Waste Water from Oil Fracking Injected into Clean Aquifers
nbcbayarea.com
nbcbayarea.com
“We are still comparing the testing of what was the injection water to what is the tested water that came out of these wells to find out if they were background levels or whether that’s the result of oil and gas operation, but so far it’s looking like it’s background,” said James Marshall from the California Department of Conservation.
So it seems as if no actual contamination of the aquifer has taken place so far - not an excuse, but far from the environmental disaster you might have imagined when you heard about 3 billion gallons of waste water.
When asked how this could happen in the first place, Marshall said that the long history of these wells makes it difficult to know exactly what the thinking was. “When you’re talking about wells that were permitted in 1985 to 1992, we’ve tried to go back and talk to some of the permitting engineers,” said Marshall. “And it’s unfortunate but in some cases they (the permitting engineers) are deceased.”
Again not an excuse, but when you learn that these injection sites were permitted 20-30 years ago (at a time of lesser technological and environmental awareness, as well as of lower population and land usage intensity), then it's not so surprising that some bad decisions could have taken place. On the plus side, the fact that the injection wells have been in use for oil exploration for so long and contamination actually seems to be quite limited suggests that halting further injection and carefully monitoring the surrounding wells may be sufficient. In other words, an unjustifiable risk but one that seems to have been identified and halted prior to a serious failure.
In any case, the tone for the statements by Marshall that you quoted were, to me, set with this earlier one:
“There have been past issues where permits were issued to operators that they shouldn’t be injecting into those zones and so we’re fixing that,”
Could this guy be any more wishy washy?
I don't think you can conclude much about someone's tone from a heavily edited TV news report where people's explanations are chopped up into single sentences.
"I'm currently working in the industry in the Permian Basin area (Texas/New Mexico) and can say that my main concern is environmental. With the fracking operations, you get a huge load of oil, saltwater, and sand/crud/junk/chemicals. They truck them to a SWD disposal facility (my company does PLC's and controls etc for these) which then separate the oil out. The problem is that, at most of the SWD disposal places I have been too, disposal consists of pumping the junk/crud/chemical water straight back into the ground. They say they drill below the Ogallalah aquifer, but what if they don't? Having actually been a contractor for one of the bigger public oil companies, I can just say I don't really trust them to do things like that properly, and my guess is that within a few years we will find out, oh shit, "Someone poisoned the water hole". That's when T. Boone Pickens will unleash his high-priced water. I don't thing people realize how close the south is to major water shortages and is vulnerable to a drought. Hopefully this upcoming winter will help offset some of that."
The degree of recklessness and criminality at the fringes of an industry is directly proportional to the contempt in which the public is held by those at the center. If the "leaders" are continually pushing the limits (e.g. BP), it's not surprising when the more marginal players overshoot them entirely. This is doubly true when the same "leaders" have spent more than a decade lavishly financing a public disinformation campaign (read: systematic lying) to downplay the environmental safety risks of their product, while twisting the arms of any elected officials who dare stand in their way.
And remember, "standing in their way" goes beyond the imposition of effective health and safety regulations. It also includes efforts to curtail enormous public subsidies for what would remain an exceedingly profitable business with no subsidies at all. It's like a Gambino family shakedown run by people with the political clout of the U.S. military.
It's true, stuff like the (potential) destruction of aquifers does make the industry as a whole look bad. But if the OP thinks this represents the extent of the PR problems faced by the oil and gas industries, he needs to start paying much closer attention to the political agenda of the business in which he makes a living. It's...not pretty.
The best thing we could do with our oil and gas resources is to use the amount we can safely burn to make the massive infrastructure changes that a sustainably low-carbon economy will need, then write off the balance of the planet's known reserves, and peacefully and voluntary close up shop once the transition is complete.
Someone should have to pay for this. If the standard excuse is all you need, there's always going to be someone who is simply going to do the same thing.
Edit: by "can't" I mean it's not allowed - it's a crime. Not that you physically can't.
[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/06/us-usa-fracking-pe...]
It's often said that socialism works great 'on paper' but not in practice. When you ignore how unchecked capitalism plays off the rest of the society it's a part of, you commit the same offense.
What does it have to do with Free Market?? This has to do with regulation more than anything else.
"State officials allowed oil and gas companies to pump nearly three billion gallons of waste water into underground aquifers that could have been used for drinking water or irrigation."
It looks like the company applied to drill the injection well and the state said "yeah, that's fine".
It literally made more sense to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for pumps that sat around and did nothing just to make damned-sure a multi-million dollar rig never sat idle.
So, when we hear that there is too much complexity in, say, making sure nobody is drinking from wells within a mile of where the stuff is being injected, we look askance.
O&G is full of money and talented engineers, so I doubt that this is a problem we can't overcome.
http://www.propublica.org/article/message-from-mexico-u.s.-i...
You inject (not necessarily polluted on purpose from the start, but it will be at some point if reused a few times) water under high pressure into the ground to break up sediment, releasing a mineral resource. Often: Natural gas, or some sludge high in oil content. Sometimes also done for certain metals, then it's called "in situ leach".
Problem is: At some point you'll have accumulated just too much polluted water than what you could reasonably store as barrels stacked up in your parking lot, or just dump into a nearby lake or river.
The amount of waste generated it not really surprising, probably one should have considered this environmental impact before allowing companies to start these operations.