There has been a lot of discussion lately about the demand on groundwater from its use to hydraulically fracture wells, and possible contamination of wells by hydraulic fracturing and improper completion of wells.
Air Products and Chemicals is promoting the use of nitrogen foam instead of water in fracking in shallower formations.
http://www.cryogas.com/pdf/Link_Nitrogen%20Fracs_Water_Air%20Products.pdf
A recent article in the New York Times highlights the difference between “oil,” or “owal” as we say in Texas, and the heavy crude oil mined from Canadian tar sands. A major waste product of that mining is coke. The tarry substance mined in Canada goes through an initial refining process to separate the crude from tarlike bitumen, caled “coking.” The tarry solid left from the process is called coke. It can be burned, and is an essential ingredient in making steel. The coke created from Canadian tar sands has a high sulfur content. Some of the Canadian tar sands are now being coked in a refinery in Detroit owned by Marathon Petroleum, and the coke by-product is sold to Koch Carbon, owned by Charles and David Koch. (I’m not making this up.) The Koch brothers have recently been in the news for considering an offer to buy the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune. They are also famous for supporting conservative and libertarian political causes.
Here is the picture from the NYT article showing the stockpile of coke along the Detroit River belonging to the Kochs:
The crude oil generated by the coking process is the oil that is supposed to go through the Keystone pipeline running from Canada to the Texas coast, if that pipeline ever gets regulatory approval. According to the NYT article, Canada has 79.8 million tons of coke stockpiled. Efforts are underway to export Canadian coke to China and Mexico as a fuel. California, which also produces heavy crude that has to be coked, exports about 128,000 barrels of coke per day, mostly to China. The EPA does not permit it to be burned in the US. The Oxbow Corporation, owned by William I. Koch (a brother of David and Charles), is one of the world’s larges dealers in petroleum coke, selling about 11 million tons a year.
The US Environmental Protection Agency has recently issued its report on greenhouse gas emissions under its Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, which for the first time includes comprehensive reported emissions from the petroleum industry. The report covers 8,000 facilities in nine industry sectors for 2011, and total reported emissions were 3.3 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e). Total reported emissions of CO2e from petroleum and natural gas systems were 225 million metric tons CO2e.
“CO2e” is a way to compare the global-warming potential of different greenhouse gases – their potential to trap heat in the atmosphere — by converting their emissions to the equivalent global-warming potential of carbon dioxide. Greenhouse gasses include carbon dioxide, methane (natural gas), nitrous oxide, and flourinated gases. Each of those gases has a CO2e. The CO2e of carbon dioxide is “1”. The CO2e of methane, the principal greenhouse gas emitted by the petroleum industry, is 19.1, meaning that one ton of methane has the same global-warming potential of 19.1 tons of CO2. (One ton of methane equals about 48,700 cubic feet.) The debate over whether natural gas is actually less harmful to the environment than coal involves, in part, the question whether the global-warming potential of methane leaked into the atmosphere offsets the fact that burning methane emits less carbon dioxide than burning coal. Because leaking one ton of methane has the same effect as emitting 19.1 tons of carbon dioxide, the facts concerning leaks of methane are important to that debate.
By far the largest industry sector accounting for total CO2e emissions is the power generation industry, which accounted for 67% of the total reported emissions in 2011. By contrast, the petroleum and natural gas system sector accounted for less than 7% of total emissions:
The E&P industry is continuing to face public criticism of its use of fresh groundwater in fracing wells and its failure to disclose the chemicals added to frac water.
On February 5, the Investor Environmental Health Network (IEHN) issued a press release announcing that shareholders have filed resolutions with Cabot O&G, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, EOG Resources, ONEOK, Pioneer Natural Resources, Spectra Energy, Range Resources and Ulta Petroleum challenging the companies “to quantifiably measure and reduce environmental and societal impacts” of their exploration activities. The resolutions focus on water issues, asking the companies to disclose the amount and sources of water used, how they track and measure naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) in frac water, whether and to what extent the companies use closed-loop systems in handling frac water, and what efforts are being made to reduce the amount of fresh water used. Shareholder proposals were filed by Calver Investments, Green Century Capital Management, the New York City Office of the Comptroller, the New York State Common Retirement Fund, the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia, and Trillium Asset Management. IEHN and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility published a report in 2011, “Extracting the Facts: an investor guide to disclosing risks from hydraulic fracturing,” intended to list and encourage best risk management practices by E&P companies, including reducing and disclosing all toxic chemicals, minimizing fresh water use by substituting non-potable sources, and using closed-loop systems to store waste waters.
