Recycling fracking fluids

Multiple shale layers explained

By FRITZ MAYER

LAKE HUNTINGTON, NY — While gas drilling has been the subject of local reporting for months, the public still has an appetite for more knowledge. At a symposium at Sullivan West High School on August 19, about 400 people turned out. Some 90 percent of them raised their hands to show that this was the first such symposium they had attended, though several have been held in the area in recent months.

Some of the advice and information has been dispensed many times. Landowners were advised to never sign a boilerplate lease, to consult an attorney and not to trust landmen to look out for their interests. Christopher Denton, an Elmira-based attorney who represents landowners in negotiating gas leases, said all details must be spelled out in the lease. Some people who have signed have stipulations that prohibit wells from being placed closer than 500 feet from the homes, but have found out that doesn’t prevent a gas company from erecting a building 30 feet from the home.

Other information presented at the symposium, however, has not been widely disseminated. For instance, it is not widely known that the Marcellus Shale is only one target out of several that drillers might go after once leases are signed. Don Zaengle, who is a consulting geologist to Denton’s law firm, said in Sullivan County, beneath the Marcellus Shale, other formations such as sandstone ones, with names like Herkimer and Oneida, also may contain gas. And beneath them is the Utica Shale, which is very similar in nature to the Marcellus Shale. And even deeper, at about 11,000 feet, lies the Trenton Black River formation, which is currently the richest gas-producing formation in New York State.

Zaengle said all of these formations represent opportunities to gas companies. He said that if the Marcellus Shale is successfully tapped at one location, that well could take perhaps 20 years to drain. If the Trenton Black River formation is then subsequently successfully tapped, that could add 10 to 15 years to the length of the lease.

But perhaps the most significant information that Zaengle related concerned closed-loop drilling. One of the elements of gas drilling that most concerns environmentalists is the use of reserve pits, where fracking fluids and drilling fluids are stored. These large open pits can be breached by floods or heavy rain and the linings can leak. Closed loop drilling eliminates the need for these pits.

Zaengle said the closed-loop process “takes the frack fluid and drilling mud and puts it through a series of sieves, centrifuges, coagulators etc., and it takes all the dry material out which is taken to a waste-disposal site, and it reuses the water.”

Zaengle said the closed loop systems are being included in the leases that the Denton Law Firm prepares for coalitions of landowners. He added that the systems save drillers money because of reduced liability and the ability to use less water during the drilling process.