Transcript Saturday, April 24, 2012 Urban Ecology, Springfield College

Injection Wells in the News
• Do they pollute
drinking water?
• Do they cause
earthquakes?
•
•
•
•
•
•
NPR April 11 and 12
Nature
Rolling Stone Magazine
The Atlantic
New York Times
Bloomberg
Injection,
Not Fracking
110 feet deep
CASVU FILO SWD #1
well injects into deep
naturally-fractured
Arbuckle Formation. No
waste water is produced
to the surface.
Woodford, 3000
feet deep
Arbuckle, 4500
feet deep
Do They Pollute Drinking Water?
FILO SWD #1
Problems have been seen • Injection at 4500 feet
• Drinking water at 110 feet
with older wells used as
• Full-time sensors and
injection wells where
automated shut-down valves
casing breaks cause leaks
to prevent foreign material,
into aquifers or spills onto
contaminated water, or
the surface.
industrial wastes, from
entering into the facility.
Matter of scale: How much waste water is
being generated and where should it go?
• Chesapeake Energy estimates that it
uses about 5 million gallons of water
per shale well.
• Typical Garvin County well produces
100 times as much waste water as oil.
Oil and Gas Operators Need
Safe, Deep Injection Wells
Matter of scale: How much waste water is
being generated and where should it go?
Bbl per day?
86,500 permitted
5,300 actual in 2010
Can we picture 1000
anything?
30,000 Barrels of Waste Water
per DAY 30 x 1000
• Where do you
want 30 to 90
thousand
barrels of waste
water going
everyday?
Comparison of Oklahoma’s and Ohio’s
Deep Water Injection Regulations
Ohio
Oklahoma
Requires a review of existing geologic
data for known faulted areas within the
state and avoid the locating of new Class
II disposal wells within these areas;
Required
Requires a complete suite of geophysical
Required
logs (including, at a minimum, gamma ray,
compensated density-neutron, and
resistivity logs) to be run on newly drilled
Class II disposal wells
Requires operators to plug back with
cement, prior to injection, any well drilled
in Precambrian basement rock for testing
purposes.
Not applicable; FILO SWD #1 well will not
penetrate to basement.
Comparison of Oklahoma’s and Ohio’s
Deep Water Injection Regulations
Ohio
Oklahoma
Requires the submission, at time of
permit application, of any information
available concerning the existence of
known geological faults within a specified
distance of the proposed well location,
and submission of a plan for monitoring
any seismic activity that may occur;
CAVU will shoot 3D seismic over the area
and submit maps to the OCC prior to
injection.
CAVU will install full-time seismic
monitors at the well-site.
Requires a measurement or calculation of Required.
original downhole reservoir pressure prior
to initial injection;
Requires the installation of a continuous
pressure monitoring system, with results
being electronically available to ODNR for
review;
Required.
Comparison of Oklahoma’s and Ohio’s
Deep Water Injection Regulations
Ohio
Oklahoma
Requires the installation of an automatic
shut-off system set to operate if the fluid
injection pressure exceeds a maximum
pressure to be set by ODNR;
FILO SWD #1 will have full-time
automated sensors and shut-down
valves to prevent injection of illegal,
possibly hazardous wastes.
Requires the installation of an electronic
data recording system for purposes of
tracking all fluids brought by a brine
transporter for injection;
Not applicable, all deliveries are
manifested, recorded, and reported to
OCC.
Summary of Potential Risks to
Groundwater
•
•
•
•
•
New well; new casing, adequate cement
Great depth relative to area aquifers
Meets and exceeds all regulations
Automated sensors in the delivery stream
Automatic shut-down valves to keep illegal
material out of the system
• Full-time seismic monitors at the well-site
Earthquakes
Natural
Caused by tectonic forces
(CA, MO, SC)
Man-made
6.4 fold increase in M>3 EQ
per year since 1970
Dams
Liquid
Injection
Groundwater
withdrawal
Fracking
Earthquakes in Eola Field,
Garvin County, 1/17/11 – 1/18/11
3
2.5
Magnitude 1.0 to 3.0
Not felt except by a very few
under especially favorable
conditions.
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43
Controversies in the News
• “Experts: Oklahoma Earthquakes Too Powerful to be
Manmade”
Boston.com News, November 11, 2011
• The USGS scientists aren't willing to draw the causal
connection between fracking and earthquakes. "While the
seismicity rate changes described here are almost certainly
manmade, it remains to be determined how they are related
to either changes in extraction methodologies or the rate of
oil and gas production," they conclude.
The Atlantic, April 6, 2012
Historical Examples of Earthquakes
Related to Injections of Fluids.
Location
Magnitude Circumstances
Gavin County, OK
1.0 – 2.8 * (see bar chart)
Fort Worth Basin, Texas
1.3 to 3.3
Lancashire, UK
1.5 – 2.3
Germany
1.4
200 cu m3
Basel, Switzerland
3.4
11,600 cu m3
Cooper Basin, Australia
3.7
20,000 cu m3
Youngstown, OH
4.0
Cogdell Field, Texas
4.6
N. Central Arkansas
4.7
Rocky Mtn Arsenal, CO
5.5
8,900 cu m3 (56,000 bbl)
631,000 cu m3
Earthquakes can happen with injection
wells but they can be mitigated.
• Scientists develop way to forecast worst-case tremor
scenario.
• “Researchers now say that they can calculate the highest
magnitude earthquake that such an operation could induce
— though it won't determine the likelihood of a quake
occurring.”
•
•
Arthur McGarr, a geologist at the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California
American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, California. December 2011
09 December 2011, Nature, International Weekly Journal of Science
Arbuckle is over 500 feet
thick; this single zone can
hold almost 250 million
bbls of water per square
mile.
Location
of
FILO SWD #1
?
Formation does not have to
be made or augmented by
high-pressure hydrofracturing.
The water freely moves
laterally so that the zone
never fills up and the
subsurface movement of
water serves to suck more
waste water into the well.
Going to use high
pump pressures!
FILO
SW#1 is
NOT!
Associated with
fracking!
Near drinking
water (4500-110
feet)!
In Conclusion:
• Safety – Recognize that groundwater and
earthquake hazards do exist at low level.
• Monitoring – Fluids monitored full-time for
contaminants and safe level of injection
pressure.
• Added volunteer monitoring of seismic
activity.