2010 Gas Well Study

We’ve completed the text for our Gas Well Study, 2010 and it is now available for download.

This year we went back to some of the wells we first looked at in 2008. We wanted to see if there had been any changes, for better or worse, and we wanted to examine the sites for potential pollution, something we weren’t able to do in 2008.

We’ve already written a post about one of the wells we revisited. This well was in some ways a good example of what we found. There are still a number of wells without API numbers, but the operator had, for most of the wells, put in the required secondary containment dikes for condensate storage tanks. There were still maintenance problems, even though most of the wells had recently painted metalwork. There were still problems with the well access roads and the sites’ vegetation in a number of cases. And we found two sites with surface contamination showing elevated chloride.

The second part of the Gas Well Study provides a summary of our experiment where we applied various concentrations of chloride to a single species of woodland vegetation. We’ve written a post about that with a link to the report.

One disturbing thing we saw this year was severe corrosion of the steel condensate storage tanks. Condensate is crude petroleum and brine that comes up with the gas. Several tanks’ trap doors were entirely rusted through.

It’s impossible to say how long these tanks will safely hold the condensate before leaking.

February 26, 2011