Category Archives: Water Quality

West Virginia: Fracking and Water Pollution

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Duke University just concluded a three year study of fracking and its effects on groundwater and surface water.  The study concludes that groundwater is not affected by fracking, but that surface water is.

The study included 112 wells in northwestern West Virginia.  Twenty of those wells were sampled before fracking took place in the neighborhood.

The study found methane and salts in the water wells, but they were different isotopes of methane and salt than were found in the gas formations.  The conclusion was that the methane and salts found in the water wells were from naturally occurring sources, not fracked wells.

Surface water was found to get contaminated from surface spills.

The important thing to note here is that ponds and streams on your property are more at risk than your water well.

While the study notes that surface water typically gets contaminated by accidental spills, it’s not unheard of for a trucker to back up to a stream and unload waste into the stream.  There are criminal penalties for this kind of thing, but it happens anyways.

So what should you do?  Make sure to get samples of your water taken before any drilling activity starts on or within a couple miles of your property, both for your water well and for ponds and streams.  Any water that is or could be a source of water should get tested.  It’s expensive, but if something happens to the water having that baseline to work from will be invaluable.

Antero’s Water Treatment Plant in West Virginia

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Ken Ward, Jr. of the Charleston Gazette-Mail put together an excellent article on the wastewater treatment plant that Antero Resources is building on the Doddridge County and Ritchie County line.  He explains the need for the plant, the controversy around the plant, and gets into the regulatory framework that is either being used or abused depending on your point of view.  There are a number of points of view represented.

Basically, the plant takes up a lot of space and has disrupted the lives of the people who live next to it.

For regulatory purposes the plant is supposed to be privately held and used by Antero.  Being private instead of commercial, the plant doesn’t have to go through some regulatory approvals.  Interestingly, Antero will be taking water from other companies and treating it.  Usually that would be commercial, not private.   It looks like Antero is using a loophole to avoid regulations.  People don’t typically like that kind of thing, particularly when their lives are being disrupted by someone who is making a lot of money disrupting their lives.

There’s more in the article.  We won’t ruin it all for you here.

WVU Research Says Fracking Waste is Not Very Radioactive

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WVU Test Wells

WVU Test Wells, Morgantown in the background

West Virginia University has been drilling and fracking two research wells.  They are using the same techniques that the industry uses and doing science on it all.

One conclusion they reached is that the cuttings (crushed rock brought to the surface) are not very radioactive at all.  They believe this was influenced at least in part by using a particular drilling mud.  The conclusion about radioactivity is interesting in light of the recent Kentucky investigation into the radioactivity levels of West Virginia fracking waste.

Another conclusion they reached was that produced water is not safe to drink or discharge into streams.  No surprise there.

The nice thing about this project is that it’s not funded by either the industry or environmentalists.  It’s paid for by the University.  That doesn’t mean that someone on the team isn’t biased, but hopefully the science will be done with a minimum of bias.  We’re looking forward to seeing more of their work reported in the future.

Really Old Wells and Horizontal Fracking

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Bloomberg has an interesting article about old wells in Pennsylvania and how they can affect or be affected by a horizontally fracked well.

West Virginia has the same problem.

The first thing to know about old wells in West Virginia is that we don’t know where they all are.  West Virginia didn’t start assigning API numbers to wells until 1929, at least forty years after oil and gas development really boomed in West Virginia, and at least seventy years after the first oil wells were drilled.  That means there are a lot of well locations out there that are unknown.  How many?

A quick Google search turned up some great photos that can help us get an idea.  The following were taken from a web site about the Kanawha and West Virginia Railroad.  There are many more on other sites.

The photo below was taken in 1913 on Blue Creek in West Virginia.  You can plainly see at least six wells, and possibly another six or seven.  When you look at the larger photo it’s possible that some of what looks like oil derricks are actually just ageing or smudges on the photo.Blue Creek, WV Oil Wells

 

 

This photo of oil wells in West Virginia was taken at another location on Blue Creek, possibly about the same time as the one above.  There are clearly ten oil wells.Oil Derricks on Blue Creek near One Mile Fork

 

 

 

 

 

None of those wells would have had API numbers, and their locations were never recorded by anybody.  Nobody thought they would be important.  They are the kinds of wells that we are concerned with, and they exist all over West Virginia.

