Water & Wastewater Systems

No. Absolutely not. Fracking takes place thousands of feet below fresh water aquifers so there can be no communication between the two. Anyone who thinks their water aquifer was damaged by fracking has a screw loose.

Rorschach, I would guess you have a vested interest in fracking, I suggest you start looking for that screw.

you would guess wrong. My business is offshore drilling which is an entirely different kettle of fish. but I have worked for service companies that do fracking in the past. I DO happen to know just a tad about the subject.

You no doubt know a tad more than me. I make this observation. There are proposals for fracking on the Mendip Hills (Somerset, England), there being large gas bearing deposits. It is known that water which rises in Bath Spa (10000 litre a day mineral water at over 33degC) fell on the Mendip hills several thousand years before rising in Bath Spa (Somerset), having gone down several kilometers and been heated in hot rocks before resurfacing (Bath has volcanic connections). I would be very surprised if Fracking and the water supply could be kept separate.

I would not want to take that chance, no doubt Big Business would say "so what, we'll take the gas (dosh), we wont be here in several thousand years".

Oil companies have thrived on greed, and the illusion of a social conscience.

if there were communication between those two formations, there would not be gas there, it would have dissipated long ago.

I suspect that that is a comment without factual support, the gas is not in little tappable pockets, and, if you were correct, then plain water would be sufficient to open up and release it, and the concoction of noxious chemicals to react it out, would not be required.

those "noxious chemicals" serve to increase the porosity in order to flow the gas out more readily, but remember we are talking about geologic timescales, not human timescales.

Wonder what happened here? Maybe it was just caused by buffalo or elk poo accumulating over the past thousand or so years out there.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/09/us/epa-says-hydraulic-fracturing-likely-marred-wyoming-water.html?_r=1&hpw

Wyoming is chock full of coal bed aquifers as well (just like PA.), again it is probably due to depletion of the aquifer. And the EPA is not exactly an unbiased observer, they WANT to use this as a reason to increase their budgets and extend their power.

are monitoring wells generally drilled before the extraction wells are drilled?

generally there are no monitoring wells as far as i am aware.

wouldn't it be good protection for the drilling companies to poke a few?

maybe, maybe not, if the monitor wells aren't cased and cemented well, they can be just as problematic as any other well. In fact it is possible that the problems with well contamination my well be because the water wells in question aren't properly cemented and cased oftentimes.

Do you know of any Regulatory Agencies in the US Government that are not trying to increase their budgets and extend their power at the expense of the taxpayer or by screwing over private industry with unending fees, permits or nonsensical fines? If you do, I will second your nomination of them as True American Heroes.

Isn't that just the same ole TP bullshyt?

EPA didn't just appear out of thin air [actually it was quite smoggy]

EPA was a response to the various heavy [& otherwise] industries, abusing the land, air & water to the detriment of all of us

come up with a system where corporation will forgo profit to watch out for the greater good....

if there were a breakdown of the cement bond, then that would be apparent when the operator attempted to pressurize the formation, there would be too much fluid loss and the pumping would be stopped to investigate. Macondo was never fracked as it was already at very high formation pressure and was not drilled into shale. The two situations are not comparable. Cement Bond Failure is a major no-no in oil production because you simply cannot control the formation pressure then. NOBODY is going to walk away from a well with communication between different formations. it will either get rectified, or the well will be plugged and abandoned and redrilled nearby. such a situation is known as an uncontrolled well and can lead to a subsurface blowout which is very difficult to control. NOBODY willingly ignores a potential blowout.

Easy on the redneck aspersions please. Some of us are cool

As long as they tackle it ten yards behind the line of scrimmage, all will be well. (Pun not intended, but accepted after noticing it.)

How are fumes getting into their water? It can't be coming from a water treatment plant, so it must be coming from a well. Is it supposed to be like a carbonated drink and it moves through the water table and out of the soil, into the well and your well pump pumps it into your house, then the fumes separate? Or is it someone wanting a payday?

Natural gas build up in sub surface water is very common and has been since the creation of this planet and the proliferation of life that followed it.

In a way flammable well gas is like taos noise. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum

Few ever think about it until someone mentions they have an issue with it locally then nearly everyone suddenly realizes they have it as well which at that point it becomes a how do we find it and block it issue.

At least up until most everyone finds something new and shiny to preoccupy their minds and forgets about it again. Really it never was a new occurance and it didnt just go away either rather its more that the 'new shiny ball thing' the media 'just found' is now more interesting than the old 'shiny ball thing' is.

