Category Archives: Fracking

Earthquake, Fracking

Federal study: Oklahoma more at risk of big damaging quakes because of increase in small ones

Repost from The Vallejo Times-Herald (Covered elsewhere, including U.S. News and World Report)

Federal study: Oklahoma more at risk of big damaging quakes because of increase in small ones

By Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer, Feb 14, 2015
File - In this Nov. 6, 2011 file photo, maintenance workers inspect the damage to one of the spires on Benedictine Hall at St. Gregory's University in Shawnee, Okla., after two earthquakes hit the area in less than 24 hours. New federal research says small earthquakes shaking Oklahoma and southern Kansas daily are dramatically increasing the chance of bigger and dangerous quakes, new federal research indicates. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
Maintenance workers inspect the damage to one of the spires on Benedictine Hall at St. Gregory’s University in Shawnee, Okla., after two earthquakes hit the area in less than 24 hours. New federal research says small earthquakes shaking Oklahoma and southern Kansas daily are dramatically increasing the chance of bigger and dangerous quakes. Associated Press/Nov. 6, 2011

SAN JOSE, California (AP) — Small earthquakes shaking Oklahoma and southern Kansas daily and linked to energy drilling are dramatically increasing the chance of bigger and dangerous quakes, federal research indicates. This once stable region is now just as likely to see serious damaging and potentially harmful earthquakes as the highest risk places east of the Rockies such as New Madrid, Missouri, and Charleston, South Carolina, which had major quakes in the past two centuries. Still it’s a low risk, about a 1 in 2,500 years’ chance of happening, according to geophysicist William Ellsworth of the U.S. Geological Survey. “To some degree we’ve dodged a bullet in Oklahoma,” Ellsworth said after a presentation to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. But, he added, “This is not to say we expect a large earthquake tomorrow.” During the 90-minute session on human-induced earthquakes, three quakes larger than 3.1 magnitude hit northern Oklahoma. Federal records show that since Jan. 1, Oklahoma has had nearly 200 quakes that people have felt. These quakes started to increase in 2008 and made dramatic jumps in frequency in June 2013 and again in February 2014, Ellsworth said. They are mostly in areas with energy drilling, often hydraulic fracturing, a process known as fracking. Many studies have linked the increase in small quakes to the process of injecting wastewater deep underground because it changes pressure and triggers dormant faults. Until now, those quakes were mostly thought of as nuisances and not really threats. But Ellsworth’s continuing study, which is not yet published, showed the mere increase in the number of tiny temblors raises the risk of earthquakes that scientists consider major hazards. That’s generally above a magnitude 5 with older buildings and a magnitude 6 for modern ones, Ellsworth said. “The more small earthquakes we have it just simply increases the odds we’re going to have a more damaging event,” Ellsworth said. A 2011 earthquake in Prague, Oklahoma, was a 5.7 magnitude, causing some damage and hurting two people. Some studies said that was a side effect of the drilling process, but other scientists are not convinced. Experts at the science session said Ellsworth’s finding of a higher risk for big quakes makes sense. “We are worried about this, no question about it,” said Rex Buchanan, interim director of the Kansas Geological Survey. Not all states with fracking and wastewater injections are seeing increased quakes and not all those with increased quakes, such as Texas and Ohio, are at a higher risk for major quakes, Ellsworth said. Arkansas and Ohio, for example, are also now seeing fewer man-made quakes, he said. Much depends on geology and how the wastewater is injected, said Stanford University geophysics professor Mark Zoback. He said industry and regulators can be smarter about where they inject wastewater and where they do not, and can avoid many of these problems.

California Regulation, Fracking, Water quality

California: Aquifer oil waste dumping to cease

Repost from The San Francisco Chronicle

Aquifer oil waste dumping to cease

State plan gives firms until Oct. 15 to stop injecting tainted water

By David R. Baker, Feb 10, 2015
Pumps operate at the Kern River Oil Field in Bakersfield in January. Jae C. Hong / Associated Press

Oil companies in California must stop injecting wastewater from their operations into potentially drinkable aquifers by Oct. 15, according to a plan by state regulators who allowed it to happen for years.

