Data driven discussions about gas extraction and related topics.

Ted Auch, PhD

Hydrocarbon Industrial Complex Map In Detail

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Below is a brand new map from our team that contains multiple data layers that speak to the myriad players and facilities involved in the North American hydrocarbon network – from upstream processing facilities to transporters and export terminals. This map helps us to demonstrate the complexity of the hydrocarbon industry, because we often assume that hydraulic fracturing or related extractive techniques are local issues. However, there is actually a tremendous – and growing – interconnectivity between production, transport, processing, usage, storage, and export.


To see a fullscreen version of this map, along with a legend and description, click on the arrows in the upper right hand corner of the map.

Data Descriptions

EIA Sources: Peak Shavers, Underground Natural Gas Storage, Compressor Station, Natural Gas HUBs, and Pipeline Data

Peak Shavers are:

…used for storing surplus natural gas that is to be used to meet the requirements of peak consumption later during winter or summer. Each peak-shaving facility has a regasification unit attached but may or may not have a liquefaction unit…[they] depend upon tank trucks to bring LNG from other nearby sources to them. Of the approximate 113 active LNG facilities in the United States, 57 are peak-shaving facilities. The other LNG facilities include marine terminals, storage facilities, and operations involved in niche markets such as LNG vehicular fuel. Learn more

The data included in this map include 109 Peak Shavers vs. the aforementioned 57.

  • Regional distribution: 7 Central US, 12 Midwest, 53 Northwest, 24 Southeast, 5 Southwest, 8 Western
  • 106 of which are active and 3 under construction

The Underground Natural Gas Storage Facilities (UNGSF) layer is an EIA-defined collection of 413 facilities1, a definition that includes “pipelines, local distribution companies, producers, and pipeline shippers with an inventory management tool, seasonal supply backup, and access to natural gas needed to avoid imbalances between receipts and deliveries on a pipeline network.” (For a more detailed description of UNGSF, see the EIA’s description)

Compressor Stations are designed to ensure:

…that the natural gas flowing through any one pipeline remains pressurized, compression of this natural gas is required periodically along the pipe…usually placed at 40 to 100 mile intervals along the pipeline. The natural gas enters the compressor station, where it is compressed by either a turbine, motor, or engine…[they] gain their energy by using up a small proportion of the natural gas that they compress.

For a more detailed discussion of the importance and design of compressor stations, refer to NaturalGas.org’s The Transportation of Natural Gas.

  • This layer includes: 1,756 compressor stations with the following regional distribution: 207 Canadian, 344 Central US, 14 Gulf Coast, 169 Midwest, 249 Northeast, 191 Southeast, 450 Southwest, and 132 Western stations
  • The mean and total horsepower across 1,417 of these facilities is 10,411 and 18,282,484, respectively, with average and total throughput of 660 and 1,159 Billion Cubic Feet (BCF)2.

Natural Gas HUBs are broken down by operator type with 26 “Market Center”, 31 “Market Hub”, 3 “Production Hub”, and 3 “Storage Hub” facilities included.

  • Regional distribution: 9 in Canada, 7 across the Central US, 4 in the Midwest, 8 in the Northeast, 4 in the Southeast, 24 in the Southwest, and 7 in the Western US.
  • All facilities were activated between 1994 and 1998
  • Status: 5 Canceled, 13 Inactive, 36 Operational, and 9 Proposed HUBs

Pipeline segments are parsed by type: a) 69 sections totaling 1,627 miles described as “Gathering” at an average diameter of 17 inches, b) 18,905 segments totaling 127,049 miles as “Interstate” with an average diameter of 15 inches, and  c) 15,152 “Intrastate” segments totaling 66,939 miles and an average diameter of 2.8 inches.

Select states statistics:

  1. 7,450 segments were located in Texas with a total length of 44,600 miles,
  2. 1,313 segments were located in California with a total length of 6,370 miles,
  3. 2,738 segments in Louisiana with a  total length of 15,330,
  4. New York and New Jersey are home to a combined 2,315 pipeline segments with a total length of 4,015 miles,
  5. 859 segments and 5,935 miles in Ohio,
  6. Great Lakes bordering states contain 6,841 pipeline segments totaling 33,457 miles,
  7. Pacific Northwest states including Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana contain 1,765 segments totaling 6,121 miles,
  8. Gulf Coast states sans Texas contain 3,886 pipeline segments totaling 25,775 miles.

The above datasets were compiled by Ted Auch and Daniel Berghoff of the FracTracker Alliance or sourced from the US Energy Information Administration via their Natural Gas data portal and their analysts Tu Tran and Robert King.

US River and Coastal Export/Import Ports

US inland (i.e., Mississippi River) and coastal ports are the singular ways in which all manner of hydrocarbons are transported to downstream processing facilities and subsequently used domestically or exported. The data contained herein include 12 Mississippi, 7 Ohio and Tennessee River, and 11 Columbia river ports along with 16 Great Lakes/St. Lawrence river ports (Table 1).

