Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act (TRI)

Thousands of the nearly 270,000 wells drilled in the West since 1980 are exempt from the federal Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act of 1986. The act requires companies to report the release of significant levels of toxic substances to EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). The Oil and Gas Accountability Project, a reform organization, has said that the law would likely apply to benzene, toluene and xylene, chemicals often used in oil and gas drilling (OGAP Exemptions 2008).




A 2008 report by EWG and the Paonia, Colorado-based Endocrine Disruption exchange found that Colorado’s natural gas industry uses at least 36 chemicals listed under the TRI (EWG and TEDX 2008, TRI Chemicals 2008).


The industry typically guards its drilling chemicals as trade secrets. In 2008, in LaPlata County, Colorado, nurse Cathy Behr almost died from contact with the clothing of a worker she had treated. The worker’s clothes were permeated with a chemical fluid called Zeta Flow used in natural gas drilling. The company that made the fluid refused to identify it, citing trade secrets to the nurse’s physician even as he was laboring frantically to save her life. The doctor had to guess how to treat Behr, who was suffering from liver failure, respiratory failure and heart failure. She later recovered (Hanel 2008).

Even if the toxic release law applied to the oil and gas industry, individual wells might not report their discharges because current rules, watered down in 2006, set a floor of 2,000 pounds of total releases per facility. The previous threshold had a lower limit of 500 pounds (EWG Stolen Inventory 2008, CFR TRI Threshold 2008).

The Colorado legislature enacted limited disclosure of toxic chemical discharges in its recent sweeping overhaul of oil and gas drilling standards. Among other provisions, the state will require companies to keep records of chemical products used at each well when 500 pounds or more of the substance is injected into the well or stored for injection at the well site. But the nature of those chemicals will largely be hidden, with some exceptions for state officials and medical personnel (COGCC 2008).

Environmental Working Group

Resource Conservation and Recovery Act

 

The nearly 270,000 oil and natural gas wells drilled in the West since 1980 have enjoyed an exemption from the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), passed in 1976 to establish a cradle-to-grave hazardous waste management program (RCRA History). The law sets standards for disclosure and safety in handling hazardous waste, for reducing such waste and for developing non-toxic alternatives (RCRA 2008). In 1988, the EPA and Congress agreed not to apply RCRA to oil and gas wastes, overriding objections from some officials at EPA after the agency had documented 62 cases in which oil and gas wastes had caused damage. Two EPA officials told the Associated Press that the exemption was granted due to industry pressure, a charge that EPA administrators denied (Dixon 1988).

Drilling generates significant volumes of hazardous and toxic waste. Some of the major sources are: hydraulic fracturing fluids in which toxic additives are mixed with large volumes of water; drilling mud, a mixture of clay (bentonite) and water mixed with other toxic additives; and produced water (naturally occurring underground water coming from an oil or gas producing zone that can contain toxic hydrocarbons). The mud is usually stored in a large earthern pit that generally serves as the repository for all the other wastes when the well is drilled and put into production (EPA 2000, OGAP 2005).

These wastes should be stored in lined waste pits but are often dumped on the ground or in unlined pits. Even lined pits can leak, contaminating nearby water. (Epstein and Selber 2002, NMOCD Pit Testing 2007). The New Mexico Oil Conservation Division has identified more than 400 cases statewide of groundwater contamination from oil and gas waste pits (Prukop 2008, Farmington 2008). A 2007 NMOCD study found that rips and tears in pit liners were a common problem. Sampling from 37 pits found 17 substances, including arsenic, benzene, cadmium and mercury, that violated water quality standards (NMOCD Pit Testing 2007).

In June 2008, the New Mexico Oil Conservation Division implemented a rule requiring that waste pits be lined and registered with the state and that companies find alternatives when groundwater is within 50 feet of the surface. The rule set forth detailed standards for managing oil and gas wastes (NM Pit Rule 2008). New Mexico governor Bill Richardson recently directed the NMOCD to modify several provisions of the pit rule in response to complaints from some companies that the provisions were burdensome and might cause them to leave New Mexico. (Brunt 2009).

Environmental Working Group

Free Pass for Oil and Gas: Environmental Protections Rolled Back as Western Drilling Surges: Oil and Gas Industry Exemptions

Many of the nearly 270,000 oil and natural gas wells drilled in the West since 1980 have employed hydraulic fracturing, a process that involves the underground injection of tens of thousands to six million gallons of water per well. The water is laced with toxic chemicals and sand or other material known as “proppant.”

