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Injection Wells in the News

Injection Wells in the News. Do they pollute drinking water? Do they cause earthquakes?. NPR April 11 and 12 Nature Rolling Stone Magazine The Atlantic New York Times Bloomberg. Injection, Not F racking. 110 feet deep.

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Injection Wells in the News

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  1. Injection Wells in the News • Do they pollute drinking water? • Do they cause earthquakes? • NPR April 11 and 12 • Nature • Rolling Stone Magazine • The Atlantic • New York Times • Bloomberg

  2. Injection, Not Fracking 110 feet deep CASVU FILO SWD #1 well injects into deep naturally-fractured Arbuckle Formation. No waste water is produced to the surface. Woodford, 3000 feet deep Arbuckle, 4500 feet deep

  3. Do They Pollute Drinking Water? FILO SWD #1 Injection at 4500 feet Drinking water at 110 feet Full-time sensors and automated shut-down valves to prevent foreign material, contaminated water, or industrial wastes, from entering into the facility. Problems have been seen with older wells used as injection wells where casing breaks cause leaks into aquifers or spills onto the surface.

  4. Chesapeake Energy estimates that it uses about 5 million gallons of water per shale well. Typical Garvin County well produces 100 times as much waste water as oil. Matter of scale: How much waste water is being generated and where should it go? Oil and Gas Operators Need Safe, Deep Injection Wells

  5. Matter of scale: How much waste water is being generated and where should it go? Bbl per day? 86,500 permitted 5,300 actual in 2010 Can we picture 1000 anything?

  6. 30,000 Barrels of Waste Water per DAY 30 x 1000 • Where do you want 30 to 90 thousand barrels of waste water going everyday?

  7. Comparison of Oklahoma’s and Ohio’sDeep Water Injection Regulations

  8. Comparison of Oklahoma’s and Ohio’sDeep Water Injection Regulations

  9. Comparison of Oklahoma’s and Ohio’sDeep Water Injection Regulations

  10. Summary of Potential Risks to Groundwater • New well; new casing, adequate cement • Great depth relative to area aquifers • Meets and exceeds all regulations • Automated sensors in the delivery stream • Automatic shut-down valves to keep illegal material out of the system • Full-time seismic monitors at the well-site

  11. Earthquakes

  12. Earthquakes in Eola Field, Garvin County, 1/17/11 – 1/18/11 Magnitude 1.0 to 3.0 Not felt except by a very few under especially favorable conditions.

  13. Controversies in the News • “Experts: Oklahoma Earthquakes Too Powerful to be Manmade” Boston.com News, November 11, 2011 • The USGS scientists aren't willing to draw the causal connection between fracking and earthquakes. "While the seismicity rate changes described here are almost certainly manmade, it remains to be determined how they are related to either changes in extraction methodologies or the rate of oil and gas production," they conclude. The Atlantic, April 6, 2012

  14. Historical Examples of Earthquakes Related to Injections of Fluids.

  15. Earthquakes can happen with injection wells but they can be mitigated. • Scientists develop way to forecast worst-case tremor scenario. • “Researchers now say that they can calculate the highest magnitude earthquake that such an operation could induce — though it won't determine the likelihood of a quake occurring.” • Arthur McGarr, a geologist at the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California • American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, California. December 2011 09 December 2011, Nature, International Weekly Journal of Science

  16. In Conclusion: • Safety – Recognize that groundwater and earthquake hazards do exist at low level. • Monitoring – Fluids monitored full-time for contaminants and safe level of injection pressure. • Added volunteer monitoring of seismic activity.

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