Coast Guard Walks Back Approval of Frac-Water Barging
The Waterways Journal
29 February 2016
By David Murray
On February 23, the Coast Guard announced that it had withdrawn an
October 30, 2013, proposed policy letter concerning the carriage
of shale gas extraction waste water (SGEWW), sometimes called frac
water, in bulk via barge. The decision left open the possibility
of the Coast Guard approving the barging of such water “under
existing regulations.”
The policy letter proposed a new standardized process and
specified conditions under which a barge owner could request and
be granted a Certificate of Inspection or letter allowing the
barge to transport SGEWW in bulk. “That proposed policy is
withdrawn and no new policy is proposed at this time,” the Coast
Guard said. “Barge owners may continue to request case-by-case
approval to transport SGEWW under current regulations by providing
recent detailed chemical composition, environmental analyses, and
other information for each individual tank barge load. The Coast
Guard will consider instituting a standardized process for
transporting SGEWW in bulk after it has assessed whether current
regulations are inadequate to handle requests for transport of
SGEWW in bulk and environmental impacts that may be associated
with SGEWW transport by barge.”
Under existing regulations, such water is considered an “unlisted
cargo.”
In a somewhat confusing part of its withdrawal notice, the Coast
Guard said, “In order to carry SGEWW on a tank barge, the vessel
owner must request permission from the Coast Guard, provide the
information about each individual cargo that the Coast Guard needs
in order to analyze potential impacts and develop carriage
requirements, and then comply with the regulations specified.
Although the proposed policy letter would have standardized that
information and request process for SGEWWs, withdrawal of the
policy letter does not change the Coast Guard’s authority to
consider approving unlisted cargoes on a case-by-case basis under
the existing regulations.
Amanda Finn, spokeswoman for GreenHunter Water LLC, whose business
model is built on treating and transporting—including by
barge—water used in fracking, told The Waterways Journal that the
issues involved are much more detailed than have been reported in
the press.
According to Finn, the walk-back of the policy letter came at the
direction of the Office of Management and Budget, a White House
agency, during a final review of the proposed policy.
Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” injects water and small
amounts of chemicals under high pressure to create tiny fractures
within the rock that allow oil and gas to escape and be pumped
upward. It has been in use since the 1940s, but the dramatic gains
in oil and gas output in recent years have come by combining
fracking with horizontal drilling to tap new sources of shale oil
and gas in bedrock.
‘Vertical’ Vs. ‘Horizontal’ Water
GreenHunter Water LLC has been having regular discussions with
the Coast Guard over its policy letter. According to Finn, the
Coast Guard distinguishes between two types of “flowback” water
collected after drilling.
“The Coast Guard believes that water used in horizontal drilling
collects more radium from underground than that used in vertical
drilling,” said Finn. She said the Coast Guard already freely
allows the barging of “vertical water,” but wants to regulate
“horizontal water.”
But as the price of oil and gas have travelled relentlessly
downward, due to the great success of the frackers, drillers have
learned to be much more efficient, in part by combining wells and
by achieving the same output with fewer drill rigs. Part of that
efficiency consists of finding new ways to use horizontal drilling
to exploit older wells to the maximum.
By some estimates, U.S. rig counts number only one-third of what
they were only a few years ago—yet output has remained steady. But
that means there are fewer wells that use purely vertical
drilling, and thus less “vertical water.”
According to Finn, it is no longer economical for companies like
GreenHunter to separate out “vertical” from “horizontal” water for
barging. “Most of our water is commingled,” she told The Waterways
Journal.
The barging of water used in fracking water has been beset by
environmental protests. In February 2013, a group of almost 100
activists protesting GreenHunter’s plans to barge water used in
hydraulic fracturing overran a wastewater storage facility owned
by GreenHunter Energy in New Matamoras, Ohio.
Disputes Over Words
The plans have also been marked disputes over the meaning of
the words and phrases used to describe the water used in, and left
over from, fracking.
Accounts in the popular media and on green activist websites
regularly use terms like “radioactive and chemical waste” or
“toxic waste” to describe the water, which is mostly brine with
added sand (called the “proppant” since it props open the
microscopic cracks) plus a few added chemicals that drillers have
listed on industry websites for the past several years.
Popular accounts also sometimes fail to distinguish between water
formulated for the process of fracking and that collected
afterwards.
In January of last year, GreenHunter announced to its shareholders
during a conference call that it had finally received U.S. Coast
Guard approval to barge the frac water.
That statement was at the center of a complaint filed in June with
the Securities and Exchange Commission by a group calling itself
the FreshWater Accountability Project, which challenged
GreenHunter’s statement that it had Coast Guard approval.