Can Ohio Handle All of the Wastewater?

An article from insideclimatenews.org considers whether Ohio can really continue to be the dumping ground for fracking wastewater as more and more shale exploration occurs.  Read an excerpt below, and view the entire article by clicking here.

A series of earthquakes that rumbled from an oil and gas wastewater well in Ohio last year has highlighted the state's new role in the regional drilling landscape. Over the last couple of years, Ohio has becoming a dumping ground for wastewater.
Last year, drillers pumped more than 500 million gallons of toxic fluid—nearly 40 percent more than in 2010—into the state's injections wells, where energy companies pump waste into porous rock formations deep underground for permanent storage. With more than 170 injection wells in operation, Ohio is by far the region's leader in this area, with New York and Pennsylvania each having only a handful of injection wells. Ohio's regulators approved 29 new injection wells last year. Applications for 19 more are pending.But the earthquakes, and a series of more restrictive injection guidelines published in March, raise the question of whether Ohio can continue taking so much wastewater from neighboring states without alienating either drillers with higher costs or voters spooked by the quakes.
"It's a very important issue and potentially a limiting factor," said John Conrad, a spokesman for New York's Independent Oil and Gas Association, an industry group. Conrad owns an environmental consulting firm that operates in New York and Pennsylvania, and he said wastewater disposal is becoming an increasingly expensive headache for the region's drillers. With natural gas prices at historic lows, he said it's becoming tougher for drillers to justify drilling new wells, with waste disposal costs being one of many factors. "Right now, there doesn't appear to be any really low cost option."
The problem is likely to get worse.
Until last spring, drillers in Pennsylvania's booming Marcellus Shale disposed of most of their wastewater by flushing it into rivers. But after that practice was found to be polluting waterways, Pennsylvania prohibited drillers from discharging untreated waste. Drillers now reuse more of their wastewater, but there are limits to this recycling. At some point, the companies must dispose of some wastewater, and they've turned to Ohio's injection wells to take it.
Pennsylvania hasn't released data on waste disposal since its new wastewater rules went into effect. But more than half of the waste injected in Ohio last year came from out of state, according to Ohio officials, with Pennsylvania likely being the biggest source.
More waste could be headed to Ohio from New York. By the end of the year, New York's regulators are expected to finalize a set of rules that would finally allow high volume fracking in horizontal wells. The draft rules, released last year, prohibit surface discharge. Conrad said that with few other options for in-state disposal, drillers would need to rely on Ohio's injection wells.
To top it off, energy companies in Ohio are in the early stages of what they hope will be the nation's next big oil boom, drilling into the little-explored Utica Shale. They've drilled 62 wells so far, with another 200 expected by the end of the year, said Heidi Hetzel-Evans, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, which regulates both drilling and wastewater disposal.
Continue reading by clicking here. 


Visit our Forum!

Connect with us on Facebook and Twitter!

Popular posts from this blog

Fracktivist in Dimock Releases Carefully Edited Video, Refuses to Release the Rest

The Second Largest Oil and Gas Merger - Cabot and Cimarex

Is a Strong Oil Demand Expected This Year?