Posted on 07/15/2014 2:04:19 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Beaver dams have so far prevented about 1 million gallons of fracking wastewater discovered spilled July 8 from a rural North Dakota pipeline from spreading too far. But area residents, environmentalists and even a Republican state legislator all want more reliable measures.
The spill of the toxic saltwater, a byproduct of hydraulic fracturing, came from gas extraction operations at the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation and occurred days before it was discovered.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency said the underground pipeline spilled about 24,000 barrels, or 1 million gallon, in North Dakota’s thriving oil and gas region. The water, which can be 10 times saltier than seawater and contains salt and fossil fuel condensates, was being piped away from fuel extraction sites for safe disposal.
The spill has been threatening Bear Den Bay on nearby Lake Sakakawea, which provides water for the reservation occupied by the Arikara, Hidasta and Mandan tribes, though the EPA said there is no evidence that the lake has been contaminated.
In fact, it said, most of the saltwater had pooled near where it had spilled and that beaver dams in the area had kept it from spreading. As a result, the EPA said, the local soil has simply been absorbing the spill.
That’s a bit too fortuitous for Wayde Schafer, a spokesman for the Sierra Club in North Dakota. He said there have been four other spills in the region recently, including three caused by lightning strikes and a fourth attributed to a cow that rubbed against a tank valve.
(Excerpt) Read more at oilprice.com ...
Yay!
No use crying over spilled wastewater.
Green beavers,, who da thunk!
Cow that rubbed against a valve? Paid saboteur?
Notice the Sierra Club has their chapter up there to scream on a moments notice.
Those beavers are fracked.
Uhhh...just about any oil well will produce some amount of salt water, whether fracture stimulated or not. In fact, once your salt water disposal costs exceed the revenues from the sale of oil, it’s time to abandon and/or plug the well.
When I build my battery’s I tell the crews to remove all valve handles.
Will a ban on fracking be the coup de grace for what’s left of our domestic economy?
Is that Eric Holder?
salt water ?
“salt water ?”
We are drilling in ancient sea beds.
A single well requires 6 million gallons of water filled with proppant (sand or ceramic) to lodge itself into the fractures the big pump on the surface creates. When that pump shuts off the pressure, the proppant holds those fractures open so the oil, with two miles of rock pressing down on it, is squirted up.
The water comes back up, too, and there’s also natural water down that deep as well. It all comes up. It will have salt, proppant, and even radioactive markers in it (to identify stage performance) in it. It is sent elsewhere to be re-injected back down into the ground . . . 2 miles down.
A pipe doing that broke. Apparently several times. Someone didn’t do a good job disposing of the water. They are supposed to. In Texas a good rule of thumb is . . . if you would not move your family onto the land where you’re doing whatever you’re doing, then don’t do it.
The frack tanks around here (tri-state .. SW Pa) use fresh water.
Before i drove sand, I picked up waste water from the pit and brought it to the reclamation plant and I never heard of salt water (never asked and of course didn't taste it)
I just thought the reporting was on par with the full auto bullets ...
Production water. Produced with the oil, from the formation the oil is in. But come hell or high water, they had to blame fracking.
Uneducated dipshits living in the Carter years. Besides that both are a NATURAL
occurrence on earth. Oil and Salt was not produced in the USA and shoved up Gaia's ass.
I wonder how the quantity of fracking salt released compare with
winter salt used for melting snow and ice on highways?
It’s not what you put in but what you get back.
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