The information on this page comes from this link
http://www.epa.state.oh.us/dsiwm/document/guidance/gd_660_appendices.pdf
CAUSES OF OHIO EARTHQUAKES
The origins of Ohio earthquakes, as with earthquakes throughout the eastern United States, are poorly understood at this time. Those in Ohio appear to be associated with ancient zones of weakness in the Earth's crust that formed during continental collision and mountain-building events about a billion years ago. These zones are characterized by deeply buried and poorly known faults, some of which serve as the sites for periodic release of strain that is constantly building up in the North American continental plate due to continuous movement of the tectonic plates that make up the Earth's crust.
SEISMIC RISK
"Seismic risk in Ohio, and the eastern United States in general, is difficult to evaluate because
earthquakes are generally infrequent in comparison to plate-margin areas such as California. Also, active faults do not reach the surface in Ohio and therefore cannot be mapped without the aid of expensive subsurface techniques."
"A great difficulty in predicting large earthquakes in the eastern United States is that the recurrence interval--the time between large earthquakes--is commonly very long, on the order of hundreds or even thousands of years. As the historic record in most areas, including Ohio, is only on the order of about 200 years--an instant, geologically speaking--it is nearly impossible to estimate either the maximum magnitude or the frequency of earthquakes at any particular site.
Earthquake risk in the eastern United States is further compounded by the fact that seismic waves tend to travel for very long distances. The relatively brittle and flat-lying sedimentary rocks of this region tend to carry these waves throughout an area of thousands of square miles for even a moderate-size earthquake. Damaging ground motion would occur in an area about 10 times larger than for a California earthquake of comparable intensity."
"An additional factor in earthquake risk is the nature of the geologic materials upon which a structure is built. Ground motion from seismic waves tends to be magnified by unconsolidated sediments such as thick deposits of clay or sand and gravel. Such deposits are extensive in Ohio.
Geologic mapping programs in the state geological surveys and the U.S. Geological Survey are therefore critical to public health and safety."
MAP OF DEEP STRUCTURES IN OHIO
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, June 26, 2009 4:20 PM PT
Climate Change: A suppressed EPA study says old U.N. data ignore the decline in global temperatures and other inconvenient truths. Was the report kept under wraps to influence the vote on the cap-and-trade bill?
Read More: Global Warming
This was supposed to be the most transparent administration ever. Yet as the House of Representatives prepared to vote on the Waxman-Markey bill, the largest tax increase in U.S. history on 100% of Americans, an attempt was made to suppress a study shredding supporters' arguments.
On Friday, the day of the vote, the Competitive Enterprise Institute said it was releasing "an internal study on climate science which was suppressed by the Environmental Protection Agency."
In the release, the institute's Richard Morrison said "internal EPA e-mail messages, released by CEI earlier in the week, indicate that the report was kept under wraps and its author silenced because of pressure to support the administration's agenda of regulating carbon dioxide."
Reading the report, available on the CEI Web site, we find this "endangerment analysis" contains such interesting items as: "Given the downward trend in temperatures since 1998 (which some think will continue until at least 2030), there is no particular reason to rush into decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data."
What the report says is that the EPA, by adopting the United Nations' 2007 "Fourth Assessment" report, is relying on outdated research by its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The research, it says, is "at best three years out of date in a rapidly changing field" and ignores the latest scientific findings.
Besides noting the decline in temperatures as CO2 levels have increased, the draft report says the "consensus" on storm frequency and intensity is now "much more neutral."
Then there's one of Al Gore's grim fairy tales — the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and glaciers the size of Tennessee roaming the North Atlantic. "The idea that warming temperatures will cause Greenland to rapidly shed its ice has been greatly diminished by new results indicating little evidence for operations of such processes," the report says.
Little evidence? Outdated U.N. research? No reason to rush? This is not what the Obama administration and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were telling us when they were rushing to force a Friday vote on Waxman-Markey. We were given the impression that unless we passed this cap-and-tax fiasco, polar bears would be extinct by the Fourth of July.
We have noted frequently the significance of solar activity on earth's climate and history. This EPA draft report not only confirms our reporting but the brazen incompetence of those "experts" that have been prophesying planetary apocalypse.
"A new 2009 paper by Scafetta and West," the report says, "suggests that the IPCC used faulty solar data in dismissing the direct effect of solar variability on global temperatures. Their report suggests that solar variability could account for up to 68% of the increase in Earth's global temperatures."