Table 1. Number of inland and coastal US and territories ports as of December 2013.

State

Number of Ports

State

Number of Ports

AK

40

MO

2

AL

7

MS

3

AR

2

NC

2

CA

9

NJ

2

CT

3

NY

6

DE, VA, MD, & DC

6

OH

2

FL

17

OK

2

GA

2

OR

13

HI

7

PA

2

IA

1

PR

1

ID

1

RI

1

IL

4

SC

1

KY

2

TN

4

LA

13

TX

11

MA

3

VI

1

ME

2

WA

6

MI

6

WI

4

MN

4

WV

2

US Coal Plants & Emissions

We were pointed to this data by Source Watch’s “Coal Swarm” project’s Director Ted Nace and researcher Joshua Frank. Learn more. The layer includes coal used, emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2), methane (CH4), oxides of nitrogen (NOX), and mercury (Hg). Also included are the number of deaths across a variety of categories and emergency room visits attributed to each coal plant, along with estimates of the valuation of each of these. The raw data are available from the the US EPA’s Emissions & Generation Resource Integrated Database (eGRID) comprehensive data portal with the “Version 1.0” ZIP file containing: “spreadsheet files, state import-export files, Technical Support Document, file structure document, Summary Tables, GHG output emission rates, the EUEC2010 paper, and graphical representations of eGRID subregion and NERC region maps. Data in this file encompasses years 2009, 2007, 2005 and 2004.” The data were most recently updated on May 10, 2012 in order to include 2009 data.

Transload Facilities Directory

Directory Description:

Rail-to-truck transload facilities where cargo is transferred between tank trucks and water or rail transportation…These bulk material handling companies also provide information such as products handled, services and equipment available, and methods for dry bulk product transfer…These intermodal locations are owned or operated by trucking companies, railroads, or independent bulk terminal operators. Unless the prohibition is stated, these businesses have indicated they allow outside carriers to load products at their facilities. Learn more

Services Key:

  • Products handled: a. Acids, b. Chemicals (liquid), c. Chemicals (dry), d. Asphalt, e. Foods (liquid), f. Foods (dry), g. Plastics (dry), h. Petroleum products
  • Services/equipment available: a. Air compressor, b. Scale, c. Blending meters, d. Sampling service, e. Hot water heating, f. Steam heating, g. Tank trailer cleaning, h. Liquid storage tanks, i. Liquid pumps
  • Dry bulk product transfer by: a. Vacuum trailer, b. Auger, c. Blower, d. Gravity (trestle), e. Portable vacuum/air conveyor, f. Bulk conveyor

Intermodal Tank Containers

Those facilities “that have actual storage depot operations. The operators specialize in both the handling and storage of ISO containers.” Learn more

Intermodal tanks are:

… intermodal container[s] for the transport of liquids, gases and powders as bulk cargo…built to the [International Organization for Standardization] Standard, making it suitable for different modes of transportation. Both hazardous and non-hazardous products can be transported in tank containers. A tank container is a vessel of stainless steel surrounded by an insulation and protective layer of usually Polyurethane and aluminum. The vessel is in the middle of a steel frame. The frame is made according to ISO standards and is 19.8556 feet (6.05 meters) long, 7.874 feet (2.40 meters) wide and 7.874 feet (2.40 meters) or 8.374 feet (2.55 meters) high. The contents of the tank ranges from 27,000 to 40,000 liters (5,900 to 8,800 imp gal; 7,100 to 11,000 U.S. gal). There are both smaller and larger tank containers, which usually have a size different from the ISO standard sizes. The trade organization @TCO estimates that at the end of 2012 the global fleet of tank containers is between 340,000 and 380,000. (Wikipedia definition)

Services Key: a. Storage, b. Cleaning, c. Container shuttle service, d. Container drayage, e. Steam/electric heat, f. Rail siding, g. Repair/refurbishing, h. American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) certification, i. American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) certification, j. ISO 9000 certification, k. 2.5- and 5-year ABS testing, l. Reefer tank repairs, m. Parts supply

Abbreviations: SC=straddle carrier, TLSL=top-lifting side-loader, D/D=drop-deck

MarkWest Facilities

Facility locational data gathered from the company’s operations website.

Cargo Tank Repair Directory

“Bulk Transporter’s Cargo Tank Trailer Repair Directory…the most comprehensive listing of repair facilities that service tank trucks and tank trailers. Additionally, many of these facilities offer custom fabrication. Most listings include services offered, but tank truck operators are encouraged to contact the facilities directly for more information…The first six items listed on the “Services Key” are the DOT tests and inspections required by federal law. Companies listing “R” or “U” stamps were asked to provide Bulk Transporter with a record of their accreditation. The federal CT registration number also was requested for the tank repair shops in the directory.” Learn more

Repair Services Key:

