Council will debate a motion on Monday to seek intervenor status into the upcoming hearings by the National Energy Board.
That would give the city the opportunity to present evidence and question those giving submissions.
Councillor Kim Richter is spearheading the motion because she’s worried any leak would contaminate the municipality’s groundwater, and the Salmon River.
The expansion proposal has no shortage of critics with several municipalities in the Lower Mainland opposing it _ it was also a major issue in last year’s election.
The $5.4-billion venture could result in a seven-fold increase in tanker traffic into Vancouver.
The National Energy Board is giving people until Feb. 12 to make a submission or to apply for intervenor status. Learn more here.
Fracking operations in BC’s Horn River Basin (Two Island Films)
A new report from geoscientist and shale gas expert David Hughes offers a big reality check for BC’s proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry. As a former 32-year veteran of the Geological Survey of Canada, Hughes led a national review of the country’s unconventional gas potential. Now, after drilling down on the BC Liberal government’s LNG vision, he has some sobering things to say about its promise of a $100 Billion windfall “prosperity fund”, built on accessing new markets in Asia.
David Hughes
In a new report titled BC LNG: A Reality Check – released by the Watershed Sentinelon January 18, where you can read it in full – Hughes analyzes the implications of 7 large LNG export licences recently issued by the National Energy Board. Together, they constitute a staggering 14.6 billion cubic feet/day (bcf/d) of gas – more than the total amount of gas coming out of the entire country today, at 12.7 bcf/d.
Drawing on the best available production and geological data from Canada’s gas sector, Hughes assails both the NEB’s reckless approval of this much gas for export and the BC Liberal policy for economic development that is driving the LNG boom.
Regulator violates mandate
“The NEB appears to have violated its mandate to ensure Canadian energy security by approving seven LNG export applications, which add up to more than the current gas production of all of Canada, and far exceed even its most optimistic projections of BC gas production, says Hughes.”
[quote]To put this in perspective, the US, which produces five times as much gas as Canada, has approved only four export projects with a total capacity of less than half that of the NEB approvals.[/quote]
Hughes found that, on average, production from a given unconventional gas well in BC plummets by 69% in its first three years – a far sharper decline than the historical rate for conventional gas, meaning that a drilling treadmill is required just to keep production flat, let alone grow it.
To that latter point, Hughes paints a startling picture of what fulfilling these export demands would look like on the ground: i.e. a dramatic increase in controversial fracking and consequent water use.
LNG export licences = gas equivalent of Tar Sands x 2
The NEB has approved 7 LNG export licences so far
The most recent approval by the NEB of 4 export licences, just before Christmas, came in the same week the regulator received Kinder Morgan’s application for a major oil pipeline expansion to Vancouver and announced its conditional recommendation of the proposed Enbridge pipeline. The LNG story was thus lost in the shuffle – this despite the fact, as The Common Sense Canadian noted at the time, those four gas licenses alone were the equivalent of almost 2 million barrels of oil per day for 25 years. In other words, roughly four times bigger than the proposed Enbridge pipeline and the same size of the entire Alberta Tar Sands oil output today.
Add in the three licences it had already approved before that, plus the the 4 more it still has under review – totalling an additional 3.4 bcf/d – and you have double the energy equivalent of today’s Tar Sands.
Another 50,000 holes in the ground
Hughes’ report gives a shocking glimpse of the environmental and economic implications of powering BC’s LNG vision:
[quote]…meeting the NEB export approvals would require drilling nearly 50,000 new wells in the next 27 years (double the approximately 25,000 wells drilled in BC since the 1950s).[/quote]
A fracking drill in BC’s Horn River Basin (Two Island Films)
After extensively researching wellhead data across the US shale gas boom – which is a few years ahead of Canada since it was the birthplace of modern high-volume slick water hydraulic fracturing – Hughes came to the conclusion that shale gas wells don’t produce for nearly as long as conventional gas wells did. In fact, the average 3-year decline rate (the speed at which production falls toward zero) of the 5 major US shale gas plays – accounting for 80% of the nation’s production – was a staggering 84%. That means that most wells are pretty much tapped out in a few years. It also means continual high rates of drilling are required to offset declines – just to maintain, let alone grow, production.