In a proposal submitted to the federal Environmental Protection Agency, regulators promised to painstakingly review wells at risk of contamination, ensuring the injections did not taint aquifers already used for drinking water or irrigation in the drought-plagued Central Valley.

The plan — from California’s Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources — comes in response to revelations that, for decades, the division granted oil companies permits to inject leftover water from their operations into aquifers that the federal government wanted protected. Now, with California heading into a fourth year of drought, that water may be difficult for humans to use.

A Chronicle analysis found that the state allowed oil companies to drill 171 wastewater injection wells into aquifers that could have been tapped for crops or people. Of those wells, 140 are still in use, according to the division. Injection into those wells must stop by mid-October unless specifically approved by the EPA, according to the plan.

A shuttered injection well next to a Palla Farms almond orchard sits empty in January. Palla Farms filed a suit blaming several oil companies for contaminating the local groundwater and killing trees. Jae C. Hong / Associated Press

February deadline  

An additional 253 wells breached lower-quality aquifers still considered off-limits by the EPA, from which water could have been used with more extensive treatment. Oil companies must cease using   these wells by Feb. 15, 2017, barring an exemption from the EPA.

The EPA, which helped uncover the practice in 2011, had given the division until Feb. 6 to submit plans for fixing the problem. The EPA has threatened to seize control of regulating the oil industry’s underground injection wells in California if the state doesn’t do a better job protecting groundwater supplies from contamination. (Although the division’s plan is dated Feb. 6, it was released to the public on Monday.)

“Our goal is to make sure the state is up to the job,” said Jared Blumenfeld, regional administrator for the EPA, in an interview before the division submitted its plans. “Frankly, if it got to the level where we needed to take (control) back, we would. That’s never been off the table. But I think we’re fairly far from needing to do that.”

The time frame for reform has already drawn fire from environmentalists. But both state and federal regulators say the oil industry will need time   to comply. If the division is forced to shut down some wells to protect drinking water supplies, the oil companies will have time to find other ways to deal with the waste.

“This is a problem that we worked ourselves into over 30 years, and it’s not a problem that can be solved in a year,” said the division’s new supervisor, Steven Bohlen, appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown last year.

Problem’s roots  

The problem dates to 1983, when the EPA gave the division authority to enforce the federal Safe Drinking Water Act in California’s oil fields.

The state’s oil reservoirs typically contain large amounts of briny water mixed with the crude. Companies must separate the oil from the water and get rid of the water, which is usually too laden with minerals and hydrocarbons to be used for drinking and irrigation. In addition, oil-extraction techniques such as hydraulic fracturing use freshwater that becomes tainted in the process and needs disposal   .

Companies inject much of the leftover water back into oil reservoirs. But some of it is pumped into salty underground aquifers that have no oil.

The 1983 agreement listed by name aquifers that the oil industry would be able to use with a simple permit from the division. But in a bizarre snafu, there were two signed versions of the agreement, one of which listed 11 aquifers not found on the other.

The division started issuing permits for injection wells drilled into those aquifers, even though they didn’t previously contain oil and weren’t viewed by the EPA as suitable for wastewater disposal. Under the agreement, the EPA has final say on which aquifers the oil industry can and can’t use.

The state even authorized oil companies to inject into a handful of aquifers already in use for drinking and irrigation, leading to the emergency closure of eight injection wells last year. Officials have now tested nine nearby drinking wells for contamination and   found none. But aquifers tainted with chemicals are difficult and expensive to clean, and state water regulators say they can’t be certain that contamination won’t eventually turn up in those drinking water supplies.

Onus on oil firms  

In the future, oil companies will need to build a case for why specific aquifers should be considered suitable for wastewater disposal, according to the division’s proposal. The companies will submit their data to the division and the State Water Resources Control Board for review. If those two state agencies agree, they will — together — ask the EPA to allow injections into those aquifers.

As for the 11 aquifers compromised by the 1983 bureaucratic mix-up, injections there will be phased out by mid-February 2017, unless the EPA decides to let them continue.

California oil industry, California Regulation, Fracking, Natural gas, Water quality

California Pledges Changes in Protecting Underground Water

Repost from ABC News (AP)

California Pledges Changes in Protecting Underground Water

By Ellen Knickmeyer, AP, Feb 9, 2015

California has proposed closing by October up to 140 oilfield wells that state regulators had allowed to inject into federally protected drinking water aquifers, state officials said Monday.

