Tag: Oil and Gas

Senate Debates Bill on Unfair Trade Practices

Legislators stood Thursday to speak to legislation that has not yet made it to the floor. Senate Bill 368 was introduced by Senator Herb Snyder early in the session repealing unfair trade practices.

The bill focuses on a section of code written in the late 1930s. At the time, many states and the federal government put laws in place that prevented major retailers from undercutting the prices of mom and pop stores, forcing them out of business.

Since, Snyder said many gas retailers across the state have used that same decades old law to file lawsuits against companies who open shop in a new area and sell their fuel at significantly lower prices.

He said it’s that practice that is causing significant price increases in gas in the Eastern Panhandle, but members of the oil and gas lobby are protesting its consideration.
 

“You’re getting calls from those people I remind you that are in the oil marketing business. Every one of them. Mr. President, this bill is not about those people and whether they’re going to compete with each other as this bill will make it in the open and free market. Mr. President, this bill is about the 99.9% of West Virginians that aren’t making profits from the sale of gasoline and fuels. This bill is clearly about the citizens of West Virginia to give them the opportunity to buy the least expensive gas on the open market without artificial controls by law and it’s not a question of will they use Chapter 47-11-1A to inflate prices. They have.”  

Senator Sam Cann stood to question the bill, however, saying he’s not positive it’s the best way to help small businesses outside of the gas industry across the state.
 

“We always talk about small businesses in West Virginia and what do we do to help them? I believe that we have a lot of small businesses that could be harmed if we take this action. I worry about Ace Hardware in my neighborhood competing with Lowes and Home Depot. I worry about Food Fresh staying open when competing with Sam's. You know, the big box stores have the advantage on a volume basis and if this rule and this law stays in place and it helps a number of these small business, because I don’t believe it’s just about the oil marketers. I don’t believe it’s just about gasoline. I believe it’s about a lot of small mom and pop industries, little shops and stores that we need to make sure we’re not harming if we take this action.”  

That statement sparked comments from Senator Doug Facemire, a grocer who started his own chain in northern and central West Virginia.

Facemire said it’s impossible for the small owners to compete with big box stores like Wal Mart or Sams because of their buying power, but he believes Senators should be looking at what’s best for citizens.
 

“We owe it to the citizens of our state to open up a system where the real capitalist market takes place. We all complain about the fair and unfair trade rules that our country has to face when doing business across the seas. It’s the same thing today. The only thing this bill does is let the big boys bigger and the small people suffer because they will always have a better cost of goods. The way the bill is written, it really doesn’t offer protection and let’s stop and think who’s in here complaining. A lot of it’s the big guys. Thank you Mr. President.”  

Snyder’s bill is single referenced to Judiciary, but has yet to be put on the committee’s calendar.

http://youtu.be/qyVHVux58y4
 

Fracking Waste: What Is It & What Do We Do About It

The natural gas boom continues to sound in what have become the northern gas fields of West Virginia. State lawmakers are working on ways to take maximum advantage of the economic benefits that are coming with it. The other byproduct authorities are grappling with is an excess of waste products, which, without proper disposal, can threaten public health.

The Horizontal Well Control Act of 2011 allocated funding to study the impacts of horizontal drilling. Legislators reached out to West Virginia University’s Water Research Institute. Director Paul Ziemkiewicz managed a study that looked at liquid and solid waste streams. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uO2XlXyhFTA

Liquid Waste

Horizontal wells produce two kinds of wastewater: flowback, and what’s referred to as “produced water.” Ziemkiewicz explains, once a well is fracked—meaning once operators take fracking fluid (5 million gallons of water mixed with sand and additives) and blast it deep into this hard, black, non-porous rock called Marcellus shale—the pressure is released and the first thing that happens is a regurgitation of some of that fluid.

“The stuff that comes out over the initial 60 days or so is called flowback,” Ziemkiewicz explains. “You have to get that flowback out of the system before you can start producing gas. You start producing a little bit of gas as soon as you release the pressure but when it gets to the point where you can start commercially producing gas you switch over to something called ‘produced water.'”

