William Burgos, James Farnan, Andrew Eck, Andrew Kearney, Eric Chase, Xiaofeng Liu, and Nathaniel Warner
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Center for Dirt and Gravel Road Studies, Larson Transportation Institute, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA

Certain US states allow produced water from conventional oil and gas wells (O&G PW) to be used as an inexpensive alternative to commercial products. In this study, water quality impacts from gravel roads treated with two commercial dust suppressants (calcium chloride brine, soybean oil), three O&G PWs, and synthetic rainwater were compared. A 2-year, 24-hour, NRCS Type-II storm event was used to mobilize pollutants from treated roadbeds. The maximum analyte concentrations in the runoff were proportional to concentrations in the dust suppressants. The calcium chloride brine had the highest concentrations of most analytes, and roadbeds treated with this dust suppressant generated runoff that exceeded regulatory thresholds designed to protect human and environmental health. Runoff from roadbeds treated with soybean oil had the highest concentrations of organic compounds. Roadbeds treated with O&G PWs generated runoff that was similar to but less concentrated than roadbeds treated with the calcium chloride brine except for radium and sodium. Radium added to the roadbed through application of O&G PWs was mobilized in the runoff. Sodium, the dominant cation in the O&G PWs, was partially retained in the roadbed and could lead to clay dispersion, limiting the effectiveness of O&G PWs as dust suppressants.

Samuel Shaheen, Susan Brantley
Department of Geosciences, Penn State University

Historical oil and gas extraction has left a high density of poorly maintained, orphaned, or abandoned wells in many hydrocarbon-bearing basins across the world. Aging and abandoned wells are a well-established source of methane (CH₄) emissions to the atmosphere, particularly in regions such as the Appalachian Basin where extraction dates back two centuries. However, less is understood about their impacts to water resources. Anticipating the impacts of such wells on water quality thus requires a more extensive understanding of the mechanisms through which contamination may occur. In Pennsylvania, the state with the longest history of commercial oil extraction in the U.S., high-CH₄ artesian flows from leaking abandoned wells generally contain aqueous chemistry distinct from CH₄-contaminated groundwater seepages. Using field-, lab-, and modeling-based efforts, we investigated how the leakage and subsequent hydrogeologic transport of CH₄ impacts the associated geochemistry and microbiology of contaminated waters. Our results emphasize that the availability of electron acceptors for biogeochemical reactions involving CH₄ influences the concentrations of redox-active species along transport pathways impacted by leakage from wells. We hypothesize that transport along more direct pathways (e.g., abandoned wellbores) vs. diffuse transport within an aquifer results in differences in electron acceptor availability, and that these differences shape the associated impacts of CH₄ leakage on groundwater chemistry. Redox reactions involving CH₄ may in turn mobilize species more hazardous to environmental and human health than CH₄ (e.g., arsenic), emphasizing the potential water quality risks associated with poorly maintained and abandoned wells.

Anne Menefee, Assistant Professor of Energy and Mineral Engineering; Hannah Wiseman, Professor of Law, Penn State Law; Co-Director, Center for Energy Law and Policy; Seth Blumsack, Professor, John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering; Earth and Environmental Systems Institute; Director, Center for Energy Law and Policy; Michael Helbing, Staff Attorney, Center for Energy Law and Policy.

There is broad scientific consensus that avoiding the most devastating effects of climate change will require dedicated carbon dioxide (CO₂) capture and storage (CCS). Achieving CCS to the extent necessary for emission reductions will involve injecting and storing captured CO₂ deep underground through geologic CO₂ storage (GCS), where Gt-scale quantities of CO₂ can be retained in the pore spaces of rocks and isolated from the atmosphere for thousands of years. Despite significant research into this area, large-scale deployment of GCS remains inhibited by legal and regulatory uncertainties with respect to pore space ownership, liability, project risk, and long-term stewardship. To address these uncertainties, federal and state policy will need to evolve to meaningfully address subsurface property management and planning.  Others have noted the need for subsurface planning for energy storage and modeling tools to better predict and manage interactions among subsurface resources, but we are unaware of proposals for a comprehensive subsurface planning regime akin to surface land use planning and regulation as we propose. 

