7 ms·

Waste Water from Oil Fracking Injected into Clean Aquifers

145 points by dismal2 12y ago

melling 12y ago
I can't actually get the article on my iPhone. I keep getting spammed or redirected to another ad page or to download an app.
- elorant 12y ago
  Try the printed version: http://www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?expire=&title=Waste+Water+from+Oil+Fracking+Injected+into+Clean+Aquifers+|+NBC+Bay+Area&urlID=534261522&action=cpt&partnerID=1127095&cid=282733051&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nbcbayarea.com%2Finvestigations%2FWaste-Water-from-Oil-Fracking-Injected-into-Clean-Aquifers-282733051.html http://www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?expire=&title=W...
jdhawk 12y ago
As a part of the Oil and Gas industry, I find this inexcusable. The industry is going to be a part of international energy picture for the long-term, and there are "environmentally responsible" ways to economically produce O&G. These corner cutting idiotic antics hurt the image of the whole industry, and are becoming more common. Sadly, with the size of the industry, the demand for the product, and the desire to keep the price low, its difficult to oversee every action.
- sp332 12y ago
  This probably isn't what you meant, but it sounds like you're saying that the industry is making the industry look bad.
  - codyb 12y ago
    I think he's saying that the corner cutters which are part of the industry make the whole industry look bad.
    - alexqgb 12y ago
      Except the industry as a whole makes itself look bad when it opposes the kind of (admittedly brutal) regulation that would terrify the corner-cutters out of existence. The degree of recklessness and criminality at the fringes of an industry is directly proportional to the contempt in which the public is held by those at the center. If the "leaders" are continually pushing the limits (e.g. BP), it's not surprising when the more marginal players overshoot them entirely. This is doubly true when the same "leaders" have spent more than a decade lavishly financing a public disinformation campaign (read: systematic lying) to downplay the environmental safety risks of their product, while twisting the arms of any elected officials who dare stand in their way. And remember, "standing in their way" goes beyond the imposition of effective health and safety regulations. It also includes efforts to curtail enormous public subsidies for what would remain an exceedingly profitable business with no subsidies at all. It's like a Gambino family shakedown run by people with the political clout of the U.S. military. It's true, stuff like the (potential) destruction of aquifers does make the industry as a whole look bad. But if the OP thinks this represents the extent of the PR problems faced by the oil and gas industries, he needs to start paying much closer attention to the political agenda of the business in which he makes a living. It's...not pretty. The best thing we could do with our oil and gas resources is to use the amount we can safely burn to make the massive infrastructure changes that a sustainably low-carbon economy will need, then write off the balance of the planet's known reserves, and peacefully and voluntary close up shop once the transition is complete.
      - saryant 12y ago
        Long before Deepwater, BP was known for its shoddy safety standards by the other supermajors. They were the butt of many jokes within the industry.
        sp332 12y ago
        Definitely a case of the industry making itself look bad! The Minerals Management Service kept giving Transocean (who built the Deepwater Horizon rig) safety awards. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_explosion#Transocean_safety_record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_explosion#Tr...
- melling 12y ago
  "We're sorry for any inconvenience and we regret..." Someone should have to pay for this. If the standard excuse is all you need, there's always going to be someone who is simply going to do the same thing.
  - thrownaway2424 12y ago
    Right, that's the fundamental problem with free-market idealism. There is not an effective limit to the damage that can be done, but there are limits to liability. Many industries are capable of committing environmental destruction on large scales, but don't have any assets when the EPA comes around looking for restitution.
