Overseas Fracking Operation Finds Wastewater Solution In The Ocean
By Peak Johnson
Fracking is not just an issue facing different cities around the United States, but one that has become a large problem overseas. As a result, a UK shale gas company is considering dumping wastewater from fracking in the sea.
Ineos, which owns the Grangemouth refinery and holds 21 shale licenses, many in the northwest, North Yorkshire, and the east Midlands, has said it wants to become the biggest player in the UK’s nascent shale gas industry according to The Guardian.
In North Yorkshire, where councilors gave the go-ahead to a fracking application by another company in May, a senior executive said in an email that water produced during fracking could be discharged in the sea after being treated.
“We will capture and contain it, treat it back to the standards agreed… with the Environment Agency and discharge where allowed under permit, most likely the sea,” Tom Pickering, director for Ineos Shale, wrote in the email.
People who are living near prospective sites have highlighted the potential environmental impacts of fracking, such as contamination of water supplies, minor tremors, and local air pollution reported The Guardian.
Under the Environment Agency (EA) regulations, the water used for fracking must be treated on site or elsewhere at a “designated treatment facility,” before a permit is issued to discharge it. Ineos added that any fracking wastewater would be treated before being disposed of.
In March, the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management, which represents water professionals, said in a consultation response to the EA that “we are concerned about the ability to treat flowback fluid at the present time”.
According to The Guardian, a report on the environmental impacts of the technique by the Natural Environmental Research Council last year warned that: “A huge uncertainty, given the immaturity of unconventional oil and gas development [i.e. shale gas fracking] in the UK, is how much wastewater will be produced and regulatory and technical mechanisms for cleaning it or directly reusing it.”
A spokesman for UK Onshore Oil and Gas, which represents the shale industry, told The Guardian: “In the exploration phase operators will send all flowback fluid to EA permitted treatment facilities for safe disposal... When the industry moves to commercial production it will want to recycle flowback fluid and reuse it for the next stage of operation.”
To read more about fracking wastewater visit Water Online’s Produced Water Treatment Solutions Center.