Horizontal Hydrofracking

of Shale in New York

Separating Fracks from Fiction

James “Chip” Northrup
Cooperstown & Texas
Meet the Frackers . . .

 Not your usual well

 Massive heavy truck
traffic
 Massive drilling
pressures
 Massive wastewater
 21st century technology
 Managed with 20th century
NY state regulations
Fracking 101: Shale is Located

 Seismic is shot to
determine the depth
and thickness of the
shale formation
 Once shale formation
is identified, no
more seismic is
usually shot - in
Texas. . .
Fracking 101: The Well is Drilled

 Well drilled into

shale formation
 Shale is tested
to determine
whether it is
economic to
produce gas
Fracking 101: Let the Fracking Begin

 A lateral (horizontal)
section is drilled into
the shale formation
 The lateral is used to
inject water under high
pressure to break up
the shale in order to
release the gas
 Frack generates
flowback wastewater
from well
Fracking 101: The Economics

 Shale gas marginally economic

– Creative accounting + creative reserve estimates
 Steep production decline curves
 Costly search over wide area for “hot
spots”
 A fraction of the wells will be profitable
 Life cycle impacts rarely considered
Fracking 101: Economics in New
York

 Property values will go down for many

 Most won’t directly benefit
– Small fraction own usable mineral rights
 No direct tax revenue from gas production
 No infrastructure, no waste disposal wells
 Gas producers avoid NYS income tax
 Drilling crews highly trained - not locals
 Taxpayers left with clean-up bill
 Fracking 101: Abandoned Wells
Be Prepared with Rules and Regulations Upfront

 Road use agreements in place

 Clean-up bonds posted prior to
 Land use statutes in place
 Tax gas at the wellhead
 Protect sensitive areas from
exploration
 Signing bonuses in tax appraisals
 Or get stuck with the clean up
bill
What’s the Hurry? Safety FIRST

 “We need the money/jobs”

– When did we not need them ?
 Landowners sold too much
– all their mineral rights
– for too little
– before the rules are in
place
 Many drillers are speculators
– Canadian penny stock
companies Copyright © 2009 FIREHOW LLC
 “It’ll be just like Texas”
Shale gas fracking was developed in Texas

Texas New York

Frack wastewater
disposal wells: 12,000 none

does not issue DEC

Environmental agency:
well permits issues well permits

Terrain: flat and semi-arid neither flat nor arid

Water wells: deep > 1000’ shallow <300’

 New York Is Not Texas
no trout streams in Texas . . . . . .

Texas New York

owned by owned by NYS
Lakes
municipalities except NYC

taxes gas no tax on

Revenues
production directly gas production

Seismically faults don’t move some faults move

Compulsory rarely DEC compels

integration enforced non-consenters into
wells
Just How unPrepared is New York ?

 EPA criticized the proposed regulations

 Regs. are so flawed New York City got a carve out
 New York shale loaded with radium
 No place to put toxic radioactive flowback from
wells
 New York gets no direct tax revenue from gas
production
 Road use agreements not in place
 No zoning controls over well locations
 Etc., etc., etc.
Problems of Shale Gas

 Massive amounts of truck traffic

 Spills and drilling blowouts pollute
groundwater
 Frack wastewater must be disposed of
– forever
 Marginal direct economics
 Problematic indirect economics
A Lot of Fracking Traffic

 1,200 tankers per well

 6 wells per site 7,200
trips
 Sites exempt from
zoning
 No road use agreements
 Counties have no funds
Frack Truck Solutions

 Local zoning should control well location

 Road use agreements in place
– Usage fees to counties
– Routes established
– Insurance and bonds in place
 State should tax gas production at wellhead
 Full value of lease in property valuations
What Does this Look Like to a Duck ?
Containment of Fluids Onsite

2009-2010 Copyright Rodale.