I understand that gases an be forced into water, i.e. carbonated water, ( which is pretty the limit of my knowledge) but I'm more interested in how the gas can be forced into the water because of fracking, then migrate through the soil and THEN release the gas in a persons home piping, where it can then be ignited from the faucet. In other words, I believe whoever concocted this story was looking for money and I believe the EPA should not presume that it KNOWS BEST and will do a better job of looking after the people of a particular state than will that states own officials. The overreaching arrogance of the federal bureaucracy is destroying this country. Sorry for the rant and I am aware we need the EPA, but don't strangle this country.

Doesn't get "into their pipes"per se. Most people there have wells and it only needs to infiltrate their water supply near the well.Then the pump brings it up with the water. It would seem strange that these incidents have only started to be prevalent since the advent of fracking. Maybe those scoundrels out in Pa. who are now complaining simply felt that they couldn't sue Mother Nature but now they see a "deep pockets" target for all their lawsuits.

Perhaps they should be grateful in that if they install a large enough holding tank with a stripper system they could get free gas for their heat and hot water.

I heartily agree with your comment about the EPA. Had enough dealings with the EPA and the NJDEP to know that most of them are unemployable in private industry.

one possible explanation as to why that gas is more prevalent now (assuming it is and that is yet to be determined.) is the possibility that the fracking (which uses thousands of gallons of water as previously noted) may be depleting the water in the fresh water aquifers (which as I noted before are usually coal seams) causing more natural gas to be released by the coal. it may have nothing to do with the fracking in of itself, but simply the increased water usage.

Good point. Always find that one should check into what was last done or touched when one is trouble shooting a problem. I also read and I think that it was on CR4 that the use of Propane, while slightly more expensive, could eliminate most of the environmental issues about fracking. Like to hear your comments about that.

nope, propane is produced along with natural gas so the two come from the same source.

Around here the water primarily comes from the municipal sources being they are the only places that have the working capacity's to produce the millions of gallons of clean potable grade water they use in the fracking processes for each well.

Second to those sources processing surface water from ponds, lakes and rivers is the next preference being those sources have vast amounts of standing water available in them plus are most often being continuously renewed by natural run off and the like so draw down concerns are usually not an issue with them. Many of these surface water sources are also where the local municipal service systems draw from as well simply due to their easy access and nearly unlimited reserve capacity's.

Actual ground water well sources are primarily limited to the municipal service types simply due to so few places having the necessary ground water flow rates and capacity's needed for a single frack job let alone being able to support many all going at once.

Typically however all of those sources of water have already had the water rights carved up among all the existing players so the company has to buy the water from someone willing to sell it to them. they can't just run a hose over to the closest stock pond, the rancher would most likely object strenuously.besides, such supplies require a lot of processing to make them usable for that purpose which increases the cost.

Exactly however as with the public municipalities getting permission and setting up the necessary filtering where needed more than cost justifies the added run around and paper work plus operating costs when the local public water system does not supply water for free.

Around here the average price for bulk water delivered to a site is around $2.50+ a barrel (42 gallons). When you need water in the volumes that frack work needs setting up a local pumping and filtering system on the nearest surface water source of sufficient size plus paying gratuities to the land owners can in many cases more than justify the added costs an work involved just by cost overall savings and time gained.

This has especialy been true around here when the local municipal sources have a daily volume cap in place due to their systems not having sufficient on demand capacity to keep up with the oil industrys requirments. When the nearest small town limits the output to a million gallons a day and the local frack work needs ten times that a day much of that water has to be trucked in from larger city sources that can at times be over 50 miles away.

In these condtions where water cost plus transport cost gets high real fast it only makes sence to tap into local surface sources and process them instead.

a lot of times they will bring in a small drill rig and drill a water well into a relatively shallow salt water aquifer (which nobody generally wants anyway so water rights are generally easy to get.) for their water needs.

I was just going to say. They ought to run pipelines to the ocean and use that water. Aren't they going up because of global warming anyway?

funny you should mention that.... I'm actually trying to stir up some interest in that idea in the Texas Legislature....

Seems like a good idea to me.

most water wells in that area are drilled into coal seams. when you drain a coal seam the natural gas that is normally adsorbed into the coal is released. this is how coal bed methane extraction is done, and it has absolutely nothing to do with fracking which is thousands of feet deeper.

the precise proportional mix is proprietary but the service companies DO publish the MSDS's of the fluids. they have to. And read my comment above about well casing. a cement bond failure is a big enough deal that fracking could not take place and would be stopped. I fail to understand how pumping deisel oil into an already oil bearing formation can be considered contamination.

