Recently the following cartoon appeared on the Op Ed Page of The Shreveport Times.  GHS Member Skip Peel responded with the below Letter to the Editor.

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Dear Sirs~

I understand that the media in general finds potential value in controversial issues.  And that "fracking" has become a major point of contention in numerous communities across our country.  However I expect my hometown newspaper to exercise some reasonable judgment even when it pertains to subjects covered on the Op Ed page.  I find the John Cole political cartoon, "News Item:  Fracking Chemical Found In Pennsylvania Well Water." particularly disturbing because it reinforces an idea that has largely been discredited by scientific investigation.  The extreme focus on hydraulic fracture stimulation (fracking) obscures a number of more relevant issues associated with the oil and gas industry.

The vast majority of instances of well water (aquifer) contamination by natural gas is not related to fracking activity but to naturally occurring natural gas in shallow formations in close proximity to a fresh water aquifer.  The incidence of natural gas in well water is not new and not limited to areas where oil and gas exploration and production occurs.  Those opposed to the oil and gas industry would like to create the idea that the only way natural gas gets into well water is by industry related activity.  The facts do not support that contention.

The mere fact that the geologic formation being produced is many thousands of feet in vertical separation from the fresh water aquifer and that within that quite large interval of separation are many dozens, if not hundreds, of intervening impermeable layers of rock should engender cautious skepticism regarding fracking as the cause of well water contamination.  There are currently 2433 producing Haynesville Shale gas wells in NW LA.  If fracking was a common cause of water well contamination it would have been an issue covered by local media long ago.

The general public is often not aware that natural gas is made up of a number of elements in addition to its primary component, methane.  Natural gas also contains ethane, propane and heavier hydrocarbons. It can also contain small amounts of nitrogen, carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulphide.  In the isolated cases where well water is found to contain natural gas and there is nearby drilling activity it is a very straight forward and unambiguous process to test the natural gas found in the well water and compare its composition to the natural gas being produced from the target formation.  The Times published an instance of this in north Caddo Parish.  Testing revealed that the composition of the natural gas in the well water was not a match to the natural gas being produced from 8,000 plus feet deeper in the Haynesville formation.

There are confirmed cases of drilling and production activity as the cause for natural gas contamination in well water.  They are small in number and they are not caused by fracking. The following is a quote from an AP article published Sep. 15, 2014,

" The drilling procedure called fracking didn't cause much-publicized cases of tainted groundwater in areas of Pennsylvania and Texas, a new study finds. Instead, it blames the contamination on problems in pipes and seals in natural gas wells.

After looking at dozens of cases of suspected contamination, the scientists focused on eight hydraulically fractured wells in those states, where they chemically linked the tainted water to the gas wells. They then used chemical analysis to figure out when in the process of gas extraction methane leaked into groundwater.

"We found the evidence suggested that fracking was not to blame, that it was actually a well integrity issue," said Ohio State University geochemist Thomas Darrah, lead author of the study. He said those results are good news because that type of contamination problem is easier to fix and is more preventable.

The work was released Monday by The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."

The extreme fascination with the myth of wide spread water well contamination by fracking serves to obscure real issues which should be of public concern in addition to the well integrity problems outlined in the study.  There are other issues which deserve greater public attention and debate such as Louisiana's growing orphan well problem.  If we ever get past the unfounded accusations regarding fracking perhaps in the future we can focus on the oil and gas issues that really matter.

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Skip Peel is a Shreveport based independent landman whose clients are individuals and companies that own or deal in significant land and mineral holdings.