The Perils of Fracing

  

 

 

   

 

Published on Thursday, March 17, 2005 by the Los Angeles Times

EPA Watchdog to Investigate Drilling Method

The Technique, Used by Halliburton and Backed by the White House, was Ruled Safe in a U.S. Study, but an Agency Engineer Says the Science was Bad
 

by Alan C. Miller and Tom Hamburger

 


"WASHINGTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency's inspector general has decided to investigate a whistle-blower's complaint about the Bush administration's handling of hydraulic fracturing, an oil- and gas-drilling technique pioneered by Halliburton Co.

The review was requested by Democratic lawmakers following a Los Angeles Times report in October that included the EPA employee's challenge of an agency study that found hydraulic fracturing posed "little or no threat" to drinking water.

The lawmakers applauded the decision by Inspector General Nikki L. Tinsley, the EPA's internal watchdog.

"Not only are there important environmental questions at stake, but the credibility of a federal agency is also at risk," said Rep. Mark Udall (D-Colo.). "The Bush administration should be using sound science to determine whether or not hydraulic fracturing is polluting our water supplies. It shouldn't rig the process to give special treatment to special interests."

Hydraulic fracturing, a widely used drilling technique, allows access to hard-to-reach oil and gas deposits by pumping liquids underground at high pressure. The liquids sometimes include hazardous chemicals, some of which remain in the ground.

Halliburton is one of three U.S. companies that dominate the fracturing market. Vice President Dick Cheney headed the Houston company from 1995 until 2000. During that time, the company filed a legal brief opposing EPA regulation of the practice.

Halliburton and other energy companies say the technique has proved safe for decades. However, a growing number of geologists and other experts say more study is needed as the practice proliferates.

A Halliburton spokeswoman declined to comment on the decision to look into the complaint.

Tinsley's review comes at a politically sensitive time. A sweeping energy bill backed by the Bush administration includes a provision that would exempt hydraulic fracturing from federal regulation.

The Times had reported that some EPA employees complained about the agency's study of hydraulic fracturing in coal-bed methane fields completed in June.

One of them, Weston Wilson, an environmental engineer in the EPA's Denver office and a 30-year agency veteran, sent Tinsley an 18-page statement challenging the study's findings and methodology. He criticized the EPA for failing to conduct field research and for relying on a panel heavily tilted toward the energy industry to review the study.

Wilson called the review timely.

"Congress is considering a national energy bill, which would allow the oil and gas industry to keep its hydraulic fracturing practices secret," he said. "If this bill passes, American citizens will not know if toxic fracturing fluids are injected into their groundwater supply."

Tinsley has not determined the scope of the review, inspector general spokesman John Manibusan said Wednesday. "There's a lot of issues that were raised. I can't say if we're going to review everything."

In response to Tinsley's decision, EPA spokeswoman Cynthia Bergman said: "We stand behind the report's conclusion that the potential threat to underground sources of drinking water posed by hydraulic fracturing of coal-bed methane wells is low and doesn't justify additional study…. None of the concerns raised by Mr. Wilson would lead us to a different conclusion."

Bergman has defended the panel that reviewed the agency's report as "a representative group." Six of the seven panel members were current or former energy industry employees.

An industry spokesman expressed support for the EPA's handling of the study, as well as its conclusion that hydraulic fracturing did not jeopardize drinking water.

"We were satisfied that EPA did follow the right process with the study," said Bill Whitsitt, president of the Domestic Petroleum Council, a trade association representing large independent natural gas exploration and production companies. "Hydraulic fracturing itself is regulated by states. It is not an environmental issue. And that's essentially what the study found."

Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

 

    

 

 

     

From The Website: Union of Concerned Scientists

http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/abuses_of_science/case_studies_and_evidence/oil-extraction.html

Note: The following is an excerpt regarding EPA Frac study whistleblower Weston Wilson. This article also contains excellent footnotes, including Wilson's letter to congress.

