industry's political connections. They were ingenious in labeling their fracking fluids "proprietary" so they dodn't have to disclose what was in them. This made determining the extent of leaks from fracking operations much more difficult.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, the EPA has now determined, not with a model, not with a reconstruction, but with ACTUAL REALLY REAL WORLD SAMPLES, that fracking contaminates drinking water. This was determined just for this single area, but what evidence is there to lead us to believe that contamination is isolated to this one fracking operation? The Precautionary Principle ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle ) demands that we keep further contamination from happening until we know it's safe to continue fracking.
If natural gas is made artificially cheap because we look the other way when fracking contaminates groundwater, then this is a very bad deal. Trading "cheap" gas for clean water is a losing proposition. Money means nothing when you can't get a drink of clean water!
Seriously? I mean, I know you need to take sensationalist documentaries with a large helping of salt but if you watched Gasland ... that came out what last year? The year before? People on well water that had Natural Gas fracking going on in their area had brown sludge coming out of their taps. Their drinking water was literally testing positive for a multitude of chemicals used for fracking!! Some people could actually SET FIRE to their own tap water as is was coming out of the tap wiTh nothing more than a BIC lighter? Their farm animals were losing all of their hair? Shit like this makes me glad that I live in Canada mind you a lot of times we're not much better....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy are there so many people pointing to communism as the culprit and EPA being one it's minions. Get over it that is the same crap that was pushed in the 60's and we are still here.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat the problem is that when a corporation offers to police itself that doesn't work so well look at the ABA or the AMA. Both of these oversight agencies allow bad lawyers and bad doctors keep their jobs which drives up the lawsuits and the justified results. We need to come up with oversight that is not directly tied to the industry and answerable to the people. That sure sounds like a government issue except we are up to our necks in bought and paid for politicians so we need to remove the monetary awards that come with office and try to do what the founding fathers prayed we would do. That is elect people that are public servants who put in their time and then return to their profession.
If we can't solve that issue please at least stop blaming the communist on what is a corrupt system you are not offering any solutions with that crap and you are scapegoating what is really greed.
Greed is the driving force in america.Three decades ago the Republicans pushed to give more to the corporations, tax breaks and incentives,so they might hire more AMERICAN workers.Then under Clinton the push continued in an effort to gain approval of the REPUBLICANS in CONGRESS and the Corporations used the tax breaks and incentives to pay for relocating thier buisnesses over seas, more profit for the corporations - less jobs for americans.Then came De-regulations so the corporations can profit more and care less about the damages to life as we know it , another reason they took thier buisnesses overseas. It's all about the money- remember the "Haves and the Have-nots; well the Haves needed to be bailed out by the Have-nots because of de-regulation and as a reward, for losing an investment we never got to vote on, the TEAPUBLICANS and the REPOublicans are slashing away at the hardest workers in america and the poorest and needy to "BALANCE the Budget". This is the same party that screams " DRILL BABY DRILL regardless of who it harms so Corporations can set record profits while the average now underemployed and unemployed lose everything.Should we be Fracking, probably not until we can do it safely, does it matter to the TEAPUBLICANS and REPOublicans"NO" or as the village idiot put it " HELL NO "! Our Nations Politics have been bought out by the same corporations that want more tax breaks even though they refuse to hire AMERICANS. We as Americans should be taking charge and insisting that our Government invest use clean energy and if the greedy want to insure they continue to make record profits let them advise thier LOBBIEST to look towards the way of the future not towards what has proven to be harmful in the past. WE the people of "THE UNITED STATES" have a Great Power AT OUR FINGERTIPS,THE POWER TO VOTE.Lets not allow any political party to take away our Life and Liberty. Let "your voice" be heard not just the voice of the Wealthy through Greed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease take time to read this little bitty in the Science Times in the NYT this week. We are definitely Frackin ourselves. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/13/science/some-blame-hydraulic-fracturing-for-earthquake-epidemic.html?_r=1&ref=earth
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey are all bought and paid for. Republicans, Democrats, Teaparty etc. The only one I see with no money backing is the OWS group but let's do it right and create a grass roots movement. It is on par with the Libertarians winning the white house (God forbid they will Frack us to death) but what they lack is a mandate and a presence in congress. We are a three tier government and as long as congress is filled with bought and paid for lobbyist, Jesus Christ would not be able to change any thing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo back the OWS or 99%ers and assist them in the local elections. Do what ever it takes to keep the money out of it and by that I mean Koch Brothers and George Soros because either way it will fail. Once we have a majority in the house and 61 in the senate we can begin to make changes that work for all of us. We need to consider socializing things such as Health Care, Education, Police, Fire Depts, Infrastructure but then leave the rest alone. We want a country that continues to innovate and create and we want to keep the brass ring with in reach but we want the playing field leveled and it cannot start at the top.
