Unprecedented: West Virginia University and Ohio State Are
Raising the Bar For Shale Drilling Research
The State Journal
17September 2015
By Sarah Tincher, Energy Reporter
A team of researchers with West Virginia University and Ohio State
University are getting up close and personal with the Northeast
Natural Energy drilling site in Morgantown to study various
impacts of shale drilling, and project leaders are calling it an
unprecedented opportunity to drive change in the oil and gas
industry.
“It’s been very difficult to get all of the kinds of information
on the process that we really need to do the good science; to
match up the field data with the process data,” said Michael
McCawley, interim chair of the Department of Occupational and
Environmental Health Sciences in the School of Public Health at
West Virginia University. “It’s just extremely important to be
able to gather this kind of information because it’s very
expensive to do it. And to have the opportunity and to be in on
that opportunity, it’s really groundbreaking and really important
for science and for the people that science serves, which is the
rest of the world, really.
“More transparency, better accuracy, better precision,” McCawley
said. “That’s the name of the game in science.”
‘Absolutely critical’
The team of geoscientists, hydrologists, engineers,
ecologists, social scientists and public health professionals
began work on the study earlier in the summer through a five-year,
$11 million agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy’s
National Energy Technology Laboratory.
“I think (the partnership) is absolutely critical,” said Paul
Ziemkiewicz, director of West Virginia Water Research Institute.
“Here you have a company that’s operating that’s allowing us
access to their site. You have a federal agency, the U.S. DOE,
that’s providing the funding to make all this happen, and then you
have two major research universities.
“And between them we have a tremendous amount of capability.”
The researchers behind the Marcellus Shale Energy and Environment
Laboratory project are looking at everything from health, business
and environmental impacts of shale gas drilling, to microseismic
activity associated with drilling and biologic makeup of the
Marcellus shale, and everything in between.
“(There are a) lot of questions on the impact of these Marcellus
wells. They are big wells, no question about it,” said Tim Carr,
chair of WVU’s Department of Geology and Geography, and program
director of the MSEEL project. “So we’re documenting all the air,
the water, the noise, the economic impact of these, as far as
direct employment, now you have to go down to the actual drilling.
“So everything from scientific questions to engineering questions
to technical questions.”
Finding, solving problems
In addition to testing water and air quality around the active
site, as well as monitoring activity during the fracture
stimulation of the wells, Northeast Natural Energy has drilled a
science observation well between two producing wells, which
researchers will use as a “listening post” to gather information
that will assist with optimizing well placement and hydraulic
fracture design with the Marcellus Shale.
And according to Ziemkiewicz, the project will allow the team to
gather data that hasn’t previously been accessible, as no other
researchers have been able to access an active well site.
“In terms of the growth of the industry and the technologies that
have been employed and the environmental issues that we’re dealing
with, they really haven’t been studied in a detailed way at a
particular well site,” Ziemkiewicz said.
“The EPA just wrapped up a five-year-long study where they were
trying to get on well sites and kind of monitor the same kind of
liquid waste streams and solid waste streams that we are, and they
really couldn’t get on a well site,” he explained. “So they came
up with a very, very expensive report … and never actually got on
a well site. So almost all of their data that they were able to
use in this was whatever they could find in literature.”
And while Ziemkiewicz said those previous studies have allowed
researchers to analyze data in a broader spectrum, the data in
those studies isn’t continuous.
“(The MSEEL project) allows us to take the environmental
monitoring right through the stages of drilling,” Ziemkiewicz
said. “The whole point of this research project is really to find
out whether there’s anything that needs to be addressed, any
environmental issues — in other words identify problems, if there
are any — and once you’ve done that, find out how to solve those
problems.”
Ziemkiewicz also said the unique location of the well site — which
lies on the southwestern outskirts of Morgantown overlooking the
WVU campus from across the Monongahela River — could really help
motivate the team to seek out possible hazards with the production
process.
“The thing that makes this important from an urban point of view
is you have a lot of people around and you have a major drinking
water supply,” Ziemkiewicz said. “Usually that’s not the case.
“It’s also significant when you get in the air and noise issues,”
he added. “It’s an important spot in that you really have to make
sure that you’re not generating any waste and if they are, we need
to document those and find out where they’re coming from. If we’re
getting gaseous emissions that are at harmful levels to people we
need to figure out where they are and how to stop them.”
Driving change
The researchers are also tasked with studying the influence
unconventional shale drilling could have on energy production.
As technology has advanced and the industry has become more
efficient, oil and gas prices have plummeted, causing a sort of
revolution in the state and nation’s energy industry.
“It’s really driven down the price of energy; that’s a challenge
for West Virginia … because it’s driven the price of coal down,”
Carr said. “The tax base on severance for coal and gas — both
those are down and that’s because we’ve gotten too good at it.
“That’s a pretty typical thing with any resource; we get too good
at it and we drive the price down,” he added. “But that’s good for
the rest of the economy, that’s good for consumers.”
And Bill Hughes, who works with the Ohio Valley Environmental
Coalition as well as FracTracker, hopes the MSEEL project will
help the oil and gas industry “move to a sustainable concept.”
“Some of the ways we’ve gone about this aren’t sustainable,”
Hughes said. “If we do, in fact, want to decrease coal use, and
water and air pollution due to coal use, we don’t want to swap it
for another form of pollution.
“Industry and a lot of environmental folks have been trying to
answer the question, ‘Can this be done right?’, and that hasn’t
been answered yet,” he said.
While Hughes isn’t certain the drilling process actually can be
done in a sustainable way, he is optimistic for what the team will
find.
“This should begin to answer that, so I’m optimistic the group
they have together should be able to help make the process
sustainable,” he said. “This will be a very worthwhile endeavor on
the parts of West Virginia and Ohio to understand our future for
energy production.”
Delaying reform
While some are eager to see what MSEEL will bring to the
table, others are questioning the necessity of the project.
“Certainly we always want to support good research and more
information is helpful; our concern is that we already know enough
to justify much more regulation of industry to limit their
environmental impacts,” said Jim Kotcon, chairman of the Energy
Committee for the West Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club.
“We think it is important to move forward the kinds of rules that
would prevent spills and require closed systems to reduce methane
gas emissions, reduce truck traffic ... and be sure benefits
touted are in fact achieved,” he said. “We’re not sure research
will help us solve some of the basic problems people are
experiencing living next to shale drilling sites.
“We really would do better to move forward than delay that needed
reform because ongoing research is still underway,” Kotcon added.
“We think the industry needs much more stringent regulation right
now.”
Additionally, Kotcon said state regulators should be making more
efforts to prevent potential problems before they happen.
“It’s very irresponsible for our state to continue to issue
permits when major potential problems exist for which their only
claim is we don’t have the data,” he said. “We should be acting on
a much more precautionary approach and make sure the industry
provides the necessary data to the public and regulatory agencies
before we allow further permitting and well drilling.”