Frack Sand Mining Forum Prairie du Chien City Hall 23 June 2012

Transcription

1 FRACKING, FLOCCING, AND WISCONSIN FRACK-SAND MINING Frack Sand Mining Forum Prairie du Chien City Hall 23 June 2012 Kelvin S. Rodolfo, Professor Emeritus Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences University of Illinois at Chicago

2 Fracking presentation, Kickapoo Earth Day, 21 April,Gays Mills What is fracking? Where is fracking done? What are fracking sands? How did Wisconsin s fracking sands form? Environmental consequences of frack-sand mining Fracking won t happen here, so is it OK for us to provide sand for fracking elsewhere? Environmental consequences of fracking Groundwater pollution Methane leakage and global warming Does fracking cause earthquakes? Consequence or staying hooked on natural gas and other fossil fuels

3 What is fracking? Where is fracking done? What are fracking sands? Two environmental consequences of frack-sand mining Stream and groundwater pollution by flocculants? Airborne silica dust

4 TRADITIONAL OIL AND GAS SITUATION Most traditional oil/gas traps are now empty; fracking extracts oil and gas directly from the source oil shales Impermeable cap rock Natural gas Reservoir rock, porous sandstone Oil Source rock: fine-grained clay shale holding tiny dispersed oil droplets and/or bubbles of natural gas clinging to clay grains

5 Unlike traditional production from oil traps in very rare places under small areas, fracking operations are very widespread and involves many more drilling rigs. So many more people are affected.

6 Hydraulic fracturing; induced hydraulic fracturing; hydrofracturing; hydrofracking. Wells drilled 1-2 miles deep into fine-grained oil or gasbearing shales, then horizontally as much as 10,000 feet. Fracking fluid forced under high pressure to fracture the shale. Fluid consists mostly of water and many chemicals, plus strong, round sand grains ( proppants ) to keep fractures propped open so gas or oil can escape and be collected.

7 Sand grains prop fractures open Horizontal drilling up to 10,000 feet. Fracking can use 2 to 3 million US gallons of fluid per well. Typical well uses 100,000 gallons of chemical additives of varying toxicity

8 Active Drilling Rigs 2011 Oil and Gas Drilling in the U.S. Since ,000 3,000 U.S. Oil Production, Millions of Barrels per Day Despite greatly increased drilling, oil production continues to decline... Fracking boom ,000 1, Sources: Baker Hughes, Inc., Energy Information Administration, and Green Econometrics Research

9 ... But U.S. Natural Gas Production is Booming!

10 Oil/Gas shale prospect areas None in Wisconsin, but frack sand is abundant!

11 Proposed

12 Frack sand sizes Mesh# 8/12 10/20 20/40 70/140 Size, mm Size, inch Preferred and most widely used ¼ inch Ideal proppants : Hard, tough, chemically durable round Quartz grains. Sometimes coated with resin to enhance durability. Called proppants because they prop fractures open to enable gas to flow. Ceramic- bead proppants also used (much more expensive). Saudi Arabia oil producers import Wisconsin frack sand!

13 Million Years old Rocks of the Kickapoo River watershed Shoreline Fracking sands CAMBRIAN ORDOVICIAN Deep Shallow Sea Level Frack sands were rounded when above sea level!

14 ORDOVICIAN SYSTEM Kickapoo Watershed geology Best frack sands: Formations and their ages in millions of years Platteville Limestone, St. Peter Sandstone, Prairie du Chien Dolomite, CAMBRIAN: Mainly sandstones including the Jordan and Wonewoc formations 488+ Mining these sands will pollute the Kickapoo

15 Blackhawk Rock, KVR Stratigraphy (courtesy Chuck Hatfield) Ordovician Oneota Dolomite (lower Prairie du Chien Group Jordan St. Lawrence Lone Rock Upper Cambrian, mainly sandstones Wonewoc

16 Frack sand mining A single mine uses hundreds of thousands of gallons of water a day. Issues: Surface water and/or groundwater depletion and contamination.

17 The Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey and Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources appear to be proponents and apologists for frack-sand mining. Historically, WDNR allows lobbyists for any industry to write the regulations for that industry. The following slides and slide portions with blue background come from this presentation.

18 Not really that many Natural gas does burn more cleanly than oil or coal, but its extraction is not clean, and its combustion does create CO 2.

19 About jobs, Ron Koshoshek, Chair of the Plan Commission for the town of Howard in Chippewa County: In Howard, the EOG mine has not employed even one town citizen to the best of our knowledge. Kraemer Mining from Minnesota does the actual mining operation and their employees are from out-of-state. It is hard to get real data on any of the local impacts regarding job opportunities. Job fairs have been largely publicity stunts.

20 In the next 6 months there will be 5000 acres of mining operations permitted or in the process of being permitted in Cooks Valley and Auburn townships. There are a few local towns people in those townships hired to truck for these companies, but we are already hearing complaints about being underpaid, of having hours promised cut way back because of a variety of problems, and of local sand and gravel operators being fired because of incompetence or general failure to meet expectations with other miners being brought in from outside areas to replace them. I am reminded of the scam Pizza companies of hiring young men provided they use their own cars to deliver. The job was over as soon as the car broke down and they did not save enough to replace the car (because not paid enough to do that)...

21 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Colorado estimate that natural-gas producers in the Denver-Julesburg Basin are losing about 4% of their gas to the atmosphere not including additional losses in the pipeline and distribution system. Because methane is some 25 times more efficient than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere, releases of that magnitude could effectively offset the environmental edge that natural gas is said to enjoy over other fossil fuels.

