Donald C. Strimbeck, Sec/Treas
Upper Mon River Assoc
UpperMon.org

Vice Chair, Mon River Rec & Comm Com
MonRiverSummit.org
109 Broad Street, P. O. Box 519
Granville WV 26534-0519
304-599-7585 (fax 4131)
dcsoinks@comcast.net

----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald C. Strimbeck" <dcsoinks@comcast.net>
To: Sent: Sunday, December 27, 2009 11:45 AM
Subject: Fw: COG Digest, Vol 10, Issue 134

> News item of interest to those of us in Mon river watershed.
>
> Donald C. Strimbeck, Sec/Treas
> Upper Mon River Assoc
> UpperMon.org
>
> Vice Chair, Mon River Rec & Comm Com
> MonRiverSummit.org
> 109 Broad Street, P. O. Box 519
> Granville WV 26534-0519
> 304-599-7585 (fax 4131)
> dcsoinks@comcast.net
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <cog-request@lists.earthworksaction.org>
> To: <cog@lists.earthworksaction.org>
> Sent: Sunday, December 27, 2009 10:26 AM
> Subject: COG Digest, Vol 10, Issue 134
>
>
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>> Today's Topics:
>>
>> 1. Lustgarten: Junk stays in ground! (scobies)
>>
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Sun, 27 Dec 2009 10:52:07 -0500
>> From: scobies <scobies@frontiernet.net>
>> Subject: [COG] Lustgarten: Junk stays in ground!
>> To: cog@lists.earthworksaction.org
>> Message-ID: <93D2336B-F2D4-42C6-B83B-310304B3BA87@frontiernet.net>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"; Format="flowed";
>> DelSp="yes"
>>
>> Relates directly to the original rationale for the Halliburton
>> exemption. Powerful quotes from industry.
>>
>> NYStan
>> Stan Scobie, Binghamton, NY <scobies@frontiernet.net>
>> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>>
>> http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/30978_Page3.html
>>
>> New gas wells leave more chemicals in ground
>> By: Abrahm Lustgarten - ProPublica
>> December 27, 2009 07:11 AM EST
>>
>> For more than a decade the energy industry has steadfastly argued
>> before courts, Congress and the public that the federal law
>> protecting drinking water should not be applied to hydraulic
>> fracturing, the industrial process that is essential to extracting
>> the nation?s vast natural gas reserves. In 2005 Congress, persuaded,
>> passed a law prohibiting such regulation.
>>
>> Now an important part of that argument ? that most of the millions of
>> gallons of toxic chemicals that drillers inject underground are
>> removed for safe disposal, and are not permanently discarded inside
>> the earth ? does not apply to drilling in many of the nation?s
>> booming new gas fields.
>>
>> Three company spokesmen and a regulatory official said in separate
>> interviews with ProPublica that as much as 85 percent of the fluids
>> used during hydraulic fracturing is being left underground after
>> wells are drilled in the Marcellus Shale, the massive gas deposit
>> that stretches from New York to Tennessee.
>>
>> That means that for each modern gas well drilled in the Marcellus and
>> places like it, more than three million gallons of chemically tainted
>> wastewater could be left in the ground forever. Drilling companies
>> say that chemicals make up less than 1 percent of that fluid. But by
>> volume, those chemicals alone still amount to 34,000 gallons in a
>> typical well.
>>
>> These disclosures raise new questions about why the Safe Drinking
>> Water Act, the federal law that regulates fluids injected underground
>> so they don?t contaminate drinking water aquifers, should not apply
>> to hydraulic fracturing, and whether the thinking behind Congress?
>> 2005 vote to shield drilling from regulation is still valid.
>>
>> When lawmakers approved that exemption it was generally accepted that
>> only about 30 percent of the fluids stayed in the ground. At the
>> time, fracturing was also used in far fewer wells than it is today
>> and required far less fluid. Ninety percent of the nation?s wells now
>> rely on the process, which is widely credited for making it
>> financially feasible to tap into the Marcellus Shale and other new
>> gas deposits.
>>
>> Congress is considering a bill that would repeal the exemption, and
>> has directed the Environmental Protection Agency to undertake a fresh
>> study of how hydraulic fracturing may affect drinking water supplies.
