This is blog post shines a spotlight on the DOE fracking study and sees a different angle from mine.
By Alan Septoff
July 19, 2013
Surprise! Only ONE fracked well has ever been properly tested for groundwater pollution.
The AP today reports that a “landmark” study of one fracked well shows that, over a year’s time, it did not contaminate groundwater.
We’re very glad this is the case, especially for the neighboring community.
The meaning of testing one well
The fact that one well didn’t contaminate groundwater doesn’t prove that fracking is safe. No one has ever claimed that every instance of fracking pollutes groundwater. As any statistician worth their salt will tell you, a sample size of one does not a valid study make.
And the unnamed company that participated in the experiment knew its well was under scrutiny. I know that when my performance is being monitored, I am more likely to be at my best.
Read the rest of this analysis at EarthBlog.
About Sharon Wilson
Sharon Wilson is considered a leading citizen expert on the impacts of shale oil and gas extraction. She is the go-to person whether it’s top EPA officials from D.C., national and international news networks, or residents facing the shock of eminent domain and the devastating environmental effects of natural gas development in their backyards.
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And yet when casing parts on one well out of thousands it makes front page news here.
Oh my. I detect the aroma of sour grapes. The flavor of this particular grape is familiar to me. I think I have sniffed it out previously.
It only takes one accident like a casing separation to contaminate an entire aquifer so that is a very serious thing.
I seem to recall a casing that separated on a UT Dallas drill site.
A casing failure on University of Dallas property (in Irving, Texas at the Irving/Dallas border) to be precise. But it’s had a lot of well names and numbers post-casing failure. They even sent the gas they could get straight to a Dr. Pepper plant because it was so incredibly clean & pure.
It’s So Clean…
WCGasette recently posted..Steve Lipsky’s Water is On Fire from Recent Fracking ~ RRC Says, “No, It’s Not!”
Correction: Meant to say that the casing failure was actually on City of Dallas property in 2009. It’s always confusing when a Leasehold’s SURFACE location is located off lease. In this case, one city was supposed to benefit from the royalties (Dallas) while another city (Irving) handled the permit. The casing failed during the completion phase (fracking) and the operator consolidated the two side-by-side leases after that since they also didn’t have a big tract leased on the City of Dallas lease (more correctly referred to a Pooled Unit since there were several lessors pooled together to form the unit).
WCGasette recently posted..Steve Lipsky’s Water is On Fire from Recent Fracking ~ RRC Says, “No, It’s Not!”
I’m sure that the people whose water has been contaminated will take great comfort in knowing that fine distinction between “Poor casings, faulty equipment and surface spills” (TRRC Commisioner and Jackass Extraordinaire David Porter )and hydraulic fracturing as the cause of the contamination.
Ellen Cantarow of Truthout interviewed Louis W. Allstadt, a former vice president of Mobil Oil. It was painfully obvious to me that he honorably gave up a tranquil, restful, retirement to “do the right thing” in working to educate us on how unproven safe unconventional fracking is. Here are some points I took away from the interview which hits it on the head with TX Sharson’s blog post …
1) The industry cannot control with certainity how far (vertically) the fractures go out from these horizontal laterals. Allstadt said that one of the appendices of the draft SGEIS [New York Department of Conservation guidelines for the gas industry] that was issued in July 2011, was expunged. It was of the EPA study in a coal-mining area where “the fractures had progressed in unexpected patterns and at greater lengths than expected.”
2) Allstadt said that the volume of water for fracking and flowback is 50 to 100 times more than conventional fracking. It is no secret that injection wells handling the waste fluids from UNconventional fracking is linked to seismic events. Here is another related statement by geophysicists from the University of California in Santa Cruz…..“As operations expanded, so did the seismicity”.
3) Allstadt said “The other [difference] is that the rock above the target zone is not necessarily impervious the way it was in the conventional wells.…there are already cases where the methane gas has made it up into the aquifers and atmosphere. Sometimes through old well bores, sometimes through natural fissures in the rock. What we don’t know is just how much gas is going to come up over time….. We’re opening up channels for the gas to creep up to the surface and into the atmosphere.”
4) Allstadt said that ”And there are lots of good indications that plugging the well doesn’t really work long-term” citing that the wells still have some pressure down there and that sooner or later the steel and cement degrades.
Only time will tell how chronic small quakes or one time “eventful sized” quakes will be to opening up new or expanding old faults causing unintended migration into our atmosphere and our ground water sources. Also the aging of cement and steel are risks for casing integrity on ALL types of wells such as natural gas, oil, disposal/injection and water wells. Any type of leaking wells can communicate with faults and make their way to our ground water sources AT ANY DEPTH. Contaminated ground water can eventually feed toxins to our municipal drinking water sources.
…Yep one frack does not safety make is a perfect take away here.
The AP story has an unverified comment that….
per Alvin Coholic • 12 hrs ago
“the article forgot to mention that the investigators used to work at halliburton”
the way that Lucy picture is colored is a bit creepy with the pale skin haha.
She looks like she lives too close to fracking.