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State hopes to release guidance document on injection wells as early as next month
By Ed Runyan
WEATHERSField
The 27-page decision that keeps a brine injection well closed just north of Niles describes a broader effort by the state to better understand and regulate such wells.
The decision issued last week by the Ohio Oil and Gas Commission said an American Water Management Services injection well on state Route 169 must remain closed.
But the decision also explains one reason why: The state will release a report as early as next month providing a “model for state programs” relating to earthquakes caused by injection wells.
It suggests that the well could reopen later, after the state has “caught up” with the rapid learning curve it has experienced in recent years regarding quakes induced by injection wells.
The decision says the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Oil and Gas is not revoking the Howland-based company’s permit to operate, but continuing a “pause in operations” while the state implements a “comprehensive regulatory scheme that will specifically address injection-induced” quakes.
Ron Klingle, owner of Avalon Holdings, parent company of AWMS, said last week that his company will be appealing that decision in Franklin County Common Pleas Court.
Richard Simmers, ODNR’s oil and gas division chief, started working with the National Induced Seismicity Working Group in 2013 to evaluate “emerging induced seismicity issues” across the country, the decision says.
The group, for which Simmers is co-chairman, will produce a “guidance document that will aid state regulatory authorities” in developing programs to address injection-related quakes, the decision says.
The decision says refusing to allow AWMS to reopen the Weathersfield well hurts the company but the decision is “‘good news’ for the citizens of Ohio, who rely upon the division “to act as the informed and effective regulator of this industry.”
The decision says investigations into the 1.7-magnitude and 2.1-magnitude earthquakes that occurred at the Weathersfield well last summer and 20 other smaller seismic events there have led the state to consider a possible link between the geology at the Weathersfield site and the Northstar site in Youngstown that produced earthquakes in 2011.
The two sites are about 7 miles apart, which is close in geological terms, the decision says. Testimony at the AWMS hearing indicated that it is “entirely possible” that the AWMS well “tapped into” the same geological fault system that plagued the Northstar well.
“The drilling of ‘deep’ injection wells is a relatively new trend in Ohio,” the decision says. “The [Division of Oil and Gas] estimates that only about 15 percent of permitted injection wells in Ohio reach into” the deepest formations that were used by the Northstar and Weathersfield wells.
“We cannot directly visualize the ‘terrain’ that exists thousands of feet below the Earth’s surface,” the decision says. “And, it is possible that geologic connections exist at these great depths that we cannot readily anticipate. There simply are many unknowns regarding the complexities of deep geology in eastern Ohio.”
The decision notes that there have even been unnamed geological formations discovered during the drilling of “deep” injection wells in Ohio “that have not been previously studied or mapped.”
Injection wells in Ohio are now being drilled to greater depths and with larger-diameter pipes than seemed possible even a few years ago, the decision says.
“Where technologies and industries quickly advance, it is not unusual for regulation to lag behind,” the decision says. “There is no denying that, regarding certain aspects of oil and gas injection, the industry has outpaced its regulatory authority.”
It says Simmers hopes to develop criteria “allowing Ohio to create a meaningful regulatory toolbox for responding to seismic issues at injection sites” and intends to propose changes to state law to protect Ohio citizens.
In 2013, when AWMS was seeking permission to drill its Weathersfield well, the ODNR was enforcing a moratorium on injection wells within 7 miles of the Northstar well, but the ODNR said it was allowing AWMS to drill near the 7-mile area as long as the drilling didn’t go as deep as the Precambrian rock formation that caused problems with the Northstar well.
The state also required seismic monitoring for the Weathersfield well that was not in place for the Northstar well. Those were added as a result of the quakes at the Northstar well.