The report was the product of Alan Carlin, senior operations research analyst at the EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE). He's been with the EPA for 38 years but now has been taken off all climate-related work. He is convinced that actual climate observations do not match climate change theories and that only the politics, not the science, has been settled.
Thomas Fuller, environmental policy blogger with the San Francisco Examiner, wrote Thursday in a story developed in conjunction with Anthony Watts' Web site wattsupwiththat.com: "A source inside the Environmental Protection Agency confirmed many of the claims made by analyst Alan Carlin, the economist/physicist who yesterday went public with accusations that science was being ignored in evaluating the danger of CO2."
All this is particularly interesting because of the charges by Al Gore, NASA's James Hansen and others that the Bush administration and energy companies actively suppressed the truth about climate change.
One of the e-mails unearthed by CEI was dated March 12, from Al McGartland, office director at NCEE, forbidding Carlin from speaking to anyone outside NCEE on endangerment issues such as those in his suppressed report.
Read the rest of the story here...........
"The need to meet future water demands may lead some parts of the nation to consider supplementing existing supplies with lower quality groundwater resources, including brackish waters that are currently not considered sources of drinking water but which could provide supplemental water via desalination. In some areas, these same deep saline-filled geologic formations also represent possible candidate carbon dioxide (CO2) storage reservoirs. The analysis presented here suggests that future constraints on CCS deployment – due to potential needs to supplement conventional water supplies by desalinating deeper and more brackish waters – are likely to be necessary only in limited regions across the country, particularly in areas that are already experiencing water stress."
"As Figure 1 illustrates, some areas of the U.S. use very little groundwater to supply their populations with drinking water. In particular, Appalachia, the Northeast and certain areas in the Midwest and Pacific Northwest rely predominantly on surface waters to meet their public supply needs. In other areas, however – particularly the Southwest, Gulf Coast and Florida, and certain other parts of the Midwest – groundwater provides a large fraction of the total public water supply, well over 50 percent in many areas. It is also worth noting that the use of groundwater to supply public drinking water appears to be on the rise. In 1985, 379 counties in the U.S. supplied more than 80 percent of their population with groundwater; in 1995 there were 436, a 15 percent increase [9]."
"3.5. Ohio River Valley Aquifers
Because the most promising CO2 storage resource in the Ohio River Valley does not underlie a major drinking water aquifer system in many areas of interest for CO2 storage, there are unlikely to be significant conflicts regarding saline water use for CCS. However, the Mt. Simon Formation, one of the key CO2 storage targets in this region, shallows to the northwest, in northern Illinois, where formation waters are fresh and the aquifer is an important groundwater source."
(Note- Greenville, Ohio sits on a freshwater sole source aquifer)
"Adapting to growing populations, declining water levels within key aquifers, and changing precipitation patterns may further strain heavily used groundwater resources in areas already impacted by water supply issues. Within certain regions of the nation, water scarcity concerns may prompt further consideration for targeting nearby high salinity or brackish water in deep aquifers for treatment by desalination technologies to augment more conventional supplies. Deep geologic formations that could be used as a permanent repository for anthropogenic CO2 in climate change mitigation efforts via CCS contain highly brackish waters that in select regions might represent potential targets for future waters supplies (particularly if they are below the salinity of seawater, approximately 35,000 mg/L TDS). This possibility might present a competing use for these deep geologic formations, and should be examined to estimate the potential probability, location, and magnitude, of such impacts.""The likelihood that deep, saline groundwaters exceeding the USDW salinity threshold may be demanded as future sources of drinking or irrigation water increases in areas where groundwater currently supplies a significant portion of the region’s water supply; in areas with already constrained water supplies, such as the High Plains / Ogallala region; in areas where significant population growth is expected to overburden current surface and groundwater resources within the near- to mid-term, such as in parts of the Southwestern U.S. and areas of Texas; and in areas where there are limited other sources of saline waters (i.e., seawater) nearby."
' In areas that meet one or more of these criteria and also have a significant potential demand for deep geologic CO2 storage, there exists the possibility for differences of opinion regarding the best use of the saline groundwater underlying these regions. In such cases, permitting or garnering public acceptance for proposed CCS projects will require regulators and potential CCS operators to strike a balance between the future needs for high quality drinking and agricultural water, and the use of CCS in a given area as a climate change mitigation strategy."
