Frack Check WV » Duke University

Electric Power Industry Thinking About Electric Vehicles (EVs)

Duane Nichols — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 07:06:56 +0000

Southern States Energy Board represents the electric power industry in the southeastern US

New Webinar Announcement: The Evolution of EVs in the Southeast

From the Zoom Announcement, Southern States Energy Board, February 4, 2021

What — The first in a series of free, educational webinars hosted by SSEB kicks off Feb. 25, 2021 at 11 a.m. Join us for an hour via Zoom as we learn about the accelerating adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) and how legislatures in the Southeast might respond to the trend.

In this informational webinar, you will be presented with an analysis from three speakers on the growing pace of EV adoption in the Southeast. We will explore the current and future outlook for EVs and how the region might respond to increased EV production and adoption.

When — Thursday, February 25th from 11:00 AM to 12:15 PM EST

Where — This is a free online event.

Speakers —
>> Stan Cross, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy
>> Jennifer Weiss, Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, Duke University
>> Alexa Voytek, Tennessee Department of Environment & Conservation

Click here for more information.

https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07ehew4woo97133a4a&oseq=&c=&ch=

Thousands of Known Spills at Fracking Sites, But How Many Unknown?

Duane Nichols — Thu, 23 Feb 2017 17:54:42 +0000

Plenty of spills also in West Virginia

Fracking Caused 6,648 Spills in Four States Alone, Duke Study Finds

From an Article by Lorraine Chow, EcoWatch.com, February 21, 2017

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has long been tied to environmental risks such as spills. The frequency of spills, however, has long been murky since states do not release standardized data. Estimates from the U.S. Environment Protection Agency (EPA) vary wildly.

“The number of spills nationally could range from approximately 100 to 3,700 spills annually, assuming 25,000 to 30,000 new wells are fractured per year,” the agency said in a June 2015 report. Also, the EPA reported only 457 spills related to fracking in 11 states between 2006 and 2012.

But now, a new study suggests that fracking-related spills occur at a much higher rate. The analysis, published February 21st in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, revealed 6,648 spills in four states alone—Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota and Pennsylvania—in 10 years.

The researchers determined that up to 16 percent of fracked oil and gas wells spill hydrocarbons, chemically laden water, fracking fluids and other substances.

For the study, the researchers examined state-level spill data to characterize spills associated with unconventional oil and gas development at 31,481 fracked wells in the four states between 2005 and 2014.

“On average, that’s equivalent to 55 spills per 1,000 wells in any given year,” lead author Lauren Patterson, a policy associate at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, told ResearchGate.

North Dakota reported the highest spill rate, with 4,453 incidents. Pennsylvania reported 1,293, Colorado reported 476 and New Mexico reported 426. The researchers created an interactive map of spill sites in the four states.

Although North Dakota is rich in oil, the state’s higher spill rate can be explained by varying state reporting requirements. North Dakota is required to report any spill larger than 42 gallons whereas requirement in Colorado and New Mexico is 210 gallons.

Patterson points out that the different reporting requirements are a problem.

“Our study concludes that making state spill data more uniform and accessible could provide stakeholders with important information on where to target efforts for locating and preventing future spills,” she told ResearchGate. “States would benefit from setting reporting requirements that generate actionable information—that is, information regulators and industry can use to identify and respond to risk ‘hot spots.’ It would also be beneficial to standardize how spills are reported. This would improve accuracy and make the data usable to understand spill risks.”

The reason why the researchers’ numbers vastly exceeded the 457 spills estimated by the EPA is because the agency only accounted for spills during the hydraulic fracturing stage itself, rather than the entire process of unconventional oil and gas production.

“Understanding spills at all stages of well development is important because preparing for hydraulic fracturing requires the transport of more materials to and from well sites and storage of these materials on site,” Patterson explained. “Investigating all stages helps to shed further light on the spills that can occur at all types of wells—not just unconventional ones.”

For instance, the researchers found that 50 percent of spills were related to storage and moving fluids via pipelines. “The causes are quite varied,” Patterson told BBC. “Equipment failure was the greatest factor, the loading and unloading of trucks with material had a lot more human error than other places.”

For the four states studied, most spills occurred in the the first three years of a well’s life, when drilling and hydraulic fracturing occurred and production volumes were highest.

Additionally, a significant portion of spills (26 percent in Colorado, 53 percent in North Dakota) occurred at wells with more than one spill, suggesting that wells where spills have already occurred merit closer attention.

“Analyses like this one are so important, to define and mitigate risk to water supplies and human health,” said Kate Konschnik, director of the Harvard Law School’s Environmental Policy Initiative in a statement. “Writing state reporting rules with these factors in mind is critical, to ensure that the right data are available—and in an accessible format—for industry, states and the research community.”

Higher Natural Gas Levels in Water Wells Near Marcellus Fracking Sites

Duane Nichols — Wed, 26 Jun 2013 13:52:05 +0000

: Well Water — Northeast Penna.

