Category Archives: Water Wells

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.

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.