"

EPA's conclusions are unsupportable. EPA has conducted limited research reaching the unsupported conclusion that this industry practice needs no further study at this time. EPA decisions were supported by a Peer Review Panel; however five of the seven members of this panel appear to have conflicts-of-interest and may benefit from EPA's decision not to conduct further investigation or impose regulatory conditions.9

"I think the agency's acted egregiously," said Wilson in an interview a few months after sending his letter to Congress. "It's not fulfilling its responsibility to protect public health."10 Wilson's concern was supported by other scientists both inside and outside of EPA. Geoffrey D. Thyne, a professor at the Colorado School of Mines who is generally supportive of hydraulic fracturing, argued that exempting the practice from regulation "is premature, unwise and goes against the public interest."11 Wilson is correct when he says, "EPA should finish its study and obtain field information to see if this does represent a risk to ground water."12 

 

1. Environmental Protection Agency, "Study of Potential Impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing of Coalbed Methane Wells on Underground Sources of Drinking Water," Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water report, June 2004, accessed December 6, 2006.
2. National Energy Technology Laboratory definition of hydraulic fracturing, accessed December 6, 2006.
3. Earthworks fact sheet, "Hydraulic Fracturing 101,"accessed December 6, 2006.
4. Michelle Nijhuis, "How Halliburton Technology is Wrecking the Rockies," On Earth, National Resources Defense Council, Summer 2006, accessed December 6, 2006.
5. Tom Hamburger and Alan C. Miller, "Halliburton's Interests Assisted by White House," Los Angeles Times, 14 October 2004, accessed 19 September 2006.
6. U.S. Court of Appeals, 11th Circuit, "LEAF vs. EPA," August 7, 1997, No. 95-6501, accessed December 7, 2006.
7. Ibid.
8. EPA, Executive Summary, 16.
9. Weston Wilson's letter to members of congress, 8 October 2004, accessed 19 September 2006.
10. Todd Hartman, "He's Either Loved or Reviled: EPA Whistle-Blower Stands Up to Agency," Rocky Mountain News, 31 May 2005, accessed 19 September 2006.
 

    


 

     

This outstanding article reveals the vital connection between persecuted whilstelblower, Weston Wilson; the EPA report finding hydraulic fractuing harmless; the oil and gas industry; and the Cheney/Bush Administration's 2005 energy policy. It also provides a detailed account of the Amos case.

Published by the Natural Resources Defense Council
How Halliburton Technology is Wrecking the Rockies

by Michelle Nijhuis

http://www.nrdc.org/onearth/06sum/rockies1.asp

Excerpted from the article:

"But the wizardry of hydraulic fracturing delivers natural gas to the nation, and it has powerful friends -- notably in the White House. The 2001 report from Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force specifically cited the value of hydraulic fracturing. The Los Angeles Times reported in October 2004 that Halliburton, Cheney's former company, which earns about $1.5 billion each year from hydraulic fracturing and is one of the country's three dominant fracturing-services companies, had lobbied against federal regulation. Industry groups, such as the Domestic Petroleum Council and the Independent Petroleum Association of America, supported a provision in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 that exempted fracturing from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

In the spring of 2005, Amos spent several days in Washington, D.C., as part of a group of Rocky Mountain activists lobbying against the proposed fracturing exemption in the federal energy bill. When Jim Jeffords, the Independent senator from Vermont, later introduced the Hydraulic Fracturing Safety Act of 2005, which would have limited the ingredients in fracturing fluids to nontoxic products, he recounted her story on the Senate floor. "It is unconscionable to allow the oil and gas industry to pump toxic fluids into the ground," Jeffords told his colleagues. But the Jeffords bill went nowhere, and when the federal energy bill passed last July, it included the hydraulic fracturing exemption, explicitly prohibiting only the use of diesel fuels. "Basically, there's a handful of people who have been seriously threatened by this practice standing up against a multi-hundred-billion-dollar industry," says NRDC's Olson.

Though environmentalists applaud the prohibition on diesel fuel, historically a common ingredient in fracturing fluids, they point out that the ban will have little actual impact: The three largest hydraulic-fracturing companies had already signed a voluntary agreement with the EPA to eliminate diesel fuel from fracturing in coal beds, and the majority of fracturing jobs in tight-sands formations already eschew diesel. "Diesel is just the tip of the iceberg," says Sharon Buccino, a senior attorney with NRDC. "The real problem is that we just don't know what else is being used."

Olson says the flawed EPA report played a crucial role in the congressional debate. "Time and time again, we heard from congressional staffers, 'Well, the EPA doesn't think this is a problem, so you're just overreacting,' " he says. "The report clearly gave the oil and gas industry cover to lobby for this thing."