The fluid creates fractures in underground formations and the proppant holds these fractures open, allowing oil and gas to flow up the drilling pipe (EPA Fracturing Final 2004 ES-11, Schein 2008, Burnett and Vavra 2006). EPA considered hydraulic fracturing as exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act following the act’s passage in 1974 (LEAF v. EPA 1997, EPA Fracturing Final 2004).

The act sets standards and requires permits for the underground injection of hazardous substances so that these materials do not endanger Underground Sources of Drinking Water (SDWA 2008).


According to 2005 Congressional testimony by the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, a group that represents governors from oil and gas producing states, hydraulic fracturing is used in 90 percent of all oil and natural gas wells drilled in the U.S. (IOGCC Carrillo 2005).


Hydraulic fracturing has recently been associated with water contamination and human health problems. Last summer, the federal Bureau of Land Management documented benzene contamination in water wells in Sublette County, Wyoming, the site of one of the nation’s largest natural gas fields.

Hydraulic fracturing is common in Sublette County (Lustgarten 2008). It was not clear what caused the contamination, but benzene is injected underground in hydraulic fracturing, and the extraction process also causes naturally occurring deposits of benzene to surface (Hess 1998, EPA Final 2004 4-11). What makes the situation so alarming is that there is no other likely source for the benzene in rural Sublette County other than natural gas operations.

Also last year, a nurse in Durango, Colorado almost died after being exposed to hydraulic fracturing chemicals (Hanel 2008).

In a draft 2002 report, EPA reported that at the point of injection, nine hydraulic fracturing chemicals violated water quality standards (EPA Fracturing Draft 2002). This assertion was edited out before the final report was published. The published report did note that fracturing fluids are likely to remain underground and are “likely to be transported by groundwater supplies” (EPA Fracturing Final 2004).

In a 1997 case involving hydraulic fracturing of coalbed methane (CBM) wells, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Safe Drinking Water Act’s underground injection standards applied to hydraulic fracturing. EPA conducted a study and, in a report that was heavily criticized by an internal whistle-blower and others, concluded that “the injection of hydraulic fracturing fluids into CBM wells poses little or no threat” to drinking water (EPA Fracturing Final 2004 ES-16).

The agency suggested that it was up to states with primary authority to enforce the Safe Drinking Water Act to set standards for any hydraulic fracturing that might threaten underground sources of drinking water (EPA Fracturing Final 2004 ES-17). In 2005, Congress exempted most hydraulic fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act but said the act would apply to fracturing with diesel fuel (SDWA Exemption 2005).

Environmental Working Group

Natural Gas Condensate - Wiki

Natural gas condensate is a low-density mixture of hydrocarbon liquids that are present as gaseous components in the raw natural gas produced from many natural gas fields.

It condenses out of the raw gas if the temperature is reduced to below the hydrocarbon dew point temperature of the raw gas.

The natural gas condensate is also referred to as simply condensate, or gas condensate, or sometimes natural gasoline because it contains hydrocarbons within the gasoline boiling range. Raw natural gas may come from any one of three types of gas wells:^[1][2]

• Crude oil wells – Raw natural gas that comes from crude oil wells is called associated gas. This gas can exist separate from the crude oil in the underground formation, or dissolved in the crude oil.

• Dry gas wells – These wells typically produce only raw natural gas that does not contain any hydrocarbon liquids. Such gas is called non-associated gas.

• Condensate wells – These wells produce raw natural gas along with natural gas liquid. Such gas is also non-associated gas and often referred to as wet gas.

Wikipedia.org

Hydraulic Fracturing Fluids Discharged

Liquid nitrogen tanker trucks transport gas to the site for nitrogen foam fracturing. Nitrogen will travel through pipes to be mixed with water and a foaming agent at the wellhead prior to injection. The foam is used to create and propagate the fracture deep within the targeted coal seam.

The fracturing fluids, additives, and proppant are pumped to the wellhead and mixed just prior to injection. (Secret Sauce of non-disclosed toxic chemicals)

Fluid that is extracted from the well is sprayed through a diffuser and stored in a lined trench until it is disposed of off-site or discharged.

Discharged?  Is that what the EPA stated in their documents?
Discharged where?

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Click HERE to read entire EPA document

dis·charge (ds-chärj)

v. dis·charged, dis·charg·ing, dis·charg·es

v.tr.

1.

a. To relieve of a burden or of contents; unload.

b. To unload or empty (contents).

2.

a. To release, as from confinement, care, or duty: discharge a patient; discharge a soldier.

b. To let go; empty out: a train discharging commuters.

c. To pour forth; emit: a vent discharging steam.

dictionary.com


source: EPA.gov
June 2004