We’re still waiting on EPA’s Hydrofracturing Study Report. While we are waiting I’ll go over some of the studies EPA is conducting according to their Study Plan and 2012 Hydraulic Fracturing Study Progress Report. In my last post on hydrofracturing, I discussed two types of case studies that EPA contemplated conducting.  The only case studies which we will probably see in their upcoming Hydrofracturing Study Report are what EPA is calling the “retrospective” studies.

EPA’s “retrospective” studies are case studies of hydrofractured areas that have complaints of groundwater contamination. EPA’s five case studies are from some of the largest oil and gas shale developments. Who hasn’t heard of the Bakken shale in North Dakota by now or the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania? These are the big new developments in oil and gas that are helping to reduce the price per barrel of oil and producing the cheap natural gas we see on the east coast. It can’t be but five years ago I was reading in the paper about peak oil – the idea that the oil industry was reaching the peak of oil production and would soon run out of sources for hydrocarbon production. Then voila an existing technology – hydrofracture is modified to be used in conjunction with horizontal drilling to shatter shale and free up the gas and oil within. And suddenly everything is changed. Peak oil is dead. At least for the next fifty years or so I would think.

EPA is conducting case studies of the Bakken Shale in Dunn County, North Dakota where a blowout in 2010 resulted in an uncontrolled release of hydraulic fracturing fluid and water from the formation. Water from the formation is simply water already existing within the rock containing the oil and gas. They are often brines and exist most everywhere there is oil and gas. Some people also call them produced waters. The formation water comes up along with the oil and gas. It then has to be separated from the oil and gas and disposed of.

EPA is conducting two case studies in the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania: one in Bradford County, Pennsylvania and the other in Washington County, Pennsylvania. For those of you with some historical knowledge, you’ll remember the first oil well in the United States was drilled in the 1850’s in Titusville, Pennsylvania in Crawford County. Washington County is south of there and Bradford County is way east of there. There are plenty of other counties in Pennsylvania where the Marcellus Shale is being developed for gas production but the two case studies EPA chose were based on homeowner complaints about changes in the water quality from their household wells after hydrofracturing of gas wells.

There is also a case study in the Barnett Shale in Wise County, Texas. The Barnett is Texas’s big new oil and gas play. I don’t know much about the Barnett Shale but it is in central Texas. Texas as we know is a huge historic and current producer of oil and gas. I briefly lived in the Fort Worth area when I was young and what I remember about it was the aromatic smell of the oil pumps that were as common as dog walkers are in my current neighborhood. You’d think people would be used to oil and gas development in Texas, but interestingly enough the National Science Foundation did a series of seminars on hydrofracturing a few years back and I got to listen to a lot of people from Texas complaining about oil development in their suburban neighborhoods and to local government officials in Dallas and Ft. Worth who are having to address the increased traffic and noise from drilling and development. Ever heard a compressor pumping oil? It can be really loud.

The other study is of a coal bed methane project in Las Animas and Huerfano Counties, Colorado. I’m not really interested in coal bed methane so I’m not going to write about that study.

If we don’t get a release soon on the EPA Study Report, I’ll do a few more posts in the next few weeks with more details of the four case studies that involve shale oil and gas.