Duke University Study Finds Higher Gas Levels in Drinking Water Wells Near Marcellus Fracking Sites

From Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, EcoWatch.org, June 24, 2013

Some homeowners living near shale gas wells appear to be at higher risk of drinking water contamination from stray gases, according to a new Duke University-led study, Increased Stray Gas Abundance in a Subset of Drinking Water Wells Near Marcellus Shale Gas Extraction.

A Dimock, Pa., resident who did not want to be identified pours a glass of water taken from his well after the start of natural gas drilling in 2009. Photo credit: Reuters.

The scientists analyzed 141 drinking water samples from private water wells across northeastern Pennsylvania’s gas-rich Marcellus Shale basin.

They found that, on average, methane concentrations were six times higher and ethane concentrations were 23 times higher at homes within a kilometer of a shale gas well. Propane was detected in 10 samples, all of them from homes within a kilometer of drilling.

“The methane, ethane and propane data, and new evidence from hydrocarbon and helium content, all suggest that drilling has affected some homeowners’ water,” said Robert B. Jackson, a professor of environmental sciences at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment. “In a minority of cases the gas even looks Marcellus-like, probably caused by poor well construction.”

The ethane and propane data are “particularly interesting,” he noted, “since there is no biological source of ethane and propane in the region and Marcellus gas is high in both, and higher in concentration than Upper Devonian gases” found in formations overlying the Marcellus shale.

The scientists examined which factors might explain their results, including topography, distance to gas wells and distance to geologic features. “Distance to gas wells was, by far, the most significant factor influencing gases in the drinking water we sampled,” said Jackson.

The team published its peer-reviewed findings this week in the online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Shale gas extraction—a process that includes horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing—has fueled concerns in recent years about contamination of nearby drinking water supplies.

Two previous Duke-led studies found direct evidence of methane contamination in water wells near shale-gas drilling in northeastern Pennsylvania, as well as possible hydraulic connectivity between deep brines and shallow aquifers. A third study, conducted with U.S. Geological Survey scientists, found no evidence of drinking water contamination from shale gas production in Arkansas. None of the studies found evidence of current contamination by hydraulic fracturing fluids.

The new study is the first to offer direct evidence of ethane and propane contamination.

“Our studies demonstrate that the integrity of gas wells, as well as variations in local and regional geology, play major roles in determining the possible risk of groundwater impacts from shale gas development. As such, they must be taken into consideration before drilling begins,” said Avner Vengosh, professor of geochemistry and water quality at Duke’s Nicholas School.

“The new data reinforces our earlier observations that stray gases contaminate drinking water wells in some areas of the Marcellus shale. The question is what is happening in other shale gas basins,” Vengosh said.

“The helium data in this study are the first in a new tool kit we’ve developed for identifying contamination using noble gas geochemistry,” said Thomas H. Darrah, a research scientist in geology, also at Duke’s Nicholas School. “These new tools allow us to identify and trace contaminants with a high degree of certainty through multiple lines of evidence.”

Co-authors of the new study are Nathaniel Warner, Adrian Down, Kaiguang Zhao and Jonathan Karr, all of Duke; Robert Poreda of the University of Rochester; and Stephen Osborn of California State Polytechnic University. Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment and the Duke Center on Global Change funded the research.

Visit EcoWatch’s FRACKING page for more related news on this topic.

Duke Study Shows Fracking Contaminates Drinking Water

Dee Fulton — Tue, 10 May 2011 16:59:36 +0000

Flammable tap water. You’ve seen it on Gasland. You can find several YouTube videos of this event on the net. Now the research has caught up with the reality. Duke University studied water quality in the vicinity of hydraulic fracturing and produced incontrovertible evidence that fracking contaminates drinking water wells with methane gas. The study published Monday found potentially dangerous concentrations of methane gas in water from wells near drilling sites in northeastern Pennsylvania, although not in central New York, where gas drilling is less extensive. But in an unexpected finding, the team of Duke University scientists did not find any trace of the chemicals used in the hydraulic fracturing process in 68 wells tested in Pennsylvania and Otsego County in central New York. In hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, water, sand and chemicals are injected underground to crack the rock and get natural gas to flow into a well. Critics of the technique have worried more about the chemicals since companies have refused to make public the proprietary blends used, and many of the ingredients can be toxic.

On average, water from wells located less than a mile from drilling sites had 17 times more methane than water tested from wells farther away, according to the study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Methane is not known to be toxic, but in high concentrations it can be explosive and cause unconsciousness and even death, since it displaces oxygen needed to breathe. Of the 60 wells tested for methane gas, 14 had levels of methane within or above a hazard range set by the Department of Interior for gas seeping from coal mines — all but one of them near a gas well. In nine wells, concentrations were so high that the government would recommend immediate action to reduce the methane level. Methane is released naturally by bacteria as they break down organic matter. The researchers’ analysis shows that the type of methane in the wells with the highest concentrations is coming from deep in the earth, the same place tapped by companies in search of natural gas.

In the most severe case, a homeowner in Bradford County, Pa. who leased her property to a gas company has so much methane coming out of her tap she can light her water on fire. A natural gas well is located 800 feet from her house.