© 2010 HVPA
Most Pollution is at the Surface

 Pa. DEP fined Cabot on half of their 62

Dimock wells
 Over a third of the wells were cited for
surface spills
 Pa. has cited over 1,500 violations in
shale wells
Containment of Fracking Fluids

 Open pits overflow - polluting groundwater

 Open pits pollute the air
 Nets don’t work
– Bird caught in net, bird dies

Solutions :
 No open pits
 No drilling sites on steep slopes > 15
degrees
A Fracking Good Cocktail

 propargyl alcohol
 glutaraldehyde
 hydrochloric acid
 dibromoacetonitrile
 butoxyethanol
 ethylene glycol
 And Mystery Ingredients
Fracking Fluid Problems

 Toxic and carcinogenic

 Gets into groundwater via spills
 New York water wells shallow and
vulnerable
 Locals depend on well water
Fracking Fluid Solutions

 Non-toxic fracking fluids

 Test wells before fracking begins and
after
 No fracking within 1000’ feet of a water
well
 State Environmental Quality Review (SEQR)
– in watersheds of sole source drinking water
lakes
– In floodplains
Fracking as Explosive as a Bomb

 Atomic bomb used to frack a gas

formation in ‘69
 Frack worked but gas too
radioactive to sell
 So Halliburton develops horizontal
hydrofracking

…because atomic bombs didn’t work

Horizontal Hydrofracking of Shale
= Extraordinary Amounts of Water

 One well = 5 million gals

8 per pad site = 40 M gal
5 fracks per well = 200 M gals
 For every one mile drilling site
 Thousands of truck trips
Casing Failures

 Gulf well blew at 80% Casing Failures

shale frack pressure
 Casing buckles due to
shifts in faulting,
heat or pressure
 Casing corrodes
 Casing set in haste
 Cemented in haste
When a Cement Job Failed…

• Crew got killed

• Water polluted
• Company denials
• Taxpayers clean
up
How to Make Flammable Tap Water
First start with a shallow water well, like in New York…
 Surface casing leaks gas
 Gas channels up the casing
 Frack cracks the casing
 Faulting shears the casing
 Casing corrodes over time
 Frack goes “out of zone”
 Pick one or more of the above
– Turn on water
– Light
– Stand back
Safer Fracking

 Treat it like an underground

explosion
 Highest standards on surface casing
 Post bonds to clean up spills
 Frack doped with a tracer to
identify
 It’s What Comes Back From the
Frack

Inject hazardous fracking fluids into

ground
+ 10,000 psi pressure @ 200+ degrees
+ radium leached from the shale
= fracking flowback
wastewater
1,000,000 gallons per well
8,000,000 gallons per site

The DEC classifies fracking fluids as “Hazardous waste”

…but classifies the fracking flowback as “Industrial waste”
Radium From Fracking Flowback

 Marie Curie discovered radium

– And it killed her . . .

 Frack fluids leach it from shale

 The Marcellus is loaded with it

– 267 over the safe limit
– no place to dispose of it in NY
Fracking Wastewater Contents

 Radium 226 in the Marcellus

 Hydrochloric acid frack fluid

 Methanol in frack
 Glutaraldehyde
 Propylene glycol
 Propargyl alcohol

 Dissolved solids and suspended solids

 Hydrogen sulfide, propane, butane,
ethane

 All of the above + heat + pressure = ??

Radon = Propane’s Evil Twin

 Marcellus is also loaded with radon

 The 2nd leading cause of lung cancer
 Similar weight and flash point as propane
 Take propane from gas, radon can tag
along
 Workers at risk, CNG users at risk
 DEC’s response ?
Where To Get Rid of all this Fracking
Wastewater ?
Nowhere in New York . . .

 No wastewater disposal wells in New York

– Closest are in Ohio for 20 cents gal. +
freight
 No wastewater treatment plants in New
York
– None are planned in NYS. Closest is in Pa.
 DEC’s response?
The Used Uranium nonSolution

 Industry proposes to recycle frack

wastewater
 This increases its toxicity with each use
 Nuclear plants built without fuel
disposal plans
 Re-use of frack flowback repeats that
mistake
 Can’t start fracking without disposal
wells
Fracking Wastewater Solutions

 Classify frack wastewater as

“hazardous”
 Wastewater treated at commercial
plants
 Disposed of in Class II disposal wells
 No waste disposal plan = No well
permit
  
 
 
 
 
Clean Air Gets Fracked  
 
 
 
 Gas fields pollute the air  
 
 Barnett Shale = pollution of all cars in DFW
 
 
 
Solution:  
 
Monitor air  
Fine operators  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The Faults with New York’s Faults

 DEC understates faulting

 Faulting poorly mapped
 Faults channel spills
into ground
 Faults enable fracks to
go “out of zone”
 Active faulting shears
wells
 Faulting causes disposal
wells to leak
 Earthquakes
DEC Says NY Faulting Looks Like…

If only it were
this simple. . .

