Fracking practices linked to water contamination in Pavillion, Wyoming

From the Billings Gazette:

http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/wyoming/former-e...

“Poor construction of wells, the proximity of fracked wells to drinking water sources and the prevalence of unlined disposal pits, where diesel-oil based drilling muds and other production fluids were stored for decades, bolsters the EPA's initial contention that natural gas operations were responsible for a polluted aquifer east of Pavillion …

The researchers say the findings support calls to limit fracking at shallower depths where well stimulations are more likely to contaminate drinking water supplies. Unlike many unconventional oil and gas plays, where fracking is conducted at deep intervals underground, Pavillion's gas wells were drilled to the same depth as nearby water wells. "No state has any restrictions on how shallowly you can frack a well," Jackson said. "That needs to change." …

[Study authors] DiGiulio and Jackson documented five cases where wells failed after being fracked. The failures raise the possibility that fracking fluid could escape a well. …

Frack jobs in Pavillion were often completed at depths ranging from 750 to 1,050 feet, or in close proximity to water wells.”

The research paper:

Impact to Underground Sources of Drinking Water and Domestic Wells from Production Well Stimulation and Completion Practices in the Pavillion, Wyoming, Field”, Dominic C. DiGiulio and Robert B. Jackson, Environmental Science & Technology journal, 2016/3/24.

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.5b04970

(paper available free here: http://www.ernstversusencana.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016-03-29-embar...)

Abstract:

“A comprehensive analysis of all publicly available data and reports was conducted to evaluate impact to Underground Sources of Drinking Water (USDWs) as a result of acid stimulation and hydraulic fracturing in the Pavillion, WY, Field. Although injection of stimulation fluids into USDWs in the Pavillion Field was documented by EPA, potential impact to USDWs at the depths of stimulation as a result of this activity was not previously evaluated. Concentrations of major ions in produced water samples outside expected levels in the Wind River Formation, leakoff of stimulation fluids into formation media, and likely loss of zonal isolation during stimulation at several production wells, indicates that impact to USDWs has occurred. Detection of organic compounds used for well stimulation in samples from two monitoring wells installed by EPA, plus anomalies in major ion concentrations in water from one of these monitoring wells, provide additional evidence of impact to USDWs and indicate upward solute migration to depths of current groundwater use. Detections of diesel range organics and other organic compounds in domestic wells <600 m from unlined pits used prior to the mid-1990s to dispose diesel-fuel based drilling mud and production fluids suggest impact to domestic wells as a result of legacy pit disposal practices.”

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Hey, Chicken Little,

You have become desperate. This claim has been utterly and totally debunked. Notice the qualifier in your title "linked". In other words there is no proof that "fracking had anything to do with water contamination.In fact several scientific studies have proved the opposite.

Yet here you are bringing it up again.

Here are the facts:

The Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has just released the results of its 30-month investigation into water contamination in Pavillion, Wyoming, and it has concluded that hydraulic fracturing is unlikely to have been the cause.  As the report explains,

“Evidence suggests that upward gas seepage (or gas charging of shallow sands) was happening naturally before gas well development.

It is unlikely that hydraulic fracturing fluids have risen to shallower depths intercepted by water- supply wells. Evidence does not indicate that hydraulic fracturing fluids have risen to shallow depths intersected by water-supply wells. The likelihood that the hydraulic fracture well stimulation treatments (i.e. often less than 200 barrels) employed in the Pavillion Gas Field have led to fluids interacting with shallow groundwater (i.e. water-supply well depths) is negligible.” (emphasis added)

As the Casper-Star Tribune put it,

“Samples taken from 13 water wells in 2014 detected high levels of naturally occurring pollution. Test results showed little evidence of contaminants associated with oil and gas production.”

You really need to apologize to the folks on this site for the misinformation you post.

Hey Chicken Little,

You never cease to amaze me, you obviously only read the titles of the articles that you post.

If you actually read the articles you would find info such as this:

"The Stanford researchers stop short of linking fracking to contaminated drinking water samples."

Further, you cite the work recent  of Domenic Digiullio. He was the lead investigator of the EPA on the study of Pavillion, WY in 2011. The lead investigator for a study that was comlpetely and utterly discredited for it's lack of scientific method and sloppy field work.

Way to go Chicken Little, posting once again nothing but mis-information.

You really owe us all here an apology.

"Frack jobs in Pavillion were often completed at depths ranging from 750 to 1,050 feet, or in close proximity to water wells.”

"...Pavillion's gas wells were drilled to the same depth as nearby water wells."

This occurred in very very shallow wells, not the thousands and thousands of feet that is/has been drilled in the last decade. You can fault the gov't entities for not doing their job and approving fraking at these very shallow depths.

Then you have this:

"...where diesel-oil based drilling muds and other production fluids were stored for decades"

Has nothing to do with any drilling/fraking in the current plays.

craig,

Great point.

It highlights the dishonesty and deception employed by fracktivists.

The geology of different oil and gas plays is not the same. The geology of oil and gas zones in the area of Pavillion, Wy is much different than that in the Utica and Marcellus.

But posts such as this placed by Paul, would have you believe they are all the same and that there should be a nationwide ban on oil and gas development.

Then of course there is the fact that the premise of this post is false. No link between fracking and water contamination was found in Pavillion, WY.

It's typical fractivist fear mongering.

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