North Dakota fracking mine site of oil spill Thursday
September 3rd, 2010 joshua
Emergency crews rushed to the site of an oil spill near Bismarck, N.D., Thursday after a hydraulic fracturing operation failed.
According to an AP report, about 1,100 barrels of crude oil and drilling fluids spilled at a fracking site early Thursday morning and by the end of the day, officials at the scene said all runaway fuels and liquids have been collected.
Denbury Resources Inc. owns the fracking well in North Dakota. It said about 125 barrels of oil spilled from the well after its steel and concrete casing within the wellbore failed. More than 1,000 gallons of fracking fluid also spilled from the well.
Fracking is a process by which drilling companies look to extract resources from rock in upwards of two miles below the surface. In this instance, Denbury was searching for crude oil in rock. Fracking is also used to extract natural gas deposits from underground shale.
The process has raised concerns across the country for years but has recently garnered much more attention than in the past, thanks in part to an HBO documentary highlighting the dangers, and the rush ongoing in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York for ample reserves in those states’ Marcellus Shale deposits below the surface.
Fracking works by inserting a drill, sand, and thousands of gallons of mostly toxic drilling fluid into the ground. Once gas is collected, a drilling company is responsible for removing the fracking fluid safely from the site.
We’ve reported extensively in recent weeks - almost daily - on the dangers associated with fracking, mostly using real-time events as they happen. Earlier this week, a new study showed a fracking accident in Pennsylvania caused a quarantine of 28 cattle who were believed to have ingested runaway fracking fluid, and that same fluid being responsible for a swath of dead crops in a farmer’s field.
Homes near natural gas mines have also reported trapped gases reaching their wells until it’s released through their home faucets, giving homeowners the ability to light their tap water on fire.
Denbury said its fracking fluid is not the same used in the capture of natural gas; it’s just pure water.
Safety officials from North Dakota were expected on the scene again Friday searching for a possible cause to the oil leak.
