Thoughtful well placement could mitigate property risks from fracking quakes
By Gloria Gonzalez, November 20, 2015
Fracking activities are contributing to the rising number of earthquakes in Oklahoma and other states, but the risks to property can be reduced, according to a geological expert.
Hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, is an oil and gas production technique that involves injecting water under high pressure into a bedrock formation to increase the flow of oil and gas to a well from petroleum-bearing rock formations.
The injection of fluids in fracking and other activities is one of the contributing causes to increased seismicity, Bill Leith, senior science advisor for the U.S. Geological Survey based in Reston, Virginia, said at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners 2015 fall meeting in National Harbor, Maryland on Thursday.
“The phenomena of earthquake triggering is well-established,” he said. “And there have been many cases in which earthquakes have been turned on and turned off by beginning and ending injection.”
Risk management concepts that can be implemented to minimize the risk posed by fracking-induced quakes includes avoiding fluid injection in known fault areas and locating injection wells away from population centers and critical facilities, Mr. Leith said.
“The risk from earthquakes can be minimized by taking various actions and by thoughtful decisions about permitting,” he said. “Risk is the thing that we can control by our own actions, by taking steps to mitigate the hazard.”
Fracking is rarely the cause of “felt” earthquakes, but fracking activities have been found responsible for quakes up to magnitude 4.5 in Canada during shale gas recovery, Mr. Leith said. The Richter scale assigns a number to quantify the magnitude of energy released by an earthquake.
About 150 million Americans live in areas exposed to natural quake hazards — double the number of Americans who lived in quake-vulnerable areas in 1990, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Oklahoma has experienced a “remarkable” increase in the number of quakes in the 3.0 or greater range, he said, with recorded quakes at this level soaring from 109 in 2013 to 585 quakes in 2014.
“The increase in the seismicity implies that larger earthquakes are possible,” Mr. Leith said. “That is increasing the hazard. The construction in Oklahoma is at a higher risk, and we’ve seen a higher risk of damage to houses in the suburbs of Oklahoma City and up in the northern part of the state as a result of these small to moderate earthquakes.”
In October, Oklahoma Insurance Department Commissioner John Doak required insurers to notify their policyholders about their coverage of earthquakes arguably or actually resulting from fracking activities. Some insurers in the state have amended their policy forms to cover damages resulting from fracking, others have waived the man-made earthquake exclusion and a third group still excludes fracking-induced quakes, creating significant confusion in the marketplace, according to the bulletin.
Repost from NBC Bay Area [Editor: Shocking coverage. Apologies for the video’s commercial ad. – RS]
Waste Water from Oil Fracking Injected into Clean Aquifers
California Dept. of Conservation Deputy Director admits that errors were made
By Stephen Stock, Liza Meak, Mark Villarreal and Scott Pham, 11/14/2014
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.
Those aquifers are supposed to be off-limits to that kind of activity, protected by the EPA.
“It’s inexcusable,” said Hollin Kretzmann, at the Center for Biological Diversity in San Francisco. “At (a) time when California is experiencing one of the worst droughts in history, we’re allowing oil companies to contaminate what could otherwise be very useful ground water resources for irrigation and for drinking. It’s possible these aquifers are now contaminated irreparably.”
California’s Department of Conservation’s Chief Deputy Director, Jason Marshall, told NBC Bay Area, “In multiple different places of the permitting process an error could have been made.”
“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,” Marshall added.
In “fracking” or hydraulic fracturing operations, oil and gas companies use massive amounts of water to force the release of underground fossil fuels. The practice produces large amounts of waste water that must then be disposed of.
Marshall said that often times, oil and gas companies simply re-inject that waste water back deep underground where the oil extraction took place. But other times, Marshall said, the waste water is re-injected into aquifers closer to the surface. Those injections are supposed to go into aquifers that the EPA calls “exempt”—in other words, not clean enough for humans to drink or use.
But in the State’s letter to the EPA, officials admit that in at least nine waste water injection wells, the waste water was injected into “non-exempt” or clean aquifers containing high quality water.
For the EPA, “non-exempt” aquifers are underground bodies of water that are “containing high quality water” that can be used by humans to drink, water animals or irrigate crops.
If the waste water re-injection well “went into a non-exempt aquifer. It should not have been permitted,” said Marshall.
The department ended up shutting down 11 wells: the nine that were known to be injecting into non-exempt aquifers, and another two in an abundance of caution.
In its reply letter to the EPA, California’s Water Resources Control Board said its “staff identified 108 water supply wells located within a one-mile radius of seven…injection wells” and that The Central Valley Water Board conducted sampling of “eight water supply wells in the vicinity of some of these… wells.”
“This is something that is going to slowly contaminate everything we know around here,” said fourth- generation Kern County almond grower Tom Frantz, who lives down the road from several of the injection wells in question.
According to state records, as many as 40 water supply wells, including domestic drinking wells, are located within one mile of a single well that’s been injecting into non-exempt aquifers.
That well is located in an area with several homes nearby, right in the middle of a citrus grove southeast of Bakersfield.
This well is one of nine that were known to be injecting waste water into “non-exempt” aquifers. It’s located just east of Bakersfield.
State records show waste water from several sources, including from the oil and gas industry, has gone into the aquifer below where 60 different water supply wells are located within a one mile radius.
“That’s a huge concern and communities who rely on water supply wells near these injection wells have a lot of reason to be concerned that they’re finding high levels of arsenic and thallium and other chemicals nearby where these injection wells have been allowed to operate,” said Kretzmann.
“It is a clear worry,” said Juan Flores, a Kern County community organizer for the Center on Race, Poverty and The Environment. “We’re in a drought. The worst drought we’ve seen in decades. Probably the worst in the history of agriculture in California.”
“No one from this community will drink from the water from out of their well,” said Flores. “The people are worried. They’re scared.”
The trade association that represents many of California’s oil and gas companies says the water-injection is a “paperwork issue.” In a statement issued to NBC Bay Area, Western States Petroleum Association spokesman Tupper Hull said “there has never been a bona vide claim or evidence presented that the paperwork confusion resulted in any contamination of drinking supplies near the disputed injection wells.”
However, state officials tested 8 water supply wells within a one-mile radius of some of those wells.
Four water samples came back with higher than allowable levels of nitrate, arsenic, and thallium.
Those same chemicals are used by the oil and gas industry in the hydraulic fracturing process and can be found in oil recovery waste-water.
“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.
Marshall acknowledged that those chemicals could have come from oil extraction, and not necessarily wastewater disposal.
“But when those (further) test results come back, we’ll know for sure,” Marshall said.
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.”
Kern County’s Water Board referred the Investigative Unit to the state for comment.
California State officials assured the EPA in its letter that the owners of the wells where chemicals were found have been warned and could ask for further testing of their drinking wells.