Many of these old wells were not properly plugged when they were abandoned.  Someone might have thrown old lumber or trees down the hole, filled it with dirt, and called it a day.  Others might have gotten a little better treatment with some cannon balls or scrap metal thrown in for good measure.  Very few were plugged with cement, and many were just left open.

This can be a real problem when a horizontal well is drilled nearby.  Some of the old wells were drilled down thousands of feet, a few even into the formations that we are fracking today.  When we frack, the pressure can push fluids into the old wells, either directly by way of the induced fractures or through existing faults in the rock.  It’s called well communication in the industry.

It could lead to contamination of a water well, or fracking fluids on the surface, or natural gas spewing into the air.  Nobody wants that.  Even the companies doing the fracking don’t want that as it lowers the amount of pressure in their well, leading to fewer, shorter, and smaller fractures and lower production.

So what can be done about it?  It’s hard to do much about it.  Many of these old wells don’t show above the surface, so getting eyes in the field isn’t going to help.  A metal detector will find a lot of them, but some of these old wells were lined with wood.  Even the wells the were lined with metal often had the casing pulled out for use on another well.  It’s a real problem, and there isn’t an obvious and good solution.

The reason we’re writing about it is to point out to people one way that their water wells can be contaminated with fracking fluid.  If you think you have a water well that’s been ruined by fracking you can get help.  It’s going to be an uphill battle proving that fracking did it, but it can be done.

Call the office at 304-473-1403 and find out what you can do.

 

Frack Water Found in Water Wells! But it’s not as Bad as it Sounds.

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Blowback Water Impoundment

A Penn State study from a few years ago has found its way into the news.  Marcellus Drilling News has posted an article here.  If you have trouble viewing the article through that link, do a Google search for “Penn State Finds Chemical Migration in 3 PA Water Wells from 2010”.  MDN links to a bunch of the articles that have been published about the study.

The gist of the articles you will find at most news sources right now is that frack water is bad, and was found in three water wells, so fracking must be bad.

The reality is that the researchers thought the frack water had come from a bad casing job in the vertical portion of the well (the part that is not fracked) or from a frack water containment pit on the surface that was shown to be leaking.  It is splitting hairs to say that fracking is not the cause as it was a fracked well that was the cause, but the reality is that the actual fracking was not the cause.  If one reads far enough into most of the articles at most of the news sites one will find that they all point to something other than the actual fracking being the cause.

I can guarantee that fracked wells communicate with other wells in the area, pushing gas through naturally-occurring weaknesses in the formations between them, and probably pushing some frack fluid through, too.  It’s quite possible that fracked wells communicate with water wells and the surface.  There is not solid evidence yet that that’s the case.

Evidence of communication with the surface and with water wells has probably been covered up by oil and gas companies.  Affected landowners have most likely been given excellent settlements with confidentiality agreements attached.  If I were an oil and gas attorney working for one of the development companies, that’s what I would try to do.  One of these days a surface owner is not going to take the settlement, a case will go to court, and then we’ll all have the evidence at our fingertips.  Until then, it’s all just “he said, she said” and hearsay.  If anyone out there has hard evidence to the contrary, please give this office a call.

Independent Water Testing Before Fracking

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Something I always tell surface owners to do is get their water tested.  I’ve never considered getting the air tested, as I’ve never thought that would be a long term problem.  After all, once drilling is done any air pollution will go away with the rig.  Air pollution from the well or pipelines shouldn’t be a problem, and if it is, it will have a pretty obvious source, such as a hissing crack in a pipe.  Apparently, though, air pollution is a concern.

Two Columbia University scientists are doing testing at 15 homes near fracking sites Pennsylvania.  They’re taking samples of both water and air.  They are gathering data to “provide an objective viewpoint to drive a more rational discussion.”  I’ll be very interested to see what their results are.