1. External visual inspection, 2. Internal visual inspection, 3. Lining inspection, 4. Leakage test, 5. Pressure retesting, 6. Thickness testing, 7. MC330/331 retesting, 8. Vapor recovery testing, 9. Bottom-loading conversion, 10. Major barrel repair, 11. Tank passivation, 12. Sandblasting/painting, 13. Tank changeouts, 14. Tank degassing, 15. Tank cleaning (for repair only), 16. Custom fabrication, 17. Purchase wrecked trailers, 18. Pick-up & delivery, 19. Lining repair, 20. ASME “U” stamp, 21. National Board “R” stamp

Soon To Be Added Data:

Tank Cleaning Directory

The Commercial Tank Cleaning Directory…information…was supplied by the operators of commercial and carrier-owned tank wash facilities that provide cargo tank interior cleaning. Directory listings may include product limitations such as “food grade only” or “no hazmat.” Learn more

Footnotes

[1] 407 active and 6 inactive facilities; Region –

  1. 259 “Consuming East” primarily within depleted reservoirs providing supplemental backup and/or peak period supply,
  2. 49 “Consuming West” primarily for domestic US and Alberta gas to flow at constant rates, and
  3. 105 “Producing” facilities which are primarily responsible for hydrocarbon basin export connectivity, transmission, and distribution and allow for the storage of currently redundant natural gas supply; Field Type Affiliation – 43 aquifers, 331 depleted fields, and 39 salt domes. Learn more

[2] These total horsepower and throughput figures are up from 13.4 million and 743 BCF in 1996.

WV Field Visits 2013
FracTracker Alliance

FrackFinders Wanted

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Unconventional drilling waste impoundment

A partner in data-crunching, SkyTruth, is seeking volunteers to find waste impoundments from unconventional oil and gas drilling in Pennsylvania.

SkyTruth is our “eye in the sky” when it comes to tracking everything from the plume of the BP Oil Spill to flaring in the Bakken. They use remote sensing and mapping technologies to better understand the extent and impacts from a wide spectrum of industrial activities.

With the rapid increase in unconventional drilling in PA since 2005, this endeavor is incredibly important; waste impoundments may release chemicals into the air that are dangerous to health. To assess the true impacts, however, we need to know how close people are living to these potential air pollution sources.

As anyone who has seen a drilling site knows, hydraulic fracturing (e.g. fracking) requires a lot of water and often produces a lot of waste. This means that to map where all of the waste impoundments are located in PA will require many volunteers. The beauty of crowdsourcing is that a group can contribute a significantly larger number of observations much more quickly than could ever be possible with a few non-profit staffers.

“What can I do?” SkyTruth needs your well-trained eyes for their new project called FrackFinder PA: Project Moor Frog. In the comfort of your home, they’ll ask you to identify ponds that are large enough to be a part of oil and gas extraction activities from satellite photos taken above the sites.  Learn more  | Get involved  |  Data results

Ted Auch, PhD

The Muskingum Watershed and Utica Shale Water Demands

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Ohio Utica Well Water Usage

Figure 1. Ohio Utica well water usage across 306 wells (Gallons Per Well)

How much freshwater has the unconventional drilling industry used to-date?

By Ted Auch, OH Program Coordinator, FracTracker Alliance

Given that Ohio’s largest conservancy district, the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy (MWCD), is considering the sale of large stocks of freshwater and deep mineral rights to the Utica Shale drilling industry, we thought it would be helpful to take a “back of the envelope” first look at how much freshwater the gas industry has already used within the basin and how much it might use given current permitting trends.

Background

But first a little background… The MWCD is an 18 county political body that encompasses the Muskingum River basin in its entirety – roughly 19% of the state’s landmass (Figure 1). The Muskingum River Watershed (MRW), Ohio’s “largest wholly contained watershed,” contains nearly 19% of OH’s wetlands and 28% of the state’s lakes and reservoirs (Table 1).

Table 1. The number, minimum/maximum size, total area, and mean (±) size of wetlands, lakes, and reservoirs in the Muskingum River Watershed (MRW)

#

Min

Max

Sum

Mean

±

Wetlands (acres)

MRW

25,529

0.014

507

98,924

3.87

12.01

Ohio River

134,736

6.9*10-5

1,500

507,312

3.77

13.94

MRW as % of Ohio

18.9

202.9

33.8

19.5

102.7

86.2

Lakes & Reservoirs (miles2)

MRW

25

0.35

5.5

44.6

1.78

1.5

Ohio River

91

0.15

5,014

5,545

61

523

MRW as % of Ohio

27.5

233.3

0.1

0.8

2.9

0.3

The sustainability of the watershed’s freshwater stocks and flows is of concern to many, given climate trends and the fact that the MWCD, according to their website, is “…awaiting results from a U.S. Geological Survey analysis of water availability at several other reservoirs before deciding whether to approve a growing number of requests for water by other drilling companies.”

Water Use Trend

Our methodology examined rainfall, evapotranspiration, and usage of water by forests, crops, and humans. “When we account for all of these usages, as well as unquantified usages like watershed discharge and soil holding capacity, the remainder is what I will call available water.”