 

    


 

   


Energy & Environment

Buried Secrets: Is Natural Gas Drilling Endangering U.S. Water Supplies?

by Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica - November 13, 2008 1:00 pm EST
http://www.propublica.org/feature/buried-secrets-is-natural-gas-drilling-endangering-us-water-supplies-1113

An excerpt from the article follows (note: ProPublica does this phenomenal thing with their articles. They link key words within articles to other articles by the same journalist. In the case of Abrahm Lustgarten, he has written extensively on the subject of hydraulic fracturing and his articles should be considered a primer on the subject. If you only read one article to get the scoop, I highly recommend you read this article:

"In July, a hydrologist dropped a plastic sampling pipe 300 feet down a water well in rural Sublette County, Wyo., and pulled up a load of brown oily water with a foul smell. Tests showed it contained benzene, a chemical believed to cause aplastic anemia and leukemia, in a concentration 1,500 times the level safe for people. The results sent shockwaves through the energy industry and state and federal regulatory agencies.

Sublette County is the home of one of the nation's largest natural gas fields, and many of its 6,000 wells have undergone a process pioneered by Halliburton called hydraulic fracturing, which shoots vast amounts of water, sand and chemicals several miles underground to break apart rock and release the gas. The process has been considered safe since a 2004 study (PDF) by the Environmental Protection Agency found that it posed no risk to drinking water. After that study, Congress even exempted hydraulic fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act. Today fracturing is used in nine out of 10 natural gas wells in the United States.

Over the last few years, however, a series of contamination incidents have raised questions about that EPA study and ignited a debate over whether the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing may threaten the nation's increasingly precious drinking water supply.

An investigation by ProPublica, which visited Sublette County and six other contamination sites, found that water contamination in drilling areas around the country is far more prevalent than the EPA asserts. Our investigation also found that the 2004 EPA study was not as conclusive as it claimed to be. A close review shows that the body of the study contains damaging information that wasn't mentioned in the conclusion. In fact, the study foreshadowed many of the problems now being reported across the country."

A version of this story first appeared on Business Week's Web site and is included in the magazine's print edition. This article was the subject of a letter to the editor of the Denver Post, which published the story on their front page on Monday, Nov. 17, 2008, and a reply from ProPublica.

 

    


 

   


Loss and Loathing on the Cheney Trail

The environmental destruction wrought by the vice president’s secret energy plan

William J. Kelly

Published on September 02, 2004 / Illustration by Brian Wilcox
http://www.laweekly.com/2004-09-02/news/loss-and-loathing-on-the-cheney-trail/1

Excerpts from arguably the most comprehensive and best early articles on the subject follow:

"A neighbor had warned Lisa Bracken of a strange phenomenon on the trail up to western Colorado’s towering Mamm Mountain. On an April morning, she set off from her home in the small town of Silt, in the shadow of Mamm, to see it for herself. She hiked for about an hour through the budding trees and brush. After climbing several hundred feet, Bracken reached Divide Creek, and grew alarmed at what she saw.

Cold water, but bubbling like a boiling pot. Bubbles rose and popped everywhere. To test a theory that gas from a nearby well caused the bubbles, Bracken and her father, who had hiked with her that day, lit a match and found that a stream of bubbles burned. After taking photos, she headed home worrying about her family’s health and the future of the water supply for the residents and farm animals along the creek.

When she got home, Bracken called state authorities to report the bubbles in the creek, which flows to the Colorado River. Within days, energy giant EnCana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc. began trucking 5-gallon water jugs to the Brackens and 20 neighboring families. Monitoring showed that the seeping gas apparently had contaminated the water with unhealthful levels of benzene and other toxic chemicals that typically occur in gas wells. After investigating, the state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission cited EnCana for allegedly polluting the creek. EnCana has paid a $375,000 fine without admitting guilt.

Authorities assure Bracken and her neighbors that the creek is again safe because EnCana has repaired the well and the toxic chemicals have dissipated, but the residents continue to fear for their health and worry that their properties have become worthless.

The people of Silt are among a growing legion of farmers, ranchers, American Indians, and businesspeople — Republican, Democrat and Independent alike — who are bearing the brunt of booming natural-gas development in the Rocky Mountains under Vice President Dick Cheney’s secretly developed 2001 National Energy Policy.

The public will never know for sure what went through Cheney’s mind and who influenced the policy; the U.S. Supreme Court ruled earlier this summer that he had a right to keep the information secret. Environmental groups fought the secrecy all the way to the Supreme Court in a vain attempt to reveal what they believed to be undue influence over the nation’s energy and environmental policies by energy companies, large and small. They suspected that the administration had unfairly stacked the national energy policy in favor of the energy industry at the expense of the general public.