I agree. Everybody here knows I'm no fan of the government and it's agencies, especially the EPA, but I want to know:

Why the veil of secrecy?

What are the chemicals you're pumping into the ground?

Where will they be 50, 100, 200 years from now?

Just because we won't be around, doesn't mean it doesn't matter.

If it was just hot water or steam, I'd say EPA butt out, but nobody seems to know what it is.

Kamarat it is real simple, these are proprietary fluids and the companies spent a LOT of money developing the precise mix. If they published the exact formula they might as well have just pumped the money down the hole, everybody will copy it and they won't get a dime for their work.They DO publish in general terms what is in the fluids in the MSDS sheets. just not the precise formula, JUST LIKE COCA-COLA DOES.

By the way, Halliburton DID comply with the EPA's demand for the precise formula for one of their fluids. The EPA assured them that they would not publish the formula. they turned around and published it anyway.

I understand the need to keep the fluid composition a secret, but isn't there more than one company involved in fracking?

These companies are going to be long gone if these secret fluids ever start causing problems.

It seems to me that the fracking rights to the deposites would be far more valuable than the secret sauce.

It really pains me to say this, and I really don't care for the tactics of the EPA, but it seems prudent in this case to get one fluid mix approved, that isn't going to totally screw up the ecosystem in the future, everybody uses the same mix, and then it's every man for himself on securing rights and extracting the deposites.

Sorry. I don't like the sound of letting people pump secret juice into the ground. I don't care how deep it is.

If it's harmless, they should be able to show that to the EPA without giving up the recipe.

There are multiple fluids because there are multiple types of formations, and in fact often the precise mixture is made up on the fly for that particular formation. most of the fluids have some combination of ascetic (vinegar), formic (ever been bit by a fire ant?), hydrochloric (muratic acid), or hydroflouric (rust stain remover) acid, often with a wetting agent, usually EDTA(check the contents of your cereal box).

I do not agree that the fluid composition needs to be secret. Potential contaminants should not be allowed to be injected into our environment without some disinterested oversight.

kramarat, I know we're on the same page here, but you are being more professional than I can on this one.

I hate the US EPA.

I love oil companies.

I love the idea of energy Independence.

I am all for the concept of fracking to obtain energy.

I want to know what is in the "fracking" fracking fluid !

My take on it, at this point, is that I don't know enough about it to say. But, as an angler, someone that enjoys nature, and being on wellwater...................I wouldn't want them doing it within a 100 miles of my house.

That doesn't mean they couldn't have me sign a nondisclosure, sit me down and explain everything to me in detail, and have me be okay with it.

As far as the EPA is concerned, it's too bad they have been infiltrated by enviro whack jobs that have no grounding in reality. Once they do become involved, the cost of extraction, (if it's allowed at all), will skyrocket, and as usual, the added cost will be picked up by us, the end users.

It's easy to hate big oil, but we have to remember, in the case of the gulf spill, there are oil deposits much closer to shore, in much shallower water, which are far far safer/easier to get to............................but the government won't let them.

and by the way, coal bed water is often chock full of mercury and H2S (which is flammable and smells like rotten eggs which is what odorized natural gas smells like anyway, natural gas in it's natural state is odorless and colorless and is lighter than air) so it probably wasn't all that healthy to be drinking it anyway.

If corporations and states could be trusted alone to do the right thing, then why was the E.P.A. invented anyway? If the E.P.A. goes away, every crooked state politician will suddenly start looking the other way when their campaign contributors ask them to.

you are far more likely to have a corporation do the right thing than a government, because if a corporation screws up someone is going to sue them into bankruptcy and hold the officers civilly liable as well, if a government screws up... oh well...that bureaucrat is safe from any liability.

At least "we the people" get to elect the government (or vote them out). How many corporate board members did you get to elect recently? When was the last time you tried to sue a mega corporation? - Hope you have a small fortune for legal fees and decades of time and live to see the trial before you die from the poisoned water ;). I would trust an EPA bureaucrat (scientist) before I would trust the corporate "honor system". The EPA was created to protect the environment. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

when have you or anyone else ever elected a bureaucrat? here is a news flash, elected representatives don't run things or write environmental laws, the bureaucrats do. They work for the government because they probably can't get a job in industry where the real money is, so right off the bat, they are generally incompetent, then you add the insulation of never having to say "sorry" and you end up with a real mess of a system.

here is how the EPA works. the EPA hands out grants to environmentalist groups, these groups turn around and sue the EPA with that money demanding that they regulate yet something else, the EPA actually wants more power so they don't fight the lawsuit, the result is an ever larger bureaucracy sucking up more and more money and more and more power. it is an ever widening circle.