According to our analysis of 306 drilling, drilled, or producing OH Utica gas wells, the hydraulic fracturing process requires on average 4.6-4.8 million gallons of water per well(2). This is equal to 2.8-2.9 billion gallons of water to-date for the watershed’s 613 wells or 4.5-4.7 billion gallons across the state’s currently permitted 985 wells (Figure 1).

After looking at water use from this industry, the following water usage scenarios emerge:

  1. For just Muskingum Watershed gas wells – water use is equivalent to 2.47% of the watershed’s “available water” assuming a low discharge scenario, 2.50% for a medium discharge scenario, and 2.56% for a high discharge scenario.
  2. For all Utica gas wells in Ohio – water use is equivalent to 3.97% of the watershed’s “available water” assuming a low discharge scenario, 4.02% for a medium discharge scenario, and 4.11% for a high discharge scenario.
Put another way, these volumes equate to 4.44 and 7.14% of Muskingum Watershed residences’ total annual water usage.

A year from now – assuming two Utica permitting trajectories(3) – our calculations resulted in the following estimates:

(Note: The below projections assume the entirety of Ohio Utica wells permitted to date or 985 permits and an increase in Utica Well water usage of 220,329 gallons per quarter(4).)

  1. 25 permits per month for the next 12 months – equivalent to 5.40, 5.47, or 5.59% of the watershed’s “available water” by November 2014 when added to the currently utilized water detailed in part 1 above. This will be equivalent to 9.70% of human water usage in Ohio.
  2. 51 permits per month for the next 12 months – equivalent to 6.90, 7.00, or 7.14% of the watershed’s “available water”. This will equal 12.40% of human annual water usage in the watershed.

Ohio vs. Other States

Total horizontal drilling water usage across 59 Counties in 6 US states.

Figure 2. Total horizontal drilling water usage across 59 Counties in 6 US states (1*105 m3)

To put OH into perspective, we decided to compare the above water usage across 19 OH counties to identical data for 40 counties in 5 other states. In doing so we found that each county’s horizontal well stock has used an average of 2.82*105 m3 of water to date or 3,912 swimming pools and 119 golf course acres worth of irrigation, with the latter equivalent to 1.53 US golf courses. Six of OH’s counties come in over this average and the remaining thirteen below. Meanwhile, 10 of neighboring West Virginia’s 19 counties exceeded 2.79*105 m3 of water. OH and WV horizontal well water usage averaged across counties exceeds the Six State*Fifty-Nine County continuum average by 0.13 and 1.48*105 m3 of water, while the remaining four states fall short of the average by 2.02*105 m3 (Figure 2).

Total water usage across the 59 counties turns out to be a robust predictor of how the industry’s water needs relate to general public water usage accounting for 78.4% of the latter (Figure 3). However, this relationship isn’t as straightforward as one might expect – requiring a statistical technique called log transformation which is generally applied by statisticians to data that is “highly skewed…This can be valuable both for making patterns in the data more interpretable and for helping to meet the assumptions of inferential statistics.” Due to the “skewness” of this data set, the average and median industry water usage as a percent of the general public is 1.40% and 11.83%, respectively.

Horizontal drilling water Vs General Public's Water Requirements across 59 Counties in 6 US states.

Figure 3. Total horizontal drilling water usage across 59 Counties in 6 US states relative to the general public’s water requirements (1*105 m3)

OH Inter-County Utica Water Usage By The Numbers

Hydraulic Fracturing Industry Yearly Water Usage

  • Per well – 5.29 million gallons (Note: This is increasing by 149-220K gallons per quarter)
  • Total water usage is increasing by 36.993 million gallons per quarter, which means that within 5-6 years the industry will be using more than 1.1 billion gallons of freshwater per year
  • Per Square Mile – 10,355 gallons
  • Per Capita – 138 gallons Per Well Per Person; 2,612 gallons Per Person
  • Per Household – 358 gallons Per Well Per Household; 6,674 gallons Per Household
  • Per Well Foot – 821 gallons
  • Water Costs Per Well – $21,494 (Per capita resident water costs are $107.86 per year)
  • Water Usage as a % of Total Well development and production costs – 4.41%
  • The Ratio of Water as a % of Total Materials Used Per Well To Water Cost Per well – 27.25

Resident-to-Industry Ratios

  • a. Per Capita Resident Water Usage Per Year as % of Per Well Usage – 0.87%
  • b. Per Capita Water Cost Per Year as % of Utica Well Water Cost – 10.05%
  • Ratio of (b) to (a) – 11.86

References

[1] “The Muskingum River Watershed is comprised of three major subwatersheds – the Tuscarawas River Watershed in the northeastern, the Walhonding River Watershed in the northwest and the Lower Muskingum Watershed in the south. The Tuscarawas and Walhonding rivers flow in a southern direction where they intersect at Coshocton, forming the Muskingum River.” Learn more

[2] The median per well volumes required in Oklahoma range from 3.0 million gallons for the state in totol to 4.2 million gallons for the state’s Woodford Shale horizontal wells according to a study by Kyle Murray at the University of Oklahoma.

