Texas leads way in water issues

Much of the technology to drill for natural gas in underground shale formations was developed in Texas, making it one of the first areas to deal with water-contamination issues.

Texas law prohibits allowing or causing water pollution, but regulators acknowledge hundreds of groundwater contaminations caused by oil and gas operations since drilling began in the Barnett Shale fields in and around Fort Worth in 1993.

Still, regulators are satisfied with the effectiveness of their policies, and the state has not had either an ongoing water-contamination incident or contamination involving drilling-water flow back, according to Ramona Nye, spokeswoman for the Texas Railroad Commission, which oversees oil and gas drilling.

The Texas Groundwater Protection Committee, which includes all state agencies involved in water protection, tracks groundwater pollution and publishes an annual contamination report, she explained in an e-mail. The 2007 report lists 354 active cases caused by oil and gas operations, she said, though no producing oil or gas wells are listed as sources. “Pipeline releases, tank battery leakage, and releases from compressor stations, gas plants, booster stations, separators, dehydrators make up the majority of the cases,” she noted. “A few cases are due to blowouts that primarily occur during the drilling of an oil or gas well.”

Three of the contamination cases deal with saltwater disposal wells and two with injection wells, the two methods used to dispose of drilling water in Texas, she said. Many of the contaminations are historical, in that they occurred prior to current regulations, and are self-reported by entities that did not cause the damage, but accept liability for it, she said.

Also of importance in Texas law is the superiority of mineral rights, or estates, over surface estates. Under state law, mineral-rights owners may “freely use the surface estate” for mineral extraction, according to the Railroad Commission, and they must be found negligent for them to be liable for damages.

Mineral-rights owners in Pennsylvania also must be granted access to the surface, but the balance of power is closer to equal, according to the state . Surface owners can’t “prevent the mineral owner’s reasonable access for development and production,” DEP says, but they can negotiate for damage payments before work begins.