"CO2 EOR Is not “The Answer”…but CO2 EOR is a great beginning
• Economic or near economic in current market, depending on cost of CO2
• Acceptable to public
• Other major benefits (domestic energy production, taxes, employment)
• Build infrastructure that can be used long term for large volume CO2 disposal =
stacked storage
Could CO2 Sequestration Storage Volume in the Gulf Coast be valuable in the future?
~ 222 Billion Tons of CO2 at $30 to $80 a ton (based on economists projects)
…. You do the math!"
I couldn't help but hear the words of Paul Harvey in my ear as I read it, "and now you know the rest of the story".
Photo by Lyn Bliss /Advocate Photo
The money will be funneled to a demonstration project in the Mount Simon Sandstone formation in Darke County in western Ohio.
About 1 million tons of carbon dioxide from an ethanol facility will be injected 3,000 feet into the sandstone formation.
Proponents contend that the process, known as carbon sequestration, is crucial for the future of Ohio coal. If electric utility plants can burn coal without causing global warming, it would provide a major boost to Ohio's coal industry.
Sen. George V. Voinovich, R-Ohio, said in a statement that "this award is a vitally important step forward in our nation's commitment to crafting a comprehensive solution to climate change."
To read the entire article click here
From the SECARB site: http://seesorg.org/Hill_10_15_part_1.pdf
The project will inject CO2 at the rate of one million tons per year, for up to 1.5 years, into brine up to 10,000 feet below the land surface near the Cranfield oil field about 15 miles east of Natchez, Miss. Experimental equipment will measure the ability of the subsurface to accept and retain CO2. The study will be supported by Denbury Resources’ CO2 enhanced oil recovery operations at Cranfield. Denbury Resources will supply CO2 from its Jackson Dome.
Consequently, the injected CO2 must be addressed as a multiphase system. Special considerations for underground disposal of CO2 are mostly related to the unique properties of supercritical CO2.
"Formation Dissolution/WeakeningSupercritical CO2 has the potential to dissolve, weaken, or transform the minerals in the injection formation. In the supercritical state, CO2 becomes a “supersolvent.” Thus, there is potential for the fluid to dissolve and weaken the rocks in the injection formation. If the rock formation is weakened, the potential for hydraulic fracturing increases. Dissolution of minerals precipitated along a fault will reduce the strength of the fault, possibly moving the fault to frictional sliding conditions where failure is more likely to occur."
Case Study: Seismic Aspects of Deep Well Injection in Ohio
Deep well injection practices and seismic activity in Ohio were examined to determine the potential for induced seismicity in the state. All five active deep well injection systems in Ohio have been investigated for seismic hazards to some extent.
Most faults in Ohio are associated with Precambrian basement rocks at depths over 1 km below land surface. Several faults have been identified in northwestern Ohio, while relatively few faults have been identified in the rest of the state. The Anna Seismogenic Region is one of the most active seismic zones in Ohio (Figure 4). The zone is located in west-central Ohio. (Note by me - Greenville, OH is considered to be part of the Anna fault)
"In general, most seismic activity indicates strike-slip movement along steeply dipping faults. Based on the USGS Seismic Hazard mapping project, there is a low probability for damage from earthquakes for Ohio, except in the Anna Seismic Area, which has a moderate hazard.
The Anna Seismic Seismogenic Region in west-central Ohio has been identified as one of the most active seismic areas in the Midwest. The area has a substantial history of seismic activity dating back to the mid-1800s. The largest earthquake observed in the area had a Modified Mercalli intensity of VIII in 1937. In general, seismic activity indicates northeast-southwest strike-slip movement oriented perpendicular to the predominant stresses in the area."
"A number of faults have been proposed in the area, but most activity appears to occur near the trend of the proposed Anna-Champaign Fault. Overall, the Anna Seismic Area is considered a seismically active area."
Acknowledgement: The work presented here was conducted with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory as part of project number DEAF26-99FT0486."
