Study Finds Fracking Chemicals Didn't Pollute Water

RoccamOccam sends this news from the Associated Press: "A landmark federal study on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, shows no evidence that chemicals from the natural gas drilling process moved up to contaminate drinking water aquifers at a western Pennsylvania drilling site. After a year of monitoring, the researchers found that the chemical-laced fluids used to free gas trapped deep below the surface stayed thousands of feet below the shallower areas that supply drinking water."

Comments

Sounds iffy

[damn_registrars]

How can they be sure that they didn't detect the fracking chemicals when the industry continues to refuse to reveal the identity of said chemicals? It is nearly impossible to do a study where you watch for every conceivable chemical that ever has or ever could exist.

Re:Sounds iffy

[dlakelan]

It's pretty easy to run water through a gas chromatograph / mass spec and see if it has anything other than water in it, and how much of that stuff it has. A bit harder to figure out exactly what the pollutant is, but if you have a sample of the fracking water it's easy to look at the peaks the fracking water has and see if they appear in the drinking water even if you don't know the identity of the chemicals.

Re:Sounds iffy

[MightyMartian]

The way I read it (yes, I read the article) is that they put a marker of some kind into the chemical brew being slugged into the ground, and found no sign of that marker in ground water. Now obviously there are still questions to be raised, but still, in and of itself, this seems a pretty reasonable way to determine groundwater contamination.

Re:Sounds iffy

[Herkum01]

It depends on the marker that they use. If the marker is something that is not as soluble or emulates the characteristic of the fracking recipe. You also have the problem of how they injected the marker versus how they normally proceed. A concern was that they were more careful in projects where they were injecting the marker rather than how they normally do business. Finally, Pennsylvania is not the only place they do fracking different soils and naturally occurring fault lines were major concerns.

Re:Sounds iffy

[rsborg]

The way I read it (yes, I read the article) is that they put a marker of some kind into the chemical brew being slugged into the ground, and found no sign of that marker in ground water. Now obviously there are still questions to be raised, but still, in and of itself, this seems a pretty reasonable way to determine groundwater contamination.

How is that even reasonable? Why not measure the actual contaminants and check elevation levels?

Here's a question that immediately comes up for me: What if the markers have different rock/soil permeability compared to the chemicals used in fracking? Are those markers closely enough in characteristics to the chemicals used as to be valid for purposes of testing exposure/pollution?

How about another one - why is the DoE doing this test as opposed to the EPA (who are likely more versed in measuring pullution)?

Not testing the presence of the actual chemicals/pollutants doesn't pass the sniff test for me. Something stinks here.

Re:Sounds iffy

[oreaq]

I agree, it wouldn't be that difficult. But that is not what was done in the study. An undisclosed amount of four unnamed marker chemicals where added to the chemicals used for fracking by a company at one fracking site. Within the one year the study has been running, non of these markers where detected in a predetermined "monitoring zone". Maybe the study has some value, but since there is no citation in the article and the article contains no facts beside the ones I just mentioned, it is really hard to tell.

Re:Sounds iffy

[Jarik C-Bol]

this effect also can occur naturally, without drilling. (I knew a person lived far from any drilling who could light their water taps. They would go out instantly from the water pouring with the gas, but it made an interesting flash.)

Re:Sounds iffy

[virtig01]

Yes, but if that's truly the case, then where precisely are the chemicals coming from that are making the water flammable?

It's not the chemicals that make water flammable, but methane.

Of course methane exists in the shale where they're fracking, but it can also exist at various layers of the ground above the shale. Pretty much anywhere organic material is decomposing, methane can exist. I would bet that the origin of any methane found in drinking water is likely above the shale. It's possible that the seismic activity caused by fracking disturbs the ground high above, releasing methane into a nearby water source. But in some places methane is just emitted naturally; in the old days, people could take advantage of relatively shallow methane as a fuel source.

