Frack Check WV » water treatment

Antero Resources Making Stronger Move into Water & Wastewater

Duane Nichols — Tue, 25 Aug 2015 17:24:43 +0000

Wastewater Evaporators

Antero Announces 60,000 Barrel per Day Advanced Wastewater Treatment Complex

Press Release from Antero Resources Corp., Denver, CO, PRNewswire, August 19, 2015

Antero Resources Corporation announced today that it has signed an agreement with Veolia Water Technologies Inc. and Veolia North America to design and build a state-of-the-art advanced wastewater treatment complex in Doddridge County, West Virginia.

This complex includes an initially designed 60,000 barrel per day facility that will allow Antero to treat and reuse flowback and produced water rather than permanently dispose of the water in injection wells. Antero will own the treatment assets including any ancillary facilities.

The complex will be centrally located in Antero’s footprint in the southwestern core of the Marcellus Shale play with the ability to serve the Company’s development in both the Marcellus and Utica Shale plays.

Announcement Highlights:

>> Veolia will design, build, operate and maintain a 60,000 barrel per day advanced wastewater treatment facility under a turnkey contract for Antero in Doddridge County, West Virginia

>> Antero will own the $275 million treatment complex, which is expected to take two years to build, and generate on a standalone basis $55 million to $65 million of EBITDA at full utilization three years following the in service date

>> Complex will allow Antero to treat and reuse flowback and produced water rather than permanently dispose of the water in injection wells

>> Treatment facility will save Antero approximately $150,000 per well on future completion costs

>> Combined with Antero’s existing freshwater pipeline distribution system, the advanced wastewater treatment complex places Antero at the forefront of environmentally conscious water management in U.S. shale plays

>> The complex will be an integral part of Antero’s water business and is subject to Antero Midstream’s option to purchase the business

Advanced Wastewater Treatment Complex

The Antero advanced wastewater treatment facility will incorporate Veolia’s proprietary AnoxKaldnes™ MBBR biological treatment and its CoLD Process®, an advanced evaporation and crystallization technology, to treat a full range of water qualities including Antero’s completion flowback and produced water.

This same technology has been successfully utilized in dozens of facilities around the world. The 60,000 barrel per day facility will produce fresh water that meets stringent fresh water quality specifications, resulting in the treated water being delivered back into Antero’s existing fresh water distribution system and reused for ongoing completions and development.

In addition to reusable fresh water, the facility is expected to produce marketable byproducts with commercial value including salt and other brine products currently used by oil and gas operators for drilling and completion activities.

Veolia has agreed to build the complex under a turnkey contract and will operate it under a 10-year agreement. The contract contains performance guarantees including uptime availability, which considerably de-risks the project economics and reliability. The treatment facility is expected to be in service by the end of 2017, pending finalization of project logistics including regulatory permitting and construction.

Estimated Capital Expenditures for Advanced Wastewater Treatment Complex

Capital investment for the advanced wastewater treatment complex is estimated to be $275 million, which includes site preparation and construction, byproducts processing equipment and five miles of water pipeline that will connect the Antero treatment facility to its existing fresh water distribution system.

Potential Water Business Drop Down to Antero Midstream

On July 9^th, 2015, Antero Midstream Partners LP notified Antero of its intent to exercise its option to purchase Antero’s water business and transaction negotiations between the parties are ongoing. If Antero Midstream purchases Antero’s water business, it is expected to enter into a 20-year water services agreement covering all of Antero’s areas of operations in West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, as well as any future areas of operation. The existing water services agreement with Antero would be included in the expected drop down of the water business. The water business will include the advanced wastewater treatment complex.

>>> See also the Article in the PowerSource section of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette titled “Winners and losers in Antero’s $275 million announcement”

AOL Clearwater to Clean Up Some Frackwater in WV

Duane Nichols — Sat, 29 Mar 2014 02:29:25 +0000

Monongahela River at Fairmont, WV

A crystalline waterproofing technology helps the brand new AOP Clearwater facility clean up wastewater used for the extraction of natural gas.

From Penetron, PR News, March 24, 2014

Located in Fairmont, West Virginia, the AOP Clearwater recently began operation as a “one of a kind” facility to treat and recycle water. This water is used in the “fracking” of natural gas extracted from the Marcellus shale formation.

The Marcellus shale formation is a layer of sedimentary rock deposited over 350 million years ago in the Appalachian regions of western New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. This formation contains significant quantities of natural gas; current estimates predict the over one-mile-deep formations may contain up to 363 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. This is enough to supply the needs of the entire United States for nearly 15 years.

