ODNR responds with proposal for injection well
By Ed Runyan
COLUMBUS
Injection Well AWMS Orders
American Water Management Services vs. Division of Oil & Gas Resources Management regarding the AWMS #2 injection well - Common Pleas No. 16 CV 006218, Appeal of Oil and Gas Commission Case Nos. 889 & 890.
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources has responded to the order of a Franklin County Common Pleas Court judge, proposing a system be implemented if and when a Weathersfield Township injection well reopens.
The system includes installation of a fifth seismic monitoring station, reactivation of the four monitoring stations at the site previously, installation of three surface-motion monitors and a “quiet period” of non-injection for 60 days after that.
The company will be allowed to begin commercial injection for 120 days as long as no small earthquake greater than 1.5 magnitude occurs, the document says.
Judge Kimberly Cocroft had ordered that ODNR and the company that owns the well, American Water Management Services, submit a proposed entry giving the parameters under which the well would reopen.
To reopen, the company must perform an environmental assessment to determine the potential effect of a earthquakes of various magnitudes on buildings, bridges, dams and other structures, the document says. It must also complete or acquire a seismic survey of the area reaching out four square miles from the injection well to help identify faults.
The document proposes that the injection well be plugged back 500 feet so that its depth will not exceed 8,000 feet. This will avoid injections in or close to the Precambrian basement rock, which has been associated with geologic faults and earthquakes.
The proposal says that if a small earthquake of between magnitude 1.5 and 2 occurs, the company must discuss with ODNR how to mitigate the risk of future seismic activity. If seismic activity of 2 and 2.5 occurs, AWMS must suspend injection operations, submit an application to “alter the disposal zone” and propose reduced perameters such as pressure and volume.
“If a confirmed felt” earthquake of 2.5 or greater occurs, the company must “suspend injection operations and submit an application to plug” the well, it says.
If no seismic event of 2 or greater occurs in the first 120 days, the company will be allowed to continue operations at an increased pressure determined by ODNR and a rate of up to 1,000 barrels per day. In the next 120 days, if no seismic event of 2 or greater occurs, the company can step up injection at a rate of 1,500 barrels per day, the filing says.
If no seismic event of 2 or greater occurs within the first year, the company will be allowed to resume injections at the originally permitted pressure of 1,680 pounds per square inch “without volume limitation.”
In the document, the ODNR discusses the geology of the Mahoning Valley, talking about the known faults in the Precambrian basement rock here and the dangers injection-well induced earthquakes could cause. It notes the homes, businesses, nine schools, two hospitals and Meander Dam are within three miles of the injection well, which is on state Route 169 just north of Niles. It recounts the earthquakes near the Northstar injection well in Youngstown in 2011, the 3.0 quake near the Hilcorp fracking well in Poland Township in March 2014 and the 2.1 magnitude quake near the Weathersfield injection well in August 2014.