Fracking Patents - Michigan Telecommunications and Technology ...

Spring 2013] Fracking Patents 305America’s oil and gas wells is many times the volume of hydrocarbons producedeach day.” 160 One recent study of the Pennsylvania Brine Treatment(“PBT”) Josephine Facility, which only accepts wastewater from the oil andgas industry, found barium levels had a mean concentration in effluent of27.3 ppm, approximately fourteen times the EPA maximum concentrationlimit of 2 ppm for drinking water; mean strontium levels of 2981.1 ppm,over 745 times higher than the EPA recommended limit for finished municipaldrinking water of 4 ppm; mean bromide levels of 1068.8 ppm, more than10,000 times higher than the 100 ppb level at which authorities become concerned;and elevated levels of other contaminants. 161 This study concludedthat downstream populations served by the Freeport water authority andother water authorities downstream of Freeport, were at risk of contaminationowing to these contaminants as well as others that were not sampled aspart of the study. 162 Others are concerned about “fugitive emissions that occurat multiple points during fracking and production.” 163 Hydraulic fracturingalso “can have impacts on local water resources.” 164 Meanwhile,petroleum engineers have cautioned that “the more obvious risks posed bywell treatment chemicals on the surface have been largely ignored by boththe environmental interest groups and governmental authorities,” suggestingthat if anything, the range of potential environmental hazards has yet to befully enumerated. 165Second, in addition to their possible environmental hazards, “drillingand fracturing activities may use and produce hazardous materials whichcould threaten human health.” 166 “The work does have inherent dangers.” 167These include safety hazards related to explosives, flammability, oxidizers,and corrosives. 168 For instance, “spills of chemical additives during transportor well site operations could pose far greater risks because the concentrationsof as received additives are two to three orders of magnitude greaterthan they are after blending with water to formulate the fracturing fluid.” 169The chemicals involved in hydraulic fracturing may contain hydrochlorictrusak, The Answer to Increasing Environmental Compliance Costs: Regulatory Reform orTechnological Advance? 3 (Soc’y of Petroleum Eng’rs, SPE 56495, 1999), available at http://www.onepetro.org/mslib/app/Preview.do?paperNumber=00056495&societyCode=SPE.160. Produced Water, INTERSTATE OIL & GAS COMPACT COMM’N, http://www.iogcc.state.ok.us/produced-water (last visited Mar. 1, 2013).161. U.S. ENVTL. PROT. AGENCY, EPA/600/R-11/047, PROCEEDINGS OF THE TECHNICALWORKSHOPS FOR THE HYDRAULIC FRACTURING STUDY: FATE AND TRANSPORT, at 11 (2011).162. Id. at 13.163. David Kramer, Shale-Gas Extraction Faces Growing Public and Regulatory Challenges,PHYS. TODAY, July 2011, at 23, 24.164. Soeder, supra note 149, at 277–78.165. Brannon et al., supra note 141, at 2.166. Witter et al., supra note 148, at 3.167. Huls, supra note 57, at 2.168. Brannon et al., supra note 141, at 3–4; Jordan et al., supra note 143, at 3.169. Brannon et al., supra note 141, at 2.