Rosebud resident having issues with water five years later – part 2

Times Reporter

 

The battle has been going on for more than five years, and Fiona Lauridson is holding strong to her belief that Encana contaminated her water well. She said after they drilled new well sites on and near her property she began to notice issues with the water quality. Alberta Environment, AENV, had suggested the increased levels of methane could be due to poor maintenance of their well. 

“We did clean and repair the well casing as suggested. We did this as part of the AENV investigation, measuring before and after samples of water. The quantity of methane in the water almost doubled after cleaning,” said Lauridson. 

She said the methane in her well was identified as being of a coal source according to isotope analysis. She said isotope signature of the methane in the Weaver Coal aquifer has not been released to the public. 

“It is not known if the gas in my well is the same as the gas being produced by the coals in this aquifer, which supplies my well,” said Lauridson.

“The gas in my water is not primarily related to bacteria. We did not shock chlorinate. Shock chlorination would not get rid of the methane as it is not of bacterial source.” 

She said they have not tried drilling another well because she doesn’t think it will solve the problem. Lauridson is convinced Encana is at fault and that they and the government are withholding information.

“Encana and the government are withholding information from us. So without that information we can say, ‘you know what, there’s too much doubt here’. But if they have got results that they don’t want us to see for whatever reason, there’s nothing we can do about that,” said Lauridson. She said a neighbour is trying to collect the missing data through the reviews. Because of the way the testing programs are set up through the government, there are still no definitive links to the issues with her water well and Encana. Lauridson said if something goes wrong at her other property, there is still not enough background to make the connection to the oil and gas company. They hold that information and it is not a government requirement for them to provide it to the landowner.

“As a landowner, if you’re in a property and something goes wrong, you can’t prove it because oil and gas hold the keys to that and they’re certainly not going to prove themselves guilty,” said Lauridson. 

“We take each and every concern…as an important issue and we have various (offices) internally to work through those situations,” said Kevin Beneteau, Hydrogeologist with Encana. He said Boxing Day of 2005 is when Lauridson first contacted Encana. Beneteau said they hired a third party consultant right away to assess her water well, look at various energy wells in the area and do an assessment of the area. He said consulting firm WorleyParsons Komex did the report that was released in 2006. 

Part of the process when Encana receives a complaint is, they notify AENV and also recommend the landowner contact ANEV.

“Mrs. Lauridson didn’t like the findings of that report. She continued on to talk to Alberta Environment and the ERCB and then AENV commissioned the Alberta Research Council, now called Alberta Innovates, to complete a study,” said Beneteau. While Lauridson says the contamination came from the fracking method, Beneteau says that is not the case. 

“What we do with our coal bed methane operations is we don’t fracture the coals. We stimulate the coals and there’s a significant difference,” said Beneteau.  

The difference is if you fracture a rock, it breaks the rock, with simulation. It’s a flush. All coals are naturally fractured; they have a fracture orientation to them. Encana injects 100 per cent pure nitrogen gas into the coal seams, which cleans out the coal. They then remove the nitrogen and start to produce the natural gas from the coal seams themselves. 

Geologist Geoffrey Thyne out of Colorado said he thinks there is a possibility that Coal Bed Methane, CBM, drilling and the issues with water contamination could be related, but said it is difficult to prove.  

“I have seen cases where there is no doubt and I have seen cases where the CBM work was not directly related,” said Thyne. 

“The CBM process does disturb the status quo in terms of the aquifer in the area.  While it can be argued that water wells disturb the aquifer’s natural condition, CBM wells are producing much more water and thus, creating much more disturbance.”

CBM drilling in the U.S has been criticised is because they are drilling into a wet coal bed. 

“When you drill into coal seam in those circumstances, the coal seams are full of water. What they do is they pump off the water first, so they have large volumes of water that they need to manage, and that has caused some concerns about how they manage the water in some of those U.S locations,” said Boras.  

Once you pump off the water, that’s what then allows the methane to come off of those coal seams. 

“In our Horseshoe Canyon wells, we do not have water present in any real substance at all. So what happens is we drill the wells, we complete them with nitrogen and then they flow. The volume of water is very tiny. It’s often less than the water we have been handling and managing in the 50 years we’ve been developing shallow gas.”

“To date Encana has not proved their activities were not a contributing factor to the contamination events reported by several landowners in this area,” said Lauridson. 

“It is Encana’s opinion based on a selection of supporting evidence that they have had no impact on the quality of my water. It is my opinion, based on a selection of supporting evidence that their activities did have an adverse impact on the quality of my water. It is a debate.”