DEC dsGEIS page 4-28 Fig 4.13

What Faulting May Really Look
Like…

These are
suspected major faults
How Texas is (slightly) Less Faulty
Texas has none

 Texas faults are mapped

 Lack of active faults facilitates:
– Better locations for safe disposal
wells
– Well casing longevity - less prone to
shear
– Reduced risk of the frack going “out of
however . . .
zone”
Disposal Wells:
Caution is Advised

 The only Texas

earthquake was due
to overloading a
waste disposal
well with shale
frack flowback
 Disposal wells and
faults don’t mix
No More Earthquakes, Thanks

New York already has its share

Source USGS
Less Faulty Fracking Solutions

 Determine where faults are in NY

 Shoot 3-D seismic on each lateral
– as a condition of getting the fracking
permit
 No disposal wells near major faults
 Locate well sites away from surface
faults
 No drilling allowed near active faults
 ‘Fracking doesn’t contaminate
groundwater’ = a big fat lie

 Frack operations can contaminate water

 Intensive trucking contaminates water
 33% of Cabot Dimock wells cited for
spills
 13% Cabot wells gassed groundwater
 1,614 violations on shale drillers in
Pa.
Groundwater -
Texas vs New York

Water contamination less an

issue in arid, sparsely
populated area with deep
water wells and city-owned
lakes, like Texas
Posted by David Kozlowski on May 09, 2010

Water contamination is a
show stopper in New York
Groundwater Solutions

 Test water wells before and after

frack
 Dope fracking fluid with tracers
 Non toxic fracking fluids
 Well set-backs tied to terrain
 SEQR in floodplains and watersheds
20th Century Regulations in New York
Shale Gas is 21st Century Technology

 dSGEIS premised on vertical well

technology
 dSGEIS doesn’t incorporate EPA study
 DEC tasked with promoting drilling
– “The cop is the dealer”
 DEC under-funded and under-staffed
 DEC totally out-gunned by shale gas
tech.
The Big Apple’s Big Carve Out

 DEC gave NYC reservoirs “special

protection” from shale gas fracking
– based on politics, not science
– DEC: “They lack sedimentation filters”

 Radiation and toxic chemicals from

spills and wastewater are not
“sediment” . . .

 All New Yorkers need NYC’s

safeguards
 Just how Bad is the dSGEIS?
See Otsego2000.org

 1st draft, well set-back 50’ from

lake
 2nd / current draft, set-back moved
Solution : Scrap the
to 150’ dSGEIS
Compulsory Integration =
Private Eminent Domain

 NY law rewritten in 2005 by the

industry
 One of the worst CI laws in the US
 60% acreage can force others into a
well
 DEC compels landowners to
participate
The Legal Basis for Pooling

Oil field unitization

was developed to keep
small owners from
drilling their own
wells into a shared or
“pooled” reserve.

Unless every owner

drills - the adjacent
wells will drain the
non-drilling owners
share of the oil
reserve.
Compulsory Integration NA to Shale Gas

 Shale gas not a “pooled” reserve

 Not permeable enough to “drain” gas
from another property
 No geological reason for CI of
adjacent owners

Compulsory integration of shale not

constitutional
How Cheney Fracked the EPA

 Fracking shale not regulated by

the EPA
because . . .
 Cheney got loopholes in Clean
Water Act, Safe Drinking Water
Act, and Clean Air Act in 2005
What the Feds Should Do

 Pass the Frack Act

– Close Cheney’s Last Loopholes
 Determine life-cycle effects of
shale gas
 Put EPA back in the regulatory
business
What Albany Should Do

 Scrap the dSGEIS

 SEQR on
– wells in sole source watersheds
– wells in flood plains
 Get DEC out of gas shale promotion
 Proof of final disposition of
wastewater
 Tax gas at the wellhead
What Local Government Should Do

 Get notice of each well application

- not after the permit issued
 Enforce zoning controls over well
sites
 Enforce road use agreements
 Adopt EMS plans
 Lobby in Albany for safe water
What You Can Do Now

 Vote for safe water over iffy shale

gas
 Call your Congressman
 Call your state rep. / senator
 Call your county and town board
 Test your water wells before you get
fracked
Now Go Get Busy