Problematic Extraction Process

Extracting natural gas from the carbon rich deposits demands drilling and fracking techniques that inject significant volumes of water (an estimated three million gallons per well head), pressurized to open up the pores in the rock and allow the gas to be collected. This water becomes contaminated with high concentrations of brines, heavy metals, and organics and must be completely removed from the well before gas production can begin.

The high concentrations of contaminants and salt brine (up to 25 %) in the returned water make it necessary to treat the large volumes of water in sophisticated treatment systems. The AOP Clearwater facility applies several treatment layers that include settling basins, bag filters and carbon filters to remove the heavy metals and contaminants. The final treatment uses multi-phase evaporators to remove the sodium chloride or salt from the brine-laden fracking water.

Greatly Enhanced Durability

Penetron Admix was selected for all the concrete structures, including the settling basins and the delivery/receiving stations, to minimize chemical penetration into the concrete. The salt brine, with up to 25% concentrations of sodium chloride, could rapidly damage the reinforcing members of the concrete and quickly deteriorate the structures.

“As shown in independent tests, Penetron Admix can reduce chloride penetration in concrete by 89%,” adds Christopher Chen, Director of The Penetron Group, “virtually eliminating any chloride penetration to a depth beyond one inch and significantly increasing the durability of AOP Clearwater’s concrete structures.”

Running now at full capacity, the AOP Clearwater facility has a treatment capacity of 210,000 gallons per day. Over 80% of the cleaned water is recycled back to the drillers to be used again, making a substantial contribution toward cleaning up today’s fracking process and enabling the long sought dream of energy independence for the country.

FRS to Upgrade Treatment and Pay Penalties after Discharge Violations at Western Penna. Wastewater Facilities

Duane Nichols — Sat, 25 May 2013 11:33:26 +0000

: U.S. EPA

From the U.S. EPA, Region III, Philadelphia, PA – May 22, 2013

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has announced a Clean Water Act settlement with Fluid Recovery Services, LLC (FRS), which operates three wastewater treatment plants in western Pennsylvania. The settlement resolves discharge permit violations associated with the treatment of wastewater generated from oil and gas extraction activities.

Under the settlement, FRS must seek renewal of their Clean Water Act discharge permits from Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) and request that PADEP include the more stringent discharge limits in Pennsylvania’s wastewater treatment standards. This includes a new standard of 500 milligrams per liter for total dissolved solids in their renewed permits.

In addition, the company will pay an $83,000 penalty for violations that occurred at facilities located in Franklin, Creekside, and Josephine, Pa.

FRS will invest as much as $30 million to upgrade the facilities to comply with the new more stringent discharge limits. Meeting the more stringent discharge limits will enable the facilities to be eligible to treat wastewater from unconventional oil and gas extraction activities, such as hydrofracking.

The agreement prohibits FRS from discharging wastewater from hydrofracking or other unconventional oil and gas extraction activities until after the facilities have achieved full compliance with the more stringent discharge permit limits.

The facilities, which discharge to the Allegheny River watershed, have not been discharging such wastewater since September 2011 following the issuance of an order to each facility by EPA and a request from PADEP in April of 2011 that asked oil and gas producers not to send their wastewater to treatment facilities that could not meet the more stringent discharge limits.

The former operators of the facilities, Hart Resources Technology, Inc. (Hart) and Penna. Brine Treatment, Inc. (PBT), recently merged to form FRS. As part of the proposed penalty settlements, Hart and PBT neither admitted nor denied responsibility for the violations.

The public has 40 days to comment on the proposed penalty settlements, which can be found here: http://www.epa.gov/reg3wapd/public_notices.htm#hartpabrine

Op-Ed Commentary: Fracking Pollution is Costly

Duane Nichols — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 23:22:00 +0000

: 4000 gallon Residual Waste Trucks. Source: marcellus-shale.us

Charleston Gazette, November 15, 2012, by S. Tom Bond

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — “Flowback” is the liquid that returns to the surface when a shale well is fractured. Figures for the amount of water required to fracture a shale well usually range from 3 million gallons to 5 million. Likewise, figures for the amount returning to the surface vary, but 20 percent seems reasonable.

As a ballpark figure, let’s say a typical Marcellus well requires 4 million gallons to fracture. That is a cube of water 81 feet per side, or 800 truckloads at 5,000 gallons each. If the flowback is 20 percent, that’s 800,000 gallons, a cube 47 feet per side, the volume of five very comfortable houses.

