Oil & Gas Waste Water Dumping

It’s just salt water or so they tell us...

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HYDRAULIC FRACTURING
Typically, hydraulic fracturing involves high-pressure injection of fluids and sand to fracture rock formations, prop the fractures open with sand, to enable more oil or gas to flow to the well. After fracturing, some of the fluids remain stranded underground. These fluids may include hazardous chemicals such as biocides, diesel fuel, acids, metals, ethylene glycol, corrosion inhibitors, and other chemicals. Hydraulic fracturing often occurs just after a well has been drilled, although many wells are re-fractured one or more times after a well goes into production.

REGULATIONS FALL SHORT

• Americans get half of their fresh drinking water from underground sources. In 2005, the oil and gas industry was granted an exemption from the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, making oil and gas the only industry allowed to inject toxic fluids directly into good quality groundwater without oversight by the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
   
•  At the state level, most oil and gas agencies do not require companies to report the volumes or names of chemicals being injected during hydraulic fracturing. Thus, neither the government nor the public can evaluate the risks posed by injecting these fluids underground.

DRILLING & PRODUCTION PITS
Liquids and solid wastes are produced during the drilling, stimulation and production stages of both oil and natural gas. These wastes are often stored in earthen pits, which may or may not be lined. Drilling and hydraulic fracturing pits may contain biocides, acids, volatile organic compounds, diesel fuel, metals, salts, radioactive materials, and undisclosed proprietary chemicals. Produced water pits may contain salts, metals, radioactive materials, hydrocarbons, and residual chemicals from drilling, completion and well maintenance. Pits containing separation and dehydration fluids may contain salts, volatile and nonvolatile hydrocarbons, metals, glycols.

REGULATIONS FALL SHORT

• Federal regulations do not protect environmental and human health because wastes created during oil and gas exploration and production operations are exempt from hazardous waste rules. These wastes include used drilling muds and hydraulic fracturing fluids, produced water, pit and tank sludges, dehydration wastes, solvents to wash drill rigs, and other chemicals. Because of the exemption, these wastes may be buried at the well site. Unused chemicals are not exempt.
   
• The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) Orientation Manual states that, “although they are relieved from regulation as hazardous wastes, the exemption does not mean these wastes could not present a hazard to human health.

 

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