    - sp332 12y ago
      I don't see what the free market has to do with this. In a free market, or really any system that has property rights at all, you can't take or destroy someone's property without their permission. Edit: by "can't" I mean it's not allowed - it's a crime. Not that you physically can't.
      - rosser 12y ago
        Tell me again how property rights prevented this from happening.
        sp332 12y ago
        The industry is already regulated, and companies are ignoring the regulations. This isn't even an approximation to a free market, let alone some ideal. Adding more regulations isn't going to help if they're not enforced.
        anigbrowl 12y ago
        But how are the companies ignoring the regulations here? It appears that state permits were granted to drill and use these injection wells ~25-30 years ago and that the owner/operators have been fully compliant with regulations - if anything, the failure in this case was a regulatory one, for granting permits that should not have been issued in the first place.
- refurb 12y ago
  I'd love to know who was responsible for this. The state seems to be taking the blame: "State officials allowed oil and gas companies to pump nearly three billion gallons of waste water into underground aquifers that could have been used for drinking water or irrigation." It looks like the company applied to drill the injection well and the state said "yeah, that's fine".
- angersock 12y ago
  The problem with the cost-cutting mindset is that it often allows for actions that seem really counter-intuitive. A friend of mine was spec'ing out some pumps for an off-shore platform, and they were rentals. Turned out renting was like thousands a day or some similarly absurd number. Company ended up renting like twice as many pumps, just in case they needed them for redundancy. It literally made more sense to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for pumps that sat around and did nothing just to make damned-sure a multi-million dollar rig never sat idle. So, when we hear that there is too much complexity in, say, making sure nobody is drinking from wells within a mile of where the stuff is being injected, we look askance. O&G is full of money and talented engineers, so I doubt that this is a problem we can't overcome.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  Who is it you think was cutting corners here? I mean, it's not good, but we seem to be talking about some wells that were incrrectly permitted back during the Reagan/Bush41 era. I didn't get the sense of anyone deliberately flouting regulations here.
Istof 12y ago
The life expectancy of average folks was getting too high
clumsysmurf 12y ago
Some wisdom from Mexico: http://www.propublica.org/article/message-from-mexico-u.s.-is-polluting-water-it-may-someday-need-to-drink http://www.propublica.org/article/message-from-mexico-u.s.-i...
anigbrowl 12y ago
A worthy report, but some valuable context is buried near the end of the article/TV news report. “We are still comparing the testing of what was the injection water to what is the tested water that came out of these wells to find out if they were background levels or whether that’s the result of oil and gas operation, but so far it’s looking like it’s background,” said James Marshall from the California Department of Conservation. So it seems as if no actual contamination of the aquifer has taken place so far - not an excuse, but far from the environmental disaster you might have imagined when you heard about 3 billion gallons of waste water. When asked how this could happen in the first place, Marshall said that the long history of these wells makes it difficult to know exactly what the thinking was. “When you’re talking about wells that were permitted in 1985 to 1992, we’ve tried to go back and talk to some of the permitting engineers,” said Marshall. “And it’s unfortunate but in some cases they (the permitting engineers) are deceased.” Again not an excuse, but when you learn that these injection sites were permitted 20-30 years ago (at a time of lesser technological and environmental awareness, as well as of lower population and land usage intensity), then it's not so surprising that some bad decisions could have taken place. On the plus side, the fact that the injection wells have been in use for oil exploration for so long and contamination actually seems to be quite limited suggests that halting further injection and carefully monitoring the surrounding wells may be sufficient. In other words, an unjustifiable risk but one that seems to have been identified and halted prior to a serious failure.