To read the entire abstract click here
From the web site: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2003AGUFM.S21E0347S
A persistent earthquake sequence in northeast Ohio includes many distinct fore--main--aftershock sub--sequences, illuminates two faults, and was triggered by fluid injection. The first known earthquake from within 30~km of Ashtabula was an mb(Lg)~3.8 mainshock that shook the downtown area in 1987. Seismicity has continued at an average of about one felt event per year. The largest magnitude so far, mb(Lg)~4.3, caused slight damage (MMI VI) 26 Jan. 2001. The latest subsequence started July 2003 with mb(Lg)~2.6. Accurate hypocenters and focal mechanisms are available from three local seismograph deployments in 1987, 2001, 2003 and from regional broadband seismograms. These hypocenters are in the Precambrian basement, 0--2 km below the 1.8~km deep Paleozoic unconformity, and illuminate two distinct planar E-W striking sources zones 4 km apart, one in 1987 about 1.5~km long, the other in 2001 and 2003 about 5 km long. We interpret them as steep sub--parallel faults slipping left--laterally in the current regime. Like many of the faults that ruptured in hazardous SCR earthquakes, these faults were previously unknown and probably have small post--Precambrian displacements. The 1987 source was active a year after onset of class 1 fluid injection only 0.7~km north of the fault. The second fault, 5 km south of the injection well, became active in 2000, while the 1987 source was inactive. The well injected about 164 m3/day of waste fluid into the 1.8 km-deep basal sandstone with about 100 bars of well head pressure from May 1986 to June 1994. An annular high pore--pressure anomaly is expected to expand along this hydraulically confined horizon at the top of the basement even after injection ends and pressure drops near the well. Over 16 years, seismicity has shifted southward from ˜1 to 5--8~km from the point of injection. It seems to initiate when and where a significant pore pressure rise intersects pre--existing faults close to failure and to be turned off when pressure starts dropping back. The largest earthquakes postdated the end of injection at both Ashtabula and at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal near Denver, Colorado. Anthropogenic earthquake hazard may thus persist after the causative activity has ceased but can generally be closely monitored. High--stress and low strain rates in the eastern US and other SCRs can account for a larger proportion of triggered earthquakes in these regions than in active ones. Unlike hazard from natural SCR earthquakes, hazard from potential sources of anthropogenic earthquakes could generally be precisely identified in time and space. Anthropogenic triggering may have raised significantly the overall level of SCR seismicity during the last half century. Models that assume constant seismicity through the historic period may thus underestimate the overall hazard.Keywords: 7209 Earthquake dynamics and mechanics, 7223 Seismic hazard assessment and prediction
Many thanks to one of our members (Roger) for this heads up!
Fracking - are these earthquakes related to recent fracking activity in TX? Seems odd they had no earthquakes in the last 140 years and suddenly, after drilling starts so do the quakes!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090612/ap_on_re_us/us_texas_earthquakes_drilling
CLEBURNE, Texas – The earth moved here on June 2. It was the first recorded earthquake in this Texas town's 140-year history — but not the last. There have been four small earthquakes since, none with a magnitude greater than 2.8. The most recent ones came Tuesday night, just as the City Council was meeting in an emergency session to discuss what to do about the ground moving.The council's solution was to hire a geology consultant to try to answer the question on everyone's mind: Is natural gas drilling — which began in earnest here in 2001 and has brought great prosperity to Cleburne and other towns across North Texas — causing the quakes?
"I think John Q. Public thinks there is a correlation with drilling," Mayor Ted Reynolds said. "We haven't had a quake in recorded history, and all the sudden you drill and there are earthquakes."
At issue is a drilling practice called "fracking," in which water is injected into the ground at high pressure to fracture the layers of shale and release natural gas trapped in the rock.
There is no consensus among scientists about whether the practice is contributing to the quakes. But such seismic activity was once rare in Texas and seems to be increasing lately, lending support to the theory that drilling is having a destabilizing effect.
On May 16, three small quakes shook Bedford, a suburb of Dallas and Fort Worth. Two small earthquakes hit nearby Grand Prairie and Irving on Oct. 31, and again on Nov. 1.
The towns sit upon the Barnett Shale, a geologic formation that is perhaps the nation's richest natural gas field. The area is estimated to have 30 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas and provides about 7 percent of the country's supply.
Click here to read the full storyFrom: Chapter 12 of, State of Texas Hazards Analysis, by the Governor's Division of Emergency Management, Department of Public Safety, Austin, Texas, 1998.