Fracking would use more water than City of Calgary
Turning his attention to Canada over the past year, Hughes is seeing similar trends. “Given the steep production declines associated with shale and tight-gas, drilling rates of more than 3,000 new wells per year would be required to ramp up production to required export levels, followed by nearly 2000 wells per year to maintain production,” he warns. (emphasis added)
[quote]Notwithstanding the other well publicized environmental issues with hydraulic fracturing (fracking), which would be the principal completion technology used to produce this gas, water consumption alone during the ramp up phase would exceed that of the City of Calgary, which has more than a million people.[/quote]
Regulator, Government’s numbers don’t add up
To Hughes though, it’s much more than a matter of underestimating the environmental costs. The NEB and provincial government are misrepresenting the geology too. The regulator’s numbers simply don’t add up, says Hughes, when it comes to supplying the gas for the export licences they’ve issued. “The NEB’s forecasts of gas production in BC through 2035 do not come close to the levels needed for its LNG export approvals,” he notes. “Its reference case forecast for BC is the production of 57 trillion cubic feet (tcf) by 2035, yet 120 tcf are required to meet its approvals (more than three times BC gas reserves).”
Hughes has also tackled the erroneous boasts being made by BC’s Minister for Natural Gas Development, Rich “The Optimist” Coleman. Although more exploration will certainly find additional recoverable reserves, Coleman recently declared that there are over 950 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of recoverable resources in BC alone – this compares to the recent NEB estimate of 861 tcf in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and BC combined. The most recent estimates of marketable gas reserves in BC by Coleman’s own Oil and Gas Commision is only 33.4 tcf.
To put this in perspective, just 25 tcf of marketable gas has been recovered in BC since the 1950s from more than 25,000 wells. Nearly five times this amount would need to be recovered in just 27 years to meet the NEB’s export approvals.
Could Canadians run out of gas due to export commitments?
At issue is Canadians’ own future energy security. A central piece of the NEB’s mandate is to ensure that exports run surplus to domestic needs. And they’ve given their stamp of approval to these LNG export licences:
[quote]We have determined that the quantity of gas proposed to be exported by Prince Rupert LNG is surplus to Canadian need. The Board is satisfied that the gas resource base in Canada, as well as North America, is large and can accommodate reasonably foreseeable Canadian demand, the LNG exports proposed in this Application, and a plausible potential increase in demand.[/quote]
But is this true? Hughes thinks not. “Canadian production peaked in 2002 and is now down 30 per cent from its peak. The only province with substantial growth is BC, which constitutes 28 per cent of Canadian production (although it is now on a plateau),” he writes. “Coupled with current BC production, which is mostly committed to existing customers, meeting the NEB export approvals to date would require increasing BC’s gas production to nearly 50 per cent more than all of Canada currently produces – within less than a decade.” (emphasis added)
And that’s easier said than done, says Hughes.
BC’s steep production declines
The decline rates for BC’s shale gas wells may not be quite as severe as Hughes has observed south of the border, but they are steeper than the conventional gas wells that made up BC production in the past.
In the Horn River Basin, near Fort Nelson – the second biggest shale gas play in the province – the 3-year drop-off averages 80%. The province’s biggest play, the Montney Shale near Fort St. John and Hudson’s Hope, the decline rate is 61% for the same period, compared with 69% for the whole province.
As the rate of decline is steepest in the first year, the overall field decline is less, averaging about 26% per year – meaning that on average 26% of BC gas production must be replaced each year by more drilling to keep production flat.
That’s how you get to 50,000 new wells by 2040 to supply BC’s much-vaunted LNG industry.
A warning worth heeding
Though both the NEB and BC Government are likely to pretend this report never came into existence – preferring instead to forge ahead with an industry built on exuberant talk – they are foolish to do so. Mr. Hughes is a man who knows of what he speaks. He headed unconventional gas research during his 32 years with the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC), and, since leaving there, has continued his research, publishing a seminal report earlier this year on shale gas and tight oil production in the US.
