re: Nebraska Man Offers Fracking Polluted Water To Oil & Gas Commissioners!

quote:

---

My PhD had to do with hydraulic fracturing. I thought that was clear from my post.

---

So that makes you an expert on waste disposal?

Nebraska Oil & Gas Conservation Commission hearing on an out-of-state company's application to export its toxic fracking wastewater into Nebraska, moving 80 truckloads carrying 10,000 barrels per day of pollution destined to be dumped into a disposal well in Sioux County

Salt water disposal wells and open pits can be far more detrimental to the environment than hydraulic fracturing could ever be

The key language in the new federal regs are no more open pits and tighter regs on water water injection. This is a good thing

Methane production in a water table is usually from bacteria intrusion and degradation in the water table. You can also see natural methane intrusion in water tables from formation shifting. Both of these situations can happen naturally without man's influence.

There are a lot of reservoirs across the country that are naturally fractured via seismic activity (earthquakes) and other faulting that has occurred over time. I'm talking geologic time again. Fractured rocks can allow any fluid to move seeming effortlessly. The Marcellus shale is one example of this. A highly fractured reservoir rock that has harnessed natural gas for millions of years. The above lying rocks are not very strong barriers and are also highly fractured. Just as anything in nature, objects flow from high potential to low potential (like electricity). So the fluid will migrate upwards until it reaches a barrier rock (not fractured) or reaches pressure equilibrium.

The only way fluids can migrate from an oil or gas well into the water table (thousands of feet higher) is as I mentioned earlier, is a bad cement job. All states require a CBL (cement bond log) on your casing. Which is usually 3 strings in most areas and the highest layer or surface casing must be ran to below the lowest potentially economic aquifer and cemented to surface. This is just one layer of protection to the aquifer, then you add cement behind the casing and usually another layer of casing and cement before you begin the production casing string. So about 5 layers of protection must be in place before any reservoir fluids are extracted. If you blame anyone about a bad cement job, blame the state for not enforcing a great CBL.

And if you research the people who can light their faucets on fire, they have been able to do this for over a century in those areas.

I'm speaking objectively as this is just the science behind it.

quote:

---

If people want to get upset about fracking it should be based on the number of vehicle accidents and deaths from the poorly regulated trucking, damage to roads and over running small towns that can't handle the suddeninflux of people.

---

I think blowouts are another legitimate issue.

The latest issue is E&Ps are finishing their drilling schedules but not completing the wells. They leave the plug stages in and will wait for commodity prices to come back up to a profitable level. This means that fluid is left in the well bore and there are severe corrosion concerns. So when the plugs are drilled out and the well is completed the production string could be eaten up by Microbiologically Induced Corrosion and acid gas corrosion.

MIC is the "new" hot button issue in the industry and there is an arms race of service companies hiring microbiologists to craft proactive services to deal with this.

That and the laughable chemical and equipment programs water companies use for municipal water systems. The diligence in managing flocculation chemicals and the necessary equipment is often suspect

One benefit of oil and gas lay offs is really smart people are finding jobs in new areas like municipal water treatment.

I'm not following the above argument about salt water disposal wells being a water table issue. Yes salt water disposal wells are more likely to corrode because of the salt concentrations, but a lot of fluid flow modeling and age dating must be done by a company and the state in order to receive an aquifer exemption. Even getting permitting for a salt water disposal well or disposal well is SUPER difficult. If there were any concerns, the state would not grant disposal use for that well.

For example, we had to prove that a 15,000 vertical well was not connected to an economic aquifer. We had to do carbon dating, fluid flow modeling and a ton of other research through a third party to prove to the state this should be granted an acceptable disposal zone. The process was overly expensive and the formation wasn't even a sustainable, long term water disposal option due to economics. The carbon dating said the water shouldn't outcrop within the next 100,000+ years because they couldn't find the last time it reached this area.

This whole situation also occurred in the most remote of areas. There was less than 1 person per square mile, so I still don't understand why the state was so difficult.

Anyway, I like an intelligent conversation, but I'm burnt out typing on my phone about this topic. I hope people don't have any more questions as I won't be revisiting this tread.

SWDs are an issue but far different reasons. They are prone to corrosion failures and there is data linking them to rolling earthquakes

The injection point downhole is not the issue. It is the tubular failures above the bottom hole that can cause problems.

quote:

---

I kind of answered that in my last post, but the video was pretty vague about the topic. He just complained about polluted water. He didn't mention anything about the issue at hand. Sorry my typing is bothering you.