"Bureaucrats" cannot write laws - only the legislature can. The E.P.A. enforces environmental laws enacted by congress. Here is an educational link: http://www.epa.gov/lawsregs/laws/ . Hope this helps. Just because someone chooses to serve their country instead of working for a corporation doesn't make them stupid either. Who were the corporate geniuses who caused the B.P. oil spill, 3 Mile Island, etc.? Without the E.P.A., we would still have sulphur spewing from smoke stacks and lakes afire. Sorry, we'll have to agree to disagree ;).

That is where you are incorrect. The congress passes a very broad brush law then the bureaucrats then write the rules to implement it which then have the force of law completely without any input from congress (and often without input of anyone else either). and the rules tend to maximize the power of the bureaucrats. Take the EPA's recent rulemaking regarding power plant emissions. they have set an arbitrary date only a year after issuing the rule (2012) to meet emissions standards which nobody (not even the EPA!) knows how to meet with current technology. but yet the EPA bureaucrats refuse to revisit or extend the deadline. in their own meeting minutes they note that there is no technology currently in existence nor any coming out of any laboratory any where with which anyone could meet these standards.

and yes, if you work for the government, you probably are either borderline incompetent or just can't handle the pressure of actually having to accomplish something to keep your job.

Unless some independent body lays down a minimum specification for "the right thing" then companies will all draw the line in different places (some compromising their definition of "safe" by the cost implications). With no guidelines to work to, any legal action would be hard to prove, because there is no legal threshold to fall below. I hope that the EPA sets the bar high, it might cost the energy companies a bit more cash, but that is the price for a safe environment. Ask BP which is the cheaper route.

This discussion relates to the US now because you are the leaders in fracking technology. But the standards set here will affect the rest of us as the technology spreads.

just remember that those costs will be passed on to you and will impact the economy as a whole. the world's economy is governed by the price and availability of energy. are you willing to lose your job and your home and your family because your employer can no longer afford to employ you because of skyrocketing energy costs?

I doubt any of these gas companies would blink any eye at the coat of the fees or even fines. The company I worked for in PA made over $10 million alone in one year in aggregate and asphalt sales to these companies. They are spending millions of dollars in these states without a care in the world.

I am not sure how fracking is done elsewhere but here they mainly use around 2 - 3 million gallons of fresh water along with several tens of tons of fine white or grey silica grout ,microscopic beads of sorts, to frack each well.

The main chemicals I was told of are mostly PH balancers and antibacterial and anti algae agents to sterilize the water in order to prevent the water from introducing bio contamination that can cause H2S formation which can ruin a well for future gas recovery.

The grouting sands are used to hold open the cracks that the high pressure water creates in the formations and are inert themselves.

The thing is as someone who has worked with both fresh water hauling and production water hauling I can say for certain that some place between it going down clean and coming back it picks up loads of calcium, sodium, and other mineral salts along with strong base compounds that are potent enough to make leather gloves shrink and eventually dissolve if enough exposure time is given that where never part of the fracking process itself.

Around here the bio sterilizers and human induced additives are the lest concern regarding what comes up with the well water when it producing. IfI remember things correctly all of those additives still don't add up to more than a few to several hundred gallons out of the 2 - 3 million that get put down a well to fracture the formation.

these days they use very fine ceramic beads more often than not because they can control the density of the mix better that way, and some of the acids attack sand. but otherwise, you are pretty much spot on. The acids both sterilize the water as well as etch limestone and silicates to increase the porosity of the formation. They also help to control Barium Sulfate scale which is dang near impossible to dissolve once it starts to precipitate on the well screens.

The regulations are necassary. No they are not a threat. Most states don't regulate this industry. PA for example regulates every single type of industry including mining, oil, etc but not fracking, why?

Biggest problem I see is the waste water. Close to 200 miles pf PA streams where damage or destory; over 2 million fish where killed, because of un-treated releases into them from gas companies doing fracking. Nothing was done to them. Thousands of miles of land are being dug up for pipe lines. No permits required, and no government oversite. tens of thousands of acres of pristine wetlands destroyed so far in PA without the normally required replacement.

I'm all for construction, mining, and drilling for natural resources it's my livelyhood, but their needs to be some sort of over site. Industry can't be trusted on their own to do this.

Human instinct is not to take care of mother earth or their own well being. It's greed, the all mighty dollar.