Re:Sounds iffy

[Freddybear]

Nothing changed. That area has had methane in the ground water since long before fracking ever happened.

Re:Sounds iffy

[Xicor]

Nothing changed. That area has had methane in the ground water since long before fracking ever happened.

this article only talks about the fracking chemicals being leaked into the groundwater... it does not mention the other problem with fracking, which is that it causes fault lines to shift and ruptures in the ground due to increased pressure. the latter is what causes methane to leak into the groundwater, which then gets into drinking water. methane is not one of the fracking chemicals, and therefore the study didnt mention it.

Re:Sounds iffy

[mellon]

Translation: the study is contradicted by known data, so it would be interesting to understand why.

FTFY.

Re:Sounds iffy

[kevmeister]

People seem unable to read papers any longer. This is especially true of the news media. The study on earthquakes repeatedly pointed out that there was NO evidence that fracking itself led to earthquakes. It said that the practice of pumping the toxic waste from fracking into deep wells for disposal, a common, but not universal practice, could and did lead to quakes.

Back in the mid 1960s Colorado experienced a series of quakes, some strong enough to cause damage. Those earthquakes were tracked to the use of deep well disposal at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal. The well was used for disposal of chemical warfare agents (toxic gases and their components). The strongest was felt quite strongly in Trinidad, CO, some 200 miles south of the well. I grew up there and felt it personally. This led to the discontinuation of this disposal method.

I am simply amazed that half a century after this well documented and researched event that it seems to have been forgotten.

Re:Sounds iffy

[Anonymous Coward]

Because not being a goddamn idiot and insisting that we make sure we're not shitting where we eat means we want to shut down energy production in America by any means necessary?

That's even worse!

[Anonymous Coward]

So what the hell is being done about keeping your damn hippie drinking water from contaminating my fracking solution??

OK, That's One (this is a preliminary study)

[Anonymous Coward]

One site, one test well. Big whoop.

>shows no evidence that chemicals from the natural gas drilling process moved up to contaminate drinking water aquifers at a western Pennsylvania drilling site

> one was injected with four different man-made tracers

Re:OK, That's One (this is a preliminary study)

[negRo_slim]

Who picked the site? What was the criteria for selection? A year of monitoring also seems to be pretty short to come to conclusions when we are talking about the most important resource on the planet.

Jackson said the 1,800-foot fracture was very interesting, but also noted it is still a mile from the surface.

Love the lackadaisical attitude.

Re:OK, That's One (this is a preliminary study)

[Em Adespoton]

Indeed: http://www.howstuffworks.com/search.php?terms=fracking

The main issue does not appear to be that a properly administered site leaks fracking fluids into the drinking water... it's that most sites have no oversight and don't always handle the fracking fluids properly.

While it's useful to know that there isn't contamination from the properly injected deep-seam fracking fluids, this doesn't really help the people who are victims of sites where the injection column lelaked at drinking water levels, extra fluid was dumped at ground level, or any of the other hundreds of possible things that could happen... happened.

One data point...

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming everything's above the board (so to speak), these results are all fine and dandy, but this single scenario doesn't itself make for a glowing endorsement of fracking's safety. For one thing, I'm wondering how the results from sites with fracking-related earthquakes might look.

Does anyone really want to bet that aquifers near other fracking sites are just as fracking-chemical-free?

Not possible

[onyxruby]

It's not possible! The results are politically incorrect and will go against the dogma of 'we must be miserable'. Not to worry, someone will quickly find a way to bury this, spin this or otherwise make this moot. We can't let science speak, that's what we have greenpeace for.

In this case.

[intermodal]

Sure, it didn't get into the groundwater this time. My concern is whether proper studies are being done to ensure that other sites do not see different results from the supposedly clean ones here.

What about long term?

[csubi]

Nothing made its way up in a year, hardly surprising.

I'm sure people will be happy when they see these chemical showing up in the water a couple hundred years from now, then discovering records about fracking in archives. They will probably say things like : they could not have been this stupid?!