---

LINK

quote:

---

Omaha, NE – The proposal calls for waste water from oil and gas recovery operations to be shipped to a storage site in Sioux County Nebraska.



That storage site would be managed by Terex Energy Corporation of Broomfield, Colorado. The waste water and other undisclosed chemicals are a byproduct of hydraulic fracturing or fracking. Fracking is a process where oil and gas trapped between layers of shale and rock are released after being fractured apart by a high pressure water and chemical mixture.

The waste water is then normally pumped back into the ground after the oil has been removed.

Ken Winston is a policy advocate at the Nebraska chapter of the Sierra Club. Winston said there are a lot of questions that need to be answered about this proposal. The water wouldn’t go directly into the Ogallala aquifer, but it would travel through the aquifer in the well drilling pipe.

“We have additional concerns if there were a leak into an aquifer,” Winston said. “One of the things that proponents will say is that it is being injected into a layer that is far beneath the drinking water aquifers or the irrigation on the surface. But it has to pass through the layers where the aquifers are located. Leaks of fracking fluid have been connected with contamination of aquifers in several other states including California.”

Winston noted the content of the waste water often contains hazardous or radioactive material which would cause severe issues if a surface spill were to occur. He said fresh water is Nebraska’s lifeblood, saying the Ogallala aquifer is the nation’s largest aquifer.

“For human use and also because of the fact that our agricultural community relies so heavily on having adequate supplies of water,” Winston said.

Bill Sydow is the Director of the Nebraska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. His agency has been involved in underground injections as a regulated industry since 1959. Sydow said NOGCC currently has over 600 enhanced oil recovery and disposal wells in their inventory. This includes 115 just like the one currently being proposed.

Sydow said the remaining waste water has many essentials found in the common household including sodium, potassium, calcium, bromine, magnesium, chloride, sulfates and bicarbonates.

Winston said he has an issue with companies’ ability to list certain materials in the waste water as proprietary information that cannot be disclosed.

“Frankly, the fact that something is being disposed of as a waste material or a waste by product, we think there is no reason to not disclose every component that is in it,” Winston said. “So people know what potential impact it could have if there were a spill.”

Sydow agreed it is an important issue and cannot be overlooked. His reasoning, however, differed from Winston’s.

“We produce nearly 59 million barrels of water to recover 2.8 million barrels of oil,” Sydow said. “The industry has to lift about 21 barrels of water for every barrel of oil that they produce out of the underground. “

Sydow said this idea isn’t novel, even to Nebraska.

“We got water today that’s comes into Kimball county from Wyoming into a commercial injection well, yet no one has complained,” Sydow said. “We have water that comes in from Kansas in Southwest Nebraska and we’ve got water that actually goes from Nebraska to Kansas via truck. The idea is to have some funds available not only for our commission but also maybe for roads and bridges in the state.”

Sydow said the proposal shows an initial 10,000 barrels of waste water would be injected daily.

“This method is safe, it is regulated, there are underground injection control programs created to protect drinking water,” Sydow said. “We have injection well of some type in 18 of our 20 producing counties today.”

Sydow and Winston disagree on many details at the heart of the issue. Winston said while this differs in many ways from the ongoing fight for the Keystone XL pipeline in Nebraska, he sees parallels.

“They are different in terms of the scale, because of the fact that the proposed pipeline in something that has attracted national and international attention,” Winston said. “This is more of a localized issue, but the potential for damage to the environment is very similar and perhaps might even be greater.”

The Natural Resources Committee held a hearing at the Nebraska unicameral Wednesday to discuss, LB 512, a bill introduced by State Sen. John Stinner of Gering, that would place a tax of 20 cents per barrel on wastewater. Sydow said money would be used to preserve roads and monitor the quality of water.

The Sierra Club of Nebraska offered testimony at Wednesday’s hearing, asking the committee to place a moratorium on imports of waste water until precautions can be added. Many opponents of fracking were proponents of the bill but several agreed this bill wasn’t as aggressive toward companies wanting to ship waste water to Nebraska in the form of higher taxes or penalties. No action was taken by the committee.

There is also a hearing in front of the Oil and Gas Commission in Sidney, Nebraska scheduled for March 24.

---

quote:

---

Do the chemicals used have no way to get to the water?

---

quote:

---

no. water zones are typically near 1000 to 5000'

petroleum payzones are anywhere near 10-20k feet.

---

Do they teleport to those depths as to avoid penetrating the water zones? Also, this thread is about waste disposal.