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发帖数: 29846 | 1 California permitted oilfield discharge in protected water
February 5, 2015 - 2:05 PM
By ELLEN KNICKMEYER, Associated Press
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (AP) — Regulators in California, the country's third-
largest oil-producing state, have authorized oil companies to inject
production fluids and waste into what are now federally protected aquifers
more than 2,500 times, risking contamination of underground water supplies
that could be used for drinking water or irrigation, state records show.
While the permits go back decades, an Associated Press analysis found that
nearly half of those injection wells — 46 percent — were approved or began
injections in the last four years under Gov. Jerry Brown, who has pushed
state oil and gas regulators to speed up the permitting process. That
happened despite growing warnings from the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency since 2011 that state regulators were out of compliance with federal
laws meant to protect underground drinking-water stores from oilfield
contamination.
In California, "we need a big course correction. We need to get the system
back in compliance," said Jared Blumenfeld, regional administrator for the
EPA. "Californians expect their water is not being polluted by oil producers
... This poses that very real danger."
The injections are convenient for oil companies because drilling brings up
13 gallons of wastewater for every gallon of petroleum. And one of the
easiest disposal methods is simply to send that waste back underground.
The federal government is now demanding that state officials do more to find
and deal with any contamination and end oilfield injection in all aquifers
set aside for families and farms.
Those water supplies are especially vital because California, the nation's
most populous state and its agricultural leader, is now entering the fourth
year of a historic drought, making water more scarce. Oil-industry
operations can introduce high levels of salts or other contaminants that can
ruin water aquifers for drinking or watering crops and livestock.
State officials acknowledge that regulators erred, citing confusion about
the boundaries of aquifers and oil fields, long-standing state
misinterpretations of federal water-safety requirements and lack of
communication between state-level oil and water regulators.
The vast majority of the more than 2,500 permits under scrutiny were issued
after the 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act heightened protection for underground
water supplies.
For some of the permits, "we don't know how this got approved," said Jason
Marshall, deputy director of the California Department of Conservation,
which directly regulates the state's oil and gas industry.
In one case, regulators signed off on an application to inject wastewater
into a federally protected aquifer, then realized their error and raced to
the site.
"He had done injection for about 20 minutes," Marshall recalled. "We just
said, 'Stop! You can't do that. Stop.'"
So far, state officials say they have no evidence that water wells have been
contaminated. Last summer, state officials shut down nine disposal wells
deemed most threatening to underground drinking-water supplies. The state
has now tested nine of more than 100 water wells within a mile of those now-
idled disposal wells, and found no obvious signs of contamination, state
officials said.
However, Blumenfeld said, poor record-keeping by the state over the years
makes that determination difficult.
Worries persist. "The problem with just monitoring (for contaminants) is
once you see it in the well, it's too late," said Timothy Parker, an
independent Sacramento-based groundwater expert who has worked for the state
Department of Water Resources and in the oil industry. "It's very difficult
to clean up an aquifer once it's contaminated."
Over the summer, state oil and gas regulators sent the EPA lists of permits
that allow oil companies to inject waste or production fluid into aquifers
that were either protected by the federal government or supplied water wells
. In December, the EPA gave the state until Friday to draft a plan for
halting the practice and bringing the state into compliance with the Safe
Drinking Water Act. The state has until 2017 to stop injections into any
aquifer that has not been specifically designated by the EPA for oil-
industry waste disposal or drilling.
Officials are determined to both "manage the transition" back into
compliance with the federal water act and to "maintain a robust oil industry
," said Steve Bohlen, head of oil, gas and geothermal resources for the
California Department of Conservation.
Of the 2,553 injection wells that the state has identified as risking
contamination of protected aquifers, 1,172 were approved by the state or
began injection in just the last four years since Brown took office,
according to state records.
Brown is known globally as a leading supporter of solar, wind and other
renewable energy. But the Democratic governor has also supported tapping
California's oil reserves.
In late 2011, Brown fired the state's top two oil-and-gas regulators after
oil companies complained that their environmental reviews were slowing the
flow of drilling permits. By early 2012, he was boasting of a double-digit
jump in drilling-permit approvals as a result of those firings.
"The oil rigs are moving in Kern County. We want to use our resources ...
our sun and all the other sources of power," Brown told a crowd in 2012 at
the opening of a solar plant near Sacramento. "It's not going to be easy.
