Clean Water Could Halt Pennsylvania’s Natural Gas Market
A 2008 ruling on water pollution could be detrimental to the expansion of Pennsylvania’s natural gas production. However, a new breakthrough in water desalination might be the saving grace for the state’s gas producing companies.
Pennsylvania’s prolific Marcellus Shale natural gas basin has given the state a large opportunity to create high-paying, green-tech jobs while providing cleaner energy for the United States. However, critical water resource problems have the potential to kill this exciting opportunity unless both water disposal and water re-use challenges can be solved with new and better technology.
The opportunity is in producing clean-burning natural gas — and lots of it. Recent technological innovations in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have reopened the 54,000-sq mile Marcellus Shale Basin, stretching across Pennsylvania and portions of New York, Ohio and West Virginia. Officials estimate that the Marcellus Shale has the potential to produce nearly 500 trillion cu ft of gas — enough to supply all of the United States’ needs for nearly two decades. The vision of an era of natural gas, a cleaner energy for the nation, coming from Pennsylvania and surrounding states, is poised to take off in a big way.
But there’s a problem. Before this vision can become a reality, acute water disposal and supply restrictions must be solved. The new frac’ing technology being deployed to access the Marcellus Shale gas 6,000 ft below the surface requires up to 2 million gals of water per well to be injected into the ground at tremendous pressure.
When that water flows back to the surface, it returns with high amounts of total dissolved solids (TDS), in the form of naturally occurring salts that dissolve in frac water, and must be disposed of in an environmentally safe manner. To date, this dirty, salty water has been trucked off-site to commercial and municipal sewer treatment plants.
These plants are not capable of removing the salts, but merely dilute the dirty water with other wastewaters in order to comply with discharge requirements to the state’s waterways. When the high TDS water is discharged into Pennsylvania’s watersheds, numerous human and aquatic health concerns arise, including allegations of huge kill of fish, mussels and other aquatic life along Dunkard Creek in Greene County in the western parat of the state.
Late last year the state government acted, ordering that a little over a year from now, on Jan. 1, 2011, all water used in the drilling of natural gas wells will be prohibited from being put back into Pennsylvania’s waters unless it is first treated to remove the salts.
This ruling, in turn, has threatened to halt the state’s natural gas expansion, limiting the creation of tens of thousands of jobs and keeping cleaner-burning natural gas away from East Coast customers hungry for a cleaner source of energy than either coal or imported oil. Without an economical and sustainable water resource solution, further development of the huge Marcellus Basin is at risk.
“If you’re not removing the salts, you’re not really solving the problem,” says Stan Berdell, president of BLX Inc., a natural gas producer in western Pennsylvania. “Our industry has no choice but to limit our growth if we can’t find a way to clean the salt out of this water so that it can be re-used again and again for our next frac jobs.”
The answer has come from a New Mexico company, Altela Inc., which has come up with a solution for BLX’s natural gas wells near Eau Claire, Pa. Last month, the two companies placed into operation a new water purification unit directly at the well head that purifies the frac water to remove the salts and other contaminants, so that BLX can use the water again and again for the same frac process. And when they are done with the water, it can go back into the river in a state purer even than drinking water.
“Recent water restrictions from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), both from the freshwater side as well as the wastewater disposal side, will limit the pace of tapping Marcellus natural gas,” says David Kohl, of CWM Environmental Inc., a local environmental company. “Until an economically viable water desalination process proves itself in the field, industry tends to be skeptical. Well, now that problem has been solved with this Altela unit.”
The new water treatment unit, built by Altela of Albuquerque, started purifying water last month at the BLX well head and results show a complete success in the purification process. The mobile AltelaRain system is 45 ft long and 8 ft wide — similar in size to a semi-tractor trailer. It is continuously converting the brackish frac water into water that is less than 50 mg/liter in salt concentration — about 10 times cleaner than municipal drinking water.
“Altela’s new technology has created a unique opportunity for PA’s shale-gas industry to beneficially re-use and expand water supplies,” says Berdell. “The natural gas industry can now become a key element of environmental sustainability and stewardship here in the northeastern Unites States.” |