[3] The two trajectories assume 25 and 51 permitted wells per month based on the entirety of Ohio’s Utica permitting period back to September, 2010 and the current 2013 year-to-date average, respectively.

[4] This number increases to 339,812 gallons per quarter if we remove Q3-2013 where our data is admittedly incomplete relative to the previous eight quarters. We did not include Q3-2010 or Q1 and Q2-20111 in our extrapolation because we only have data for 1, 2, and 2 wells, respectively.

[5] Mekonnen, M M, & Hoekstra, A Y. (2010). The green, blue and grey water footprint of crops and derived crop products Value of Water (Vol. 47). New York, NY: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization – Institute for Water Education (UNESCO-IHE).

[6] Sanford, W E, & Selnick, D L. (2013). Estimation of evapotranspiration across the conterminous United States using a regression with climate and land-cover data. Journal of the American Water Resources Association, 49(1), 217-230.

Well and pipeline data in British Columbia
Matt Kelso, BA

British Columbia Map Now Available

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Increasingly, FracTracker has been receiving requests to map oil and gas data from a variety of locations.  Now for the first time since the roll-out of the ArcGIS Online-based FracMapper platform last year, we have content dedicated to understanding oil and gas data outside of the United States.  Specifically, this map is focused on the extractive – and midstream – activities in British Columbia, Canada.


British Columbia Shale Viewer. Please click the expanding arrows icon in the upper right corner of the map to access the full page map, complete with legend and descriptions.

British Columbia’s Oil and Gas Commission has records for over 29,000 wells, of which over 11,000 are indicated as being directional.  These are the wells included on this map.  While directional drilling is a broader category than horizontal drilling, which is more commonly associated with hydraulic fracturing, it was the most readily available means of finding wells likely to be unconventional in nature.  And indeed, a substantial majority of the directional wells drilled in the province correspond to the unconventional plays in the northeastern portion of British Columbia.

While the available well data was lacking some of the detail that FracTracker prefers, this is made up for by a data type that is difficult to encounter in the United States:  pipeline rights-of-way.  Note that not all of the wells on the map are connected by pipelines.  One explanation is that the pipeline data are from October 30, 2006 onward, while over 3,600 of the directional wells were drilled before that time.

Well and pipeline data in British Columbia
This image shows a closeup of the British Columbia Shale Viewer, highlighting pipeline data

Other notable data types for British Columbia include oil and gas facilities, and a layer showing the extent of individual well sites.  For more information, see the Details section of the map.

Ted Auch, PhD

Frac Sands Mines and Related Facilities

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Northern American Frac Sand Mines

Pattern, Process, Quality, Quantity, and US Frac Sands
By Ted Auch, OH Program Coordinator, FracTracker Alliance;
Daniel Berghoff, The Ohio State University; Elliott Kurtz, Intern, FracTracker Alliance

Part I, Frac Sands Locations and Silica Geology Map Description


Click on the arrows in the upper right hand corner of the map for a fullscreen view and to access the legend.

This is a map of silica sands/frac sands mines, drying facilities, and value added facilities in North America. The map includes addresses and facility polygons. We present production for only 24 of these facilities all of which are in Wisconsin. The remaining Wisconsin and other state facilities do not have production or acreage data associated with them pursuant to a lack of disclosure requirements at the state level and USGS’s confidentiality agreement with all firms. The sandstone/silica geology polygons presented herein – in certain instances – include a breakdown of each polygon’s land cover distribution across agriculture, urban/suburban, temperate deciduous forest, and conifer forests. At the present time we only have this type of delineation for the primary frac sands producing US state, Wisconsin, along with Ohio, with Minnesota soon to arrive. The identification of each polygon’s land cover gives a sense for the types of ecosystem services present and/or threatened from a macro perspective. During our tour of select West Central Wisconsin frac sand mines it became apparent that the mining industry was essentially picking off forested “bluffs” or drumlins because these are generally the areas where frac sand deposits are deepest and closest to the surface. In return landowners are returned these parcels with less dramatic slopes making them more amenable to grazing or crop production. Consequently understanding the current land cover of each sandstone polygon will give us a sense for how much forest, grasslands, or wetlands acreage could potentially be converted to traditional agricultural usage.

Part I of this series can be found here.

Data Sources

Industry data was provided by or sourced from the following organizations, individuals, or websites:

Methodology

Land Cover Data Methodology:

State Level Primary and Secondary Silica Sand Geology – polygons extracted from USGS Mineral Resources > Online Spatial Data > Geology. Primary and secondary polygons are dissolved by Unit Age.Land cover in km2 and as a % of the entire polygon are presented using the following:

  1. “Select By Attributes” tool in ArcMAP
  2. _geol_poly_dd
  3. “ROCKTYPE1” = Primary; “ROCKTYPE1” = Secondary
  4. Using the following protocol we have begun to code each Silica Sand Geology polygon for land cover in terms of km^2 and % of polygons. The protocol fractionates polygons into forest, crop, pasture, urban, and wetlands:Used zonal statistics, which is in the spatial analyst toolbox in ArcGIS.