Last week, New York Comptroller Thomas DiNapoly announced that the state’s pension fund had reached an agreement with Cabot O&G to disclose its practices for minimizing the use of toxic chemicals in frac fluids. DiNapoli withdrew his shareholder proposal submitted for Cabot’s upcoming proxy statement. DeNapoli has negotiated similar agreements with Hess, Range Resources and SM Energy.
A client recently suggested that I should write about landfarming – the practice of disposing of drilling mud and cuttings by spreading it over land.
Drilling mud is the common term for the fluid used in the process of drilling a well. It is made up of a mixture of clay (bentonite) in a base of either water, diesel or mineral oil. It also contains an organic material such as lignite to stabilize the slurry and a material such as barite to increase its density. The drilling mud is circulated through the wellbore – pumped down the inside of the drill stem, through the drill bit, and up the outside or annulus of the hole as the well is being drilled. The drilling fluid carries the cuttings made by the drill bit back up and out of the hole, and it helps to cool the drill bit. The clay also coats the outside of the open hole to help seal off porous geologic strata. The drilling fluid is circulated through a pit or tank, where the cuttings settle out, and re-injected into the hole. Usually an earthen “reserve pit” is constructed for this purpose.
The actual content of drilling mud varies with conditions in the hole and the formations being drilled. In the Eagle Ford, for example, water-based mud is typically used for the vertical section of the hole, and oil-based mud is used for the horizontal section.
FrackNation is a documentary by Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney, journalists from Ireland, in response to Josh Fox’s Gasland. It recently premiered in several locations and now can be seen on Mark Cuban’s cable channel AXS. I watched it this week, and it can be seen again on AXS February 2 at 2:30 pm Eastern time. It is worth watching and has received favorable reviews.
McAleer and McElhinney have previously done documentaries on global warming (Not Evil Just Wrong) and gold mining in Romania (Mine Your Own Business) that challenge conventional wisdom on environmental topics. McAleer got the idea for this new film when he confronted Josh Fox at a press conference in Chicago about scenes in Gasland showing tap water being lit on fire. McAleer pointed out that natural gas has been in well water long before the boom in hydraulic fracturing in Pennsylvania.
McAleer and McElhinney got their funding from Kickstarter, where 3,305 backers donated $212,000 to back the movie. (They’re all listed in the movie credits.)
The University of Texas’ Burear of Economic Geology has issued a draft report updating an earlier report on water use by the oil and gas industry in Texas. Among its conclusions: Movement of shale plays into oil-rich areas of the Eagle Ford and West Texas’s Permian Basin have resulted in increased use of brackish water for frac’ing, improvement in reuse technologies, and lower fresh water consumption, but also more demand on groundwater in regions of South and West Texas.
Some excerpts:
In the Eagle Ford, although the number of wells completed has increased rapidly, the intensity of water us (gallons per foot of completed interval) has decreased almost in half in four years. The report attributes this decreas in intensity to higher use of “gel” fracs that can carry proppant with much less water. Water use is significantly higher in the down-dip gas window of the play (as high as 1400 gal/ft) vs. the oil window (800 gal/ft). Here are graphs from the draft report about the Eagle Ford’s water use:
News items of interest:
The University of Pennsylvania’s Center of Excllence in Environmental Toxicology has organized a group of researchers from UPa, Columbia, Johns Hopkins and the University of North Carolina to study whether the drilling in the Marcellus Shale play is hazardous to human health.
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/21/taking-a-harder-look-at-fracking-and-health/
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is scheduled to decide whether the Lesser Prairie Chicken should be listed as an endangered species. Its Texas habitat is in the Panhandle and West Texas.
The bird’s habitat extends into Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas and Oklahoma:
The listing could have an adverse impact on oil and gas exploration and wind energy projects in the habitat area. David P. Smith, an environmental lawyer with my firm and expert on oil and gas exploration in endangered habitats, was quoted in the Texas Tribune as saying that the Obama administration faces the challenge of deciding between two green priorities — endangered species and wind power.
The Texas Groundwater Protection Committee has a new website that provides a wealth of information and links for those interested in groundwater resources and regulation in Texas. The Committee was created by the Texas Legislature in 1989 to provide coordination among nine state agencies that deal with groundwater: the Texas Water Development Board, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the Texas Railroad Commission, the Department of State Health Services, the Texas Department of Agriculture, the Texas State Soil and Water Conservation Board, the Texas Alliance of Groundwater Districts, Texas A&M AgriLife Research, the Bureau of Economic Geology, and the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation. The TGPC’s website provides helpful links to maps of Texas aquifers, groundwater management areas and groundwater conservation districts, regulations covering drilling of water wells, groundwater conservation and contamination, injection and disposal wells, and classroom resources. Bookmark this site.
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