Tuesday, July 09, 2013

U.S. well sites in 2012 discharged more than Valdez

Mike Soraghan, E&E reporter


It went up orange, a gas-propelled geyser that rose 100 feet over the North Dakota prairie.

But it was oil, so it came down brown. So much oil that when they got the well under control two days later, crude dripped off the roof of a house a half-mile away.

"It had a pretty good reach," said Dave Drovdal, who owns the land where the Bakken Shale oil well, owned by Newfield Exploration Co., blew out in December near Watford City, N.D. "The wind was blowing pretty good. Some of it blew 2 miles."

It was one of the more than 6,000 spills and other mishaps reported at onshore oil and gas sites in 2012, compiled in a months-long review of state and federal data by EnergyWire.

That's an average of more than 16 spills a day. And it's a significant increase since 2010. In the 12 states where comparable data were available, spills were up about 17 percent.

Drilling activity in those states, though, rose 40 percent during that time.

More common than the Newfield blowout are 100-gallon leaks that are contained to the well site and get cleaned up the same day.

But together they add up to at least 15.6 million gallons of oil, fracking fluid, wastewater and other liquids reported spilled at production sites last year. That's more than the volume of oil that leaked from the shattered hull of the Exxon Valdez in 1989. About 11 million gallons gushed from that ship.

And 15.6 million gallons is almost certainly an undercount, because reports in drilling-heavy states such as Colorado, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania often exclude spill amounts. That figure also doesn't include spills from interstate pipelines or offshore wells.

Companies reported that at least one-third of the spill volume from well sites was recovered.

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