Ziemkiewicz goes on to explain that the longer the fracking fluid mingles with the rock formation the more stuff from that formation flows back out with the fluid like organic compounds, lots of salts, and yes, radioactive material.

“Sodium chloride, bromide, mainly chloride salts of one kind or another,” Ziemkiewicz says. “Strontium chloride, barium chloride. These things start pushing back up out of the hole and the concentration of those salts almost everything, including radioactivity starts to go up during the flowback cycle. So the longer you go into flowback and then produced water the higher the concentrations get.”

Ziemkiewicz  adds that while many people seemed to be very concerned with the initial fracking fluid being injected into the wells, he is much more concerned with the produced water that comes up afterward.

“The stuff that comes back out is almost always more concentrated,” he says.

Ziemkiewicz says in some cases this briny water produced a concentration of about 250,000 milligrams per liter of dissolved solids–which he explains is essentially 25 percent solid.

Where does it go from there?

Well Ziemkiewicz says about 25 percent of the fluid is pumped back into deep wells classified as injection waste disposal wells, while the other 75 percent of flowback is being recycled. That recycled portion has to be processed. Solids like clays, metals, and rock are filtered and precipitated out, leaving cakes behind. These cakes are then dumped into solid waste landfills, the same place that the mud and rock produced during the drilling process are dumped.  

Solid Waste

Under the Resource Conservation Recovery Act (RCRA) hazardous waste is differentiated from industrial solid waste based on tests that determine chemical properties. Interestingly, federal laws exempt drilling waste from regulation as hazardous waste. But the WV Department of Environmental Protection is proceeding with some caution, nevertheless.

Scott Mandirola Director of the DEP’s Division of Water and Waste Management explains horizontal well operators were just sort of spreading this waste on properties, or dumping it, burying it, whatever, wherever. By all estimations, a bad idea. The Horizontal Well Control Act of 2011 specified that instead the waste should be disposed of in appropriate landfills. That’s when municipal landfills started accepting the waste. And we’re talking about a lot of waste.

So DEP Cabinet Secretary Randy Huffman sent a memo out to solid waste landfill operators in July of last year saying that they could continue accepting waste if they took one of two actions: apply to expand their operation, or construct separate cells specifically for these waste products.

Bill Hughes is the chairman of the Wetzel County Solid Waste Authority. He’s concerned about new practices.

“Wetzel County which is legally permitted for up to 9,999 tons, round it off to 10, times 12, 120,000 tons per year? Our landfill last year took in about 330,000 tons. Of that, about a quarter million tons was drill waste, drill cuttings.”

Mandirola says Wetzel County—one of the most heavily drilled counties in the state—has seen one of the largest influxes of waste because of its proximity to so many well sites. This concerns residents for reasons such as the amount of space available in landfills, and also because there’s still so little known about the chemical characterization of the waste.

Enter Paul Ziemkiewicz, who, again, was tasked to look into that.

“I don’t think we’ve characterized this material adequately enough to determine whether or not it really belongs in solid waste landfills or whether it belongs in a higher standard landfill,” Ziemkiewicz says.

Ziemkiewicz did look at drilling mud. But he explains that a combination of bad luck, low response times from companies and the WV Department of Environmental Protection, bad weather, and an aggressive timeframe to report results contributed to the lack of access to drilling samples from the actual rock formation where Marcellus gas exists—the shale.  So unfortunately, it’s still something of a mystery.

“They’re black shales,” Ziemkiewicz explains. “And black shales tend to accumulate uranium. Uranium breaks down into radium.”

While Ziemkiewicz  wasn’t able to test drill muds from the Marcellus itself, he says the tests results from drilling samples of vertical sections turned up exceeding amounts of toxins considered safe by federal drinking water standards.

“Whether or not [comparing to federal drinking water standards] was the right approach I’m still not sure. Nevertheless, a lot of these drill cuttings and muds came out being well excess of drinking water standards.”

Recommendations

Ziemkiewicz is calling for an additional study to test these solid waste streams.

“By the time this stuff gets to the landfill and is diluted it may or may not even be a problem,” he says. “It may be that we’re focusing on radioactivity when that’s not a problem at all, but the real problem is organic contamination like benzene.”

