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Lawmakers rush to stop 'catastrophic-level event' at Texas oil fields

Posted on 3/30/24 at 10:07 pm
Posted by Street Hawk
Member since Nov 2014
3464 posts
Posted on 3/30/24 at 10:07 pm
quote:

There is increasing alarm about West Texas oil fields that continue to produce toxic water leaks.

The latest event was detected in Crane County in early December, when brine water poured out of the earth and over ranchland, Marfa Public Radio reported. The well wasn't plugged until Jan. 29, and the remediation project cost $2.5 million.

The water contained 154,000 chloride parts per million and at times flowed at 330 barrels, or 13,860 gallons, per hour, "creating a marsh-like scene," Mitch Borden reported. It was not always clear where it was coming from.

It took nine days to identify two wells and multiple other sources of the water. The Railroad Commission of Texas, which regulates the oil and gas industry in the Lone Star State, dug and lined 20 containment pits and had vacuum trucks remove the water.

quote:

"[TRC and Bureau of Economic Geology researchers] have what you call a war room to try to figure out what's going on in this area. It has unusual geology and unusual water flows," RRC deputy executive director Danny Sorrells said. "We want to get to the bottom of this and stop it."

Crane County is in the middle of the Permian Basin, which covers 75,000 square miles in Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico. The county is hundreds of miles from El Paso and San Antonio. Fourteen miles to the north in neighboring Ector County is Odessa, of "Friday Night Lights" fame.

"If we don't stop this now we are going to have complete and utter ecological devastation anywhere we've had historic oil and gas wells," Stogner said.

LINK
Posted by Northshoretiger87
Member since Apr 2016
3728 posts
Posted on 3/30/24 at 10:10 pm to
Get Gordon about to move to Texas.
Posted by Oilfieldbiology
Member since Nov 2016
37576 posts
Posted on 3/30/24 at 10:10 pm to
quote:

If we don't stop this now we are going to have complete and utter ecological devastation anywhere we've had historic oil and gas wells," Stogner said.


Doubt it.
Posted by TigerBalsagna
tRedStick
Member since Jan 2015
730 posts
Posted on 3/30/24 at 10:11 pm to
quote:

154,000 chloride parts per million



15.4% chloride?
Posted by Cosmo
glassman's guest house
Member since Oct 2003
120384 posts
Posted on 3/30/24 at 10:11 pm to
Sounds like hyperbole with an agenda
Posted by UpToPar
Baton Rouge
Member since Sep 2008
22162 posts
Posted on 3/30/24 at 10:25 pm to
quote:

Sarah Stogner


This is the one that ran for a seat on the RRC and ran a campaign ad sitting naked on top of a pump jack.

LINK

Posted by Jim Rockford
Member since May 2011
98305 posts
Posted on 3/30/24 at 11:11 pm to
quote:

"creating a marsh-like scene,"


Stock it with redfish amirite?
Posted by canyon
Member since Dec 2003
18477 posts
Posted on 3/31/24 at 7:54 am to
Hmmmm
Yeah somewhere below the surface somebody’s plug failed. Or they did a shitty job on location of the injection zone.
Posted by Achilles Hill
Member since Mar 2024
233 posts
Posted on 3/31/24 at 8:12 am to
I have never met an environmentalist who does not use some product produced from oil.

They are either extremely ignorant or hypocrites.

Every process has its downfalls. You have to weigh your options and choose the one that makes sense. Do you think that they are paying this much attention to environmental concerns in China?
Posted by Saunson69
Member since May 2023
1908 posts
Posted on 3/31/24 at 8:44 am to
Whoever the operator is of that well gonna have to fork up millions of dollars. Watch it be a small mom and pop operator. They're gonna have to sell the house for it.
Posted by jeffsdad
Member since Mar 2007
21471 posts
Posted on 3/31/24 at 8:57 am to
As part of my Masters, I collected plants in North La. While driving down a road west of Homer, my professor slammed on the brakes and said, "what the heck is that?" It was a 10 acre low lying edge of a field covered in a marsh "grass" from south louisiana. We drudge through it collecting specimens and getting cut up by the grass (sedge) edges. We identified it as a sedge that only grew in the along the coast in swamps.

There were a lot of oil and gas drilling in the area. Apparently, there was a salt water intrusion, and some ducks from south Louisiana flew in with some seeds. It was pretty cool, but I had to explain it to numerous botanists later because it really looked odd on distribution maps.

Point being, salt water intrusion has a long history, lawmakers and lawyers looking to make money is the problem
This post was edited on 3/31/24 at 8:59 am
Posted by chili pup
Member since Sep 2011
2793 posts
Posted on 3/31/24 at 12:58 pm to
Sounds like someone wants to make some money quick.
Posted by Don Quixote
Member since May 2023
1651 posts
Posted on 3/31/24 at 1:01 pm to
don't be shocked when Obiden uses the EPA to shut down oil production in Texas in furtherance of their war on "fossil fuels"
Posted by Lolathon234
Texas
Member since Oct 2022
210 posts
Posted on 4/1/24 at 6:44 am to
Water production is standard during oil & gas production. But I have 2 questions for you oil baws.

1. Aside from organic material/pollutants/etc deposited during climatic events(ex: peat accumulation in bottomlands after percolation/evaporation post-flood events), isn't virtually everything dissolved in brine, and oil for that matter, derived from the local minerals/soils? Take calcium for instance. Limestone is Calcium carbonate. If you have excess water in that soil horizon/formation(due to an aquifer for instance), some of the limestone would dissolve and the resultant solution would contain calcium ions, no? And the amount would increase with volume of water, temperature/heat, and/or appearance of catalysts(CO2) that could aid in increasing solubility

2. If 1 is true, then mineral extraction is essentially just removing large amounts of sub-surface soil using drilling fluid and other chemicals to aid in dissolving whatever soil(mineral found in it) is the target. I would assume the only reason this doesn't cause major ecological issues(land slides, sinkholes, earthquakes) is due to cementing at each end of the well bore and replacing what was extracted with an equivalent volume of water. But if evaporites, salt formations, were to be drilled into/extracted, wouldn't it cause those 3 ecological issues? Replacing the volume removed would be almost impossible due to salts high solubility in water

Seems to me that if enough salt were removed, it would cause a cataclysmic land slide/migration and the end result would be a surface that looks something like grand canyon
This post was edited on 4/1/24 at 6:48 am
Posted by themunch
Earth. maybe
Member since Jan 2007
64729 posts
Posted on 4/1/24 at 6:52 am to
Stop the drilling like biden wants.
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