Groundwater quality changes alongside the expansion of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling

“Clarifying misconceptions about the environmental effects of these new drilling technologies is vital to us all,“ Khaledi said. “CLEAR and Dr. Schug have a particularly strong history of research in this area.”

The new paper, developed in collaboration with the University of North Texas, Baylor University, and sampling firm Inform Environmental LLC, comes on the heels of two other recent studies, “A Comprehensive Analysis of Groundwater Quality in the Barnett Shale Region” published in Environmental Science & Technology in 2015, and “Elucidating Hydraulic Fracturing Impacts on Groundwater Quality using a Regional Geospatial Statistical Modeling Approach” in Science of the Total Environment, in 2016. Both studies discussed the detection of unconventional drilling-related abnormalities in the groundwater overlying the Barnett Shale in the Fort Worth Basin.

UTA’s CLEAR laboratories previously discovered beryllium concentrations in groundwater that could be associated with contamination from hydraulically fractured gas wells by way of structural failures in protective well casing. They also found elevated levels of 10 different metals as well as the presence of 19 different chemicals compounds including so-called BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene and xylenes) compounds associated with hydraulic fracturing, as well as elevated levels of methanol and ethanol.

As early as 2013, an initial study of 100 private water wells in and near the Barnett Shale showed elevated levels of potential contaminants such as arsenic and selenium closest to natural gas extraction sites.

CLEAR is running multiple research projects aimed to help the scientific community, the industry, and most importantly, the public, understand the potential effects of unconventional oil and gas development on the environment,” Schug said. “We are dealing with complex processes in complex and variable environments.  It is our goal to develop and apply methods that provide reliable information about a wide variety of chemical constituents.”

Schug said it also is important to consider what can be done once a problem is found. CLEAR is dedicated to the development of remediation technologies and best management practices to effectively handle and decrease the occurrence of contamination events. Means for remediating contaminated water and soil are currently being tested in the laboratory and in field applications.

— Read more in Zacariah L. Hildenbrand et al., “Temporal Variation in Groundwater Quality in the Permian Basin of Texas, a Region of Increasing Unconventional Oil and Gas Development,” Science of the Total Environment 562 (15 August 2016): 906–13 (doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2016.04.144); Zacariah L. Hildenbrand et al., “A Comprehensive Analysis of Groundwater Quality in the Barnett Shale Region. ” Environmental Science & Technology 49, no. 13 (16 June 2015): 8254–62 (DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.5b01526); and Taylour G. Burton et al., “Elucidating Hydraulic Fracturing Impacts on Groundwater Quality using a Regional Geospatial Statistical Modeling Approach,” Science of the Total Environment 545–546 (1 March 2016): 114–26 (        doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2015.12.084)