109
gaps include the absence of pre-drilling baseline data and the resulting difficulty of
separating out the potential impacts of fracking from other legacy sources of groundwater contamination, which align with the findings of similar studies (e.g. Soeder
et al. 2014). The EPA also found that there are significant challenges in understanding the migration of contaminants in the subsurface, as noted in other assessments
(e.g. Cahill et al. 2017). Finally, like many other would-be investigators, the agency
ran into difficulty securing industry cooperation for access to well sites, samples,
and data (Soeder 2015).
Concerns raised by the Halliburton loophole and the EPA study led to an effort
in the U.S. Congress and in state agencies charged with issuing drilling permits to
require the public disclosure of frack chemical additives. A joint venture between
the Ground Water Protection Council and the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact
Commission established a website called FracFocus (http://fracfocus.org/) that contains well completion reports and a listing of the chemicals used for hydraulic fracturing indexed to a map. The posting of frack additives on FracFocus was voluntary
at first, but a number of states now require this as part of the well permitting or
completion process.
The main ingredients of hydraulic fracture fluid, as reported on FracFocus, are
typically water, sand as proppant, polyacrylamide to make friction-reducing slickwater, guar gum to thicken the fluid to carry the proppant, hydrochloric acid for
cleanup, ethylene glycol for corrosion resistance, and a biocide to control downhole
bacteria that can create sour gas. Some fracking opponents have claimed that service companies were injecting a complex chemical soup into the ground consisting
of hundreds of unknown and exotic compounds. It turned out instead that the basic
chemicals used for a hydraulic fracturing job were actually fairly simple and cheap.
However, by not making this information available from the beginning, the O&G
industry allowed fracking opponents to dictate the narrative, and they filled a dark
closet with every monster imaginable. Despite the availability of FracFocus and
other information on chemical additives since 2012, many of these myths still linger. The industry certainly does try different variations of chemicals to get the formulation right for a particular part of a particular shale play, but nobody routinely
uses hundreds of chemicals on a single job.
Although the large study done by the EPA (USEPA 2016) concluded that chemical additives from hydraulic fracturing activities are not systemically contaminating
groundwater, this is not to say that contamination incidents don’t happen. They
certainly do, but on an individual water supply well basis. Water samples from 64
private residential groundwater wells in northeastern Pennsylvania and in southern
New York were collected between 2012 and 2014 to look for organic compounds
that potentially originated from shale wells (Drollette et al. 2015). Along with an
assortment of VOCs, in two of the well water samples the investigators detected
bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, a known additive to frack fluids. They concluded that
the source of the chemical was probably surface spills of frack additives on nearby
drill sites.
In addition to surface spills, there is a potential for hydraulic fracturing fluids,
flowback water, and produced water to be released directly into a shallow aquifer
6.2 Additives and Produced Water
gaps include the absence of pre-drilling baseline data and the resulting difficulty of
separating out the potential impacts of fracking from other legacy sources of groundwater contamination, which align with the findings of similar studies (e.g. Soeder
et al. 2014). The EPA also found that there are significant challenges in understanding the migration of contaminants in the subsurface, as noted in other assessments
(e.g. Cahill et al. 2017). Finally, like many other would-be investigators, the agency
ran into difficulty securing industry cooperation for access to well sites, samples,
and data (Soeder 2015).
Concerns raised by the Halliburton loophole and the EPA study led to an effort
in the U.S. Congress and in state agencies charged with issuing drilling permits to
require the public disclosure of frack chemical additives. A joint venture between
the Ground Water Protection Council and the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact
Commission established a website called FracFocus (http://fracfocus.org/) that contains well completion reports and a listing of the chemicals used for hydraulic fracturing indexed to a map. The posting of frack additives on FracFocus was voluntary
at first, but a number of states now require this as part of the well permitting or
completion process.
The main ingredients of hydraulic fracture fluid, as reported on FracFocus, are
typically water, sand as proppant, polyacrylamide to make friction-reducing slickwater, guar gum to thicken the fluid to carry the proppant, hydrochloric acid for
cleanup, ethylene glycol for corrosion resistance, and a biocide to control downhole
bacteria that can create sour gas. Some fracking opponents have claimed that service companies were injecting a complex chemical soup into the ground consisting
of hundreds of unknown and exotic compounds. It turned out instead that the basic
chemicals used for a hydraulic fracturing job were actually fairly simple and cheap.
However, by not making this information available from the beginning, the O&G
industry allowed fracking opponents to dictate the narrative, and they filled a dark
closet with every monster imaginable. Despite the availability of FracFocus and
other information on chemical additives since 2012, many of these myths still linger. The industry certainly does try different variations of chemicals to get the formulation right for a particular part of a particular shale play, but nobody routinely
uses hundreds of chemicals on a single job.
Although the large study done by the EPA (USEPA 2016) concluded that chemical additives from hydraulic fracturing activities are not systemically contaminating
groundwater, this is not to say that contamination incidents don’t happen. They
certainly do, but on an individual water supply well basis. Water samples from 64
private residential groundwater wells in northeastern Pennsylvania and in southern
New York were collected between 2012 and 2014 to look for organic compounds
that potentially originated from shale wells (Drollette et al. 2015). Along with an
assortment of VOCs, in two of the well water samples the investigators detected
bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, a known additive to frack fluids. They concluded that
the source of the chemical was probably surface spills of frack additives on nearby
drill sites.
In addition to surface spills, there is a potential for hydraulic fracturing fluids,
flowback water, and produced water to be released directly into a shallow aquifer
6.2 Additives and Produced Water