Ziemkiewicz’s other recommendations include what he calls common sense measures like proper containment of drill sites to guard against spills, and thorough inspection and enforcement by well-trained authorities. He also suggests tracking liquid wastes to have clear knowledge of where it ends up.

Ziemkiewicz and other experts say it’s hard to predict the future of oil and gas development, but everyone seems certain that significantly more drilling is the most likely scenario, and therefore, more insight into the science and practices of the industry is the best course of action to safeguard not only communities, but also employees and first responders.

Study: Fracking requires more water than we thought

The Marcellus water resources and water footprint report takes a critical look at water-use data provided by natural gas drillers over the past couple years to the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection—data operators are required to provide under the Horizontal Well Control Act of 2011.

The study interprets that data as well as compares it to the data reported in Pennsylvania, where the gas industry is substantially more developed. The president of Morgantown-based environmental firm Downstream Strategies, Evan Hansen, began his explanation by showing an image of what once was a pit where waste fluid from a fractured hydraulic well used to be stored.

“This is a waste pit that’s located in West Virginia and you’ll notice that there’s no waste in it,” Hansen explained. “And that’s because it was recently pumped dry. And that plastic liner is being removed. The reason is that in this case the flowback fluid that was stored there was draining through cracks in the liner directly into the bedrock that underlies this pit and contaminating the drinking water aquifer.”

Hansen went on to explain that ground water monitoring data was collected before, during, and after development of the site. That data confirms pollution levels increased in the drinking water. He says it’s a cautionary tale that underscores the importance of diligent attention to water issues related to oil and gas development.

Wet Footprint

Hansen says there are about 2000 well sites in West Virginia and 9000 in Pennsylvania. He says the average Marcellus well in West Virginia injects about 5 million gallons of water into wells as fracking fluid. One of the key findings in the report is that “the amount of water used per well is higher than previously estimated for Marcellus Shale wells.”

“And by far most of the water comes from surface water—it’s about 81 percent—plus a portion of purchased water. That’s water purchased from local water utilities,” Hansen said.

Hansen found that 8 percent of the 5 million gallons that goes into each well comes back up. 

Flowback

Hansen says the DEP and industry should be applauded for adopting new recycling practices so about 75% of that flowback is now being reused. He says the remainder is disposed of in deep well injections.

“That’s important because every gallon of water that comes from reuse rather than withdrawal is protective of the environment,” Hansen said.

He added that tracking this waste water should continue to be a priority. West Virginia already sees 100-million gallons of waste water each year and PA, across the border where the industry is significantly more developed, sees nearly a billion gallons of waste each year.

Wet Footprint

Hansen’s report also indicates a need to improve data collection and reporting requirements. 

Hansen says one of his biggest concerns is that West Virginia’s state law only requires operators to report flowback water. It’s a different story in Pennsylvania where flowback only accounts for 38% of reported waste.

“In Pennsylvania, all types of waste are reported,” Hansen said. “And not only are all types of waste reported, they are reported every six months. So there’s a good, full accounting of the waste generated from Marcellus operations in Pennsylvania. It’s different in West Virginia.”

Operators in West Virginia are required to submit data once a year, but according to the study, only about a third comply. Moreover, errors in data submissions are common.

“Roughly one third of the data we found to be suspect and so we decided to eliminate it before we crunched our numbers because we wanted to be sure that the data that we used for our analysis was reliable.”

How much do we know about drilling horizontal wells?

The Horizontal Well Control Act of 2011 required studies be conducted to gain a more profound understanding of all that's entailed in the natural gas…

The Horizontal Well Control Act of 2011 required studies be conducted to gain a more profound understanding of all that’s entailed in the natural gas drilling that’s sweeping northern West Virginia. Those reports are coming due, and legislators are hearing from scientists who have been looking into the matter.

Two major reports are being discussed in Charleston this week. One looks at air and noise pollution, while another considers water use related to Horizontal Well drilling.

1. Air and Noise

Michael McCawley is the interim chairman of the Department of Occupational and Environmental Health from the School of Public Health at West Virginia University. He presented recommendations based on the air, noise, and light study he published this summer.

