Category: Analysis

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How much water does fracking use, Part V

In Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV of this series, we showed that each hydraulic fractured well permanently poisons millions of gallons of water.

Now that Occidental is fracking the wells at Mae J and Papa Jo / Shumaker, there’s a renewed interest in the amount of water used by hydraulic fracturing, so let’s take a look at the 12 wells drilled at the Cosslett pad by Crestone Peak Resources.

All data obtained from http://fracfocusdata.org/DisclosureSearch/Search.aspx

By using more water than any other pad we’ve examined in this series, it’s once again worth saying out loud:

Crestone Peak Resources has used one hundred seventy-five million, five hundred thirty-four thousand, six hundred and seventy-four gallons of water to frack the twelve wells at Cosslett.

A total of 175,534,674 gallons of water, with a median of 16,252,811 gallons per well. It sounds like we’ll expect Occidental to use a similar quantity of water to drill the 12 wells at Mae J.

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How much water does fracking use, Part IV

In Part I, Part II, and Part III of this series, we showed that each hydraulic fractured well permanently poisons millions of gallons of water.

Now that the data for the drilling at Broomfield’s Interchange B pad has become available from FracFocusData, a quick calculation shows Extraction Oil & Gas has used 81,837,881 gallons of water to frack the 10 wells at the Interchange B pad.

All data obtained from http://fracfocusdata.org/DisclosureSearch/Search.aspx

Once again, let’s say it out loud:

Extraction Oil & Gas has used eighty-one million, eight hundred thirty-seven thousand, eight hundred eighty-one gallons of water to frack the ten wells at Interchange B.

Extrapolating to the remaining 74 wells to be drilled, we’re expecting Extraction to use just over 600 million gallons of water on this project. Note the difference between the water used for the C wells in the Codell formation versus the N wells in the Niobrara formation.

We’ll keep you posted of the water usage as Extraction progresses with their comprehensive drilling plan.

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How much water does fracking use, Part III

In Part I and Part II, we showed that each hydraulic fractured well permanently poisons millions of gallons of water. This week a new Duke University study was released, claiming “the amount of water used per well for hydraulic fracturing surged by up to 770 percent between 2011 and 2016 in all major U.S. shale gas and oil production regions.”

Since it has been a while since we’ve gathered this data from FracFocusData, a quick calculation shows Extraction Oil & Gas has used 102,044,434 gallons of water to frack the 10 wells at the Coyote Trails pad just east of Erie, Colorado in unincorporated Weld County.

Once again, let’s say it out loud:

Extraction Oil & Gas has used one hundred two million, forty-four thousand, four hundred and thirty four gallons of water to frack the ten wells at Coyote Trails.

Keep in mind that these 10 wells are just the beginning; 4 Form 2s have already been approved and another 24 are pending for this location.

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Garfield County Air Monitoring

We received the following post from an O&G industry worker on our Facebook page:

Results coming in from air quality tests near Parachute, CO shows “little risk”…”According to the data, all air concentrations of individual and combined volatile organic compounds (VOCs) were below long-term, non-cancer health guideline values established by state and federal agencies.” But I’m sure you and ECBU will find some flaws with the tests to discount the results… Still, it is good to have more data points.

For the purposes of this discussion, let’s refer to the following documents:

Read on for some comments.

Continue reading “Garfield County Air Monitoring”

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How much water does fracking use, Part II

In Part I, we showed how Crestone Peak Resources had used 160,349,639 gallons of water to frack the 13 wells at the Waste Connections and Pratt sites. Sadly, it gets worse. Between the Morgan Hills, Woolley-Becky, and Woolley-Sosa sites, Crestone Peak Resources used 225,137,194 gallons of water to frack 22 wells.

So all together now:

Crestone Peak Resources has used three hundred eighty-five million, four hundred eighty-six thousand, eight hundred thirty-three gallons of water to drill 35 wells on five pads in Erie, Colorado.

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How much water does fracking use?

Recently, we stumbled upon FracFocus, an additional resource linked from the COGCC complaint site. FracFocus allows the public to view “Hydraulic Fracturing Fluid Product Component Information Disclosure” documents that include some summary information for each well, as well as a detailed chemical composition of the fluids injected at each well head. We ran the numbers for Waste Connections and Pratt, and came up with a single catastrophic statistic: 160,349,639 gallons of water.

Continue reading “How much water does fracking use?”