UK won’t make US fracking monitoring mistakes

Gas contamination of water aquifers and surrounding environment is one of the key safety fears raised by opponents of shale gas development in this country.

Those voicing such fears are not just the protestors at Cuadrilla’s site in Balcombe, West Sussex, but also the UK’s water industry.

However, Ground Gas Solutions (GGS) managing director Simon Talbot told Process Engineering that many of these fears are driven by basic errors made in the monitoring of gas movements at US projects.

“Much of the anti-shale gas rhetoric based on the fact that few if any of the American monitors carried out baseline monitoring,” said Talbot, whose firm is monitoring gas movement at all of Cuadrilla’s sites, using the GasClam monitor.

“Ground gasses like methane are present in the natural environment. To effectively monitor a site you must establish a baseline to characterise the gas regime at the site before any works occur. There is then an evidence base before any further monitoring occurs.”

At the Cuadrilla sites it is working on, GGS has carried out a pre-drilling baseline desk study of the near surface geology, site history and land-use to identify possible sources of methane and other contaminants that may be present at each of the drilling pads. At Cuadrilla’s site near Blackpool existing potential hazards included biogenic methane arising from local organic silts and peats, as well as from made-ground and landfills.

By doing regular sampling and laboratory tests we can demonstrate that nothing has changed at this well site

The desk study is followed by the installation of purpose-designed monitoring wells at each drilling pad and a programme of baseline monitoring, sampling and laboratory testing.

GasClams, the world’s first in-situ borehole gas monitor that can collect data continuously, are installed in each monitoring well. They collect data on both ground-gas concentrations and the environmental parameters that affect the gas such as atmospheric pressure, temperature and groundwater level.

In addition to the continuous monitoring provided by GasClam, GGS also takes regular samples for laboratory testing.

“By doing regular sampling and laboratory tests we can demonstrate that nothing has changed at this well site, or if something has changed we can alert our client and there will be a range of actions operator could take,” adds Talbot.

These actions, he says, could range from stopping drilling to allow further investigation all the way through to sealing up a well and abandoning a site.

While protestors might hope that GasClam’s data forces developers to abandon their sites, it seems more likely the technology could giving fracking operations the environmental legitimacy they so desperately need.

This article is taken from a feature on environmental monitoring to appear in the next issue of Process Engineering.