On Friday March 27, 2015, EPA announced the availability of their latest peer reviewed report from their overall Hydrofracturing Study. Congress asked EPA to conduct the Hydrofracturing Study to determine the impacts of the hydrofracturing process on water. One of the analyses EPA identified in their overall Study Plan was the need to determine the constituents of hydrofracturing fluid. What exactly is being used in the process? Another analysis EPA identified in their Study Plan is how much water is being used in hydrofracturing and what is its source? In order to answer these questions, EPA sent out and collected data from a large number of operators who are conducting hydrofracturing operations. The other source of information was collected from data disclosed in FracFocus. Not familiar with FracFocus? Well head on over to their website (http://fracfocus.org) if you are interested in hydrofacturing. It is a source of great information. In addition to information on the hydrofracturing process, FracFocus also serves as a disclosure site for hydrofracturing operations. What are they disclosing? Those very things that EPA is interested in: What are the chemicals being used in hydrofracturing and how much water is being used. EPA has published an analysis of the FracFocus information in this newly issued report. The report is aptly named “Analysis of Hydraulic Fracturing Fluid Data from the FracFocus Chemical Disclosure Registry 1.0”.

 

I have taken a look at the report and not surprisingly EPA discovered what so many other people do when trying to analyze a database for a purpose for which the database was not intended. The FracFocus database was meant for disclosure of chemicals and water used in hydrofracturing of individual wells. EPA has tried to use the information in the database to determine and this is right from the report: “(1) what are the identities and quantities of chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing fluids, and how might this composition vary at a given site and across the country? and (2) how much water is used in hydraulic fracturing and what are the sources of this water?” So EPA was sort of able to make some conclusions, but the report is caveated with all sorts of limitations on the ability to use the data in the report to answer their two questions.

 

A lot of the trouble EPA encountered was the conversion of the data from FracFocus. That data is in the PDF format. EPA had to bring all that data from the PDF format into a database. So there were problems with conversion. EPA says the conversion potentially resulted in some errors. Operators filling out the data in FracFocus also made errors, so a number of chemical numbers entered by the operators were actually not valid numbers and EPA could not use them to identify the chemical. In addition EPA found the data in FracFocus incomplete because some operators designated ingredients in their additives as Confidential Business Information.  Another issue EPA raised about the usefulness of the information in FracFocus was the wide variety of reporting on sources of water for hydrofracturing fluid. A lot of operators reported using fresh water but didn’t give any information on whether it was surface water or groundwater.

 

In other words some of the data was usable but EPA cautioned about the completeness and accuracy of the data. None the less, EPA has once again done a masterful job at taking the data and making some sense out of it.

 

To let you know what a big job this was, EPA used all of the disclosures in FracFocus over a period of almost two years between January 2011 and February 2013. There were almost 39,000 disclosures. Out of that number of disclosures EPA was able to use about 38,000 to determine well locations, water volumes and whether the record was for an oil or a gas well. They were able to use about 36,500 records to determine what ingredients were being used in the hydrofracturing process.

 

What did EPA learn? Well there are three things that go into a hydrofracturing fluid. A base fluid (usually water), what is called a proppant (which is basically a material to hold open the fractures once they are made – this is usually silica sand), and a number of chemical ingredients that do things like making the base fluid more viscous and controlling biological growth. So for base fluid, EPA learned that the most common fluid used was water. It was used in 93 percent of the disclosures. Sometimes water was used in a mixture with other base “fluids”. And that is quoted because some of the other bases used were actually gases. Other primary bases were carbon dioxide and liquid nitrogen. EPA learned that in 2012 alone 52 billion gallons of water were used in twenty states to conduct hydrofracturing. EPA looked at the median amounts of water used per state. In Pennsylvania, operators used four million gallons per well. In North Dakota the median was two million per well and in Texas it was about one and a half million per well. Remember median is where half of the number of something is greater and half is less. The ranges were extremely variable.

 

EPA also learned that most operators are using “fresh” water as a base fluid. It was identified in 68 percent of the disclosures. Although EPA was quick to point out that the actual source of the water was not identified. So they don’t know if the source was surface water or groundwater.  The thing I found interesting was the state breakdown on water source. I mentioned in an earlier post that more operators are using recycled water now. Of the three states I mentioned above (Pennsylvania, North Dakota and Texas), Pennsylvania seems to be the leader in recycled water use. I would have thought it would be the other way around, with the drier states like North Dakota and Texas leading the way.

 

EPA learned that quartz sand is the prevalent proppant being used. It was used in 98 percent of the disclosures. In fact ninety percent of the disclosures only used quartz sand as a proppant.

 

EPA identified 692 unique ingredients being used in additives for hydrofracturing fluid. The most common additives were methanol, hydrochloric acid and hydrotreated light petroleum distillates. I think most people know what methanol and hydrochloric acid are, but even I don’t know what a hydrotreated light petroleum distillate is. So I checked out the Material Safety Data Sheet on it. It is a mixture and not a single chemical, therefore the fancy name. And its name is really more of a description of how it is made. EPA found that 20, out of the 692 identified ingredients, were more commonly used as additives in hydrofracturing fluid and that the more commonly used ingredients were different for hydrofracturing oil wells versus gas wells. These chemical ingredients were found to be less than one percent by mass of the total fluid, with base fluid being 88 percent of the total, and proppants another 10 percent.

 

This report is a great overview of the industry. It gives a good summary of the amounts of water used, the source of the water and the most common ingredients used in additives. To me what would be most interesting next is for EPA to look at the mobility of these additives in water. Will a chemical ingredient easily mix with water and move along with the water? Not all chemicals do. Some adhere to soil and rock. Some are too dense.

 

EPA held a webinar on this latest report on Monday March 30, 2015 and has promised to post the webinar soon. I’ll look out for it and let you know if EPA had anything to say about what is coming next from their Hydrofracturing Study.