One critical aspect of subsurface planning is creating legal certainty for the use of pore space in four dimensions—addressing horizontal and vertical space, communication between subsurface and surface land use, and evolving subsurface uses over time.  Such planning will need to address increasing competition for pore space from not only GCS, but also natural gas storage, underground disposal of wastewater, injection of drinking water for use during periods of water scarcity, geothermal energy development, and helium storage. If shale gas development is increasingly paired with “blue” hydrogen production, GCS might also become an integral part of planning for shale development projects.  One conflict likely to emerge would involve oil and gas producers drilling down through GCS facilities to access shale or other formations below. States such as West Virginia have already legislatively addressed this issue, but only in a cursory manner. Storing CO₂ at the Gt-scale necessary to make appreciable dents in emissions would require pore volumes on the order of hundreds of km³.  Addressing the legal uncertainties that could inhibit broad deployment of GCS will require careful, large-scale planning.

Drawing on lessons learned from marine spatial planning, we propose creating a new Commission on Subsurface Energy Resources within the U.S. Department of Energy. The Commission should map and assess at a comprehensive level existing and projected subsurface uses. This mapping effort should specify the depths and potential aerial extent of existing and potential subsurface uses and visually depict potential conflicts. The Commission should then recommend protocols for avoiding conflicts among mapped uses in space and time, building from examples in marine spatial planning that specify levels of acceptable development based on changing external factors and acceptable depths/aerial extents of conflicting uses.  Rather than make binding subsurface land use plans or regulations in areas of law that have traditionally been controlled at the state or local level, the Commission should make recommendations to Regional Subsurface Planning Groups that would then formalize and implement the recommendations.

Samuel Shaheen¹, Tao Wen², Owen Harrington¹, Lingzhou Xue¹, Susan L. Brantley¹, Jennifer Baka^1
1Penn State University, University Park, PA; ²Syracuse University, Syracuse, N

Development of horizontal drilling and high-pressure high-volume hydraulic fracturing (fracking) has changed global energy development. At the same time, like older hydrocarbon extraction industries, shale gas development can impact water resources. To understand causes of contamination, time-intensive and localized field studies that use multiple lines of evidence are required (see Figure 1).  The necessary data to analyze such incidents are rarely publicly available nationally.  Case studies showed us that industry practices can explain some ground water impacts (leakage of contaminants from uncased boreholes at intermediate depths or leakage of contaminants from surface impoundments). Regional studies document that the frequency of impacts vary with geology, legacy and current land use practices, topography, and seasonality in PA. To determine regional water contamination from Unconventional Oil / Gas Development (UOGD) we must therefore correct for contamination from Conventional Oil / Gas Development (COGD), coal mining, and highway road salting.

For this analysis, we combined community focus groups and geoscientific analysis to examine the potential relationship between energy development and ground water contamination in a region with a long history of energy extraction, Southwestern PA (SWPA). Three community focus groups were held in SWPA in June-July 2022. The main areas of community concern expressed in the focus groups were potential radiation contamination and accidents from wastewater management. These data informed our analysis of the Shale Network groundwater chemistry database.

Nebraska Hernandez
Penn State University

Approximately four decades after the 1982 Warren County, North Carolina protests credited with launching the environmental justice movement, environmental injustice still pervades across landscapes. Recently, environmental justice has received renewed interest in academic, governmental, and social movement sectors and calls for including environmental justice into U.S. state and federal policymaking have increased. In Pennsylvania, the Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) is currently revising its environmental justice policy. This paper seeks to analyze how this revision fits into a broader push for environmental justice in Pennsylvania in the current political climate and to challenge the normative conceptualization of the state as a benevolent or neutral force in the pursuit of environmental justice. To do this, I explore four main research questions regarding environmental (in)justice in the commonwealth: (1) Who participated in the PADEP environmental justice policy revision comment period? (2) What sentiments are expressed through these comments? (3) Who/which communities were absent, and what were barriers to their participation? (4) Is this process reinforcing environmental justice as a technocratic exercise by the state? In order to answer these questions, I analyze the policy revision through Pellow’s (2018) Critical Environmental Justice Studies (CEJS) framework by recounting this history of environmental justice in Pennsylvania and creating a sentiment analysis of 71 unique comments gleaned from the 1,253 comments public comments generated during the public participation period of the policy revision to better gauge public opinion and participation on the topic, as well as critique the PADEP revision process.

