Real Estate & Property Law

The Value of Injection Well Storage Data

By Alan Ackerman

The New York Times article indicates that recycling waste water from natural gas mining can create deleterious health and safety effects. This shows the importance of finding injection well facilities to store drilling waste. Our desire to obtain mineral and energy sources hazards contaminating water supplies and the environment. Preventing this depends on how efficient we are in finding injection sites to store wastewater. Unfortunately, in the state where most of this wastewater is produced, there are few sites. Information on where wastewater can be successfully stored will prove invaluable.

The New York Times

Mr. Halldorson emphasized that he had not seen high radioactivity readings at the plant he operates in Williamsport, Pa. He said he firmly believed in the benefits of recycling — to reduce the waste produced and water used and to help promote a shift toward natural gas, which burns cleaner than coal for producing electricity. 'But there still needs to be a candid discussion, and there needs to be accountability about where even the recycled wastewater is going,' he added.

More than 90 percent of well operators in Pennsylvania use this process, known as hydrofracking, to get wells to produce. It involves injecting water mixed with sand and chemicals at high pressures to break up rock formations and release the gas. Between 10 percent and 40 percent of the water injected into each well resurfaces in the first few weeks of the process.

Many states send their drilling waste to injection wells, for storage deep underground. But because of the geological formations in Pennsylvania, there are few injection wells, and other alternatives are expensive. So natural-gas well operators in the state have turned to recycling.

Full post as published by National Eminent Domain Blog on March 08, 2011 (boomark / email).