>> But the government faces stiff pressure from the energy industry to
>> maintain the status quo ? in which gas drilling is regulated state by
>> state ? as companies race to exploit the nation?s vast shale deposits
>> and meet the growing demand for cleaner fuel. Just this month, Exxon
>> announced it would spend some $31 billion to buy XTO Energy, a
>> company that controls substantial gas reserves in the Marcellus ? but
>> only on the condition that Congress doesn?t enact laws on fracturing
>> that make drilling ?commercially impracticable.?
>>
>> The realization that most of the chemicals and fluids injected
>> underground remain there could stoke the debate further, especially
>> since it contradicts the industry?s long-standing message that only a
>> small proportion of the fluids is left behind at most wells.
>>
>> But while the message has not changed, the drilling has.
>>
>> In the nation?s largest and most important natural gas fields, far
>> more chemicals are being used today than when Congress and the EPA
>> last visited the fracturing issue, and far more of those fluids are
>> remaining underground. Drilling companies say that as they?ve drilled
>> in the Marcellus they?ve discovered that the shale rock ? which is
>> similar to many of the nation?s largest natural gas projects in
>> Louisiana, Texas and several other states ? holds more fluids than
>> they expected.
>>
>> During hydraulic fracturing, drillers use combinations of some of the
>> 260 chemical additives associated with the process, plus large
>> amounts of water and sand, to break rock and release gas. Benzene and
>> formaldehyde, both known carcinogens, are among the substances that
>> are commonly found.
>>
>>
>> If another industry proposed injecting chemicals ? or even salt water
>> ? underground for disposal, the EPA would require it to conduct a
>> geological study to make sure the ground can hold those fluids
>> without leaking and to follow construction standards when building
>> the well. In some cases the EPA would also establish a monitoring
>> system to track what happens as the well ages.
>>
>> But because hydraulic fracturing is exempt from the Safe Drinking
>> Water Act, it doesn?t necessarily have to conform to these federal
>> standards. Instead, oversight of the drilling chemicals and the
>> injection process has been left solely to the states, some of which
>> regulate parts of the process while others do not.
>>
>> As the industry was lobbying Congress for that exemption ? and ever
>> since ? the notion that most fluids would not be left underground
>> continued to emerge as a recurring theme put forth by everyone from
>> attorneys for Halliburton, which developed the fracturing process and
>> is one of the leading drilling service companies, to government
>> researchers and regulators.
>>
>> ?Hydraulic fracturing is fundamentally different,? wrote Mike Paque,
>> director of the Ground Water Protection Council, an association of
>> state oil and gas regulators, to Senate staff in a 2002 letter
>> advocating for the exemption, ?because it is part of the well
>> completion process, does not ?dispose of fluids? and is of short
>> duration, with most of the fluids being immediately recovered.?
>>
>> The Ground Water Protection Council did not respond to a request for
>> further comment.
>>
>> EPA officials maintained in 2005, and say now, that the volume of
>> fluids left underground had little to do with its opinion that
>> hydraulic fracturing for gas wells is not the same as underground
>> injection. They say that distinction is because the primary function
>> of the two types of wells is different: Gas wells are for production
>> processes, while most EPA-regulated underground injection wells are
>> intended for storage.
>>
>> But Stephen Heare, director of the EPA?s Drinking Water Protection
>> Division in Washington, said that both the circumstances and the
>> drilling technology have evolved. When asked to explain how hydraulic
>> fracturing today is different from other forms of underground
>> injection, he said the bottom line was simple:
>>
>> ?If you are emplacing fluid, it does not matter whether you are
>> recovering 30 percent or 65 percent of it, if you are emplacing
>> fluids that is underground injection,? Heare said. ?The simple
>> explanation for why hydraulic fracturing is different from other
>> injection activities,? he added, is that hydraulic fracturing ?is
>> exempt from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act.?
>>
>> The argument that fracturing should not be regulated by the EPA
>> became prominent in the 1990s, after the EPA said that fracturing lay
>> outside the scope of the Safe Drinking Water Act, because the primary
>> purpose of gas wells was energy production, not fluid disposal.
>>
>> A 1997 Alabama lawsuit challenged that position, and the 11th Circuit
>> Court of Appeals ruled against the EPA.
>>
>> In that decision, the judges wrote that "According to the state
>> agency, hydraulic fracturing is not underground injection because it
>> does not result in permanent subsurface ?emplacement? of the fluids,
>> as these fluids are pumped out of the ground before methane gas is
>> extracted out of the well." But the judges called that assertion
>> ?untenable? and ordered the EPA to regulate fracturing in Alabama
>> under the Safe Drinking Water Act. They also ordered the EPA to more
>> clearly define fracturing as a type of underground injection, a move
>> that could have paved the way for regulation in other states as well.