I see a lot of local 99%ers calling for meetings and it is a good start but we also live in the shortest termed memory country in the world so if it really matters get off your buts and take your country back. Otherwise stop bitching because you get exactly what you vote for so far.
In eply to David Russell: Well put! Thats exactly the message I expected.Our states independently have proven they cannot afford to go it alone,they have never been UNITED except for their boundries. OWS is a united effort not just in america but across the globe.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat will never happen. Just as members of congress and the other two branches of our government don't have the same health care that we do, they also won't have to drink the same water. Now i'm all for getting to energy reserves, but if doing so ruins our water, then what's the point?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI guess that the gas will keep me warm as I die from dehydration.
Michael etc... You are correct and besides we are reacting too late. Asymmetrical systems such as our earth and solar systems can be triggered to massive, overnight changes by small stimulation. We depend on feedback systems and are already tied to basic cycles based on orbital changes, variations in the sun's output, amounts of atoms pcc in inter-solar space which is right now about .001 per cc but can be as high as 5,000 per cc which will still appear to be a vacuum but it has devastating effects with the Oort Cloud and the Kupier Belt if we happen to pass through a interstellar cloud of lets say carbon, oxygen.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut the point is we have decimated this small haven of life and the effects that caused the change are already in place, so grab a beer or ice tea and enjoy the storm. Cascadia is ripe, Yellowstone is waking up, the storm coming to the North East will be something like out of the bible and with the loss of ice in Greenland and to be followed by Antarctica we will start to see the coast lines disappear as they are moved more and more inland.
The kind of good news is the earth has been very hot before. At one point quite recently it was tropical in the arctic regions and the entire earth was probably 10 degrees Celsius warmer. But now the bad news, about 70% or more of the human race lives on the coast or on coastal plains and if sea level raises 6 m maybe not so bad but there is evidence of coastal heights of 120 m higher and that is the end of our civilization and my stay here in FL.
But don't take it from me, here is some well presented work explaining that when you wake a giant fee fi fo thumb will make us realize we were pretty dumb.
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/bill-mcguire/waking-giant-changing-climate/
The economics of fracking are horrid. All wells have decline rates where production drops over time. But instead of decades for traditional wells, decline rates in horizontal fracking are measured in weeks and months: production falls off a cliff from day one and continues for a year or so until it levels out at about 10% of initial production. To be in the black over its life under these circumstances, a well in the Barnett Shale would have to sell its production for about $8 per million Btu, pricing models have shown.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAt today’s price of $2.43 per million Btu at the Henry Hub—though up 28% from the April low—drilling is destroying capital at an astonishing rate, and drillers are left with a mountain of debt just when decline rates are starting to wreak their havoc. To keep the decline rates from mucking up income statements, companies had to drill more and more, with new wells making up for the declining production of old wells. Alas, the scheme hit a wall, namely reality ...
The beleaguered drillers finally reacted, cutting whenever feasible their operations in dry shales (fields that produce only methane) and concentrating on wet shales that produce oil—still a profitable activity—and gas liquids like propane, butane, and pentane that are priced more like oil. Result: a collapse in the number of rigs drilling for gas. From 936 on October 14 last year to 588 last week. A 37% nosedive in seven months. The lowest count since October 15, 1999. The rout appears to be far from over:
http://www.testosteronepit.com/home/2012/6/4/capital-destruction-in-natural-gas.html#ixzz2GjsWgdT0
and ...
It is supremely ironic that it is to our patriotism that the hydraulic fracturing corporations appeal since they are demonstrably beholden to no country, no flag, no national interest whatever. Indeed, as is reported by Common Dreams, the fracking boom actually threatens national security:
Despite gas industry claims that the natural gas extraction “revolution” will create energy security and affordable fuel for US consumers, fracking will in fact benefit those in the US very little, as the natural resource will most likely be shipped offshore to those who will “pay the highest price,” according to a new report released Wednesday by Food and Water Watch. Additionally, there is far less oil and gas reserves to mine in the first place — contrary to what industry leaders would have us believe.
http://www.ragingchickenpress.org/2012/12/30/energy-in-depths-soldiers-of-fracking-fortune-why-we-must-understand-who-they-are-and-what-they-do/