Mr. Hughes’ opinion is being sought by people around the world deciding the future of shale gas. In recent months, he has spoken to the European Parliament, academics, energy financiers, and global financial media. The work he’s done in the US is changing the game there and abroad.
But if Christy Clark and our regulator decide to ignore this warning, they do so at the public’s peril – not their own. For none of them will be in their current positions long enough to answer for the catastrophic choices they’re making today.
The 3-member Joint Review Panel for the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline
Not even a month has pass since the federally-appointed Joint Review Panel (JRP) released its official report recommending approval of the Northern Gateway Pipeline, pending the fulfillment of 209 conditions. Yet already two separate suits have been filed against the integrity of the report, with groups requesting Cabinet delay a final decision on the pipeline project until the federal court of appeals can assess the complaints.
One of the suits, filed Friday by the Environmental Law Centre on behalf of B.C. Nature (the Federation of British Columbia Naturalists), requested the JRP’s report be declared invalid and that Cabinet halt its decision on the pipeline project until the court challenge is heard. The second suit, filed by Ecojustice on behalf of several environmental groups claims the JRP report is based on insufficient evidence and therefore fails to constitute a full environmental assessment under the law.
Chris Tollefson, B.C. Nature’s lawyer and executive director of the Environmental Law Centre at the University of Victoria, says “we have asked that the federal court make an order that no further steps be taken by any federal regulator or by Cabinet until this request is adjudicated.”
[quote]We’re confident that the federal court will make that order because we’ve raised some serious issues with the legality of the report and if the report is flawed then it can’t go to Cabinet, and it shouldn’t go to Cabinet.[/quote]
Legal errors in Enbridge review prompt challenge
B.C. Nature has identified almost a dozen legal errors that bring the legitimacy of the JRP’s recommendation into question.
“The two [errors] that we think are the most serious among those are the finding with respect to justification of serious harm to caribou and grizzly and the ruling with respect to a potential major oil spill and its consequences. We say that in both of those areas there is a glaring error that’s occurred that has to be addressed by the federal court of appeal,” Tollefson said.
A federal recovery strategy for humpack whales on the B.C. coast released in October cited potential increased oil tanker traffic as a danger to dwindling populations. The recovery strategy, released after a five-year delay, also noted the danger toxic spills posed to critical habitat.
A federal caribou recovery strategy is expected by the end of the month.
“Both those federal strategies have to be consider by the Cabinet when it ultimately rules on this [project]… For caribou this pipeline has some serious consequences and it will be interesting to see what happens when the federal strategy comes down.”
JRP hearing a “failure”
For Tollefson, the inadequacy of the official JRP report points to a failure of the Northern Gateway hearing process.
“It’s disappointing for everybody involved on the intervenor side, how this has unfolded,” he said.
[quote]The report is not only legally flawed in relation to the specific issues that we’ve raised but I think there’s a more general flaw, which is that it’s failed the test of transparency, it fails test of intelligibility. It basically doesn’t grapple with the evidence.[/quote]
The report reaches its conclusions “without setting out its analysis,” Tollefson says, “without discussing the evidence that forms the basis for those conclusions.”
“So we think there’s a basic rule of law issue here: does this report even conform with the basic requirements in terms of intelligibility and transparency that we expect from tribunals?”
“And we say that it doesn’t.”
Tollefson anticipates that the request will delay Cabinet’s 180 decision period, saying it would be “very difficult” for Cabinet to address and respond to B.C. Nature’s complaints within that timeframe.
For Tollefson a delay in Cabinet’s decision isn’t only foreseeable, it’s appropriate.
“Cabinet after all has to make its decision based upon the findings and the recommendations that arise out of this report.” Without a reliable report, what kind of decision can British Columbians expect?
The errors in the report could send the JRP back to the drawing board.
“If we’re upheld on any of our arguments, that report will have to be sent back to the JRP, redone, and we’ll basically be starting, potentially, back where we were in June. In those circumstances, it makes little sense for Cabinet to make a decision given that level of uncertainty around the future of the report.”
An oil pipeline crossing the Tanana River in Alaska
The federal NDP’s BC-based deputy fisheries critic is questioning a quiet deal signed just before Christmas that saw the Department of Fisheries and Oceans hand over the protection of fish habitat and species at risk along energy pipelines to the National Energy Board.