- devb 12y ago
  Marshall followed up with “But when those (further) test results come back, we’ll know for sure”. I think your assessment of the situation is premature at best. In any case, the tone for the statements by Marshall that you quoted were, to me, set with this earlier one: “There have been past issues where permits were issued to operators that they shouldn’t be injecting into those zones and so we’re fixing that,” Could this guy be any more wishy washy?
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    Hence my use of the word 'seems'. I don't think you can conclude much about someone's tone from a heavily edited TV news report where people's explanations are chopped up into single sentences.
fataliss 12y ago
This is a shame. But as usual, people start caring about environment very late. They should have had that in mind right off the bat when they started using this technology.Sadly back in those days all was going good, nobody cared. Now when it becomes critical, suddenly people start getting scared. Well, too late guys. How many screw up we will need to stop being late?
- refurb 12y ago
  Did anyone read the article? The state gave the company permission to do the well injection of waste. The state screwed up!
  - Ygg2 12y ago
    And I'd bet the oil companies lobbied for 'deep' aquifers to be deemed usable for fracking.
    - refurb 12y ago
      Massive conspiracy! I think you overestimate the impact of lobbying.
arca_vorago 12y ago
From another comment in a thread last week about the same subject: "I'm currently working in the industry in the Permian Basin area (Texas/New Mexico) and can say that my main concern is environmental. With the fracking operations, you get a huge load of oil, saltwater, and sand/crud/junk/chemicals. They truck them to a SWD disposal facility (my company does PLC's and controls etc for these) which then separate the oil out. The problem is that, at most of the SWD disposal places I have been too, disposal consists of pumping the junk/crud/chemical water straight back into the ground. They say they drill below the Ogallalah aquifer, but what if they don't? Having actually been a contractor for one of the bigger public oil companies, I can just say I don't really trust them to do things like that properly, and my guess is that within a few years we will find out, oh shit, "Someone poisoned the water hole". That's when T. Boone Pickens will unleash his high-priced water. I don't thing people realize how close the south is to major water shortages and is vulnerable to a drought. Hopefully this upcoming winter will help offset some of that."
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
eyeareque 12y ago
Why in the world would it ever be okay to inject contaminated waste water into the ground? That sounds just plain stupid.
- cnvogel 12y ago
  Oh, but that's the whole idea of fracking. You inject (not necessarily polluted on purpose from the start, but it will be at some point if reused a few times) water under high pressure into the ground to break up sediment, releasing a mineral resource. Often: Natural gas, or some sludge high in oil content. Sometimes also done for certain metals, then it's called "in situ leach". Problem is: At some point you'll have accumulated just too much polluted water than what you could reasonably store as barrels stacked up in your parking lot, or just dump into a nearby lake or river. The amount of waste generated it not really surprising, probably one should have considered this environmental impact before allowing companies to start these operations.
ryandrake 12y ago
I must have missed the memo on the terminology change. So, now, waste is "injected" into the environment, not "dumped"? Guess that does sound better.
- kaybe 12y ago
  It's obviously a different process.

