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Permalink Reply by Philip Brutz on January 14, 2015 at 4:25am

http://businessjournaldaily.com/drilling-down/new-injection-well-sl...

New Injection Well Slated for Warren Township

Wednesday, January 07, 2015

By Dan O'Brien

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- The Ohio Department of Natural Resources has issued a permit to Kleese Development Associates Inc., Warren, to develop a new Class II injection well in Warren Township, according to records.

This would be the third injection well the company has in Trumbull County, ODNR records show. Kleese Development operates two other injection wells in Vienna Township. Company officials could not be reached for comment.

Development of new injection wells was thwarted in Mahoning County after a D&L Energy well was linked to a series of earthquakes in 2011, but the business remains active in Trumbull County.

American Water Management Services Inc., a division of Avalon Holdings Corp., operates an injection well site in Weathersfield Township. Last year, the state oil and gas commission ordered the operation shut down because of a small earthquake recorded near the deeper of two wells at the site. That well remains closed, but a shallower well was allowed to resume operations in September.

"We're just taking a truckload or two a day," said Ron Klingle, chairman of Avalon Holdings, Tuesday. "That's nothing, and the customers are out there."

The company has appealed the decision to stop activity at the deeper well but is yet to get a response from ODNR, he said.

"There is induced seismic activity in every part of the oil and gas industry," Klingle noted. He points out that the tremors recorded near American Water's injection well were insignificant and not felt by the public, yet the tremors registered on the very sensitive seismic monitors placed near the site.

To keep an injection well closed because of a small tremor that couldn't be felt by the public doesn't make sense, Klingle said, noting that the state has regulations related to other components of the industry, but not seismic activity.

"Right now, their standard is zero," Klingle says. "We have to make sure the state is being realistic."

Absent this clarity, companies are likely to pull their investments in the oil and gas industry knowing that they could be put out of business "for no reason at all," Klingle stated. "Why would we invest more money? That is the big concern everyone should have."

Another locally owned company, American Energy Inc., based in Cortland, holds permits for two injection wells in Trumbull County, one in Greene Township, the other in Brookfield.

"We've been keeping pretty steady," said Robert Barnett, owner of American Energy. "We recently drilled a well in Brookfield."

A second injection well in Greene Township is operational, and that site includes a seismic monitoring station and a recorder that keeps track of injection pressure levels. "We monitor our pressures very carefully," he said.

The company owns 80 gas wells across northeastern Ohio that target the Clinton sandstone formation. Two years ago it entered the injection-well business as exploration in the Utica and Marcellus shale plays took off.

Injection wells such as American Energy's are used across Ohio to dispose of wastewater generated from hydraulic fracturing, a process that injects sand, chemicals and millions of gallons of water under pressure into a recently drilled well to crack shale rock so the oil and gas deep underground is released.

"We've got a real good clientele that we work with," Barnett said, noting that the well has turned away water. "We don't want to take more than we can handle."

However, it's unlikely his company would drill any new injection wells in the near-term, Barnett says, because of a pull-back in drilling activity since oil prices began to plummet two months ago.

"Things are starting to slow a little," Barnett says. 

Meanwhile, permit activity for horizontal wells in the Utica shale of eastern Ohio continues in the southern portion of the play, ODNR records show.

Last week, ODNR issued nine permits, all of which are concentrated in the central or southern portion of the play.

Chesapeake Energy secured five more permits, four for wells in Carroll County and one in Harrison County. Two permits were awarded to Rice Drilling or wells in Belmont County; two more were issued to Gulfport Energy in Monroe County.

To date, ODNR has issued 1,743 horizontal well permits in the Utica, of which 1,290 are drilled and 713 wells are in production.

There were no new permits for horizontal wells last week in Mahoning, Trumbull or Columbiana counties during the week.

Nor were there new Utica permits issued for horizontal wells in nearby Lawrence and Mercer counties in western Pennsylvania, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

Copyright 2015 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.

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Permalink Reply by Dan Warner on January 14, 2015 at 5:59am

Here's a little irony.

When I hauled 'water' to one of the Ohio injection wells, the only constituent that they were concerned with excluding was oil.

Go figure.

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Permalink Reply by Philip Brutz on January 16, 2015 at 4:13am

Deep concerns: Pennsylvania gas industry grows by sending waste to ...

Deep concerns: Pennsylvania gas industry grows by sending waste to Ohio

By JOHN FINNERTY | CNHI Harrisburg Correspondent |

Deep concerns

JOHN FINNERTY | CNHI This cluster of injection wells in Vienna, imported more waste from Pennsylvania during the first half of the year than 28 other Ohio towns with similar wells.