“The Conservatives have gone too far,” says New Westminster–Coquitlam & Port Moody MP Fin Donnelly.
[quote]They have gutted the Fisheries Act, slashed DFO’s budget, launched an all-out attack on science, and now they have handed over the power to make decisions on the environment to a body whose mandate is to deal with pipeline and energy development.[/quote]
The NEB lacks the knowledge to properly assess fisheries issues, says Donnelly. “The federal government is still the only body with the jurisdiction and sufficient expertise to assess potential damage to fisheries.”
Rather than making any legal changes to the Fisheries Act or Species at Risk Act, the deal came in the form of a “memorandum of understanding” between DFO and the NEB, making the Calgary-based energy regulator the point agency in determining whether aspects of a pipeline project could pose a risk to fish habitat or species at risk. Only then, in certain specific cases, would the NEB turn to DFO for what sounds very much like a rubber-stamped permit:
[quote]The NEB will assess a project application and determine if mitigation strategies are needed to reduce or prevent impacts to fish or fish habitat. If the project could result in serious harm for fish then the NEB will inform DFO that a Fisheries Act authorization under paragraph 35(2)(b) is likely to be required. DFO will review and issue an authorization when appropriate, prior to project construction. Authorizations issued by DFO would relate to those watercourses impacted, not the entire project.[/quote]
“Streamlining” pipeline approvals
The memo clearly states the reason for its creation – part of the Harper Govenrment’s continued efforts to clear roadblocks to energy development: “This MOU better integrates the Government of Canada’s initiative to streamline application processes by eliminating the requirement for duplicate reviews.”
“This clearly demonstrates the Conservative government’s complete lack of understanding of and regard for science in decision-making, and the importance of proper environmental assessment,” counters the NDP’s Donnelly.
DFO: Nothing fishy about deal
DFO issued a statement yesterday in response to concerns about the MOU, suggesting that the deal with the NEB is similar to previous collaborative agreements with provincial regulators. “Over the years, DFO has established similar arrangements with some Provinces and with Conservation Authorities,” the statement read. “In all cases, the standards for fisheries protection are established by DFO and the Fisheries Act Authorizations continue to be done by DFO.”
Yet the department strains belief in touting the NEB’s ability to protect fish habitat as well as DFO:
[quote]Our collaborative arrangement builds on the decades of training, experience and expertise of NEB biologists in assessing the potential environmental impacts of development projects, including regarding fish and fish habitat…The National Energy Board is best placed to deliver regulatory review responsibilities under the Fisheries Act for activities relating to federally regulated energy infrastructure (such as pipelines).[/quote]Ecojustice Executive Director Devon Page sees this as the latest in a long line of coordinated attacks on Canada’s environmental laws by the Harper Government. Says Page, “Taking authority for assessing harm to fish and their waters from fisheries experts and granting it to a pipeline approving body, after having vastly weakened of our laws through omnibus bills, is pretty much the straw that breaks the environment’s back when it comes to appropriate stewardship of the thousands of lakes, rivers and streams that are proposed to be bisected by pipelines.”
CALGARY – The president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers says rock legend Neil Young’s anti-oilsands statements are irresponsible and do a disservice to the aboriginals he’s trying to help.
Dave Collyer made his remarks ahead of Young’s fundraising concert in Winnipeg.
The Friday concert will be the second stop on a four-city circuit in support of a First Nation that lives downstream from the oilsands.
Collyer says the musician’s statements show a lack of understanding about the oilsands and the economic benefits they bring.
Collyer says he’d be happy to meet with Young on the final stop of the “Honour the Treaties” tour in Calgary this weekend.
Conservative Manitoba MP Candice Bergen has released a statement criticizing the anti-oilsands stance of — quote — “champagne socialists” who “hypocritically” use products made from oil.
Young’s tour is meant to raise money for the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, which is in a legal battle to protect traditional territory from further industrialization.