145 points by dismal2 12y ago

I can't actually get the article on my iPhone. I keep getting spammed or redirected to another ad page or to download an app.

elorant 12y ago
Try the printed version: http://www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?expire=&title=Waste+Water+from+Oil+Fracking+Injected+into+Clean+Aquifers+|+NBC+Bay+Area&urlID=534261522&action=cpt&partnerID=1127095&cid=282733051&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nbcbayarea.com%2Finvestigations%2FWaste-Water-from-Oil-Fracking-Injected-into-Clean-Aquifers-282733051.html http://www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?expire=&title=W...

jdhawk 12y ago

As a part of the Oil and Gas industry, I find this inexcusable. The industry is going to be a part of international energy picture for the long-term, and there are "environmentally responsible" ways to economically produce O&G. These corner cutting idiotic antics hurt the image of the whole industry, and are becoming more common. Sadly, with the size of the industry, the demand for the product, and the desire to keep the price low, its difficult to oversee every action.

sp332 12y ago
This probably isn't what you meant, but it sounds like you're saying that the industry is making the industry look bad.
- codyb 12y ago
  I think he's saying that the corner cutters which are part of the industry make the whole industry look bad.
  - alexqgb 12y ago
    Except the industry as a whole makes itself look bad when it opposes the kind of (admittedly brutal) regulation that would terrify the corner-cutters out of existence. The degree of recklessness and criminality at the fringes of an industry is directly proportional to the contempt in which the public is held by those at the center. If the "leaders" are continually pushing the limits (e.g. BP), it's not surprising when the more marginal players overshoot them entirely. This is doubly true when the same "leaders" have spent more than a decade lavishly financing a public disinformation campaign (read: systematic lying) to downplay the environmental safety risks of their product, while twisting the arms of any elected officials who dare stand in their way. And remember, "standing in their way" goes beyond the imposition of effective health and safety regulations. It also includes efforts to curtail enormous public subsidies for what would remain an exceedingly profitable business with no subsidies at all. It's like a Gambino family shakedown run by people with the political clout of the U.S. military. It's true, stuff like the (potential) destruction of aquifers does make the industry as a whole look bad. But if the OP thinks this represents the extent of the PR problems faced by the oil and gas industries, he needs to start paying much closer attention to the political agenda of the business in which he makes a living. It's...not pretty. The best thing we could do with our oil and gas resources is to use the amount we can safely burn to make the massive infrastructure changes that a sustainably low-carbon economy will need, then write off the balance of the planet's known reserves, and peacefully and voluntary close up shop once the transition is complete.
    - saryant 12y ago
      Long before Deepwater, BP was known for its shoddy safety standards by the other supermajors. They were the butt of many jokes within the industry.
      - sp332 12y ago
        Definitely a case of the industry making itself look bad! The Minerals Management Service kept giving Transocean (who built the Deepwater Horizon rig) safety awards. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_explosion#Transocean_safety_record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_explosion#Tr...
melling 12y ago
"We're sorry for any inconvenience and we regret..." Someone should have to pay for this. If the standard excuse is all you need, there's always going to be someone who is simply going to do the same thing.
- thrownaway2424 12y ago
  Right, that's the fundamental problem with free-market idealism. There is not an effective limit to the damage that can be done, but there are limits to liability. Many industries are capable of committing environmental destruction on large scales, but don't have any assets when the EPA comes around looking for restitution.
  - sp332 12y ago
    I don't see what the free market has to do with this. In a free market, or really any system that has property rights at all, you can't take or destroy someone's property without their permission. Edit: by "can't" I mean it's not allowed - it's a crime. Not that you physically can't.
    - rosser 12y ago
      Tell me again how property rights prevented this from happening.
      - sp332 12y ago
        The industry is already regulated, and companies are ignoring the regulations. This isn't even an approximation to a free market, let alone some ideal. Adding more regulations isn't going to help if they're not enforced.
        anigbrowl 12y ago
        But how are the companies ignoring the regulations here? It appears that state permits were granted to drill and use these injection wells ~25-30 years ago and that the owner/operators have been fully compliant with regulations - if anything, the failure in this case was a regulatory one, for granting permits that should not have been issued in the first place.
refurb 12y ago
I'd love to know who was responsible for this. The state seems to be taking the blame: "State officials allowed oil and gas companies to pump nearly three billion gallons of waste water into underground aquifers that could have been used for drinking water or irrigation." It looks like the company applied to drill the injection well and the state said "yeah, that's fine".
angersock 12y ago
The problem with the cost-cutting mindset is that it often allows for actions that seem really counter-intuitive. A friend of mine was spec'ing out some pumps for an off-shore platform, and they were rentals. Turned out renting was like thousands a day or some similarly absurd number. Company ended up renting like twice as many pumps, just in case they needed them for redundancy. It literally made more sense to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for pumps that sat around and did nothing just to make damned-sure a multi-million dollar rig never sat idle. So, when we hear that there is too much complexity in, say, making sure nobody is drinking from wells within a mile of where the stuff is being injected, we look askance. O&G is full of money and talented engineers, so I doubt that this is a problem we can't overcome.
anigbrowl 12y ago
Who is it you think was cutting corners here? I mean, it's not good, but we seem to be talking about some wells that were incrrectly permitted back during the Reagan/Bush41 era. I didn't get the sense of anyone deliberately flouting regulations here.