First in a series

VIENNA, Ohio – This eastern Ohio hamlet is home to about 1,000 people, a traffic light and a high school. Businesses are few; the only grocery in town closed last summer.

But there’s something big in Vienna – a facility that tethers the town to the sprawling natural gas industry across the border in Pennsylvania.

About a mile from the town center, a cluster of five injection wells pours gas drillers’ wastewater deep into the earth. In the first half of this year alone, these wells accepted and deposited underground 350,000 barrels of waste from Pennsylvania – more than 14 million gallons – according to records kept by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

Those numbers don’t surprise residents along a country road that leads from the four-lane highway, Route 82, to the farm that is home to the KDA Inc. injection wells.

Trucks rumble down Sodom Hutchings Road at all hours, seven days a week. Engine brakes roar as trucks struggle to lose speed.

“It’s constant,” said Russell Grimes, who lives a few houses from the KDA operation.

The Vienna wells – and more than 200 others like them across Ohio – figure prominently into the natural gas industry’s growth in neighboring Pennsylvania over the past six years.

While drillers treat and reuse 90 percent of their liquid leftovers, according to industry estimates, the remaining 10 percent that gets sent to injection wells adds up. And it’s far easier to dispose of it in the Buckeye State than over the border – so much that last year Pennsylvania exported enough drilling wastewater to Ohio to fill 200 Olympic-sized pools.

Not that you’d want to swim in any of them. The brine is two- or three-times more salty than seawater. Regulators have found evidence that it contains chemicals left over from hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” the drillers’ process of busting through underground with high-pressure liquid to release stores of gas.

And, environmentalists warn, the wastewater could be radioactive.

Pressure for new wells

A number of reasons explain why Ohio more readily accepts the wastewater than Pennsylvania, which has just eight active injection wells, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Geology is one. What lies beneath the surface of much of Pennsylvania is not as suited for injection wells. Also, regulators in Ohio monitor the disposal wells in their state and are perceived by some as more friendly toward the gas industry, while federal officials watch over the wells in Pennsylvania.

Those dynamics could be shifting. The longer the gas industry drills in Pennsylvania, the greater the pressure to site injection wells closer to home, no matter who regulates them.

“We have had a significant increase in applications for disposal well permits in Pennsylvania and expect to see more permitted wells accepting waste in the future,” said EPA spokesman David Sternberg.

The drilling industry is growing – and looking for more options to dispose of its waste – but the controversy associated with it has in no way subsided.

New York officials announced this month that they will continue a ban on fracking due to concerns about its impact on health and water quality. In Pennsylvania, Gov.-elect Tom Wolf’s campaign pledge to tax the drilling industry has fueled ramped-up lobbying by the industry, as well as those who believe the state should scrutinize its practices more closely.

The injection disposal wells are especially controversial. Some are blamed for outbreaks of seismic activity – including in eastern Ohio. In some places, environmental fears have stirred sentiment against the wells. 

And, the federal Government Accountability Office warned earlier this year that regulators haven’t done a good enough job monitoring wells, or keeping up with states, including Ohio, that have asked to regulate the industry themselves.

Traffic back-ups

Gas drillers’ reliance on injection wells isn’t likely to slow soon. Even as falling prices cool the industry’s expansion, gas production in Pennsylvania is still breaking records, according to those inside the industry.

Pennsylvania’s wells now serve a fifth of U.S. demand for natural gas. Six years ago, when drillers began digging into the Marcellus region, wells in the state barely met a quarter of the demand from Pennsylvanians themselves, said David Spigelmyer, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition.

The industry’s red-hot growth has created jobs and fueled the economy of rural Pennsylvania. It’s also led to barrels upon barrels of wastewater, which creates an array of challenges, from where to dispose of fracking’s leftovers to how to deliver them.

Some drillers reuse their wastewater, an alternative they claim is far cheaper than injection disposal, though some environmentalists have expressed concern about oversight of the process.

Vienna imported the most among the 29 Ohio towns with injection disposal wells accepting Pennsylvania drilling wastewater.

But residents have little voice with what happens at their local wells, said township Trustee Philip Pegg. They can squawk about safety – and they have – but their complaints are mostly related to traffic.

Worried about trucks on Route 82, Pegg started keeping count of the number of accidents. He stopped after the third serious incident.

Problems begin on Route 82 – before trucks even turn down Sodom Hutchings Road. Most of the traffic heading to wells makes a left turn off the highway, where there’s no turn lane. Since the trucks regularly travel in caravans, a line sometimes backs up in the passing lane of eastbound Route 82. It’s a recipe for calamity.