Three years after the policy was introduced, it is clear that Cheney — former chief of the energy-services company Halliburton — has done just that. His policy has allowed his energy-industry cronies and campaign contributors to drill on the cheap in the absence of environmental standards that commonly apply to most any other industry in America, such as a duty to control air pollution with the best available technology."

 

    

 

   


New York Times Editorial
October 15, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/15/opinion/15wed3.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Deep beneath the Earth’s surface from New York to West Virginia sits the Marcellus Shale, an enormous geological deposit of natural gas. Natural gas is one of the cleanest fuels available — if you can extract it without ruining the water around it.

Retrieving Marcellus natural gas requires hydraulic fracturing with horizontal drilling, a process that shoots millions of gallons of water deep underground to break the rock and unlock the gas. Now that prospectors are using this process increasingly in Pennsylvania and hoping to begin soon in New York, there are two important questions: Where will all that water come from? And what happens to it when it is no longer needed?

New York officials are exploring whether it’s possible to drill safely without poisoning water supplies. High on our list of concerns is whether the used water — some of it tainted with toxic chemicals — will later seep into streams, rivers and deep water wells, placing New York City’s municipal water supply at risk. Before the state allows exploration, there should be a clear agreement on how the used water will be dealt with safely.

Energy companies have already signed so many new leases for drilling rights with landowners in New York and Pennsylvania that one farmer called it a “modern-day gold rush.” Nobody wants to deprive these landowners of the money they can make, but the price of their good fortune cannot be the contamination of water supplies for everyone else.

Pete Grannis, the New York State environmental commissioner, promised at a recent hearing that, “we will not permit any drilling to take place that presents any threat to the city’s drinking-water supply.” That is an important commitment, but Mr. Grannis and Gov. David Paterson should take the safest course. While they search for ways to encourage drilling in less-sensitive areas, they should ban drilling anywhere near water supplies, and especially the city’s watershed.

State leaders in all of the areas touched by the Marcellus formation must find a balance between the need for energy and the need to protect water.

 

    

 

   


Believe it or not - Natural gas producers can still show profits at $5 gas

Resource Investor
By Keith Schaefer
28 Jan 2009 at 11:55 AM GMT-05:00
http://www.resourceinvestor.com/pebble.asp?relid=49001

Two new related technologies in the oil and gas industry are about to forever change the economics for its investors, producers, and consumers.

Excerpts from this excellent industy article follows:

"Horizontal Drilling (HD) and sister technology Multi-Stage Fracing (MSF) are lowering production costs, improving economics on current oil and gas fields and opening up massive new fields that were previously not profitable.

Companies usually drill down thousands of metres – vertically – for oil or gas. But now they have the technology to turn the drill bit deep in the ground and drill out horizontally along an oil/gas reservoir for thousands more metres – accessing much more hydrocarbons.

More importantly, the industry has figured out how to break up the rock formations that hold the oil – fracing – which can increase production from wells 4-7 x. That bears repeating – an HD well can increase production 400%-700% over conventional vertical wells.

That’s why more than 40% of all wells in North America are HD wells – and it’s steadily rising. Onshore natural gas production in the U.S. is up 9.6 billion cubic feet per day (bcf/d) since 2002 – almost all of it Texas shale gas that uses HD"

 

    

 

   


Hydraulic Fracturing Facts

EARTHWORKS | 1612 K St., NW, Suite 808 | Washington, D.C., USA 20006
202.887.1872 | info@earthworksaction.org | Privacy Policy

Jennifer Goldman & Lisa Sumi, 2/2/2009
http://www.earthworksaction.org/publications.cfm?pubID=383

View the publication (pdf)

Excerpts from this excellent tutorial follow - if you are really digging for information, be sure to check out the extensive endnote references listed at the bottom of this comprehensive document:

"How Fracturing Works

Engineers design a fracturing operation based on the unique characteristics of the formation and reservoir. Basic components of the fracturing design include the injection pressure, and the types and volumes of materials (e.g., chemicals, fluids, gases, proppants) needed to achieve the desired stimulation of the formation.