Disposal is a major problem, both physical and financial. The traditional way to handle disposal, dating back to pioneer days is to throw it in the creek. But that is bad for people downstream. It was cow manure, brush and sewage when population density was small, but we have largely ended the nasty habit of disposing of things that way today.

Flowback is far worse than what had to be disposed of in the past. It has the fracturing chemicals and a huge load of material dissolved while below. The temperature of the deep-down Marcellus Shale is a little below the boiling point of water at the surface, and the fracturing fluid is under great pressure. This makes it capable of dissolving a variety of compounds from the shale, including several uncommon in surface waters.

Sometimes it’s referred to as “residual waste,” more frequently “brine.” Most people know brine as a table salt solution. The ocean is brine. However, most inorganic compounds that are soluble are salts. It is a mistake to think any naturally formed brine has only the properties of a sodium chloride solution. It may be far more corrosive, poisonous or concentrated.

Present in this Marcellus brine are barium and strontium, bromine, sometimes arsenic or manganese, along with the substances sent down by the driller. It is several times more concentrated than seawater.

So what to do with this brine is a major concern. The ingrained instinct is to dump it and forget it — put it in a creek or anywhere out of sight. I have seen it sprayed on a dirt road in the summer for dust control. I noticed the spray did not stop when the truck got to hard road, though, but went on and on. Others have seen it used to melt ice on a road in winter. So where does the material go when it rains? In the creek.

In some times and places, a legal way to get rid of it was “land disposal.” What happens to the vegetation? And where does it go when it rains?

Another perfectly legal way to dispose of flowback at some times and places is to take it to a municipal water treatment plant. These plants use microorganisms and oxidation by air to remove sewage, food and other organic waste. The municipal water plant can do little or nothing for inorganic components fed to it. It is simply diluted and passed downstream, like in the old days, to the water intake of the next town. The bromine reacts with other things on the way to make carcinogenic compounds.

Another way to get rid of “frack water” is to reuse a portion of it for fracking. Sometimes some of it goes through a processing plant to remove impurities — but what happens to the impurities?

Still another is to dump it in mine voids, where coal has been removed. Then it moves through the mine and through cracks and back out to the surface if the abandoned coal seam is above the valley floor. And then into streams.

Sometimes residual waste is pumped underground. This requires relatively porous rock, unavailable in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. There are several wells in Ohio, and truck traffic is brisk to them. When you start pumping the volume equivalent of many houses down 10,000 feet every day, considerable pressure is needed. At least one Ohio well has disposed of so much brine that earthquakes have occurred.

Still another disposal method is to evaporate the water and volatile organic compounds from “frack ponds” on site. This is a source of considerable air pollution. Ponds are lined with impervious plastic to prevent leaks into the soil, more an ideal than an actuality. The final step may be removal to burial in a landfill or simply pushing it together on site and covering it with soil. Both of these slow down the movement of the salts, but eventually, over geological time, much of it washes into the creek.

There is no public accounting for flowback disposal, and little concern for how it is done. Does it “get lost” between the source at the well being fractured and some destination?

I get reports from the EPA almost daily, sometimes two or three a day, of cleanups of chemical contamination, brownfields. I am a member of an environmental group which is remediating acid mine drainage from mines dug over 100 years ago. I see the Marcellus industry repeating the same externalization of cost practiced by these earlier industries. Somebody else will pay for the industry’s legitimate business cost of gas extraction.

The scale is vast. Figures above are for one well. Full exploitation of the Marcellus will involve hundreds of thousands of wells.

>>> Dr. Bond, of Jane Lew, Lewis County, is a retired organic chemistry professor from Salem College, WV. <<<

Workshop: Water Challenges & Opportunities with Shale Gas Exploration and Production

Duane Nichols — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 12:52:11 +0000

: Monongahela River @ Pittsburgh

November 1-2, 2012, Omni William Penn Hotel, Pittsburgh, PA

A one-and-a-half day workshop is scheduled to bring together experts to discuss current water management technologies and process utilized to address water use and impacted water disposal. This workshop, co-sponsored by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and the Air & Waste Management Association (A&WMA), will focus on the engineering design and in-the-field implementation of water use and reuse activities.

Overview:
Shale oil and gas exploration and production has dramatically increased as a result of advancements in both exploration technology and reservoir simulation techniques; specifically horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing.
Opportunity: This one-and-half day workshop is scheduled to bring together experts to discuss current water management technologies and processes utilized to address water use and impacted water disposal. This workshop will focus on the engineering design and in-the-field implementation successes and challenges of water use and reuse activities. The workshop will provide a forum for the presentation of current management processes and case-studies as well as provide attendees the opportunity to interact with technical experts who are actively working and addressing these timely and critical issues.