Neil Young at a benefit concert in Toronto on Sunday (Mark Blinch/AP)
When Neil Young first wandered into Canadian energy politics last year, comparing Fort McMurray to Hiroshima following a trip to the northern industry town in his biomass-powered car, it provoked a handful of rebuttals from conservative columnists. But the legendary Canadian-born rocker’s latest wading into that political and geological morass known alternately as the Alberta oil sands or Tar Sands has been a very different story.
Young’s Canadian concert tour, in support of an oil sands-related legal challenge by the Athabasca-Chipewyan First Nation, has somehow struck a nerve. The media has been rife with stories on Young’s provocative critique of Canadian energy policy and treatment of First Nations, eliciting a tidal wave of responses from everyday citizens, journalists, political pundits, industry advocates and top Harper Government officials.
A google news search of “Neil Young, oil sands” at the time of this writing yielded a staggering 34,000 news items from around Canada and the world.
If the comments posted on this site and others are any indication, Young has somehow fostered a frank debate about the kinds of economic choices we’re making for our future.
Round 1: Harper underestimates Young
The Harper Government underestimated Neil Young from the get-go, beginning with a juvenile rebuttal from a spokesperson for the PMO this past weekend: “Even the lifestyle of a rock star relies, to some degree, on the resources developed by thousands of hard-working Canadians every day.”
Apparently, to the Harper Government, two wrongs do make a right.
Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver – the Conservative pitbull on critiques of the government’s energy agenda – also chimed in with a rather lame response:
[quote]We don’t go ahead with any project unless it’s safe for Canadians and safe for the environment – it’s a a very rigorous, objective and independent review. We rely on that rather than an entertainer – no matter how talented – who compares Fort McMurray to Hiroshima, which is deeply insulting to the people of Fort McMurray and is both a travesty and a wild exaggeration.[/quote]
Mr. Young – flanked on the four-city tour by First Nations leaders, David Suzuki, and climatologist-cum-BC Green Party MLA Andrew Weaver – wasted no time firing back at Harper and co. through a statement issued yesterday:
[quote]Our issue is not whether the natural resource sector is a fundamental part of the country, our issue is with the government breaking treaties with the First Nation and plundering the natural resources the First Nation has rights to under the treaties…There are better jobs to be developing, with clean energy source industries to help make the world a safer place for our grandchildren.[/quote]
Despite the polarizing nature of his earlier comments about the oil sands as Hiroshima, in his statement yesterday, he expressed compassion for everyday Canadians facing tough choices in today’s economy. “As to the thousands of hard working Canadians, we have respect for all working people,” Young emphasized. “The quandary we face is the job they are working on. They are digging a hole that our grandchildren will have great trouble digging their way out of.”
Canadians chime in
The complex and essential conversation which Young has stoked shows up in the comments section of the many well-read stories appearing on the subject. The sheer volume of responses provides a telling glimpse at the power of Young’s voice. Sure, there are plenty of the simplistic barbs that typically pepper Canadian energy stories – on both sides of the conversation. But there is also much heartfelt grappling with what has become perhaps the defining Canadian question: What role should fossil fuel development play in our economic future?
One oil sands worker simultaneously defends Fort Mac and illustrates the plight many Canadian workers face as a result of the country’s economic policies: “There is no other place in Canada that you will be able to make the type of money to provide for your family, even without any education.”
Another counters:
[quote]Our choices are more like oil vs. electric cars/solar power/biofuels/mass transit expansion/conservation investment/etc. There are so many different paths we could be walking…It’s short-sighted, destructive and counterproductive to progress where we need it.[/quote]
Is it because it’s Neil Young that this debate has suddenly blown up – or because it’s a conversation with which Canadians are about ready to engage? Perhaps it’s a bit of both. While it remains to be seen the longterm legacy Mr. Young’s tour will leave on the public discourse, for the time being, at least, it’s amping up an urgent national discussion.
This site has also seen a fair share of “Neil Young for PM!” comments. That maybe a bit of a stretch – but, hey, if the whole music thing doesn’t work out, Mr. Harper may want to watch his back.
