Can Gas ‘Fracking’ Pollute Groundwater? Unlikely.

Can hydraulic fracturing of oil and gas wells pollute groundwater? The anti-drilling crowd wants you to think so, and has convinced the Environmental Protection Agency to launch an investigation into fracking. Don’t believe them.

The fracking process basically consists of injecting millions of gallons of water mixed with a wee amount of chemicals and tiny ceramic balls down a well at high pressure to break up stubborn rock formations and release the natural gas trapped inside.

In recent years there’s been a handful of cases where groundwater in the proximity of fracked gas wells has allegedly been contaminated–some say by fracking chemicals, some say by gas infiltrating the water table through an improperly completed well.

Oil and gas execs dismiss the concerns. Speaking at a recent conference in Houston Aubrey McClendon, chief executive of Chesapeake Energy said, “We consider a frack successful if we can move fluid 300 feet, so the concern is scientifically curious.”

“You can’t say there’s zero risk,” Jeff Ventura, president of Range Resources told me. “It all comes down to how you case your well. If you’re drilling to 8,000 feet deep, you have to drill through the water. What we do is set a string of pipe and cement to protect the water, to prevent cross flowing.”

Adding confidence is a study is a study just out by Pinnacle, a division of Halliburton, which looked at more than 3,000 frack jobs done over the past decade (see article on the study here).

Using underground sensors they monitored the success of these fracks–how the rock cracked, how far the frack fluids infiltrated into the gas reservoirs. What they found was that even in the most successful fracks, none of the fractures or chemicals migrated closer than 4,500 feet below the surface–thousands of feet below the nearest water aquifer.

In short, if water reservoirs are ever contaminated it’s because of a problem with how wells are cased close to the surface, not because frack chemicals are oozing up from a mile underground.

We need to end this debate. Many oil and gas companies would be ok with regulations covering how wells must be cased. But it’s absurd to even consider a ban on fracking. Without the process the U.S. would go from being self-sufficient in natural gas to depending on shipments of LNG from the likes of Qatar. Without fracking, gas would cost a lot more, as would electricity, chemicals, plastics, everything.

Forbes (blog)