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Oklahoma gets more of state’s wastewater
Some resist influx of Arkansas drill fluid
Friday, February 5, 2010
As drilling activity has steadily increased in the Fayetteville Shale in northcentral Arkansas, so has the number of trucks hauling briny water used to fracture the gas wells over the border into Oklahoma.
Over a million barrels of wastewater from natural gas wells in the Fayetteville Shale - nearly 48.5 million gallons - were hauled to Oklahoma to be injected in disposal wells there between October and December of 2009, according to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission.
The January release of the data was the first time the commission has measured the amount of Arkansas water injected into Oklahoma wells.
Matt Skinner, the public information officer at the commission, which regulates the Class 2 injection wells, said Arkansas water accounts for the “lion’s share” of outof-state water being disposed of in Oklahoma. Wastewater brought from Arkansas accounts for about 7.8 percent of the water injected into commercial disposal wells in Oklahoma.
“All of this is because of the western Arkansas shale play, which is virtually brand new,” he said.
In 2004, there were 24 active wells in the Fayetteville Shale, according to the Department of Energy. In 2010, Southwestern Energy alone expects to participate in approximately 650 to 680 wellsin the Fayetteville Shale, 475 to 500 of which will be operated.
In the formation, millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals are blasted into gas wells to break apart the compact rock, releasing the gas and allowing it to flow freely into the well. The technique, known as hydraulic fracturing, has made natural gas production in the Fayetteville Shale and other “shale plays” around the country commercially viable.
But the used water, which contains salts and heavy metals, has to go somewhere, and Oklahoma already has 262 Class 2 commercial disposal wells used for oil- and gasdrilling wastewater.
Much of the water had been disposed of in “land farms” in Arkansas, where the drill water evaporates in ponds. Sixteen land farms have been granted permits since drilling began in 2004 in the Fayetteville Shale, a natural-gas formation stretching under north-central Arkansas.
But a study conducted by the Arkansas Departmentof Environmental Quality between Nov. 25, 2008, and Jan. 20, 2009, found that all the land farms had violated the terms of their permits in some way. Because of those violations, the agency placed a moratorium on new permits last year, and many of the land farms in the state are no longer operating.
Since then, Oklahoma has seen an increase in landfarm permit requests, some of which has been driven by additional wastewater coming in from Arkansas, Skinner said.
Until recently, Arkansas did not have the infrastructure to accommodate the large volumes of water produced by hydraulic fracturingin injection wells, said Larry Bengal, the director of the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission.
“Eventually, Arkansas wells will catch up, and fewer and fewer trucks will end up going to Oklahoma.”
Arkansas currently has 25 disposal wells, all of which have permits to accept drilling wastewater, though not all of them are within the Fayetteville Shale area.
Bengal said there is no regulatory advantage to sending fracture water to Oklahoma. Both states have obtained primary enforcement authority over their injection wells from the Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees underground injections. This means that both states have regulations that are “considered at least as effective as the federal regulations,” said Ray Leissner, an environmental engineer with the EPA.
“The rules are virtually identical, in fact in some areas, [Oklahoma’s] are a little bit tougher when it comes to injection wells,” Skinner said.
But some Oklahoma residents are concerned about the influx of drilling water into their state. A proposed injection well in Vian, Okla., about35 miles west of Fort Smith, has been met with resistance. The application, submitted by I-Mac Petroleum Services Inc. of Muskogee, is still pending in court.
Vian’s Board of Trustees passed an “emergency ordinance” last month, which would require any underground injection well built in the city limits to receive a permit from the town, and prohibiting the construction of any Class 2 wells within 2,000 feet of any school or business. The ordinance stipulates that any well built must pay a $75,000 annual inspection fee, as well as a $100 per vehicle fee on each truck bringing the water to the well.
“The whole purpose [of the well] was to attract Arkansas business,” said Oklahoma state Sen. Jim Wilson, D-Tahlequah.
“The concern is we don’t necessarily feel comfortable, or the community doesn’t, that it’s not going to affect the aquifer or the water source.”
Wilson said there needs to be more input from state environmental agencies in the permitting process. Currently, wells are approved only by the Oklahoma Corporation Commission.
Business, Pages 21 on 02/05/2010
