D&L Energy Nears Start of North Lima Injection Well
NORTH LIMA, Ohio – By the end of this year, wastewater trucked from drill sites in Ohio and Pennsylvania could once again be injected into storage wells in the Mahoning Valley, a prospect that doesn't sit well with activists here.
"From a mechanical perspective, the well will be done before Halloween," said Vince Bevacqua, spokesman for D&L Energy, the Youngstown company that drilled the well here last year.
The well site is off Market Street not far from the entrance to the Ohio Turnpike. Once it is completed and in compliance with new regulations set by the state of Ohio, the well would be able to accept brine water, a byproduct of the hydraulic fracturing process.
A 100-foot tall derrick can bee seen at the site and is being used to remove bore pipe, Bevacqua said. When the pipe is removed, D&L will line the bottom of the well with a cement footer to prevent drilling into the Precambrian rock formation. The pipe would then be replaced once the cement cures.
Activists opposed to the process say that this method of disposing brine water poses more risks to the public than benefits, and they point to the series of earthquakes that rocked the Mahoning Valley in 2011.
"It's not about energy independence," said Lynn Anderson, a member of Frackfree Mahoning Valley, a group opposed to the use of hydraulic fracturing and the practice of disposing wastewater in deep injection wells. "It's about greed."
The North Lima startup comes more than a year after the series of earthquakes began in March.
Much of the evidence tied the tremors to an undetected fault line that ran underneath an injection well – Northstar No. 1 -- operated by D&L Energy on Youngstown's West Side. The well was shut down after a New Year's Eve quake registered a magnitude of 4.0 and was felt as far away as Buffalo.
Gov. John Kasich then placed a moratorium on all deep-injection wells within five miles of the epicenter of the quakes. He also issued an executive order that mandated certain tests be performed at disposal well sites before any permits could be issued.
The North Lima well is 11 miles south of D&L's Youngstown well, Bevacqua said. D&L also owns disposal well sites in Coitsville Township and Girard, both of which are idled.
The earthquakes and the use of brine disposal wells unleashed a flurry of protest across the state, and attracted international attention to Youngstown.
D&L's well in North Lima is very different than the Youngstown well, Bevacqua emphasized, and should operate without any problems. He said that there are roughly 180 brine disposal wells in operation across the state, and with the exception of the Youngstown well, none have experienced any issues.
"I believe this well will operate just as smoothly as all of the others," Bevacqua said. "The geology is much different here" than at the Youngstown site.”
Bevacqua said the Ohio Department of Natural Resources has reviewed the permit for the North Lima well and has determined that the project can move ahead. "This conforms to all of their regulations,” he noted.
With the cement floor in place, the well will measure 9,581 feet in depth, as opposed to the original depth of 10,000 feet, Bevacqua said.
Inspectors from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources are at the well site to monitor compliance while work is under way, Bevacqua said. "They're on site the entire time work is taking place. Nothing moves forward without their approval," he added.
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources issued a permit to D&L Energy on May 24, 2011, for the North Lima site to be used to dispose of brine wastewater from companies drilling in the Marcellus and Utica shale.
Brine water is a byproduct of the hydraulic fracturing process. The process calls for injecting large volumes of water and sand, plus a mixture of chemicals, into wells under high pressure to blast apart tight shale formations in order to free up trapped oil and gas.
Frackfree Mahoning Valley's Anderson argues the chemicals used in the process pose a health risk to the public, in addition to the earthquakes that she suspects were caused by the Youngstown well.
In the 1960s, the U.S. government determined that a similar method of using disposal wells to store hazardous nuclear waste in Colorado provoked the same type of quakes, Anderson noted.
"Why are they still doing this?" she asked. "It's abject greed. We're an area that's economically disadvantaged, and we're considered a sacrifice zone."
Copyright 2012 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.