Again, the problem here is timescale. One should not think in decades but in centuries.

Re:What about long term?

[Nemyst]

You're asking for long-term thinking from corporations? Ha! They can't think long-term even when it'd benefit them, imagine when they don't give a shit about it.

Says it all!

[Tempest451]

"While the lack of contamination is encouraging, Jackson said he wondered whether the unidentified drilling company might have consciously or unconsciously taken extra care with the research site, since it was being watched. " Ya think?

From a comment on the story - so this is bogus

[PoconoPCDoctor]

This segment of oil and gas propaganda was brought to you by the good ol' folks of the Marcellus Shale Coalition and its friends at ANGA. What a joke! I'm sure the American Natural Gas Association (ANGA) will advertise even more on your station now as a thank you for this puff piece you proffered as news. I live in SW PA. I sadly know many, many families whose lives have been destroyed by the onslaught of drilling and fracking. For them, this might be the most insulting study I have seen to date. Why not point out, CBS, that the state of PA never even had 1 cumulative impact study on human health or the environment before they allowed the takeover of our state and government by big oil and gas. No consideration whatsoever for what this would do to our health, our air, our water. We are here to be the guinea pigs and no one really seems to care thanks to a lack of media integrity and coverage about the reality of living in the gasfields. CBS should be embarrassed to even play along with this type of bought and paid for "journalism". Congratulations Duke! You found a company here that can drill and maintain a gas pad exactly as it should be without a single complication and did a study (like the 7 or 8% failure rate on the cement well casings. This is one of the major reasons we have had so much water contamination and methane migration in this state. Check the DEP numbers here in PA. That is failure of cement casing on just the completion of wells, not the overall failure rate, over time, that is much, much higher). It is terrifying to think about all of the damage that the fractures (1800 ft) themselves can or will do in addition to the failed casings. You seem there are hundreds of thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells, and coal mines in all corners of this state that are further complicating this type of migration and contamination. Why not investigate that? Looking at one well and saying "Hey, this is how it is supposed to work when it does. See, it can happen." is not any kind of science or research that helps those of us screaming "WHAT DO WE DO WHEN YOUR DRILL SITES FAIL; WHEN YOUR FRACK PITS LEAK TOXIC WASTE; WHEN YOUR TRUCKS SPILL AND YOUR WORKERS ILLEGALLY DUMP ON OUR ROADS AND IN OUR WATERWAYS? WHAT DO WE DO WHEN WE CAN'T BREATHE THE AIR OUTSIDE OF OUR HOMES AND ALL OF OUR POLITICIANS and REGULATORY AGENCIES ARE BEHOLDEN TO INDUSTRY AND NOT THE PEOPLE THEY WORK FOR?" Now there's a story we here in Gasland would love to see. I will take any honest journalist on a tour of what fracking really looks like when things go wrong, as they often do, from the view of the harmed, the sickened, the destroyed forests and farmland. I will show you the massive frackpits that sit behind people's houses and poison their air. I will show you what black, putrid water looks like where it used to run clean and water animals. I will let you smell the smell of flaring and burning of god knows what from giant cyrogenic plants next to the home of toddlers and daycare centers. I will show you where toxic waste is buried on farmland and where water catches fire and well after well is destroyed, thanks to all of the disruption of the earth below it. I could show you all of this and yet the sad truth is that you wouldn't even investigate or report on it, just like the media round these parts. You have an organization to run and that takes lots of advertising dollars, not honest reporting. Just keep spewing the BS about jobs, safety, doing it right, American independence from foreign oil, and every other lie and industry talking point that you tell to justify the plight of my neighbors and the destruction of our land and the profit of your news organization. I'll be here shaking my head at your fault, but fighting back. I'll watch as our resources are shipped to China and India, while more and more foreign companies drill and have more rights in our backyards than the citizens of this state. I'll watch with great sadness, your participation in the destruction of my democracy. And I will continue to speak truth to power. My eyes were opened a long time ago. I understand how the world works. I know what part in the coverup media outlets like you play. I only hope that many of your viewers wake up and take your news for what it is, good old American journaltizing at its best.

