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There may be civil, administrative and criminal sanctions...
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"Drinking water contaminated by shale gas boom in Texas and Pennsylvania"
Faulty natural gas well casings blamed in study for methane leakage in Barnett Shale and the Marcellus formation
The natural gas boom resulting from fracking has contaminated drinking water in Texas and Pennsylvania, a new study said on Monday.
However, the researchers said the gas leaks were due to defective gas well production – and were not a direct result of horizontal drilling, or fracking.
The study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences validated some of the concerns raised by homeowners in the Barnett Shale of Texas and the Marcellus formation in Pennsylvania about natural gas leaking into their water supply.
The film Gasland notoriously showed flames bursting out of a kitchen tap because of high concentrations of natural gas in drinking water.
But the researchers said there was no direct causal relationship with fracking itself.
“Our data do not suggest that horizontal drilling or hydraulic fracturing has provided a conduit to connect deep Marcellus or Barnett formations directly to surface aquifers,” the authors wrote.
Instead, the researchers said the leakage was due to faulty cement casing on natural gas wells.
The finding was in line with a number of earlier studies on leaks in the cement casing of natural gas wells.
In Pennsylvania, state inspectors found about 9% of steel and cement casings on wells drilled since the start of the natural gas boom were compromised. There was an even higher risk on newer wells drilled since 2009, especially in the north-western part of the state, the inspectors found.
Scientists from Cornell University – who have often led research onto environmental problems associated with fracking – have said in the past the problems with well construction were due to installation as well as faulty cement mixing.
Earlier this year, the Cornell researchers also found higher rates of methane leakage from natural gas wells.
Researchers from Duke University meanwhile have suggested that the higher failure rate for hydraulically fractured (fracked) wells could be due to longer distances, or the horizontal orientation, which adds to pressure on the casing.
Monday’s study was conducted by scientists from Ohio State University,Stanford University, Dartmouth College, and the University of Rochester as well as Duke.
The researchers took water samples seven locations around gas drilling regions in the Pennsylvania and Texas, and analysed them for traces of methane gas.
In some cases, the gas come from shallow formations unrelated to fracking, but travelled up through the gas well and leaked into the groundwater from there because of faulty casing.
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"Fracking boom increases 'triple tragedies' on Texas highways
Drilling crew fatigue major factor in number of multi-fatality wrecks on roads across state
September 16, 2014
Mayra Beltran/Staff
A cross marks where Joe Rios and two other oil field workers died when their van struck a school bus.
September 16, 2014
On a cold January morning, Daniel Zambrano drove a company van with six co-workers from an isolated fracking site along Texas 72 in the Eagle Ford Shale, blasting the heat as he headed for a nearby hotel.
The close-knit crew, family men from all across Texas, had just completed a 24-hour shift at a natural gas site near the tiny town of Tilden. Those long hours were standard for their employer, Compass Well Services, and Zambrano, 26, had gotten little rest before he took the wheel, according to attorneys later hired by his pregnant widow.
He apparently dozed off as the van flew at 70 mph toward a school bus that had stopped to pick up a child, according to police reports and interviews with attorneys.
Steve Alaniz, a commuter, came upon the aftermath of the crash on Texas 72 - a rural oil patch road that has become one of Texas' deadliest highways. His headlights illuminated a line of debris that led to the ruined van and, beyond that, the bus with a big hole punched in its backside. The kids were unharmed - they'd been warned to avoid the back of the bus because of the dangerous road. But in the van, Alaniz found Zambrano and two others dead - one still strapped in by a seat belt. Four other workers were injured but survived.
"There are so many guys that are working all night and so many people getting up in the morning," Alaniz said. " … And roads like 72 aren't big enough to handle that traffic."
All across Texas, the drilling and fracking boom has boosted fatal accidents for oil and gas workers, and for those who share the urban and rural roads that serve as important oil patch connectors.
Triple tragedies - accidents that killed three or more people - have become common. The death toll from those kind of catastrophic crashes increased statewide from 72 in 2010 to 101 in 2012 and 148 last year, crash data compiled by the Houston Chronicle shows. Eighty-one people had died in triple tragedies through mid-July of this year.
One called 'death row'
Nearly every interstate highway had reported a share of accidents in which three or more people died - including Interstate 10 and I-45 in Houston. None had more than I-20. The interstate serves Midland, Odessa and other boom towns of the Permian Basin, traverses the Barnett Shale, and crosses Fort Worth and Dallas before reaching East Texas. I-20 itself has had 13 triple fatalities since 2010. That's twice the number recorded in that same period along I-10, a much longer highway that traverses the state from east to west.
Smaller highways have seen more triple tragedies, too, such as Texas 72, which is only 111 miles long and serves oil boom towns like Three Rivers and Tilden but crosses no major cities. It has seen 21 fatal accidents since 2011 - four involving triple or quadruple deaths.
"It's called death row because we've had so many accidents," said Live Oak County Sheriff Larry Busby. "All the trucks go along it, and the road's narrow. … It's dangerous out there."
Busby has been sheriff for decades - so long that county fathers named the street in front of the jail after him. He never had to worry about speeders or drunken drivers in the past. There are no bars in his dry county, but everyone started calling to complain after the oil and gas boom dumped all those big trucks onto rural roads.
"Since this happened, I put radars on all the cars," Busby said.
Traffic deaths up in Texas
The increase in multiple fatality accidents is not the only troubling trend on Texas' highways. As road deaths have dropped steadily all across the United States for decades, they've rebounded in Texas since the oil drilling and fracking boom began in 2008. Since then, Texas has led the nation in motor vehicle deaths, surpassing California, federal records show.