2011 Rainbow Pipeline diluted bitumen leak in Alberta (Rogu Collecti/Greenpeace)
VANCOUVER – A new federal government study has concluded that diluted bitumen — the product that would be transported by the Northern Gateway pipeline — sinks in seawater when battered by waves and mixed with sediments.
However, when free of sediments, the molasses-like crude floats even after evaporation and exposure to light.
The report also says that the commercial dispersant, Corexit 9500, used in previous clean-up efforts had a limited effect on dispersing diluted bitumen.
The study examined two blends of crude, the Access Western Blend and Cold Lake Blend, which represent the highest volume of bitumen products transported by pipeline in Canada between 2012 and 2013.
Conducting research on how the oil would behave in a marine environment was one of the 209 conditions announced by a review panel that approved the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline in December.
The pipeline, if approved by the federal government, would carry diluted bitumen from Alberta’s oil sands to tankers on the British Columbia coast.
A visualization of industrial impacts across Canada as of 2010 (Global Forest Watch)
A national study suggests that Alberta has disturbed more natural landscape than any other province.
The analysis by Global Forest Watch adds that Wild Rose Country also has two of the three areas in Canada where the rate of disturbance is the highest.
“There were at least three major hotspots, two in Alberta,” said report author Peter Lee.
The report (download here) combines government data, satellite imagery and cropland maps to look at human intrusions in the last decade into all major Canadian ecozones. Those disruptions included everything from roads to seismic lines to clearcuts to croplands.
“We took all the available credible data sets that we could find and combined them all,” said Lee. “We ended up with what we believe is the best available map of human footprint across Canada.”
Alberta leads in the amount of land disturbed at about 410,000 square kilometres. Almost two-thirds of the province — 62 per cent — has seen industrial or agricultural intrusion.
Saskatchewan, at 46 per cent, is second among the larger provinces. Quebec comes nearest in area with 347,000 square kilometres.
The Maritime provinces actually have the highest rate of disturbance. The human footprint in Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia is 94, 85 and 72 per cent respectively of each province’s total area. But those provinces are so relatively small that the actual amount of disturbed land is dwarfed by totals elsewhere.
When Lee compared the current map to one developed about 10 years ago, he found two of three areas where the rate of development was highest were in Alberta as well — one was in the oilsands region; the other along the eastern slopes of the Rockies.
The third area is in a heavily logged part of northern Quebec. New intrusion in northeastern British Columbia, where there is extensive energy development, is almost as heavy.
Lee said development in the three top zones is pushing into previously untouched land at the rate of five to 10 kilometres a year.
The report’s calculations include a 500-metre buffer zone, which corresponds to the distance animals such as woodland caribou tend to keep between themselves and development.
Duncan MacDonnell of Alberta Environment said the government has plans to set aside about 20 per cent of the remaining boreal forest, which covers the northern third of the province.
That includes about 20,000 square kilometres in the oilsands region. MacDonnell said Alberta plans to eventually combine old and new protected areas to create the largest connected boreal conservation area in North America.
Those plans haven’t been implemented and all are the subject of controversy with area aboriginals.
MacDonnell said the province is developing land-use plans for the entire province which are intended to balance pressures on the landscape.
Representatives from the federal government were not available for comment.
Lee notes his findings come at a time when Canadian and provincial policies on development are being increasingly scrutinized, whether they involve forestry, energy or agriculture. He said this sort of basic, common-sense data-gathering should be done by Ottawa.
“It’s those sort of general questions that the person in the street asks,” said Lee. “Where are all the disturbances in Canada? Where are the pristine areas?
“This is a simple monitoring analysis that should be done and could very easily be done by the feds … (but) they’re not doing it.”
The wastewater is created when some of the chemical-laced water used to fracture thick underground rocks flows back out of the wellbore. The water is tainted with chemicals, toxins and in some parts of the country — such as Pennsylvania — naturally occurring radioactive materials, such as radium. Research has shown that even wastewater that had been treated with conventional means was changing the chemistry of rivers when discharged into waterways.
In 2011, Pennsylvania barred drillers from taking the wastewater to treatment facilities, forcing them to haul the fluid waste to be disposed in underground injection wells in Ohio. This, along with a lack of freshwater in other parts of the country needed to drill new wells, has scientists and the industry looking for creative solutions.
