An Ohio State University led study has pinpointed the likely source of most natural gas contamination in drinking-water wells associated with hydraulic fracturing as the walls of the gas well and their well casing seal to the ground.
It's not the source many people may have feared and, if the press can get its facts - truth - and integrity act together, the news should enable the natural gas industry, the state regulators and well engineers an opportunity to solve the public's anti fracking issue with real results for much improved water well protection.
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The problem should be fixable with improved construction standards for cement well linings and metal well casings at hydraulic fracturing sites.
The team was led by a researcher at The Ohio State University and composed of researchers at Duke, Stanford, Dartmouth, and the University of Rochester. The team devised a new method of geochemical forensics to trace how methane migrates under the earth. The study identified eight clusters of contaminated drinking-water wells in Pennsylvania and Texas.
Natural Gas Migration by Well Casing to Aquifer Graphic. As researchers study hydraulic fracturing, a team led by Thomas Darrah at Ohio State University has identified a key source of groundwater contamination (labeled 5, center right) caused by faulty well casings. Image Credit: Courtesy of Thomas Darrah, Ohio State University. Click image for the largest view.
Most important among their findings, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is that neither horizontal drilling nor hydraulic fracturing of shale deposits seems to have caused any of the natural gas contamination. This will not come as much of a surprise to those in the industry and mechanical engineers.
Study leader Thomas Darrah, assistant professor of earth sciences at Ohio State said, "There is no question that in many instances elevated levels of natural gas are naturally occurring, but in a subset of cases, there is also clear evidence that there were human causes for the contamination. However our data suggests that where contamination occurs, it was caused by poor casing and cementing in the wells."
Robert Poreda, professor of geochemistry at the University of Rochester explained, "Many of the leaks probably occur when natural gas travels up the outside of the borehole, potentially even thousands of feet, and is released directly into drinking-water aquifers."
Avner Vengosh, professor of geochemistry and water quality at Duke said, "These results appear to rule out the migration of methane up into drinking water aquifers from depth because of horizontal drilling or hydraulic fracturing, as some people feared."
Robert B. Jackson, professor of environmental and earth sciences at Stanford and Duke pointed out, "In some cases homeowner's water has been harmed by drilling. In Texas, we even saw two homes go from clean to contaminated after our sampling began."
"This is relatively good news because it means that most of the issues we have identified can potentially be avoided by future improvements in well integrity," Darrah said.
In hydraulic fracturing, water is pumped underground to break up shale at a depth far below the water table, he explained. The long vertical pipes that carry the resulting gas upward are encircled in cement to keep the natural gas from leaking out along the well. The study suggests the natural gas that has leaked into aquifers is the result of failures in the cement used in building the well.
The method that the researchers used to track the source of methane contamination relies on the basic physics of the noble gases (which happen to leak out along with the methane). Noble gases such as helium and neon are so called because they don't react much with other chemicals, although they mix with natural gas and can be transported with it.
That means that when they are released underground, they can flow long distances without getting waylaid by microbial activity or chemical reactions along the way. The only important variable is the atomic mass, which determines how the ratios of noble gases change as they tag along with migrating natural gas. These properties allow the researchers to determine the source of fugitive methane and the mechanism by which it was transported into drinking water aquifers.
The researchers were able to distinguish between the signatures of naturally occurring methane and stray gas contamination from shale gas drill sites overlying the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania and the Barnett shale in Texas.
The researchers sampled water from the sites in 2012 and 2013. Sampling sites included wells where contamination had been debated previously; wells known to have naturally high level of methane and salts, which tend to co-occur in areas overlying shale gas deposits; and wells located both within and beyond a one-kilometer distance from drill sites.
As hydraulic fracturing starts to develop around the globe, including the countries of South Africa, Argentina, China, Poland, Scotland, and Ireland, Darrah and his colleagues are continuing their work in the United States and internationally. And, since the method that the researchers employed relies on the basic physics of the noble gases, it can be employed anywhere. Their hope is that their findings can help highlight the necessity to improve well integrity.
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The team's hope isn't misplaced. While the anti-fracking crowd can go home now, they probably won't. There will be new players on the field soon; the trial lawyers will be after the well drilling contractors to pony up for the wells where natural gas is spoiling the water wells.
The story isn't over, but the hydraulic fracking is not the problem, allowing most well location landowners, most of the natural gas industry, and all of us consumers a great sigh of relief. The problems will get worked out.
By Brian Westenhaus
(Source: www.newenergyandfuel.com)
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Brian is the editor of the popular energy technology site New Energy and Fuel. The site’s mission is to inform, stimulate, amuse and abuse the… More
Comments
And it is as one would have assumed - fracking can be done right but often isn't - it is done by humans looking for profit. Regulators that do their job can lesson how many times the frackers fuck up but not eliminate it. Look at the gulf of Mexico or Fukushima on how regulators let private energy interests fuck up big time. Granted fracking wells will affect only small communities but there will be so many more fracking wells that need to be drilled because of the rapidly declining rates of production. So many more that can be (and some surely will) done poorly so that they leak methane and such into the ground water.
Frankly, the results of the study are what I have thought for some time, but with one exception. The little ole abandoned well sitting off to the side of their graphic is not necessarily an extraneous, innocent bystander in and around shale plays.
Older wells, more shallow than fracking wells, are often used for injecting contaminated water left over from multiple "well completion" cycles involving millions of gallons of water per well. These older wells, or new ones of similar depth, are intertwined with the the hydraulic fracturing enterprise in a great many shale operations.
I ask, why were injection wells omitted from the article? As it is, the article winds up with this dig at the opposition: "While the anti-fracking crowd can go home now, they probably won’t."
I detect a little money-making bias in the article.
Yes, it's amazing that the industry would acknowledge the problem and produce an effective solution, unlike the feds who never do anything wrong and therefore never need to admit anything, right? There will always be those looking for shortcuts and maximum profits at the expense of safety. I just don't understand why so many folks think that "Moar government!" is the solution...
Green goombas never make a mistake, never hurt anyone, never need to say they're sorry. And if they do, they had the best of intentions. When intentions are pure, facts don't matter.
When electrical contractors don't do their job right, faulty wiring can cause disastrous fires. I guess we should give up on electricity - it's too dangerous.
The government can step in and revoke the contractor’s license (boo hoo.)
However, the privately owned insurance companies can bankrupt the contractor. (as they should) and compensate the owner.
So, who compensates the homeowner who can’t drink the water?