Re:From a comment on the story - so this is bogus

[phantomfive]

They're obviously right, they use paragraphs.

At least we know fire water is safe

[pablo_max]

It seems the US government has a very loose definition of "polluted".
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/06/fracking

Obvious conclusion.

[alexhs]

So, they didn't test water pollution, only checked that fracking didn't contaminate water by using markers.
Hower, other studies showed a correlation between fracking and presence of water pollutants.

Therefore, the only logical conclusion is: water pollution causes fracking !

Gasland II

[mspohr]

Watch Gasland II.
All wells will eventually leak into surface water. About 5% failure rate per year. (The cement around the pipe develops cracks.)
They studied one well which didn't leak in the first year.
Gasland II shows what happens when they do eventually leak.

Re:Fire water?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

And suppose the fracking chemicals themselves don't migrate.

. . . they could be carried by a swallow . . .

Re:Fire water?

[Em Adespoton]

But what about the videos of people lighting their tap water. Are there explanations that don't directly implicate fracking? I asking seriously. I haven't read up on those films and I'm sure someone has a perfectly reasonable sounding story for how that could be.

And suppose the fracking chemicals themselves don't migrate. What about the petrochemicals they've broken loose (which is the whole reason for fracking in the first place, as I understand it)? Can those work their way up into the water supply?

As I understand it, when done properly, the petro and fracking chemicals either stay in the shale or end up back in the tankers.

The problem is, according to some studies, it's only done properly 20% of the time or less, due to the high costs of doing it properly and the lack of effective oversight.

In short, the chemicals usually migrate into the water supply due to dumping, accidents, and badly maintained equipment, not because they were properly injected into the shale/extracted and shipped to petrochemical companies.

Re:Fire water?

[Anonymous Coward]

Methane has been fairly common in groundwater long before fracking. Of course, the environmental activists don't want you to know that.

Re:Fire water?

[steelfood]

I don't recally where I heard this, but my understanding is that the tap water was flammable even prior to the fracking. Natural gas was contaminating the groundwater long before people began mining it. The way I see it, it may be that more places have flammable tap water after fracking, but being able to light water on fire by itself is not indicative of contaminated drinking water. It's more just attention-whoring and if you abscribe malice to the media, then classic straw-man misdirection.

Stronger correlators, such as the tails of cows falling off after fracking began (I don't recall which, but one of the known chemicals used in fracking caused tails to fall off in laboratory experiments), would be a better argument for groundwater contamination.

The other thing to realize is that just because one area is not contaminated does not imply that fracking in general does not contaminate the ground water. It could be due to the specific geology of the area. Or it could be variations in the fracking process used in that particular area or for this particular test.

Re:Fire water?

[TapeCutter]

Of course, the environmental activists don't want you to know that.

So name one, point to an environmentalist that is claiming the phenomena is always a result of fracking.

As an environmentalist since the 70's I want people to know they are pumping an unknown substance into the ground because they claim it's more effective than using plain old water (ie: it's more profitable). I want people to know that the US congress refuses to force frackers to reveal the recipe for their fluid.

Also as a pragmatic environmentalist I can see that burning gas (or uranium) is a lesser evil than burning coal but it seems to me (in the US at least) that greed and the regulatory blindness it creates will destroy the overall social benefit from these natural resources, just as it has in Nigeria and dozens of other resource rich hell holes around the globe.

Disclaimer: As someone who has a BSc and a lifelong passion for science I'm well aware that dissolved methane in tap water is more often a natural phenomena than a man made one. I am not responsible for other people making outrageous claims under the banner of "environmentalism", nor will I defend them if the science does not stack up.