Crew kills oil leak
September 2, 2010 at 6:37 pm in The Dickinson Press
Support crews were able to “kill” a breached oil well 2½ miles southwest of Killdeer Thursday afternoon following a blowout Wednesday morning and officials say water sources are presently not in danger. Continue Reading
This has been one of my main concerns with fracing…failure of the surface casing..(if that is what actually happened) Surface casing is placed through the fresh water zone as a protection for the fresh water. I testified on a bill during the last legislative session regarding fracing shallow wells as they do in Wyoming and other states… I also warned that this could happen…failure of surface casing in deep well drilling is one of the ways that fresh groundwater can be contaminated.
I think that part of the solution is, as said in the article, a review of the rules regarding pressure testing surface casing prior to fracing. To protect the fresh water zones let’s make certain that the surface casing is in place properly by requiring a surface casing pressure test.
The other solution is staff. The Oil and Gas Division has been short staffed for quite some time. In the last session they changed the pay scale for specialty positions such as petroleum engineers. Looking at the website for Oil and Gas I see that they filled the positions that they had advertised a few weeks ago.
I fear that part of the problem in filling those positions was housing. At least one of the positions was in Williston and the other in Dickinson…both short on housing. But, that is a local government issue, not the state’s. But it is still a problem.
My main concern with all of the oil development is fresh water being used for fracing. It seems now that Governor Hoeven is beginning to solve that problem finally talking about using river or lake water. That is a great step in the right direction. But, using groundwater is dangerous.
Farmers and ranchers rely on that water for their farming and ranching operations. If it is lost because of contamination or depletion of the aquifer the oil industry has other options…farmers and ranchers do not. If they lose their water and can’t find another place to drill a well they are out of business. Not only that, if they redrill that same well deeper, I believe that they lose their priority rights and any well drilled nearby just for frac water has a priority rights even if the well that was redrilled in the same place, only deeper….if that water starts to deplete the last one to drill is the first one to be asked to cease and desist. (at least that is what I understand after attending several meetings with the ND Water Commission.
I hope that the water is not contaminated either on the surface or underground in the Killdeer area and I know that the Dept of Health will do an excellent job of testing the nearby wells and surface water.
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