Costs of dealing with waste water from fracking could be significant and make shale exploitation uneconomic in the UK, according to leading academics.
A report published by the Natural Environmental Research Council this week said there was “huge uncertainty” about how much waste water would be produced by UK fracking and how it would be cleaned or reused.
It concluded there was unlikely to be enough industrial waste treatment capacity for an operational shale gas industry and there was “a pressing need” for research and development of new technology.
It also identified information gaps on the impact of fracking on human health, emissions, earthquakes, public opinion and water quality
The report is the outcome of a workshop held in November last year involving nearly 50 UK and US academics and regulators. From the UK, they included researchers at 12 universities, as well as representatives from the Environment Agency, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the industry body Uk Onshore Oil and Gas and the British Geological Survey.
The workshop participants identified more than 140 priority questions where research was needed on the potential environmental impacts of unconventional hydrocarbons. Of these, about half needed to be addressed in the next year, they said.
“Huge uncertainty” on waste
One of the biggest knowledge gaps involved disposal of waste and produced water from fracked wells.
The authors said:
“A huge uncertainty, given the immaturity of unconventional oil and gas development in the UK, is how much waste water will be produced and regulatory and technical mechanisms for cleaning it or directly reusing it.”
In the US, most waste and produced water is injected deep into oil and gas wells. This is cheaper than treatment but has been linked to earthquakes, or induced seismicity, and removes water from the water cycle.
In the UK, deep water injection is currently not an option to the shale industry, the report said.
“Without deep well disposal, it is likely that treatment of the dissolved solids will be required and so research into cost-effective means of doing this is important to the implementation of unconventional oil and gas production in the UK.”
The report concluded:
“The costs related to waste water production may be significant and could make shale exploitation uneconomic. Research into potential uses of the flowback and produced water that might require less treatment should be pursued as well as treatment schemes taking advantage of cheap power.”
Without deep well disposal, the report said:
“There is unlikely to be sufficient industrial wastewater treatment capacity to service the needs of a mature operational industry and so there is a pressing need to address this through research and technology development.”
It said research was currently underway into how and when waste water could be disposed of in wells in the UK and how it could be reused as a hydraulic fracturing fluid.
The issue of waste water disposal was a key issue at the public inquiry into Cuadrilla’s plans to frack at two sites in the Fylde area of Lancashire. Friends of the Earth’s witness, Alan Watson, gave evidence that waste water from the proposed wells would conservatively use 68% of the total available capacity of two of the three national treatment facilities. He also gave evidence that the concentration of chemicals in the waste water may be at levels greater than those allowed in the permits of the treatment facilities.
Emissions: reliable data needed
The report said reliable data was needed on total greenhouse gas emissions from the “cradle to the grave” for shale gas and oil. These should be compared with other energy sources to inform climate change policy and understand the impact on legally-binding emissions targets.
The report recommended:
“More monitoring of unconventional oil and gas infrastructure is needed to understand which parts of the system are the biggest emitters and when these emissions occur. There is a gap in knowledge around what equipment the emissions are from, for example are they from tanks, gathering lines or wastewater treatment facilities?”
“Emissions from the entire supply chain need to be measured so the full impact is understood”.
The report also acknowledged US shale operations were associated with the release of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), most of which are toxic and contribute to air quality problems. There is “substantial uncertainty” about these releases, it said, and called for answers to the questions:
“What are best management practices for the control of emissions of volatile organic compounds and how do they change as a function of type of operation and procedures in place during the operation.”
Earthquakes: questions over UK traffic light system
The report also called for more research on how fracking leads to earthquakes and how to measure seismic activity.
“Of major concern is the ability to predict the maximum potential earthquake as a result of hydraulic fracturing. This may be related to the locations of faults, and research into how to detect and avoid faults is an important goal.”
It also questioned the value of the UK regulation known as the “traffic light system”, which requires fracking operations to stop if seismic activity reaches a level of 0.5. The report suggested there were problems with measuring this limit:
“At the current time, the regulatory threshold for action in the UK may not be able to be measured and therefore the defined threshold is of little benefit.”