>>
>> But in 2005, before such regulation could happen, Congress stepped in
>> and gave hydraulic fracturing its special exemption from the Safe
>> Drinking Water Act.
>>
>> When Congress voted for the exemption it referred to a 2004 EPA
>> report, which concluded that fracturing did not pose a threat to
>> drinking water. That report, which has since been criticized as
>> incomplete, said that while some of the fracturing fluids remained
>> underground, ?Most of the fracturing fluids injected into the
>> formation are pumped back out of the well along with groundwater and
>> methane gas."
>>
>>
>> Lee Fuller, vice president of government affairs for the Independent
>> Petroleum Association of America, said that the emphasis on
>> wastewater removal was made to help legislators understand how
>> fracturing was different from underground injection, but that those
>> legislators also knew that much of the water stayed underground when
>> they voted for the exemption.
>>
>> ?The EPA study said there was a certain amount of the water that does
>> stay in the fractured formation. That information was known,? he
>> said, adding that more of the water may seep out over the lifespan of
>> the well. ?So I think there was an understanding of it on the part of
>> the proponents of the proposal.?
>>
>> In the 2004 report, the EPA said as much as 59 percent of fracturing
>> fluids can remain underground. A 2009 Department of Energy report
>> titled Modern Shale Gas put that figure at 30 to 70 percent, but
>> emphasized that most wells fall into the lower end of that range,
>> explaining that "The majority of fracturing fluid is recovered in a
>> matter of several hours to a couple of weeks."
>>
>> Just six months ago that point was reiterated in testimony before the
>> House Committee on Natural Resources, when the Interstate Oil and Gas
>> Compact Commission repeated a statement that former Alabama state
>> geologist Donald Oltz made in the 1997 Alabama court case: "Almost
>> all hydraulic fracturing fluid is recovered to the surface after a
>> hydraulic fracturing operation."
>>
>> That statement contrasts sharply with the latest reports from regions
>> where gas drilling is on the upswing.
>>
>> Spokesmen for Cabot Oil and Gas, Range Resources and Fortuna Energy ?
>> three of the most active companies developing gas resources in the
>> Marcellus Shale ? say
>> that more water is trapped underground in newer drilling areas
>> because the ?tight shale? that is loath to give up the gas is likely
>> to hold onto the fluids too.
>>
>> ?It?s not like you pump a volume of water into the frack and then it
>> gives you that volume back,? said Ken Komoroski, a spokesman for
>> Cabot Oil and Gas, who says only 15 to 20 percent of the fluid comes
>> back out. ?Most of the water and sand stays in the formation compared
>> to in other geologic formations.?
>>
>> Gas industry officials say the amount of fluids they leave behind in
>> their wells should have no bearing on whether hydraulic fracturing is
>> or is not regulated by the federal government. What?s important is
>> managing the risk, says the Independent Petroleum Associations? Lee
>> Fuller, a job he says the industry is doing very well without
>> additional oversight.
>>
>> ?You are wrapping yourself around a distinction of whether something
>> should or should not be regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act
>> as opposed to whether something does or does not pose an
>> environmental risk,? said Fuller, who asserts that despite numerous
>> reports of contamination in drilling areas, the fracturing process
>> has never been conclusively proven to be the cause.
>>
>> Regulation, Fuller said, ?may shut down natural gas drilling for a
>> long time, but it is not going to make the environment any better.?
>>
>> It will fall to Congress ? and then to the EPA ? to decide whether
>> that is truly the case. Sponsors of the Frack Act hope for a vote
>> this spring. If it passes, and if the EPA finds reason to change the
>> conclusions it reached in 2004, the agency would then have to decide
>> exactly how fracturing will be addressed by the Safe Drinking Water Act.
>>
>> ?The thinking we did then, the study that we did then, we were really
>> looking at a different set of circumstances,? said Heare, the EPA?s
>> Drinking Water Protection Division director. ?The agency has not
>> investigated the impacts of hydraulic fracturing in other settings
>> such as shale gas production and at this time is unable to quantify
>> the potential threat.?
>>
>> ProPublica is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces
>> investigative journalism in the public interest. For more stories on
>> natural gas drilling, go to propublica.org/naturalgas.
>>
>> ? 2009 Capitol News Company, LLC
>>
>>
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>> End of COG Digest, Vol 10, Issue 134
>> ************************************
>