After intense lobbying by local officials, Ohio’s Department of Transportation said it plans to add a turning lane on Route 82 next summer, said Pegg.

“Fortunately, we haven’t had anyone killed,” he said.

Then there’s damage to the roads, themselves. While gas drillers must reach agreements to repair local roads smashed up by their trucks, Pegg said there’s no similar requirement for operators of injection wells.

Trucks laden with liquid waste beat potholes into Sodom Hutchings Road, and the township has no recourse to force the operator to make repairs. The situation has gotten so bad that residents on the street placed a Barbie doll in a large pothole as a tongue-in-cheek warning to motorists.

“That’s how we respond,” Pegg said. “We have a sense of humor.”

Eventually, the injection well operator patched the potholes.

Ohio’s cash register

Bumps in Vienna’s roads can be attributed to Ohio’s relatively relaxed approach to injection wells, and its booming business accepting waste from neighboring states, environmentalists say.

Ohio wells pumped 16 million barrels of waste into the ground in the first three quarters of 2014. Almost half of it came from neighboring states including Pennsylvania.

Kathryn Hanratty, director of water affairs for the People’s Oil and Gas Collaborative of Ohio, a citizen’s watchdog group, called that a “huge concern.” Environmentalists believe regulators are too “chummy” with the gas industry, said Hanratty, and they’ve asked the EPA to force the state to share more information about its wells.

One reason that Ohio is awash in fracking wastewater is geology.

Disposal wells require a soft layer of rock below the surface to receive the waste, which must be bounded by hard rock formations that prevent waste from migrating.

Those soft layers tend to be deeper below ground in mountainous areas – such as central Pennsylvania – which subjects them to more pressure and makes them less porous, said Jeffrey Dick, a geology professor at Youngstown State University.

But, generally speaking, there is no “geologic reason” that injection wells couldn’t be developed in western Pennsylvania, especially given their proximity to disposal wells just a few miles away in Ohio, said David Yoxtheimer, an associate with Penn State Cooperative Extension who specializes in hydrogeology.

A more significant reason why injection wells proliferate in Ohio is bureaucratic.

Local regulation of Ohio’s wells dates to the 1980s when the federal government allowed states to take on the chore of well monitoring. Ohio took control of its wells, as Pennsylvania left the work to the EPA.

Hanratty wishes Ohio hadn’t made that decision. “It’s proving to be not a good thing, she said.

Lack of information is one concern. While regulators randomly check waste sent to wells, there’s no requirement that drillers document the composition of the liquid, said Mark Bruce, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

State inspections have only revealed that the water is extremely salty, he said.

Ohio’s role in taking care of Pennsylvania’s waste was magnified about three years ago. Until then, Pennsylvania drillers sent much of their byproduct to treatment plants.

From 2008 until 2011, more than half the byproduct of wells in the Marcellus region was treated by industrial waste facilities or local sewage plants, which then discharged the wastewater into waterways, according to a report by the Earthworks Oil and Gas Accountability Project.

In 2011, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection realized that its treatment facilities couldn’t adequately keep up. A year later, it found chloride, bromide, lithium, strontium and radium downstream from a treatment plant that had been handling gas-drilling waste, according to the Earthworks report, which was released in August.

Pennsylvania then clamped down on the liquid waste being sent to treatment plants.

Ohio regulators realized that their neighbor would need someplace to dispose of drilling waste, said Bruce.

So they jacked up out-of-state fees for waste disposal, using the proceeds to hire more regulatory staff. Ohio now charges 5 cents per barrel for in-state waste and four times more for waste from elsewhere. In the first three quarters of 2014, its injection wells took about as much out-of-state waste as in-state waste. But because of the fee difference, Ohio billed $1.6 million for out-of-state waste, compared to $415,000 for in-state waste.

That troubles environmentalists. Hanratty said state regulators seem to view “this despoiling of our land as a ‘cash center.’”

Problems yet faced

Aside from traffic, Vienna’s wells haven’t elicited such strong reactions from those who live nearby.

Residents along Sodom Hutchings Road express ambivalence. A family that has lived in the township for generations owns KDA Inc., the well operator. A couple of years ago, they repurposed shallow gas wells to use as injection wells.

The switch has caused some headaches, say neighbors – from traffic and other costs associated with the venture. The site occasionally attracts protesters, said Pegg, which means the town has to send over police for security.

But some neighbors say they think about problems they’ve not yet faced.

Grimes, for one, said he wonders how long the earth can absorb the waste that’s being forced into the wells.

“It’s got to have an effect down the road,” he said.

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