Ohio Connects Quakes to Injection Well, Previously Unknown Fault Line Nearby

Friday, December 30, 2011

Jan. 1, 2012 8:01 a.m.
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- The state has temporarily halted the disposal of waste produced from shale drilling within a 5-mile radius of the D&L Energy brine-injection well on Ohio Works Drive . The announcement was made late Saturday following the magnitude 4.0 earthquake that shook the Youngstown area around 3 p.m.

The director of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Jim Zehringer, told reporters during a conference call late Saturday that the 5-mile radius "is an adequate buffer zone. ...There are four other wells, none of them active, but we're not going to allow any activity to take place in these wells."

Officials believe shale-drilling waste -- primarily brine water -- pumped into the D&L well is seeping into a fault line that they say was previously unknown to geologists, and the waste disposal is triggering the seismic activity. Eleven earthquakes have occurred since March in the immediate area of the injection well.

The well, known as Northstar No. 1, was pumping some 5,000 42-gallons barrels of brine water daily nearly 9,300 feet beneath the earth's surface. According to ODNR's chief of oil and gas management, Rick Simmers, the water was coming from oil and gas wells drilled into the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania.

The earthquakes did not result from the hydraulic fracturing process used to extract oil and gas from the Marcellus and Utica shale plays, officials emphasized, but rather the injection of fluid byproducts into the D&L well in close proximity to the Youngstown-area fault line.

On Friday ODNR announced an agreement with Northstar Disposal Services LLC, an affiliate of D&L Energy Inc., to stop disposing of shale drilling waste at the Girard site, which D&L began operating in December 2010. That agreement followed data related to the magnitude 2.4 earthquake that rattled the Mahoning Valley early in the morning of Christmas Eve. The epicenter of that earthquake, like all the others that shook the area in 2011, was very close to the brine-injection well.

D&L has applications pending with ODNR for two new injection wells in Mahoning County -- one along state Route 617 in Springfield Township and another in Youngstown along Brittain Road. The company has leased three acres for the new Youngstown well and seven acres in Springfield, according to information published by ODNR. D&L also has an application pending for a brine-injection well in Hubbard Township, Trumbull County. The company currently operates a brine-injection well in Coitsville and one along state Route 7 in Beaver Township.