Here’s the basic procedure:

  1. Download national land cover dataset which can be found at: http://www.mrlc.gov/nlcd2006.php
  2. Before recoding the raster, it may be easier to manage after clipping it to a smaller extent such as the state you are interested in. Simply use Arc’s Clip tool to do this. I also found that QGIS has a fast, easy, clipping tool called Clipper. Once the raster is a bit more manageable, use the legend for the dataset that is on the above webpage to recode the raster into a set of rasters for each land cover type you’re interested in. Use Arc’s Reclassify to set all the values you want to 1 and all other values to 0. This process can also be done in QGIS which I found to be easier and faster. For QGIS, use Raster Calculator and create an expression that connects all the rasters of interest with “OR.” The syntax should be something along the lines of: ([name of raster @ band1] = first forest value) OR ([name of raster @ band1] = second forest value) and so on for all your values.
  3. Use the zonal statistics tool in Arc (Zonal Statistics as Table) to get the sum (it is important that is the sum) of the new binary raster for each polygon for each shapefile you’re using. The tool used should export a table of values.
  4. Add the table that the zonal statistics tool outputs and then join it to the shapefile you used to generate it.
  5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for the other raster layers you generated with reclassify.
  6. Export the shapefile with the joined data.
  7. Put the shapefile back in Arc and open the attribute table.
  8. Add a new column.
  9. Use field calculator to calculate this column as 900 times the sum you got from your first zonal statistics run (because the data are in 30mX30m resolution, this will give you a good approximation of the square meters of land cover affected).
  10. Repeat steps 8 and 9 for your other zonal statistics results.
  11. Repeat step 2 for other raster classes you are interested in (developed, cultivated, wetland, etc.).
  12. Repeat steps 3-10 for the other shapefiles you are using.
FracTracker Alliance

Texas Drought Conditions and Water Availability

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By Thomas DiPaolo, GIS Intern, FracTracker Alliance –

For the last three years, Texas has been experiencing a drought so severe that it has gained media attention around the world; the recurring theme from each media report is that the water use of the oil and natural gas industry is sucking up so much water from the ground that towns like Barnhart are seeing their taps run dry.


To view the fullscreen version of this map, including details about each layer, click here.

Surface Water

Water data for Texas, owned and operated by the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB), defines “reservoir storage” as the total volume of water contained within a reservoir, while “conservation storage” is specifically the volume of water that can be accessed and moved out of the reservoir. For example, the Twin Buttes Reservoir currently has 2,095 acre-feet of water in its reservoir storage, but because it cannot be removed from the reservoir, in terms of conservation storage it is considered “empty.” Twin Buttes is not the only reservoir in this position; Electra Lake, Meredith Lake, and White River Lake are also empty, and Electra Lake has no water at all in its reservoir storage. The average conservation storage of reservoirs statewide is 168,704.64 acre-feet. Ninety-two reservoirs (including the aforementioned) have less than that amount, while six reservoirs have conservation storages in excess of 1 million acre-feet. For reference, a TWDB report from last year found that in 2011 statewide fracking operations used a combined total of 81,500 acre-feet of water, over 26.5 billion gallons. That is almost enough to consume the conservation storage of the ten smallest reservoirs in the state.

The other measure for comparing water quantity is “fullness percentage,” a ratio between a reservoir’s current conservation storage and the maximum volume of water it can hold without flooding, or maximum conservation storage. Any reservoir with no conservation storage, therefore, has a fullness of 0%, while overflowing reservoirs are only 100% full. This means that, in contrast to the four reservoirs with 0% fullness, four other reservoirs have complete fullness. Monticello Reservoir, Mountain Creek Lake, and Squaw Creek Reservoir are all in excess of their conservation storages, but Houston Lake is flooding by the greatest amount, with reservoir storage of 139,409 acre-feet and conservation storage of 128,054 acre-feet. The average reservoir is  56.01% full as of this writing, but 44 of 115 reservoirs have a lower proportion of fullness. The problem here isn’t that every reservoir is under threat: it’s that those reservoirs which are threatened are running on empty.

Water Restrictions

Fig1The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the state’s oil and gas regulatory agency, publishes a list of drought-affected public water systems and their restrictions, classifying them by “stage” and “priority” (Figure 1). Stage refers to the expected duration of the existing water supply, while priority reflects the degree to which residents’ water usage is being restricted. This means water systems with no immediate threat of their supplies expiring may be applying extreme restrictions to sustain that supply. Water systems in the highest stage of “Emergency” have at most 45 days before their water supplies are exhausted; a priority of “Severe” means the water system has forbidden all outdoor water usage and may limit individual residents’ usage if they believe it’s necessary. At the time of this writing, 442 water systems have instituted voluntary restrictions on water usage, but 44 systems have a Severe priority, and five of those are in a stage of Emergency.

