Pa.'s Attempts to Track Drilling Waste Flawed
Washington
PA Observer
Reporter
11 March 2011
Associated Press
The natural gas industry's claim that it is making great strides in
reducing how much polluted wastewater it discharges to Pennsylvania
rivers is proving difficult to assess because of inconsistent reporting
by energy companies - and at least one big data entry error in the
state's system for tracking the contaminated fluids.
Last month, Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection
released data that appeared to show that drillers had found a way to
recycle nearly 6.9 million barrels of the toxic brine produced by
natural gas wells - fluid that in past years would have been sent to
wastewater plants for partial treatment, and then discharged into
rivers that also serve as drinking water supplies.
But those figures were revealed Thursday to have been wildly inflated,
due to a mistake by Seneca Resources Corp., a subsidiary of
Houston-based National Fuel Gas Co. The company said a worker gave some
data to the state in the wrong unit of measure, meaning that about
125,000 barrels of recycled wastewater was misreported as more than 5.2
million barrels.
The error left the false impression that, as an industry, gas companies
had created about 10.6 million barrels of wastewater in the last six
months of 2010, and then recycled at least 65 percent of that total.
"They did put in gallons where they should have put in barrels," Seneca
spokeswoman Nancy Taylor explained after the error was reported
Thursday by the Philadelphia Inquirer. There are 42 gallons in every
barrel. Taylor said the company was working to correct its information.
So how much waste did the industry actually recycle? It may be
impossible to say with certainty.
Not counting Seneca's bad numbers - and assuming that the rest of the
state's data is accurate - drillers reported that they generated about
5.4 million barrels of wastewater in the second half of 2010. Of that,
DEP lists about 2.8 million barrels going to treatment plants that
discharge into rivers and streams, about 460,000 barrels being sent to
underground disposal wells, and about 2 million barrels being recycled
or treated at plants with no river discharge.
That would suggest a recycling rate of about 38 percent, a number that
stands in stark contrast to the 90 percent recycling rate claimed by
some industry representatives. But Kathryn Klaber, president of the
Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry group, stood by the 90 percent
figure this week after it was questioned by the Associated Press, The
New York Times and other news organizations.
"I am definitely holding to the 90 percent," she said, adding that her
figure was based on internal industry data. "It is definitely high and
going higher."
As for the wastewater management reports filed annually with the state
and reported to the public, she and other people in the industry said
they aren't fully representative of the industry's practices.
At least one company, Range Resources of Fort Worth, Texas, said it
hadn't been reporting much of its recycled wastewater at all, because
it believed the DEP's tracking system only covered water that the
company sent out for treatment or disposal, not fluids it reused on the
spot.
Another company that had boasted of a near 100 percent recycling rate,
Cabot Oil & Gas, also Houston-based, told the AP that the figure
only included fluids that gush from a well once it is opened for
production by a process known as hydraulic fracturing. Company
spokesman George Stark said it didn't include different types of
wastewater unrelated to fracturing, like groundwater or rainwater
contaminated during the drilling process by chemically tainted drilling
muds.
DEP officials did not immediately respond to inquiries about the
problems with the state's data.
The AP reported in January that previous attempts by the state to track
where wastewater was going were also flawed. Some companies reported
that wells had generated wastewater, but failed to say where it went.
The state was unable to account for the disposal method for nearly 1.3
million barrels of wastewater, or about a fifth of the total reported
in the 12 month period that ended June 30. At least some went to a
facility that had not received permission from regulators.
Among large gas-producing states, Pennsylvania is the only one that
allows substantial amounts of wastewater produced by gas drilling to be
discharged into rivers. Other states don't allow the practice because
of environmental concerns. The preferred disposal method in most other
places is to inject the well water into rock formations far
underground, where it can't contaminate surface water.
Liquid that comes out of the wells - first in a gush, and then
gradually for the years and decades it is in operation - is ultra-salty
and contaminated with substances like barium, strontium, radium, and
other things that can be damaging to the environment.
Pennsylvania's strategy for protecting the health of its rivers is
based partly on knowing which waterways are getting the waste, and how
much they are receiving.
Regulators monitor which rivers are being used as discharge points for
treated well wastewater, and use reports filed by Seneca and other
companies to help decide which waterways should be watched for signs
that the rivers aren't assimilating the waste stream. Even if Seneca's
data error had gone unnoticed - unlikely given the size of the blunder
- it probably would not have had an effect on that effort, because it
involved waste not sent to treatment plants for river disposal.