There's going to be screw-ups. There's going to be bankruptcies. There'll be
indictments, and there'll be deaths. But we're going to keep going. Nothing
's going to stop us."
Richard Stapler, spokesman for California's Natural Resources Agency, said
neither the firings nor Brown's statements played a role in the hundreds of
drilling permits granted for protected aquifers in his most recent term.
State officials said high oil prices earlier in the decade and a U.S. push
for domestic oil production led to a surge in mistakenly granted permits.
"What we really want to do right now is make sure we're not currently
impacting public health and to put safeguards in place to make sure this
does not happen again, and then we can determine precisely how it occurred
in the past," Stapler said.
Most of the permits were granted for drilling sites in central California's
Kern County, one of the nation's leading petroleum-producing counties. At
least a dozen times, state oil and gas regulators authorized drilling into
protected aquifers underlying federal land controlled by the Bureau of Land
Management.
Many of the injection wells are in oilfields thick with rigs, tanks and
disposal wells. But others are among citrus groves, row crops and houses.
The AP found more than 170 of the permits involved aquifers that met both
federal and state standards for potential drinking-water sources. That
included at least 27 permits that authorized injections into aquifers with
water that state records rated clean enough to be tapped for drinking
without treatment.
In a Bakersfield neighborhood that is home to one of the oil-industry wells
shut down this summer for threatening water wells, resident Tony Lemon stood
next to a bobbing drilling rig on the edge of his driveway. He and other
neighbors said they had been told nothing about any threat to water.
But Lemon said he trusted oil companies to safeguard the public water supply.
"As long as they know what they're doing, taking care of business," Lemon
said.
Like others in Bakersfield, he stressed the jobs and money that the oil
industry offered the community.
At issue are what the oil industry and regulators call Class II injection
wells, which are used to inject high-pressure steam or fluids and other
agents underground to force up oil and gas. They are also used to dispose of
briny water and other waste that comes up with the oil.
The injected wastewater is often cleaner than the water already underground.
Other times, the injections can include high levels of salt or other
chemicals.
Industry representatives say any threat to underground water sources is
minimal.
"It's not a crisis, not a wide-scale problem. I think the fact the (state)
identified the issue, took action and is now seeking to remedy, suggests the
system works pretty well," said Tupper Hull of the Western States Petroleum
Association industry group.
Chad Hathaway, a fourth-generation oilman based in Bakersfield, described at
least one state regulator acknowledging that an aquifer was EPA protected
even as the regulator gave Hathaway a permit to discharge into it.
Just because the EPA hasn't said so, "doesn't mean it's not an exempted
aquifer," Hathway recalled the official telling him. The episode happened
before Bohlen's appointment last June as head of state oil and gas
regulation, Hathaway said.
Blumenfeld, the EPA regional administrator, said his agency had encountered
similar episodes.
"Unfortunately, that isn't as surprising as it should be. Ultimately the
checks and balances have not been in place to ensure the integrity of the
system," he said.
Although four smaller producers had injection wells shut down, Chevron Corp.
, the world's ninth-largest oil company by production, rejected a state
request this past August to shut down seven injection wells that were found
to be operating near water wells, said Marshall of the Department of
Conservation.
Chevron's refusal means its wells continue to inject oil-field wastewater as
close as 88 vertical feet to active water wells that supply homes or
businesses in Kern County, according to state Water Resources Control Board
records.
Chevron disputed the state's account, saying one well cited as active in
state records was actually out of use. The company is already injecting
hundreds of feet below most of the water wells, and was seeking permits to
make those injection wells deeper still.
Oil industry representatives say they expect the EPA to retroactively allow
drilling in many of the aquifers where the industry is already injecting
fluids. But the federal crackdown is already stirring tensions, including
lawsuits by both oil companies and farmers.
In an orchard within sight of one of the disposal wells shut down by the
state, fourth-generation farmer Mike Hopkins ran a hand over his face and
turned around for a minute to compose himself when asked about the threat
that oil-field wastewater poses to the aquifers that farmers use for
irrigation.
Hopkins said damage from injections forced him to pull up his cherry trees
in 2013, and he has filed a lawsuit blaming the oil companies with fracking
wells and other installations that ring his orchards. The companies deny
responsibility.
"We're farmers," Hopkins said. Pulling up the withered fruit trees "broke
our hearts." |
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