The deadline is part of a broad plan the state sent the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last week for bringing state regulation of oil and gas operations back into compliance with federal safe-drinking water requirements. State authorities made the plan public Monday.

An ongoing state review mandated by the EPA found more than 2,500 oil and gas injection wells that the state authorized into aquifers that were supposed to be protected as current or potential sources of water for drinking and watering crops.

An Associated Press analysis found hundreds of the now-challenged state permits for oilfield injection into protected aquifers have been granted since 2011, despite the state’s drought and growing warnings from the EPA about lax state protection of water aquifers in areas of oil and gas operations.

Steve Bohlen, head of the state Department of Conservation’s oil and gas division, told reporters Monday that the proposed regulatory changes were “long overdue.”

EPA spokeswoman Nahal Mogharabi said Monday that federal authorities would review the new state plan over coming weeks. “EPA will then work with the State to ensure that the plan contains actions that will bring their program into compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act,” Mogharabi said. She referred to landmark 1974 legislation that sought to protect underground drinking-water sources from oil and gas operations.

Bohlen said 140 of those 2,500 injection wells were of primary concern to the state now because they were actively injecting oil-field fluids into aquifers with especially good water quality.

State water officials currently are reviewing those 140 oil-field wells to see which are near water wells and to assess any contamination of water aquifers from the oil and gas operations, Bohlen said.

Part of the state plan released Monday would set an Oct. 15 deadline to stop injection into those water aquifers deemed most vital to protect them from contamination. State officials also could shut down oil field wells sooner if they are deemed to jeopardize nearby water wells, authorities said. This summer, the state ordered oil companies to stop using at least nine oil field wells that altogether had more than 100 water wells nearby.

The U.S. EPA had given the state until Friday to detail how it would deal with current injection into protected water aquifers and stop future permitting of risky injection.

While some of the fluids and materials that oil companies inject underground as part of normal production is simply water, some can contain high levels of salt or other material that can render water unfit for drinking or irrigating crops.

California is the nation’s third-largest oil-producing state, and oil companies say the kind of injection wells under scrutiny are vital to the state’s oil production.

Tupper Hull, a spokesman for the Western State Petroleum Association, said the oil-industry group feared state regulators would not be able to meet all the deadlines they were setting for compliance with federal water standards.

If that happens, oil producers “would be put into the untenable position of having to shut in wells or reduce production,” Hull said.

Fracking, Pope Francis

Pope Francis Says No to Fracking

Repost from EcoWatch

Pope Francis Says No to Fracking

By Stefanie Spear | January 12, 2015 

We’ve been busy lately providing news on all the great ways Pope Francis is working to create a healthy, sustainable planet. In July 2014, Pope Francis called destruction of nature a modern sin. In November 2014, Pope Francis said “unbridled consumerism” is destroying our planet and we are “stewards, not masters” of the Earth. In December 2014, he said he will increase his call this year to address climate change. And, last week we announced that Pope Francis is opening his Vatican farm to the public.

Now, we learn from Nicolás Fedor Sulcic that Pope Francis is supportive of the anti-fracking movement. Watch this interview by Fernando Solanas where he met with Pope Francis soon after finishing a film about fracking in Argentina.

The movie, La Guerra del Fracking or The Fracking War, was banned in cinemas by the Argentinian government, so the filmmakers decided to post it on YouTube. We are awaiting translation of the film and then we’ll feature it on EcoWatch.

“When I was doing research for the film, every time I’d ask someone if they knew what fracking was they had no idea,” said Sulcic. The problem was that “the government didn’t call it fracking, they called it ‘non conventional gas’ so no one was making the link to what was happening in Argentina to what was happening America. I got really mad and knew something had to be done to make people aware of what was going on. I saw the website Artist Against Fracking and felt that was a very good example of what was needed to be done here to take the cause to more people rather than just environmental activists.”

With support by Peace Nobel prize Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Oscar winning Juan Jose Campanella and other very well known Argentinian intellectuals and social leaders, a website was launched to help raise awareness about the dangers of fracking Argentina.