Technical Program:

Keynote Address: Jeffrey Daniels, Director of Subsurface Energy Resource Center at Ohio State University and Cal Cooper, Manager of Special Projects at Apache Corporation will give the address to kick off this workshop.

Day 2 Opening Address: Danny Reible, Director of the Center for Research in Water Resources at the University of Texas at Austin will open the second day of the workshop

Water Treatment:
Chair: Al Sacco, Texas Tech University; Co-chair: Audra Morse, Texas Tech University. Speakers: Nathan Hancock, Director of R&D, Oasys Water, Inc., Tor Polmgren,Schlumberger Environmental Testing, John Lucey, Executive Vice President, Heckmann Group, Cal Cooper, Manager of Special Projects, Apache Corporation

Water Sourcing/Logistics: Chair: Dan Mueller, Zephyr Environmental. Speakers: Paula Ballaron, Regulatory Program Director, Susquehanna River Basin Commission, Sam Bacon, Encana Energy

Wastewater Disposal: Chair: Mark Wilson, GE Power & Water; Co-chair: Lee Lundberg, Veolia Water. Speaker: TBD from Texas A&M, TBD from Chesapeake, TBD from Veolia Water

Water Reuse and Recycle: Chair: Jessica Gray, ERG; Co-Chairs: Martin Abraham, Youngtown State University, Tracy Young, Dow Water. Speakers: Aaron Johnson, Dow Water & Process Solution, David Yoxtheimer, Penn State Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research.

Technical Advisory Committee

	-	Dan Mueller (Zephyr Environmental)
	-	Patricia Brush (Air Liquide)
	-	Todd Ennenga (Purestream Technology)
	-	Jessica Gray (Eastern Research Group)
	-	David Klanecky (Dow)
	-	Lee Lundberg (Veolia Water)
	-	Wendy Young Reed (Chemstations)
	-	Danny Reible (University of Texas)
	-	Al Sacco (Texas Tech University)
	-	Randy York (Chevron)

In addition to the keynote, second day opener, and four technical sessions, there will be a panel discussion of experts in the field on day two, and networking opportunities during coffee breaks, lunches, and receptionist throughout the workshop.

Proposed Plans for the Restoration of Dunkard Creek Presented, Recalling the Fish and Mussel Kill of 2009

Duane Nichols — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 18:35:28 +0000

Restoration plans were described on August 25^th in Morgantown for Dunkard Creek. In September of 2009, some 22,000 fish and thousands of mussels (14 species) were decimated by the toxins from an extensive golden algae bloom. The algae may well have invaded from Texas or Oklahoma where it is rather common, in brackish waters. The algae bloom was possible because of the high level of total dissolved solids resulting from mining operations, over 20,000 parts per million (or milligrams per liter).

CONSOL has now broken ground on a $200 million water treatment facility near Mannington (Marion county) to remove dissolved inorganic compounds (salts) from about 2500 gallons per minute of contaminated mine water from three area mines, namely Blacksville 2 (Monongalia county), Loveridge (Marion county), and Robinson Run (Harrison county). The treated product water will go to the Hibbs Reservior, which drains into Buffalo Creek. The residue filter cake and crystallized salts will be landfilled near the treatment plant.

The WV Division of Natural Resources (DNR) described a five year project to restore smallmouth bass and 30 inch muskies to Dunkard Creek. Another project was described to restore six mussel species if possible, described as difficult and complex. Mussels depend upon adequate water flow and a fish population as well as limits on contaminants. Seasonal variations in flow rate and water removals for mining operations and Marcellus hydrofracking could be a serious challenge for the mussel restoration plan. Northeast Natural Energy already has Marcellus drilling operations ongoing near Dunkard Creek.

David Wellman of WV-DNR reported that earlier instances of golden algae detection in other streams of West Virginia were probably in error, and that even Dunkard Creek has not shown the presence of the golden algae since November of 2009. Apparently, golden algae are very difficult to detect and easily misidentified. Residual golden algae may well remain in Dunkard Creek. And, the theory still remains that the occurrence of the golden algae in Dunkard Creek arose from contaminated trucks working here in the Marcellus gas industry, from Texas or Oklahoma.

Information on the 2009 Dunkard Creek Fish Kill is available from the WV-Department of Environmental Protection. Shortly, the WV-DNR is to post their “Proposed Dunkard Creek Fish and Mussel Restoration Plan” on the following web-site and provide for a thirty day comment period: Select the “Fishing” category at www.wvdnr.gov