The fracturing operation is intended to create fractures that extend from the wellbore into the target oil or gas formations. Injected fluids have been known to travel as far as 3,000 feet from the well.[1]  Although attempts are made to design fracturing jobs to create an optimum network of fractures in an oil or gas formation, fracture growth is often extremely complex, unpredictable and uncontrollable.[2] Computer models are used to simulate fracture pathways, but the few experiments in which fractures have been exposed through coring or mining have shown that hydraulic fractures can behave much differently than predicted by models.[3]

Diagnostic techniques are available to assess individual elements of the fracture geometry, but most have limitations on their usefulness.[4] One of the better methods, microseismic imaging, provides a way to image the entire hydraulic fracture and its growth history. But it is expensive and is only used on a small percentage of wells. According to the Department of Energy, in coalbed methane wells where costs must be minimized to maintain profitability, fracture diagnostic techniques are rarely used.[5] And up until 2006 approximately 7,500 in the Barnett shale wells had been drilled, but only 200 had been mapped using microseismic imaging.[6]

....

Our Drinking Water at Risk
There are number of ways in which hydraulic fracturing threatens our drinking water. Where drilling companies are developing fairly shallow oil or gas resources, such as some coalbed methane formations, drilling may take place directly in the aquifers from which we draw our drinking water. In this case, contamination may result from the fracturing fluids that are stranded underground. The few available studies have shown that 20-30% of fracturing fluids may remain trapped underground, but this number can be much higher for some chemicals, which are preferentially left behind (i.e., do not return to the surface with the bulk of the fracturing fluids).[12]

....

Visit www.ogap.org to learn more, receive action alerts and stay involved."

 

    

 

   

 

What’s in that fracking fluid?
Pennsylvania discloses the chemicals used by the drilling companies

The River Reporter / December 04-10-2008

By SANDY LONG
http://www.riverreporter.com/issues/08-12-04/news-fracking.html

Complete with charts: http://www.riverreporter.com/issues/08-12-04/fracking.pdf

NOTE: This article is accompanied by numerous charts. To view the charts, see the print newspaper or click here.

PENNSYLVANIA — It’s something many people in the Upper Delaware region want to know: what chemicals are being used by the natural gas industry in its drilling processes?

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) notes that while companies may keep their fracking “formulas” proprietary, the individual ingredients are public record in Pennsylvania. The agency supplied The River Reporter with a list of chemicals that may be used during the fracking process. Any of them may be present in the wastewater generated and may be stored temporarily in open pits at the site.

We asked researchers at The Endocrine Disruption Exchange (TEDX) to analyze the list for its potential health effects. TEDX is a non-profit organization that reviews and interprets scientific research focused on the effects of synthetic chemicals on human and animal health. TEDX president Dr. Theo Colborn has published, lectured and testified extensively on the effects of chemicals on the developing endocrine, immune, metabolic and nervous systems.

The tables and graphs presented here were generated by that organization. Of the 59 chemicals on the list, several were synonyms for the same chemical (e.g. Isopropanol, Isopropyl Alcohol, Propan-2-01). When this occurred, the names were combined to create a final list of 54 chemicals.

TEDX staff searched the literature for health effects associated with the 54 chemicals and broke them into 14 different health effect categories commonly used in government toxicological literature. The table below shows the number of chemicals out of the 54 that have effects on at least 10 health categories.

Controlling fracking fluids

Defenders of the fracking process say that in the Marcellus Shale it is safe because the process takes place well below the water table that provides drinking water.

The water is injected deep underground through lined wells that prevent the fracking fluid from contaminating the water in the higher part of the earth beneath the drill site.

Critics, however, argue that the casings around the well bore that are intended to prevent fracking fluids from entering the ground water supply have failed in the past, and will likely fail in the future in at least some instances.

Further, a large amount of fracking fluid comes back out of the well after drilling, and can then contaminate air and ground water if not properly handled. The chemicals pose a threat to human health until they are disposed of.

Fracking fluid complaints and identification

According to a report from the Oil & Gas Accountability Project, citizens from many states have reported negative impacts to water quality in the wake of hydraulic fracturing.

The report says, “Common complaints include: murky or cloudy water, black or gray sediments, iron precipitates, soaps, black jelly-like grease, floating particles, diesel fuel or petroleum odors, increased methane in water, rashes from showering, gassy taste and decrease or complete loss of water flow.”

The report continues, “In most cases, the agencies conducting follow-up water quality sampling do not know what chemicals have been used in fracturing operations because companies are not required to disclose this information. Consequently, state agencies do not test for all fracturing fluid chemicals. Citizens have also experienced soil and surface water contamination from spills of hydraulic fracturing fluids.”

 

    

 

   


The following local articles demonstrate the frustrations folks feel relative to unresponsive agencies. There are also disturbing references to small dead animals and an unwillingness to test them. In the event of the calf, there may be other physical implications relative to injestion of benzene but that go unstudied because of false assumptions.