Of those systems, only the White River Municipal Water District appears in the map above within the data layer of public water systems offered by the TCEQ, and it lies within 20 miles of eight different fracking wells1. According to FracFocus.org, these eight wells consumed a combined volume of almost 600,000 gallons of water, or 1.8 acre-feet, when they were first fractured. While that amount may sound low, FracFocus shows 1,557 fracking wells within the state of Texas, and White River is located about 100 miles from the major oil fields of west Texas, where individual wells commonly consumed millions of gallons of water. For eight wells combined, 600,000 gallons is at the bottom of the scale.

FracFocus also notes that these figures do not take into account the amount of fresh water used in drilling. As freshwater becomes scarcer, hydraulic fracturing operations are turning to brackish water, which contains salt or other minerals, and water recycled from previous gas wells: the TWDB estimated that 17,000 of the 81,500 acre-feet of water used in 2011 was either brackish or recycled, and water recycling specifically is on the rise ever since the Texas legislature removed the need to seek permits before recycling water on leased land. FTS International reports that some of its Texas wells have completely switched over to recycled water.

It remains to be seen how soon efforts like this will bring relief to towns like Barnhart.

Footnotes

1. The eight wells in question are Bryant B-1045, etal #4576; Bryant B-1045, etal #4578; Flores, etal #182; Rankin #etal 161; Rankin, etal #172; Wheeler-1046, #4666; Wheeler-1046, #4678; and Williams, etal #4570. Reports on all of them can be found on FracFocus by searching for Crosby County, Texas.

WV Field Visits 2013
FracTracker Alliance

Intentional Omissions? Waterless Fracturing

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Note

This post has been archived. It is provided here for informational purposes only.

By Samantha Malone, MPH, CPH – Manager of Science and Communications

We got called on it; we have no articles about waterless fracturing on FracTracker.org – yet.

Fracturing deep geologic formations to access oil and gas without the use of water offers some financial benefits; it minimizes the water-in and waste-out costs, even though the upfront costs are higher for the driller. Environmentally, this is a plus since the sites would theoretically use much less water than they currently do (~5 million gallons per well depending on who you ask). The omission of an article on FracTracker about waterless fracturing, while not intentional, does reflect the nature of our work. As data enthusiasts, we try to focus on information that can be obtained from available data. We’ve looked into but found there to be limited data regarding the actual use and productivity of waterless fracturing. As such, we have not written anything specifically about the technique to-date.

Having said that, if you, the public, know where we could access data of this nature, please let us know. We would be more than happy to analyze and discuss waterless fracturing on our site in the future.

Hydraulic fracturing for oil and natural gas can use millions of gallons of water per well. Waterless frac technology could change that.

You can learn more about waterless frac technology in an article on RigZone.com.

Matt Kelso, BA

Violations per Well Among PA Operators

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Note

This post has been archived. It is provided here for informational purposes only.

People often want to know which operators perform the best (or worst) among their peers in terms of adhering to the laws set forth in a given state. In principle, the easiest metric for determining this is to look at the ratio of violations issued per well, or VpW.

However, in order to make that analysis, we would obviously need to have violations data. Unfortunately, out of the twenty states that we have shale viewers for on FracMapper, we only have violations data for Arkansas, Colorado, and Pennsylvania, with the latter being far and away more robust and complete when compared to the other two. We have been told that the data is also available for North Dakota as well, if we are willing to pay for it, so we might be able to perform a VpW analysis for the Peace Garden State in the near future.

Then, of course, there is the realization that, “What is a violation?” is actually somewhat of a philosophical question in Pennsylvania.  In the past, I’ve determined that the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) uses the number of unique violation ID numbers issued to calculate their totals. However, historically, the department would often lump several issues that showed up on the Compliance Report together under the same violation ID.  Others have taken to looking at Notices of Violations (NOV’s), which are more limited in number.  Still others exclude any violations marked as being administrative in nature, an idea that makes sense superficially, but a closer look at the data shows that the label is extremely misleading.  For example, “Pits and tanks not constructed with sufficient capacity to contain pollutional substances” is an administrative violation, as is, “Improper casing to protect fresh groundwater”.

In addition to all of that, the cast of operators is constantly shifting as new operators come on board, old ones get bought out by rivals, joint ventures are formed between them, and the like.  Sometimes a parent company will shift the active operator status to one of its subsidiaries, so wells that were originally Consol will then be listed under CNX, for example.

In terms of violations per well, there is a further complication, in that all of the drilled wells data reflect the current custodians of the wells, whereas the violations data reflect those that received the violations.  The result is that there are records issued for Turm Oil (really!) for wells where Chesapeake is now listed as the operator.  In some respects, this makes sense:  why should Chesapeake carry the burden of the legacy mistakes of Turm in their compliance record?

But it does make analysis somewhat tricky.  My approach has been to combine operators that are obviously the same parent company, and to do the analysis in several different ways, and over different time frames.  Who’s ready for some numbers?

Violations per Well (VpW) for operators of unconventional wells in Pennsylvania with 50 or more wells. Those operators with scores higher than the average of their peers are highlighted in pink.

