Shepstone Management Company, Inc.
A fourth fracking study in just a few months has concluded hydraulic fracturing has not affected groundwater drinking sources. Will the DRBC even notice?
The Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), in its high school quality justification for a fracking ban, asserts this (emphasis added);
Considering the totality of the risks that HVHF poses to basin water resources, the Commission proposes in Section 440.3(b) of the draft rule to determine that controlling pollution by prohibiting high volume hydraulic fracturing in the basin is required to effectuate the comprehensive plan, avoid injury to the waters of the basin as contemplated by the comprehensive plan and protect the public health and preserve the waters of the basin for uses in accordance with the comprehensive plan.
Since this statement was issued, four different studies have come out directly contradicting it, not to mention previous studies or the voluminous data collected by its sister agency, the SRBC, finding no discernible impacts. The latest fracking study comes from analysis of the Barnett Shale region, where it all started.
The University of Texas at Austin study is entitled “Monitoring Stray Natural Gas in Groundwater With Dissolved Nitrogen; An Example From Parker County, Texas” and may be obtained here. Also, Energy In Depth did a nice summary of the study. It is the abstract that says it all, though, and it follows with paragraphing added to make it easier to read:
Hydraulic fracturing, horizontal drilling, and associated natural gas production have dramatically changed the energy landscape across America over the past 10 years. Along with this renaissance in the energy sector has come public concern that hydraulic fracturing may contaminate groundwater.
In this study we measure the chemistry of dissolved gas from shallow groundwater wells located above the Barnett Shale natural gas play, a tight gas reservoir located west of the Dallas‐Fort Worth Metroplex. We compare groundwater chemistry results to natural gas chemistry results from nearby production wells.
Most groundwater wells have trace to nondetectible concentrations of methane, consistent with no measurable infiltration of natural gas into shallow groundwater. A cluster of groundwater wells have greater than 10 mg/L dissolved methane concentrations with alkane chemistries similar to natural gas.
Using dissolved nitrogen and alkane concentrations and their stable isotope ratios in combination with chemical mixing models, we conclude that natural gas transported from the shallower Strawn Group affected these groundwater wells rather than natural gas from the deeper Barnett Shale, which is the target of hydraulic fracturing in this area. These results suggest that hydraulic fracturing has not affected shallow groundwater drinking sources in this area.
You don’t need to read much more than the statements I’ve bolded to understand what web have here; yet another fracking study showing hydraulic fracturing is not the threat to water quality the wholly political DRBC would have us believe. Here are the conclusions of all four studies released since the DRBC staked out its claim in March, 2018:
June, 2018: University of Cincinnati
“We found no relationship between CH4 concentration or source in groundwater and proximity to active gas well sites.”
“… our data do not indicate any intrusion of high conductivity fracking fluids as the number of fracking wells increased in the region.”
June, 2018: Pennsylvania State University
By investigating data from gas companies, the state, and the U.S. Geological Survey, researchers saw possible contamination by natural gas near no more than seven out of 1,385 shale wells studied in heavily drilled Bradford County. The rest of the water chemistry data highlighted that groundwater had either improved or remained level from samples taken prior to the 1990s.
“The most interesting thing we discovered was the groundwater chemistry in one of the areas most heavily developed for shale gas – an area with 1400 new gas wells – does not appear to be getting worse with time, and may even be getting better,” said Susan Brantley, director of Penn State’s Earth and Environmental Systems Institute and distinguished professor of geosciences.
“The results suggest that, as a whole, groundwater supplies appear to have held their own against the energy industry’s exploitation of the Marcellus Shale, a rock layer more than a mile underground that holds the nation’s largest reservoir of natural gas.”
…
“Collectively, our observations suggest that was an unlikely source of methane in our valley wells.”
August, 2018: University of Texas at Austin
“After four years of studies, scientists have found no link between methane present in water wells outside of Fort Worth and nearby gas production activities in the Barnett Shale. The methane appears to have migrated naturally to the wells from the shallower Strawn formations and not from the Barnett Shale, where natural gas production and hydraulic fracturing are occurring.”
As those of us who followed the issue, read the EPA report and studied the DRBC justification know, the fractivist assertions of water quality impacts invariably revolve around methane contamination; the migration of gas. This migration can occasionally be caused by any type of drilling connected with gas wells, geothermal wells or water wells. It can also be completely natural, as is the case at Salt Springs State Park where man has been lighting the water on fire for centuries.
Fractivists and the DRBC want us to think its the fracking that’s doing it, though, because they can’t find a case of fracking chemicals actually polluting a public drinking supply. They need something to make their case—anything at all—and so they really on methane migration to argue (falsely) that hydraulic fracturing pollutes. These four peer-reviewed studies released the DRBC high schoolers made their case along those lines completely rebut even that claim.
What will the DRBC do as the data accumulates refuting its case? My prediction is that they’ll do absolutely nothing. The members may, in fact, simply use it as an excuse to do nothing on the fracking ban itself, letting it sit in limbo for another seven years just as they did with the regulations they crafted in 2011. Such is the nature of this incompetent, superfluous agency that ought to be disbanded.
The post Yet Another Fracking Study Puts the Lie to DRBC Claims appeared first on Natural Gas Now.
https://www.shaledirectories.com/blog/yet-another-fracking-study-puts-the-lie-to-drbc-claims/
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