Every few weeks there is a story about the clear impact fracking operations have on nearby waterways. There are stories every week or so about other clear environmental concerns resulting from American natural gas and oil industries. As our government is being fully stocked with individuals who made careers out of neutering laws and punishments surrounding consumer protections and human protections, this is a dangerous combination. The BBC reports on a new study that looked at the natural gas and oil industry’s leakage issues—and the number of spills the companies report.
Rapid growth in unconventional oil and gas (UOG) has produced jobs, revenue, and energy, but also concerns over spills and environmental risks. We assessed spill data from 2005 to 2014 at 31,481 UOG wells in Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota, and Pennsylvania. We found 2–16% of wells reported a spill each year. Median spill volumes ranged from 0.5 m3 in Pennsylvania to 4.9 m3 in New Mexico; the largest spills exceeded 100 m3. Seventy-five to 94% of spills occurred within the first three years of well life when wells were drilled, completed, and had their largest production volumes. Across all four states, 50% of spills were related to storage and moving fluids via flowlines. Reporting rates varied by state, affecting spill rates and requiring extensive time and effort getting data into a usable format. Enhanced and standardized regulatory requirements for reporting spills could improve the accuracy and speed of analyses to identify and prevent spill risks and mitigate potential environmental damage.
The state with the overwhelming number of spills was North Dakota, making up 4,453 of the study’s 6,648. The Dakota Access Pipeline state’s big numbers are connected to the lower threshold that companies must meet before being required to report.
This can be explained by reporting requirements. In North Dakota, any spill bigger than 42 US gallons has to be reported while in Colorado and New Mexico the requirement was 210 gallons.
Of course, this also means that Colorado and New Mexico, if held to the same reporting standards, would probably have had a few thousand more spills to report over the years. Duke University’s Dr. Lauren Patterson explained the origin of the leakage.
"Equipment failure was the greatest factor, the loading and unloading of trucks with material had a lot more human error than other places."
A surprising number of spills occurred at wells which had recorded a previous incident, over half in the case of North Dakota. This suggests that targeted inspections on these sites might have a significant impact in reducing spills.
The study has a handy visualization tool right here.