Violations per Well (VpW) for operators of unconventional wells in Pennsylvania with 50 or more wells. Those operators with scores higher than the average of their peers are highlighted in pink.

Here, violations per well are based on the number of violation ID’s issued, where as NOVpW is based on the number of Notices of Violations.  The date range for this table is from January 1, 2000 through October 21, 2013, and please note that the totals represent those that are included on the chart, not statewide totals.  A lot of violations are lost of the shuffle when we look at only the largest current operators, but it also helps eliminate some of the noise that can be generated with small sample sizes, as well as with the inconsistencies described above.  Here’s a look at data from this year:

Violations per Well (VpW) for operators with unconventional wells in Pennsylvania in 2013, through October 21. Those operators with scores higher than the average of their peers are highlighted in pink.

Violations per Well (VpW) for operators with unconventional wells in Pennsylvania in 2013, through October 21. Those operators with scores higher than on violation per well or NOV per well are highlighted in pink.

Notice that the highest violations per well and notices of violations per well scores are much higher than the data aggregated since 2000, whereas the statewide averages of the two scores are actually much lower.  The former is almost certainly attributable to having a smaller sample size, but there is something else at play with the latter:

Violations per well of Pennsylvania's unconventional wells. 2013 data through 10/21/2013.

Violations per well of Pennsylvania’s unconventional wells. 2013 data through 10/21/2013.

The number of violations per well drilled has been steadily decreasing since 2009, and it is now down to an average of less than one violation issued per every two wells.  There is nothing in the data that indicates why this is the case, however.

Note:  This post was edited on 12/18/2013.  The table showing operators violations per well and NOV’s per well in 2013 originally stated that that values higher than the average of their peers are highlighted in pink.  In fact, only those with values of 1.00 or higher are highlighted in that fashion.

Karen Edelstein

USGS Stream Gages Helpful in Monitoring Risks in Shale-gas Extraction Regions

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Weld County, CO - 9-14-13: A floating tank leaks an unknown fluid on flooded farm. (Photo By Andy Cross/The Denver Post)

Weld County, CO – 9-14-13: A floating tank leaks an unknown fluid on flooded farm (Photo By Andy Cross/The Denver Post)

By Karen Edelstein, NY Program Coordinator, FracTracker Alliance

We’re now in the aftermath of September’s catastrophic floods in Colorado that hit Boulder and Weld counties notably hard, damaging or destroying 18,000 homes and killing at least 10 people. The gas industry has asserted that relatively little damage occurred; only 37,000 gallons of fluid escaped into the rural landscape, including over 5,200 gallons of crude oil that seeped directly into the South Platte River. According to Conoly Schuller, president of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, “In the context of hundreds of billions of gallons of rain, and millions of gallons of raw sewage, 37,000 gallons is pretty small.”

Environmentalists, however, say that the long-term impacts of the flooding cannot yet be determined. They also point out how the dangers of placing oil and gas rigs in flood-plain areas are a recipe for disaster. Amy Mall, policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council, noted the sheer luck that most of the flooding occurred in areas where active fracking operations were not actually happening; most of these wells were already in production. About 1,900 wells were “shut in” in preparation for the predicted flooding, but storage tanks and other production-related equipment experienced the impacts of the flood waters.

FracTracker Alliance created the following map of United States Geological Survey (USGS) streamflow gage stations across the Lower 48, in areas of mapped shale plays. Each of the USGS points is interactive. Pop-up bubbles allow the user to link directly to the USGS websites for that particular stream gage. Note that not all of the stream gages are currently active; some show only historic USGS data. Many sites, however, show a wealth of real-time information on stream discharge and allow the user to customize time parameters. USGS also includes stream gage height and contributing drainage area. Zooming into an area, users will also see wetlands delineated as part of the National Wetlands Inventory. These wetlands may also be endangered by floods that pick up waste material from oil and gas extraction sites.

Click here to view the full-screen version of this map.

To view gas wells in a particular state, visit FracTracker’s state-by-state map gallery.

Links to more on the Colorado floods of September 2013:

 

 

Kyle Ferrar, MPH

2013 American Industrial Hygiene Association Fall Conference

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By Kyle Ferrar, CA Program Coordinator, FracTracker Alliance

FracTracker was recently in attendance at the American Industrial Hygiene Association annual conference, held in Miami, FL, September 28-October 1st.  The FracTracker Alliance’s Kyle Ferrar participated in the workshop “Natural GAS EXTRACTION – Rising Energy Demands Mandate a Multi-Perspective Approach.”  The workshop was moderated by Dr. Mark Roberts, and in addition to the FracTracker Alliance, there was a presentation by NIOSH Senior Industrial Hygienist Eric Esswein and the well-versed chemist, engineer, and industry associate/consultant  John Ely.  The workshop was well-attended (sold out).

In case you missed it, FracTracker’s annotated presentation is posted here:  Ferrar_AIHA Presentation_9.29.13.