Mining waste and fracking radiation – an unlikely marriage
The discovery by Duke University researchers would allow oil and gas drillers to combine flowback waters from the fracking process with acid drainage from mining, or any other salty water. The solids that form, which include radioactive materials, are removed and dumped at a hazardous waste landfill, and then the now cleaner water is used to drill a new well, said Avner Vengosh, the Duke professor who oversaw the project, which included scientists from Dartmouth College and the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa.
The metals and radium in the drilling wastewater automatically attract to sulfates — or salts, he explained.
“It’s a romance. It’s inevitable it will combine,” said Vengosh, a professor of geochemistry and water quality.
The research was primarily funded by Duke University, Vengosh said. One of the scientists had some funding from the National Science Foundation, he added.
Vengosh’s research was published in December in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, but still needs to be field tested, he said.
Finding solutions for safely dealing with contaminated water and having enough usable water to drill new wells is crucial for the oil and gas industry. It has booming in recent years due to new methods of hydraulic fracturing — or fracking — a method that uses millions of gallons of chemical-laced water to crack thick layers of underground rock so fossil fuels can flow out.
But as drilling spreads to more areas the industry has faced obstacles. In the gas-rich Marcellus shale region of Pennsylvania, wastewater disposal is problematic. In drought-prone areas, such as Texas and California, drillers face a shortage of freshwater. As a result, the industry is seeking to recycle wastewater.
Vengosh’s researchers blended fracking wastewater from the Marcellus shale with acid drainage from mines, materials collected in western Pennsylvania by the industry. The researchers had hypothesized that the salts, metals and radium would combine so they could be removed as solids, leaving behind water clean enough to be used in another fracking operation, though not quite pure enough to be potable.
After two days, they examined the chemical and radioactive levels of the 26 different mixtures they had created and found that within the first 10 hours the metals — including iron, barium and strontium — and most of the radium had combined to form a new solid. The salinity of the remaining fluid had reduced enough to be used in fracking, Vengosh said.
“I’m not sure it resolves all the problems, but it can have some improvement,” Vengosh said.
Texas facing its own water issues from fracking
Ben Shepperd, president of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association, which represents drillers in an oil-rich, desert-like area of West Texas, said maximizing water use is a top priority for the industry.
“Those of us who live, work and play near oil and gas activities place a premium on efficient water uses,” he said in an email.
But Tad Patzek, chairman and professor of the petroleum engineering department at the University of Texas in Austin, cautioned that the method could present problems in the field. The remaining water would still be jam-packed with chemicals and toxins, he noted.
“That water can get spilled,” Patzek said. “That water can get into a shallow aquifer. There are many other considerations.”
Still, freshwater and wastewater are such serious issues that Donald Van Nieuwenhuise, director of the University of Houston’s geosciences program, said researchers are seeking solutions on several fronts: by recycling flowback water, by creating ways to use less water to begin with or by using a liquid other than water to crack the rock.
Texas doesn’t have acid mine waste, an environmental threat to the Appalachian basin, to mix with the fracking fluids, but the method could be applied in the Lone Star state differently, Van Nieuwenhuise noted. The contaminated drilling water could be mixed with fluids from brine aquifers that are too salty to be used as drinking water, he said.
“This is novel. It’s a really neat idea,” he said, adding that solid waste is safer than liquid and the amount created in this process would be manageable.
Yet another derailment for CN, this time involving coal, near Vancouver.
BURNABY, B.C. – A CN Rail spokeswoman has confirmed heavy rainfall led to a train derailment in the Vancouver area Saturday.
Emily Hamer says the increased amount of rain caused a beaver dam to wash out, spilling large amounts of water onto the tracks and causing a train in Burnaby to jump the tracks.
She says seven cars went off the rails — three of them were lying on their sides while four remained upright.
Coal was spilt into a nearby creek that feeds into Burnaby Lake, but Hamer could not say how much.
The train is owned by CP Rail, but the tracks and the crew are from CN Rail.
Hamer says CN Rail is taking the lead in the cleanup and that the tracks should be operational by Sunday afternoon.
