Fracking Wastewater Spikes
1,440 Percent in Half Decade, Adding to Dry Regions’ Water Woes
An oil and gas field over Wyoming taken on
May 14, 2006.BRUCE GORDON / ECOFLIGHT
August
18, 2018
Between 2011 and 2016, fracked oil
and gas wells in the US pumped out record-breaking amounts of wastewater,
which is laced with toxic and radioactive materials, a new Duke University study concludes.The amount
of wastewater from fracking rose 1,440 percent during that period.
Over the same time, the total
amount of water used for fracking rose roughly half as much, 770 percent,
according to the paper published Wednesday in the journal Science
Advances.
“Previous studies suggested
hydraulic fracturing does not use significantly more water than other energy
sources, but those findings were based only on aggregated data from the early
years of fracking,” Avner Vengosh, professor of geochemistry and water quality
at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment, said in a statement. “After more
than a decade of fracking operation, we now have more years of data to draw
upon from multiple verifiable sources.”
The researchers predict that spike
in water use will continue to climb.
And over the next dozen years,
they say the amount of water used could grow up to 50 times higher when
fracking for shale gas and 20 times higher when fracking for oil — should
prices rise. The paper, titled “The Intensification of the Water Footprint of
Hydraulic Fracturing,” was based on a study conducted with funding from the
National Science Foundation.
“Even if prices and drilling rates
remain at current levels, our models still predict a large increase by 2030 in
both water use and wastewater production,” said Andrew J. Kondash, a PhD
student in Vengosh’s lab who was lead author of the paper.
More Water Than Oil
The shale industry has been
heavily focused on ramping up the amount of fossil fuels it can pump per well
by drilling longer horizontal well bores and using more sand, water, and
chemicals when fracking (which raises the costs per well and, as DeSmog recently reported, raises risks of
water pollution).
But the water use and wastewater
production per well have been growing even faster than the per-well fossil fuel
production, the researchers found, labeling the water demand and wastewater
growth “much higher” than the oil or gas increases.
Shale drilling and fracking often
occurs in areas already suffering from water stress. DUKE UNIVERSITY
The researchers studied data from
over 12,000 oil and gas wells representing each of the major shale-producing
regions in the US.
Their findings are particularly
troubling news for arid areas like the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico,
where underground water supplies are already taxed by residential and
agricultural demand, and where fights over water use are brewing.
On average, a Permian Basin well
used 10.3 million gallons of water in 2016, according to a San Antonio Express-News investigation earlier
this year — more than double the average per-well demand just a few years ago.
A Waterfall of Waste
The wastewater problem has
attracted the eye of industry analysts, particularly in the Permian.
“One of the biggest risks facing
operators today is the issue of produced water,” wrote Ryan Duman, a Wood Mackenzie senior
energy analyst, describing how in parts of Texas and New Mexico, wells can
produce up to 10 gallons of wastewater for every gallon of crude oil. “The sheer
volume of water is unprecedented.”
And that wastewater can be a toxic
blend that’s very difficult to treat, in part because it may contain high
levels of corrosive salts, naturally occurring radioactive materials, and
fracking chemicals whose identities are considered trade secrets and which even
the US Environmental Protection Agency can’t list.
The agency highlighted this fact
in its 2016 national study on fracking and American drinking water
supplies. While drafted under strong pressure from industry,
the EPA study found that fracking not only generates vast amounts of
wastewater but also can and has polluted drinking water supplies in areas
nationwide.
“There aren’t water quality
standards or even approved analytical methods for most of the chemicals we know
are a concern in produced water,” said Colin Leyden, senior manager for
state regulatory and legislative affairs for the Environmental Defense Fund.
There’s so much toxic wastewater
produced from fracking oil and gas in the US that it’s difficult to
envision just how much water comes from the wells. Expressed in terms of
barrels or swimming pools, the numbers still grow dizzyingly high.
One way to think of it is
literally in terms of a waterfall of toxic waste. “One of the things I think we
can lose sight of is just how much produced water we are creating … which is
more on a per day basis than Niagara Falls has going over it in an hour,” Joel Mack,
an attorney at Latham &Watkins, a firm which represents oil
and gas companies, recently said in an E&PMagazine
article. He has predicted that water-related costs in the Permian could top $17
billion in 2018.
Wastewater disposal — which often
uses “injection wells” that pump toxic water down underground into areas where
oil has been pumped out — is suspected not only of playing a role in causing
earthquakes across the US, but also linked by scientists to the emergence of massive sinkholes in
parts of Texas.
“The ground movement we’re seeing
is not normal,” said geophysicist Zhong Lu, an earth sciences professor at
Southern Methodist University, who recently published research that highlighted
the connection of the sinkholes to fracking. “These hazards represent a danger
to residents, roads, railroads, levees, dams, and oil and gas pipelines, as
well as potential pollution of ground water.”
Wringing Water from the Desert
The industry’s demand for water
during fracking is also a growing concern, especially in the Permian Basin,
which produces most of America’s shale oil and which stretches in part over the
Chihuahuan Desert.
Summer temperatures in the Permian
can often top
100 degrees. Theaverage annual rainfall in Pecos, Texas,
located in the basin, is just 11.55 inches (compared to a Texas-wide average of 28.9 inches a year). Much of New
Mexico has been in the grips of a severe drought since
the year began, and the same is true to a lesser degree in
Texas as well.
This means demand for water for
drilling and fracking is one of the biggest challenges facing the industry. “Next
to profitability and safety, water may well be the next most important topic
for an oil company,” Laura Capper, CEO at Energy Makers Advisory
Group in Houston, told Bloomberg. “It has risen to the forefront over
the last five years unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”
And as the climate warms, Texas
and New Mexico will also benefit less from water supplied by rivers flowing
into the state from more lush regions. The Rio Grande River Basin is expected to see less water flowing per
year, with flows down four to 14 percent over the next dozen years, and the
Colorado River Basin expected to dry up even more significantly, up to 30
percent by 2050.
Most of the water used in the
region is claimed by the agricultural industry — 60 percent compared to the one
percent used by the oil and gas industry. But a key difference is that water
used for fracking is often permanently removed from the hydrologic cycle,
because it becomes so contaminated that it must be injected in underground
disposal wells. This means that the freshwater used by the oil and gas industry
can add up over time much more dramatically than water used by other
industries.
In addition, spats over the oil
and gas industry’s use of water in the Permian are flaring up between its two
states. Driven by Permian Basin demand, some landowners in Texas are selling
water to drilling companies, drawing down aquifers relied on by residents of
New Mexico.
“Texas is stealing New Mexico’s
water,” New Mexico State Land Commissioner Aubrey Dunn told The Texas Tribune. “If you put a whole
bunch of straws in Texas and you don’t have any straws in New Mexico, you’re
sucking all the water from under New Mexico out in Texas and then selling it
back to New Mexico.”
The latest findings from Duke
reinforce this tension, showing “a need to find alternative water sources,” the
doctoral student Kondash told the Pacific Standard.
“Especially in water-scarce
areas,” he predicted, “you will have more strain and more competition for
water.”
This piece was reprinted by Truthout
with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without
permission or license from the source.
Sharon
Kelly is an attorney and freelance writer based in Philadelphia. She has
reported for The New York Times, The Nation, National Wildlife, Earth Island
Journal and a variety of other publications. Prior to beginning freelance
writing, she worked as a law clerk for the ACLU of Delaware.
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
No comments:
Post a Comment