Statewide, it's impossible to determine how much of the increase in fatal crashes and triple fatalities from 2010-2014 relates directly to the oil boom. Crash reports don't contain that kind of detail.
But transportation accidents are a major cause of workplace deaths in Texas, which led the nation in oil patch fatalities and in all workplace fatalities in 2012, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nationwide, oil patch workers are 8.5 times more likely than other private employees to die in work-related transportation accidents, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health found.
Transportation accidents killed about half of the 50 Texas oil patch workers killed last year, according to statistics released Thursday by the Texas Department of Insurance.
Insurance claims up
Texas Mutual Insurance, the state's largest workers' compensation carrier, has recorded a steady increase in the number of motor vehicle accident claims filed directly by oil and gas employers. The carrier's latest data shows those employers have reported 24 fatal motor vehicle accidents so far in 2014 - three time as many as in 2009, according to data the Houston Chronicle and Houston Public Media obtained from Woody Hill, the company's vice president of safety services. Company officials confirm fatigue is frequently a factor.
The industry's usual two-week shifts of 12-hour days and long commutes contribute to well-documented dangers of driver fatigue, crash data shows and experts say.
Clusters of triple fatalities have been cropped up on interstates and highways that cross the oil patch and around urban hubs, like Midland and Odessa, where many oil and gas workers live or scramble to find hotels.
Three workers died on March 26, 2013, on a highway that rings Odessa in another accident involving workers commuting together to a hotel in a crowded company van after a long night's work, accident records show.
Killed were Fernando Portillo, a father of three from Humble; Michael Vonesh Jr., who left behind a wife in Pearland; and Isaias Ponce Jr., an Oklahoman who was living with his wife in San Antonio at the time of the crash.
In that case, the driver had, like the men who died, logged 190 hours and worked 14 days straight prior to the accident, according to Houston attorney Alexander Gurevich, who represents the dead workers' families in a related lawsuit. Gurevich argues that a driver's impairment from fatigue is akin to "driving while intoxicated."
State police reports confirm the accident was blamed on the fracking crew driver's error, but an attorney for the workers' employer denies that fatigue contributed to the crash.
In a statement, Scott Jones, of Brock Person Guerra Reyna, who represents the workers' employer, Sanjel USA, in a related civil lawsuit said the company "has a strong commitment to safety … related to driving."
Although Sanjel did not want to comment about ongoing litigation, Jones said, "in light of the fact that the plaintiff's lawyer made some comments regarding fatigue, I think it's important to know that Sanjel's driver has recently testified under oath specifically that he was not fatigued at the time of the accident."
No designated drivers
On that cold morning in January, when Daniel Zambrano pulled away from the fracking site in the Eagle Ford with his heater blasting, police records show that he and all six of his co-workers had worked about 24 hours in a scheduled shift, nearly twice a typical oil field shift.
A related lawsuit alleges that their employer, Compass Well Services, didn't provide designated drivers or on-site resting areas, according to a lawsuit pending on the triple fatality.
Providing a rested designated driver would have saved lives and cost little, argue Benton Ross and Doug Monsour, the Longview-based attorneys who represent Zambrano's family in related litigation. Zambrano left behind a toddler and his wife, Whitney, was five months pregnant with their second child. Martin Aguirre and his wife and five children lived in Brownsville. Jose "Joe" Rios' widow, Cindy, and son live in San Antonio.
'JOE RIOS, DAD'
Cindy Rios returned to erect a hand-lettered cross at the accident site and her husband's name remains visible: JOE RIOS, DAD.
Rios' life had been closely intertwined with his fracking crew friends. He spent most of his last 24 hours in a noisy data van - working pumps, reading and coordinating incoming information.
His last minutes were spent with those same men inside a company van bound for a hotel they never reached. Three ended up in a funeral home; the others returned to the oil patch, Cindy Rios said.
That wasn't the first time members of fracking crew working in the Eagle Ford for Compass Well Services had died on the road after finishing a shift of more than 20 hours, federal court records and related interviews show.
It was late on Jan. 13, 2012, when Billy Barrett Jr., 29, called his wife, Samantha, in Arkansas to tell her that he was unexpectedly coming home. He'd driven from a remote site to the company's bunkhouse in George West to sleep, but found it full, he told her, according to a statement she provided to Andy Tindel and Stafford Davis, Tyler-based attorneys representing her in a federal lawsuit.
He set out for home around midnight with fracking crew friends Shawn Nichols, 38, and Dakota Sabin, 33.
They piled into Nichols' Red GMC Sierra 2500 pickup, intending to drive 10 hours home to Arkansas. A supervisor learned of their plan and followed along in his truck, federal court records show.
They made it about 25 miles before the driver allegedly fell asleep on I-37, according to the federal lawsuit and a police report. The pickup flew off the road at a curve, struck a sign and rolled before landing in a ditch. Barrett and Sabin were both killed.
Houston Public Media News 88.7 reporter Andrew Schneider contributed to this investigative report.
Boom in oiland traffic deaths
This is a joint investigation by the Houston Chronicle and Houston Public Media News 88.7.
Sunday: Oilpatch traffic - and rogue trucks - boost death toll.
Monday: Public Media News looks at how fracking and hydraulic drilling have brought huge benefits to the economy - and a spike in fatal traffic accidents.
Tuesday: Houston Public Media takes a closer look at the rise in fatal crashes tied to commercial vehicles serving the energy sector.
Today: The Houston Chronicle looks at triple tragedies on the state's most dangerous highways. Houston Public Media reports on the role of fatigue in some of the worst traffic accidents.
Thursday: Houston Public Media News examines steps being taken to make highways safer."
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