Source of sickening spring seep still unknown

By DENNIS WEBB / Tuesday, February 24, 2009 / Grand Junction Sentinel

http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2009/02/24/022509_2a_tainted_spring.html

"Despite intensive efforts, investigators have yet to find the exact source of oil and gas operations that contaminated a spring northwest of Parachute, causing a man to become ill last May.

The delay is becoming frustrating for Ned Prather and fellow family members, said their attorney, Richard Djokic.

“On behalf of my clients, they are as you can well imagine very anxious to resolve this matter, find the source and get on with life,” he told the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission on Monday in Denver.

It’s been disturbing to Prather not only for health reasons, but economically, Djokic said.

“This has been very disruptive to his outfitting business,” Djokic said.

Prather suffered irritation to his throat, esophagus and stomach when he visited his cabin and drank water tainted with cancer-causing benzene May 30.

Oil and gas regulators issued notices of alleged violation against Williams Production RMT, Marathon Oil Co., Petroleum Development Corp. and Nonsuch Natural Gas, based on the proximity of their wells to the cabin. Testing of water-monitoring wells in the area has yet to prove that any of the companies is responsible for the contamination.

Tests results also showed benzene in a second spring in the area. That led to OXY USA WTP LP being cited as a suspected source of the second spring’s contamination.

The two springs continue to be contaminated. Tests have at least led state officials to conclude the cabin spring water is tainted by oil and gas condensates. The second spring is contaminated by production water associated with drilling.

The involved companies have cooperated with the state in the investigation, which among other things has entailed extensive water and soil sampling, along with reporting of data from area wells.

The state found a dead elk calf in the area examined, but it turned out to have died of natural causes. Prather has found other dead animals such as chipmunks that he thinks may have consumed the spring water. The state has declined to have them tested because the water’s contamination levels aren’t considered sufficient to be toxic to animals.

Oil, gas panel to revisit concerns about seep in water south of Silt

By DENNIS WEBB / Monday, February 23, 2009 /  Grand Junction Sentinel

http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2009/02/23/022409_2aDivide_Creek_drilling.html

Concerns about renewed development in the area of a 2004 natural gas seep south of Silt probably will be aired before the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission this spring.

Acting Director Dave Neslin said he anticipates an update with the commission on drilling in the West Divide Creek area. One purpose would be to give residents a chance to voice any concerns.

However, Neslin reiterated his belief that renewed drilling in the area would be safe.

After natural gas from an EnCana Oil & Gas (USA) well bubbled to the surface of West Divide Creek in 2004, the commission fined the company $371,200 and imposed a moratorium on drilling in the area, where underground geological faulting has contributed to drilling problems.

The commission lifted the moratorium after putting new drilling rules in place for better water protection.

But area resident Lisa Bracken wants the moratorium imposed again in at least part of the area, and she contends the rules need to be re-examined.

Bracken and at least one neighbor, Jim Eubanks, are worried about an incident in January, when groundwater flowed from a well EnCana was drilling.

EnCana and the state say the leak originated about 1,000 feet down, well below the deepest water wells in the vicinity. It was stopped before drilling had reached the well’s gas- producing zones.

EnCana also experienced a “kick” of high gas pressure with that well and late last year with another well in the area, state officials said. But they say both situations were controlled and posed no threat to residents or water.

The Oil and Gas Conservation Commission also reports EnCana experienced a recent problem installing surface casing for another well. Surface casing is intended to protect shallow water aquifers. In the case of that well and the one that leaked water, the agency granted EnCana variances from standard requirements. EnCana said the alternative measures were adequate.

Bracken contends gas from drilling is leaking to the surface at her property. Commission staff say numerous tests show any surface methane is biological in origin.

The agency and EnCana dispute Bracken’s contention that recent tests by an EnCana consultant showed that gas from drilling has been found in groundwater monitoring wells. Commission staff say the confusion resulted from a consultant error that later was corrected, but Bracken believes that’s not the case for all the tests.

Bracken notes that differences of opinion exist about how to interpret data. Late last year, Geoffrey Thyne, a geological consultant for Garfield County, said increasing drilling south of Silt and Rifle is resulting in more gas showing up in domestic water wells, particularly in the Divide Creek area.

He said some gas that state officials are blaming on biological sources is in fact coming from drilling.

Neslin said his staff will look at Thyne’s report and that commissioner Richard Alward, a professional ecologist, will speak to Bracken.

 

    

 

 

 

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