McCawley says the major surprise his study revealed were copious amounts of benzene detected by his air monitors. The monitors were set up at the current legal “set-back distance” of 625 feet from the center of drilling pads. His report notes that at one site, benzene levels were detected of up to 85 parts per billion. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health recommends workers regularly exposed to 100 parts per billion wear respiratory protection.

So why worry about benzene? Substantial quantities of epidemiologic, clinical, and laboratory data link benzene to aplastic anemia, acute leukemia, and bone marrow abnormalities.

“Now we suspect that the benzene may be coming, in fact, from the diesel engines because a lot of the fracking sites have a lot of truck traffic going in and out of them. And also during the actually fracking itself there are a number of diesel engines that are sitting in the pad being run at high rates,” McCawley says.

Based on his findings, McCawley made suggestions to lawmakers this week.

Control the emissions.

McCawley says the current required “set-back distance” is a regulation that should be abandoned. The aim of the rule was to protect people in the vicinity from exposure, but he says an arbitrary number won’t achieve that given the variability of topography and considering that pollution doesn’t always come from the center of the pad. 

To protect not only people within the vicinity but also workers on site from harmful emissions, McCawley submits that monitoring real-time emissions is likely the smartest, most effective tool to employ. Especially around sensitive areas like houses, hospitals, schools, monitoring would allow high levels of pollutants to be addressed immediately by the people controlling the operation.

Control the noise.

“We were seeing short term exposures exceeding 100 decibels around some of these sites. 100 decibels is kind of the level of a rock band. You don’t want a rock band outside your bedroom window. Although the long term exposures were below 70 db on average for the sampling period that we saw, there were levels that exceeded 70 db for brief periods of time. But those brief periods of time can be a concern particularly if they’re disturbing sleep or if they’re really loud.”

An expert in public health, McCawley explains that 55 decibels is enough to interrupt sleep which, in turn, could result in hypertension, or high blood pressure—already endemic in the state, especially in the northern panhandle.

He says noise pollution needs to be taken into account when constructing these sites, and also when considering the traffic patterns to and from them.

2. Water use

Water use is another area of concerns for legislators. Evan Hansen, president of Downstream Strategies, conducted a study on water use in hydraulic fracturing operations in and around the state. He and his colleagues set out to analyze water-use data provided by natural gas drillers to the Department of Environmental Protection—data operators are required to provide as per the 2011 law.

Hansen says, the average Marcellus well in WV injects about 5 million gallons of water into wells as fracking fluid. 8 percent of that comes back up. He says the DEP and industry should be applauded for adopting new recycling practices as about 75% of that flowback is now being reused. He says the remainder is disposed of in deep well injections.

“Even though about 3/4 of the flowback water is being reused and recycled, which is great, that’s only substituting for 10 percent of the water withdrawls. So while great progress has been made in the areas of recycling, that’s not taking care of the vast quantities of water that still need to be withdrawn from WV streams.”

Hansen adds that tracking this waste water should continue to be a priority. WV already sees 100-million gallons of waste water each year and in PA, across the border where the industry is significantly more developed, they see nearly a billion gallons of waste. Each year.

Hansen also sees several areas of improvement, regarding data collection and reporting requirements. 

  • Fix mistakes identified in the database, and make data entry less error-prone to prevent future mistakes
  • Ensure data gets reported completely and within appropriate timeframes
  • Make data available and searchable online so that researchers and public have access
  • Streamline the efforts of DEP offices of Oil and Gas and Water Management regarding wastewater

Hansen says his biggest concern is that WV law only requires operators to report flowback water. It’s a different story in PA where flowback water only accounts for 38% of reported waste.

“In WV, because only flowback fluid is reported, and the other types of waste are not reported, we still don’t really have a handle on how much waste is being generated and where it’s going. So we’re still operating with some uncertainty about what’s going on in the real world and that’s not a great place to be if you’re trying to get the right policies in place to protect water resources,” Hansen says.

Hansen says his report will be made available on the 30th of October. That day he will also conduct an online webinar explaining his finding that is open to the public.

 

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