Other Large Diesel Trucks on Country Roads

Truck overturns, spills drilling wastewater that taints reservoir

From an Article by Laura Arenschield, Columbus Dispatch, March 9, 2016

A truck hauling drilling wastewater overturned in eastern Ohio early this morning, sending thousands of gallons of toxic water into a nearby creek and contaminating a reservoir in Barnesville in Belmont County.

The truck crashed along a curve just after 3 a.m. today, said Barnesville Fire Chief Bob Smith. The driver, Hiley Wogan of Chesterhill, Ohio, was flown by helicopter to a hospital in Columbus, Smith said.

About 5,000 gallons of drilling wastewater spilled into a field, then a creek and finally into one of Barnesville’s three reservoirs.

Smith said the reservoir is closed while the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency tests the water. James Lee, an EPA spokesman, said the agency is investigating the spill.

Smith said the truck is owned by ECM, a brine hauling company with a location in Cambridge, Ohio, not far from Barnesville.

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Injections of wastewater rise in Ohio despite lull in fracking

From an Article by Laura Arenschield, The Columbus Dispatch, March 7, 2016

The amount of fracking wastewater pumped underground in Ohio increased by more than 15 percent last year, even as shale drilling has slowed nationwide, according to new numbers from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

Ohio took in nearly 29 million barrels of fracking wastewater in 2015, according to a Dispatch analysis of department data. That is about 4 million more barrels than in 2014.

Fracking involves pumping a mixture of water, sand and chemicals at high pressure into deep wells to fracture shale formations and free oil and natural gas trapped underground.

The water can be recycled for reuse but eventually must be dumped somewhere. Ohio, which is situated to accept wastewater from states that don’t allow injection waste wells, has more than 200 injection wells. Fewer than 10 have been approved in Pennsylvania, where much of the fracking boom in this part of the country has taken place. West Virginia has about 60.

That means about 13 million barrels a year comes from Pennsylvania and West Virginia, according to the Natural Resources data.

Ohio typically takes more fracking wastewater from outside Ohio than inside. But last year, about 55 percent of the fracking wastewater that ended up in Ohio injection wells came from Ohio, the Dispatch analysis shows.

Wastewater generally travels in tanker trucks on Ohio’s highways until it reaches injection well sites, which are primarily in eastern and southeastern Ohio.

Athens County, for example, took more than 4 million barrels of fracking wastewater in 2015, an increase of 1.1 million barrels, or nearly 40 percent. Most of that wastewater was injected into wells in the eastern part of the county, near the village of Coolville and the unincorporated area of Torch.

Residents there, worried about drinking-water contamination and earthquakes associated with injection wells, have fought unsuccessfully to keep wastewater out.

“Something’s got to give,” said Teresa Mills, program director for the Buckeye Forest Council, an environmental-advocacy group. “Athens County, Coshocton, Guernsey (counties) — these are environmental-justice communities, and we have to stop burdening them.”

Exact numbers about drilling patterns and oil and gas production in Ohio in 2015 are not yet available. Companies were required to report that information to Natural Resources by Feb. 14, said Matt Eiselstein, an agency spokesman. The department will not make the numbers public until it reviews them, he said.

Industry trends nationwide show that drilling slowed in 2015, hampered by low gas and oil prices. A weekly drilling report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration released Feb. 25 showed that the nation’s number of natural-gas rigs was its fewest since 1987.

Jackie Stewart, a spokeswoman for Energy In Depth, an advocacy group for the oil and gas industry, said that even though drilling is down, production per well could be increasing. Drillers also are probably drilling longer horizontal cuts to access oil and gas, she said. That would require more water, which would in turn produce more wastewater.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

ATEX Pipeline Route

ATEX Pipeline To Transport Ethane in December

From Bob Downing, Akron Beacon Journal, October 31, 2013

A Texas company reported that its 1,230-mile Appalachia to Texas Pipeline will begin service in December. Enterprise Products Partners said the ATEX pipeline will carry ethane from the Utica and Marcellus shales to Texas.

The $1.2 billion pipeline was originally slated to begins ervice in early 2014. It is designed to carry 190,000 barrels per day initially and to carrry 260,000 barrels per day later.

The company also has plans to move propane via the same pipeline, beginning in early 2015. The news came from a Pittsburgh conference earlier this week.

The line runs 264.61 miles across 13 Ohio counties, entering the state on the east side at Jefferson County, passing through Harrison, Tuscarawas, Coshocton, Muskingum, Licking, Fairfield, Pickaway, Fayette, Greene, Clinton, Warren and exiting at Butler County north of Cincinnati.

In all, the 369-mile, 20-inch diameter pipeline would extend from southwest Pennsylvania’s Washington County to Seymour, Ind., where it would connect with an existing Enterprise pipeline that runs 861 miles through Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas.

The existing 16-inch pipeline, which brings refined product from the Gulf Coast to Indiana, would be reversed to accommodate the new product. At the Texas end, an additional 55 miles of new pipeline would extend from Beaumont to a natural gas liquid storage complex at Mont Belvieu.

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Tennessee Gas Pipeline Projects to Transport Marcellus Natural Gas

Houston, TX, Business Wire, November 1, 2013

Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company (TGP), a subsidiary of Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, placed the fully subscribed Northeast Upgrade Project (NEUP) in service on schedule November 1. The approximately $500 million project boosts capacity on TGP’s 300 Line system in Pennsylvania and New Jersey by 636,000 MCF per day and provides additional takeaway capacity from the Marcellus shale area.

TGP also placed into service its approximately $65 million Marcellus Pooling Point (MPP) project as scheduled on Nov. 1. The fully subscribed project provides about 240,000 MCF/d of additional firm Marcellus transportation capacity on TGP’s pipeline system in Pennsylvania.

“We are delighted to place both the NEUP and MPP projects in service as scheduled and provide our customers with reliable, efficient pipeline service to move more Marcellus Shale natural gas to the growing northeast market,” said Natural Gas Pipelines East Region President Kimberly S. Watson. “We continue to make progress on approximately $300 million of additional TGP expansion projects that have been previously announced.”

Kinder Morgan Energy Partners is a leading pipeline transportation and energy storage company and one of the largest publicly traded pipeline limited partnerships in America. It owns an interest in or operates more than 54,000 miles of pipelines and 180 terminals. The general partner of KMP is owned by Kinder Morgan, Inc. Kinder Morgan is the largest midstream and the third largest energy company in North America with a combined enterprise value of approximately $110 billion. It owns an interest in or operates more than 82,000 miles of pipelines and 180 terminals. Its pipelines transport natural gas, gasoline, crude oil, CO(2) and other products, and its terminals store petroleum products and chemicals and handle such products as ethanol, coal, petroleum coke and steel.

NOTE: 1 Thousand Cubic Feet (MCF) of Natural Gas is equivalent to a million BTU (MMBTU) or 1 dekatherm of energy.  [BTU = British Thermal Unit].