Public opinion: “how do we change perceptions?”
The report recommended research on what it called “the most effective approaches for better engaging communities”.
The purpose, it said, was to “provide the public with the information they need to understand and evaluate the potential environmental impacts of hydraulic fracturing.”
But there was evidence elsewhere in the report that workshop participants were looking to change public opinion in support of shale gas. Among the questions they said they wanted to answer were:
“In the long run, how do we change people’s perceptions towards this industry? To advertise more and educating them? Or maybe our knowledge is yet limited and that’s why we cannot convince them”.
Other issues
The report also identified other areas for research including:
Surface spills “Transportation and treatment of these waters can increase the opportunities for such spills”
Public health “Very early stage. Lack of understanding of long term impacts yet a potentially significant public concern.”
Water quality identifying leaks; sub-surface migration pathways; flowback water chemistry; risk assessments to improve leak detection; risks to human health from contamination of shallow groundwater and drinking water.
Report details
Joint US-UK Workshop on Improving the Understanding of the Potential Environmental Impacts associated with Unconventional Hydrocarbons. Final report by Danny Reible, Texas Tech University, and Richard Davies, Newcastle University, published 3 May 2016. Link (36.7MB)
Categories: Research, Uncategorized
DRILL OR DROP? 
One thing we can all take from all of this, no matter what side anyone is on, is that many other countries never both with any of this. Unconventional drilling will spread across the world and most of it will never have this sort of rigour, care or debate.
A cynical person might wonder how much of it we will be importing in 20 years time.
“The report said reliable data was needed on total greenhouse gas emissions from the “cradle to the grave” for shale gas and oil. These should be compared with other energy sources to inform climate change policy and understand the impact on legally-binding emissions targets.”
This should be done for all energy sources including renewables, biomass aka Drax, wind and solar, plus nuclear. It is interesting that this has actually been done for solar PV recently – and the results are not what you would think:
Click to access ferroni-y-hopkirk-2016-energy-return-on-energy-invested-eroei-for-photo.pdf
The assessment should include back up required for intermittent sources and demand supply for fixed output.
Most intelligent adults already have access to the hundreds of reports coming from scientists in respected universities in the US, upon the impact of fracking. It does not take a rocket scientist to know that if you pump 23 millions gallons of water underground and only 40-6- gallons resurfaces, then you have a massive build of trillions of gallons of highly polluted water, taken from freshwater supplies, the WWF reported in 2007, sans a frack roll out, would be insufficient to quench the thirst of the influx of population , which by now is risible given the current government has failed to stem the tide of immigration, which wasn’t factored into the report circa 2007.
What the Preston Inquiry revealed was how little the EA knew about fracking, and how much less the government ministers knew, and how baseless were the claims of PEDL being the safest regs in the world to guide onland fracking.
Hillsborough lies and spin are bad enough, the paedo scandal was as bad, and the miners being massacred is enough for all northerners to bear, but for goodness sake, when those charged with due diligence in keeping the nation safety a top priority, the last thing we need is some hubristic fracker and MP in his pocket, telling us with spin and hype, that fracking is safe.
Waste water is highly radioactive and conveniently ignoring that, and the issue of no disposal facility currently exists for it, to distract from the fact there is already a massive nuclear dumping scandal operating in this country, is a farce and needs stopping now, as flagged at NYCC in February–listen to the worrying lack of interest or diligence given to the waste topic at the Feb meeting to find out how far the EA, this government and shareholders are prepared to ignore the pollution and dangers of fracking, where they haven’t fully considered the waste water issue.
What.
This can’t be true Ruth – Ken Wilkinson keeps saying it’s all sorted out and there would be no uncertainty at all if you would all just listen to “the experts”. Surely he’s not been misleading us all this time?
John Hobson you have made me smile – this study involved many of the “experts” and guess what there are many unanswered questions, including impacts on health and look at the waste issue – they really do want to re inject waste, so much for the UK’s gold plated standards that will be so much higher than elsewhere. The truth is clear they want to impose this industry on communities regardless and it will be just as awful as in other countries. And they wonder why the public will not accept this industry.