Yossra Mokhtar and Nathaniel R. Warner
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA

Oil and gas produced water (OGPW) is used as a less expensive dust suppressant for some gravel roads in the USA. Previous studies showed that OGPW efficacy as a dust suppressant was no better than leaving roads without treatment. Moreover, it is attributed to increasing the possibility of pollution by trace elements (such as Pb and As) and higher radioactivity to nearby water bodies and road sediments. However, the concentrations of trace and major elements in the dust generated from roads treated with dust suppressants have not been studied in detail. The aim of this study was to compare the trace metals concentrations in PM₁₀ and PM₁ dust generated from unpaved roads treated with calcium chloride and OGPW to dust from untreated roads. PM₁₀ and PM₁ generated from the bench-scale experiment were collected and measured for radioactivity (²²⁸Ra and ²²⁶Ra) and trace elements of environmental or human health concern. Samples were and trace elements were measured by ICP-AES and radium activity was measured using Canberra small-anode germanium (SAGe) gamma spectrometer. Experimental results showed that untreated samples had the highest averages of trace elements compared to other types of treatments for each of PM₁₀ and PM₁ size fractions. The mean values of Al, As, Cr, Fe, K, Mn, and Ni in dust were the highest from untreated samples, followed by OGPW, and commercial CaCl₂ brines, respectively. OGPW samples were higher in Sr than untreated samples. Concentrations measured in PM₁ were higher than those in PM₁₀ for most elements in untreated and OGPW treated samples, including Pb, As, Co, and Ni. Radium activity was increased by 24% in PM₁₀ dust collected from road aggregate treated with OGPW. Relatively high Sr and Ra in particulate matter collected from road aggregate treated with OGPW and the enrichment of heavy metals in smaller size fractions (PM₁) could indicate elevated risk to humans who live near roads treated with OGPW.

Philip Tominac^1,2, Elmira Shamlou^1,2, Travis Arnold^1,2, Melody Shellman^1,2, Naresh Susarla^1,2, Miguel A. Zamarripa^1,2, Markus G. Drouven¹,¹ National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), Pittsburgh, PA 15239, USA,² NETL Support Contractor

Produced water is challenging to treat due to its high concentrations of TDS, as well as the spatial and temporal variability in production qualities and quantities. Given the variation in water produced across and within basins, oil and gas companies need to identify custom, fit-for-purpose water management, treatment, and reuse approaches. Individual market participants are faced with growing complexity in contemplating capital-intensive investments in their produced water infrastructure, and they require computational decision-support tools to rapidly and quantitatively assess feasible options. Currently, few such software tools exist.

In 2021, the Department of Energy launched a three-year, $5 million produced water optimization initiative to develop, demonstrate, and deploy a novel optimization framework for produced water management and beneficial reuse. [1] The framework, which has been developed by NETL in cooperation with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is designed to identify cost-effective and environmentally sustainable produced water management, treatment, and reuse solutions. Specifically, the proposed platform will support decision-makers with (1) coordination of produced water deliveries, (2) buildout of the produced water infrastructure, (3) selection of effective treatment technologies, (4) placement and sizing of treatment facilities, (5) identification of beneficial water reuse options, and (6) the distribution of treated produced water and/or concentrated brine for beneficial reuse. [2]

This poster presents an overview of updated capabilities of the PARETO open-source framework including the following modules: (1) PARETO Water Quality Management—allows PARETO to identify produced water quality spikes in the network (by constituent, location, and time) and, more importantly, to identify blending opportunities to minimize quality levels in certain network nodes (i.e., treatment sites); (2) PARETO hydraulics—allows the user to track pressure drop in the PW network, identify PW flow bottlenecks, and identify investment options to mitigate this issue, such as installing valves and pumps; and (3) PARETO Water Exchange Platform—provides real- time optimization to identify produced water sharing opportunities, bringing producers and consumers together to maximize water sharing, minimize water injection (SWD sites) and fresh water consumption.

The PARETO framework is provided as both a downloadable executable program and source code. Beyond the software itself, this initiative will complete a series of detailed case studies with industry and other partners.[1]

Acknowledgement

We gratefully acknowledge support from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, through the Environmentally Prudent Stewardship Program.

Disclaimer

This project was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, National Energy Technology Laboratory an agency of the United States Government, through a support contract. Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof, nor any of its employees, nor the support contractor, nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, expressor implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof.

References

[1] Drouven, M. G. (2021). DOE’s Produced water optimization initiative.

https://netl.doe.gov/sites/default/files/rdfactsheet/R-D228%20-%20Produced%20Water%20Optimization%20Initiative.pdf

[2] Drouven, M. G., Calderon, A. J., Zamarripa, M. A., Beattie, K., PARETO: An Open-Source Produced Water Optimization Framework. Optimization and Engineering. 2022. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11081-022-09773-w

[1] https://www.project-pareto.org/  https://github.com/project-pareto   https://pareto.readthedocs.io/en/latest/