Repurposing Acid Mine Discharge for Use in Shale at a Standstill
Pittsburgh Business Times
3 February 2012
By Anya Litvak, Reporter
It’s been at least three years since the promise of using the
state’s many abandoned mine discharges to frac the Marcellus Shale
appeared to be an environmental panacea for two potential
problems: The millions of gallons of fresh water shale operators
need to get gas out of the earth and the millions of gallons of
abandoned coal mine waste that leaches heavy metals into the
state’s streams.
But fast forward those three years and a combination of economics,
legal barriers and chemical unknowns has stagnated the idea in the
promise stage.
Technically speaking
Left over from the state’s 200-year legacy of coal mining,
there are now about 2,500 miles of streams in Pennsylvania
polluted with AMD and billions more gallons of it in mine pools
throughout the state.
Many are in southwestern Pennsylvania, along the footprint of the
shale.
Today, AMD is treated mostly by the state, in metaphorical
spoonfuls, with an annual budget of about $19 million for
reclamation projects.
The DEP is soliciting comments on a white paper on the topic, with
a final version expected to be issued in early spring.
What’s at issue is how the AMD can be stored and transported
safely for use in fracking.
The agency is proposing three options: Keeping it in water
impoundments or in site pits, both of which require the AMD to be
treated to drinking water quality; or storing it in a centralized,
double-lined impoundment with leak detection and monitoring. That
last option means the AMD wouldn’t have to be treated at all.
“Not a lot of companies are currently interested,” said Rick
Palmer, an oil and gas environmental group manager with the DEP.
“If they have to adhere to drinking water quality, we probably
won’t get many takers.”
It might be public relations pressure that could move the effort
further along, Palmer said, the same way it forced many
Pennsylvania shale operators to recycle rather than dispose of
their flowback water.
To sweeten the deal, the DEP said last week that applications from
drillers to use AMD will be processed within 15 days, a speedy
trial.
But one of the major issues yet unresolved is the quality of water
Marcellus operators are looking for, Palmer said.
“There’s no generally accepted criteria for frac fluid” when it
comes to AMD, said Radisav Vidic, a professor at the University of
Pittsburgh’s department of civil and environmental engineering.
“And some people have a much more stringent criteria than the
others.”
Not to mention that many natural gas companies hire contractors
such as Schlumburger and Halliburton to frac their wells. These
firms have proprietary frac formulas and may be less willing to
tinker with them if they can’t guarantee results.
Vidic has spent several years testing how AMD would behave if
pumped underground at high pressure. His feeling is that it would
work beautifully without any additional treatment.
But Vidic has had a hard time convincing companies that the
sulfates in AMD won’t sour the well by producing hydrogen sulfide,
or clog it by combining with the barium native in the shale.
Considering a single Marcellus well can average about $5 million
to complete, experimenting with a new formula is a costly risk.
Money and the law
In December, RAND Corp. hosted a conference on AMD use in frac
water at the request of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, which has
endorsed the possibility.
“At the end of the day, it was fairly widely agreed in the room
that there was a sufficient resource out there and it was very
technically feasible to use the resource (in fracking),” said
Aimee Curtright, a physical scientist who attended the conference.
“But things standing in the way may be economic.”
For example, the location of the AMD and its proximity to a well
is a critical cost consideration.
For CONSOL Energy Inc., a coal miner and gas producer obligated to
treat its acid mine water, the combination makes sense, according
to Katharine Fredriksen, senior vice president for environmental
strategy and regulatory affairs.
“In fact, we were the first to receive approval to do so from one
of our AMD plants and have also moved forward with arrangements
for a third party to use water from another plant,” she said.
CONSOL treats more mine water than anyone else in the U.S.,
Fredriksen said — about 32 billion gallons annually.
“It only makes sense to assess the options to use that water in a
sustainable fashion where the nexus of flow, location and need
converge,” she said.
Range Resources, the most active driller in southwestern
Pennsylvania, is convinced that, technically, the concept can
work.
“The issue now is liability,” said Matt Pitzarella, a spokesman
for Range. “If we fix the problem, so to speak, we would own the
abandoned mine and all of the potential issues.
Until that issue is addressed at the state level, I’m not sure
this issue can go much further.”
In November, Sen. Richard Kasunic, who represents parts of
Fayette, Somerset, Washington and Westmoreland counties,
introduced a bill that would specifically free natural gas
operators who withdraw AMD from streams for the purpose of
fracking from any liability for those discharges.
Anya Litvak covers energy, transportation, gaming and accounting.
Contact her at alitvak@bizjournals.com or (412) 208-3824.