22 Frack-sand mining is and will be much greater in magnitude, and the mining frenzy unavoidably will relax environmental protection, which are inadequate to begin with.

23 Downplayed! Principal contaminants of concern: Flocculants, mentioned only in passing by WGNHS. Flocculants: chemical additives used to clarify the water from mineral washing processes, speeding up the thickening of sludge and encouraging its compacting. Flocculants may include polyacrylamide, acrylamide, aluminum sulfate, iron sulfate, organic coagulants (polyamines and polydadmacs), polyacrylate dispersants, antifoams and defoamers.

24 Dispersion of very fine sediment Flocculated dispersion Flocculation, using a flocculant Large sediment grains settle more quickly than fine ones. Floccule : a clump of fine sediment grains that settles quickly, like a single large grain.

25 Magnified floccules

26 Flocculant polymer, greatly magnified, attracts sediment particles with electrostatic charge Floccule POLYMER: A complex chemical structure, made of many linked simpler structures called monomers

27 (monomer) Acrylamide is a carcinogenic neurotoxin. Polyacrylamide (polymer) million acrylamide units comprise one strand of linear polyacrylamide. Small amounts of acrylamide always accompany polyacrylamides. Question 1: Is this because of spontaneous breakdown? Question 2: Can polyacrylamide degenerate into acrylamide in streams and groundwater?

28 Eldon A. Smith*, Susan L. Prues*, and Frederick W. Oehme, 1997, Environmental Degradation of Polyacrylamides II. Effects of Environmental (Outdoor) Exposure. Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety v.37, n. 1: The environmental fate of a polyacrylamide thickening agent... was examined under various environmental situations: formulation in surface water and ground water, volatility, and soil mobility......polyacrylamide can degrade to acrylamide under environmental conditions... Acrylamide and ammonium concentrations increased during the study in all formulations, except when solutions evaporated to dryness... *GEO-CENTERS, Inc., at Naval Medical Research Institute Detachment (Toxicology), Wright- Patterson AFB, Ohio Comparative Toxicology Laboratories, College of Veterinary Medicine, Kansas State University.

29 In courts of law, defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty. But in environmental protection, a suspect substance MUST be presumed guilty until proved otherwise. The stakes are far too great to do otherwise.

30 Ken Stark s cartoon says it all

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32 WDNR 30 August 2011 Silica Study Report Industrial sources of crystalline silica include... mining and rock crushing operations. Crystalline forms of silica (such as quartz) meet the definition of a known carcinogenic hazardous air pollutant... No federal air quality standards for silica currently exist. Federal standards for particulate matter (PM), a component of which is silica, are in effect for PM 10 and PM2.5. The size of crystalline silica particles of most concern are those that are smaller than four microns (millionths of a meter), also called particulate matter 4 (PM4). There are no generally accepted methods for monitoring PM4 in ambient air...

33 Controls for crystalline silica are the same controls typically used for particulate matter (PM). The extent of reduction from existing particulate matter (PM) controls is not currently known and will vary from source to source. The types and costs for these controls need to be evaluated on a facility-by-facility basis.... where people live near a source of crystalline silica, data from other air pollution control agencies shows that silica ambient air concentrations could be above a level of concern... Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WDNR) has extensive experience applying PM controls to many types of air pollution sources. For example, many permits for industrial sources require dust management plans and other controls to reduce PM emissions, which also help minimize crystalline silica emissions.

34 Currently, WDNR has no crystalline silica monitoring data. Additional financial and staff resources would be needed to conduct crystalline silica monitoring. Monitoring to specifically analyze for crystalline silica is difficult, there are no federal standards and there is no standard reference method for monitoring crystalline silica in ambient air very little conclusive information exists regarding sources, controls or levels of silica present in ambient air. This...means it is not currently possible to determine conclusively whether or to what extent the quantity, duration or types of silica emissions in the state may be a public health concern. It would take significant additional efforts to fill in these data gaps. That said, Wisconsin has regulated PM for 40 years. The controls for PM are the same controls for crystalline silica. This means that for those crystalline silica sources where PM is controlled, crystalline silica emissions are also reduced. Not good enough!

35 The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) of the Center for Disease Control recently collected 116 air samples at 11 different hydraulic fracturing sites in... AR, CO, ND, PA and TX.... At each of the 11 sites, full-shift personal-breathing-zone (PBZ) exposures to respirable crystalline silica consistently exceeded... the OSHA Permissible Exposure Limit, NIOSH Recommended Exposure Limit, and the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienist s Threshold Limit Value... 47% of the 116 samples collected exceeded the calculated OSHA limits; 79% exceeded the NIOSH and ACGIH limits of the 116 (31%) samples exceeded the NIOSH limit by a factor of 10 or more. The significance of these findings is that even if workers are properly using half-mask air-purifying respirators, they would not be sufficiently protected because half-mask air-purifying respirators have a maximum use concentration of 10 times the occupational health exposure limit. Based on these results, NIOSH concluded that an inhalation health hazard existed for workers exposed to crystalline silica at the evaluated hydraulic fracturing sites. NIOSH notified company reps of these findings and provided reports with recommendations to control exposure to crystalline silica.

36 But what if water is contaminated by flocculants?

37 Not true! This report does not fully describe flocculants and their potential health hazards. This omission alone should be a matter of serious concern.

38 Questionable. The fine silica removed by the processing must be stored somewhere, and will be subject to dispersion by strong winds.

39 The unprecedented volume of sand mining will create problems in enforcement, and in containment of the fine material accumulated at mine sites. DNR lacks personnel!

40 Folks, we ain t seen nuthin yet...

41 So is it morally OK for us to manufacture fracking sands to be used in states that are blessed with tight gas shales?

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