Pratts newswire reported on a NETL research project on June 8th. Federal researchers are testing whether hydraulic fracturing fluids can travel thousands of feet via geologic faults into drinking water aquifers close to the surface. A fault from the Marcellus Shale formation, which is thousands of feet below the surface, could provide “a quick pathway for fracking fluids to migrate upwards,” said Richard Hammack, a spokesman for the US Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL).
The experiment is being carried out at a site in Greene County in southwestern Pennsylvania where conventional shallow wells were drilled and long since capped, NETL said on its website. The study will provide regulators, landowners and the general public “an unbiased, science-based source of information which can guide decisions about shale gas development,” NETL said. The study also will help the industry “develop better methods to monitor for undesired environmental changes” and develop technology or management practices to address the changes.
Speaking at a congressional briefing in Washington, Hammack said faults “form a plane that allows fluids to move up through the frack.” Some faults can be easily seen and avoided, but Hammack said some faults are not easily detected and could extend from the Marcellus Shale formation into other formations close to the surface. The testing “is taking place right now,” Hammack said. “It should be completed next week. Within a month, we will have the micro-seismic data that will show how high fracture fluids have migrated upwards” toward the surface.
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Critical comments on the above described project have come from the Marcellus Drilling News (MDN), as posted on their web-site under the title “NETL Study of Faults & Fracking, Are We Being Set Up?”
MDN notices a couple of interesting things about this study by the NETL. First, this is the first time MDN has heard of this study being conducted. For such an important study, you would think it would be well-publicized. Coming “out of nowhere” raises a red flag. Why did NETL hide the fact they were conducting this study?
Second, proclaiming Greene County, PA the perfect spot to conduct these tests, and that it can serve as a proxy, as an example for all geographies, strikes MDN as stretching the facts the fit the science. Not all geographies are the same. The results of the NETL study in Greene County can conceivably be relevant for that part of PA—but not even for all of PA, nor for NY, nor for OH or WV either. How prevalent are these faults? Are they more numerous in some geographies and not others?
The announcement that the results from this study will be ready within a month and “then we’ll know, we’ll have unbiased science” sure feels like a set up. It feels like the researchers have already jiggered the results the way they want them to go and they know what those results will be, and it won’t be favorable to the drilling industry.
Good science, real science (and not junk science) is repeatable, measurable, and testable. So before we simply accept the results of the NETL study as the authoritative, last word on whether or not fracking fluids can migrate, other scientists will need time to test and verify those results.
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Of course, this is good logic but it works both ways. If no problems are found with these particular wells or in this particular county, it does not mean that contaminating faults are not present with other wells, in other counties or other States. Greene County, in the southwest corner of Pennsylvania, borders three counties of West Virginia, namely Monongalia, Wetzel and Marshall counties. So clearly, the results of the NETL study will be looked at closely here in West Virginia.
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