Istof 12y ago

The life expectancy of average folks was getting too high

clumsysmurf 12y ago

Some wisdom from Mexico: http://www.propublica.org/article/message-from-mexico-u.s.-is-polluting-water-it-may-someday-need-to-drink http://www.propublica.org/article/message-from-mexico-u.s.-i...

anigbrowl 12y ago

A worthy report, but some valuable context is buried near the end of the article/TV news report. “We are still comparing the testing of what was the injection water to what is the tested water that came out of these wells to find out if they were background levels or whether that’s the result of oil and gas operation, but so far it’s looking like it’s background,” said James Marshall from the California Department of Conservation. So it seems as if no actual contamination of the aquifer has taken place so far - not an excuse, but far from the environmental disaster you might have imagined when you heard about 3 billion gallons of waste water. When asked how this could happen in the first place, Marshall said that the long history of these wells makes it difficult to know exactly what the thinking was. “When you’re talking about wells that were permitted in 1985 to 1992, we’ve tried to go back and talk to some of the permitting engineers,” said Marshall. “And it’s unfortunate but in some cases they (the permitting engineers) are deceased.” Again not an excuse, but when you learn that these injection sites were permitted 20-30 years ago (at a time of lesser technological and environmental awareness, as well as of lower population and land usage intensity), then it's not so surprising that some bad decisions could have taken place. On the plus side, the fact that the injection wells have been in use for oil exploration for so long and contamination actually seems to be quite limited suggests that halting further injection and carefully monitoring the surrounding wells may be sufficient. In other words, an unjustifiable risk but one that seems to have been identified and halted prior to a serious failure.

devb 12y ago
Marshall followed up with “But when those (further) test results come back, we’ll know for sure”. I think your assessment of the situation is premature at best. In any case, the tone for the statements by Marshall that you quoted were, to me, set with this earlier one: “There have been past issues where permits were issued to operators that they shouldn’t be injecting into those zones and so we’re fixing that,” Could this guy be any more wishy washy?
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  Hence my use of the word 'seems'. I don't think you can conclude much about someone's tone from a heavily edited TV news report where people's explanations are chopped up into single sentences.

fataliss 12y ago

This is a shame. But as usual, people start caring about environment very late. They should have had that in mind right off the bat when they started using this technology.Sadly back in those days all was going good, nobody cared. Now when it becomes critical, suddenly people start getting scared. Well, too late guys. How many screw up we will need to stop being late?

refurb 12y ago
Did anyone read the article? The state gave the company permission to do the well injection of waste. The state screwed up!
- Ygg2 12y ago
  And I'd bet the oil companies lobbied for 'deep' aquifers to be deemed usable for fracking.
  - refurb 12y ago
    Massive conspiracy! I think you overestimate the impact of lobbying.

arca_vorago 12y ago

From another comment in a thread last week about the same subject: "I'm currently working in the industry in the Permian Basin area (Texas/New Mexico) and can say that my main concern is environmental. With the fracking operations, you get a huge load of oil, saltwater, and sand/crud/junk/chemicals. They truck them to a SWD disposal facility (my company does PLC's and controls etc for these) which then separate the oil out. The problem is that, at most of the SWD disposal places I have been too, disposal consists of pumping the junk/crud/chemical water straight back into the ground. They say they drill below the Ogallalah aquifer, but what if they don't? Having actually been a contractor for one of the bigger public oil companies, I can just say I don't really trust them to do things like that properly, and my guess is that within a few years we will find out, oh shit, "Someone poisoned the water hole". That's when T. Boone Pickens will unleash his high-priced water. I don't thing people realize how close the south is to major water shortages and is vulnerable to a drought. Hopefully this upcoming winter will help offset some of that."

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

eyeareque 12y ago

Why in the world would it ever be okay to inject contaminated waste water into the ground? That sounds just plain stupid.

cnvogel 12y ago
Oh, but that's the whole idea of fracking. You inject (not necessarily polluted on purpose from the start, but it will be at some point if reused a few times) water under high pressure into the ground to break up sediment, releasing a mineral resource. Often: Natural gas, or some sludge high in oil content. Sometimes also done for certain metals, then it's called "in situ leach". Problem is: At some point you'll have accumulated just too much polluted water than what you could reasonably store as barrels stacked up in your parking lot, or just dump into a nearby lake or river. The amount of waste generated it not really surprising, probably one should have considered this environmental impact before allowing companies to start these operations.

ryandrake 12y ago

I must have missed the memo on the terminology change. So, now, waste is "injected" into the environment, not "dumped"? Guess that does sound better.

kaybe 12y ago
It's obviously a different process.