Finally, some human activities are known to cause or trigger earthquakes. These include the injection of fluids into the earth for waste disposal or petroleum production, and the filling of deep lakes or reservoirs. In Texas, there have been earthquakes associated with oil and gas production at a number of fields. These include the Wortham field in Freestone County, the East Texas and Longview fields in Upshur and Gregg Counties, the Cogdell field in Scurry and Kent Counties, and the Fashing and Jourdanton fields in Atascosa County. None of these quakes have been very damaging or very large; the largest had magnitude 4.7. And, usually petroleum production does not cause earthquakes; in Texas there are more than two thousand oil and gas fields but only about five seem to have generated earthquakes. Nevertheless, wherever there is considerable petroleum production, and especially when there is fluid injection to enhance recovery of to dispose of waste, people should be aware that induced earthquakes are possible.
Texas elected officials Tuesday railed against federal efforts to curb global warming, claiming it would throttle the state's economy -- one of the few that generated job growth last year.
State comptroller Susan Combs said that if passed, a landmark climate change bill winding its way through Congress could cost the state 164,000 jobs and shave some $25 billion per year, or 2%, off the state's total economic output.
"Texas is the kitchen of the country. We cook up all of the products that are used elsewhere," said Ms. Combs, a Republican, referring to the state's large petrochemical and plastics industry. "The recipe for disaster is being cooked up in Washington D.C.," she added.
"I happen to think that what they are discussing could wreck our traditional energy industry and put a very serious dent in our economy," said Mr. Perry. He repeated his view that the proposed provisions that recently passed out of committee in the House of Representatives amounted to the largest tax increase in history. The provisions would put a limit on emissions of the gasses blamed for climate change and require companies to pay for permits to pollute. As a result, "Every American that uses any source of energy would see their bills go up," he said.
The impact would be felt acutely in Texas, home to a giant refining complex. Refineries under the legislation would be forced to purchase emissions permits, driving up the cost of producing fuel. It is also home to the corporate headquarters of the world's largest oil company, Exxon Mobil Corp., and the largest refining company based on refining capacity, Valero Energy Corp., as well as another major oil company, ConocoPhillips.
Ms. Hutchison, however, also stands against a carbon cap-and-trade system. "A cap and trade approach to address climate change is onerous and misguided, and it will raise energy prices for consumers and adversely impact workers and small businesses during a time of economic hardship," she said Tuesday in a statement.
From the web site
June 10 2009 (Carbon Capture Journal)
- Fifteen months after project planning began, drilling has started in Hancock County, Kentucky for a test well to research the permanent storage of CO2.
The 8,300-foot well will help determine the feasibility of injecting CO2 into geologic formations to help reduce emissions of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
The project is the result of a joint effort between Kentucky state government agencies, the Kentucky Geological Survey (KGS), and a consortium of public and private participants.
The project was made possible by a $5 million grant awarded to the geological survey from the Kentucky Department for Energy Development and Independence as a result of appropriations from the Kentucky General Assembly.
A portion of this grant is used for the west Kentucky project, with substantial matching funds provided by industry partners. The KGS recruited corporate partners who have contributed the majority of the funding and services crucial to completing the project.
NorAm Drilling, Inc. of Houston, Texas, has been selected to drill the well, a task that is expected to take 45 to 60 days. To protect shallow groundwater and oil and gas resources of the drilling site, the upper 3,800 feet of the well will be lined with steel casing.
Project plans call for drilling through the Knox and Mount Simon formations to test their potential to permanently store CO2. Studies have indicated these formations may have characteristics needed for such storage.
The well will penetrate Precambrian basement rocks at its total depth. Samples of geologic formations will be taken for testing and analysis, and up to 1,500 tons of carbon dioxide will be injected into deep formations to further the understanding of the feasibility of commercial CO2 storage.
State grant funding will also be used for a similar deep carbon dioxide storage test in eastern Kentucky and enhanced oil/enhanced gas recovery projects.
TENTATIVE PROJECT TIMELINE
* Spring 2009: Drilling phase. (Drilling expected to take 45 – 60 days; well of about 8,300 feet will be cored in intervals, geophysical surveys completed and interpreted and prepared for injection testing.)
* Spring - Summer 2009: Start of injection testing with brine and CO2. Deeper porous zones will be tested for injection capacity.
* Summer - Winter 2009: Post-injection monitoring of well site. Interpretation of drilling and testing results and preparation of final reports. Project completed, and well plugged and abandoned per Kentucky and U.S. EPA specifications. Environmental monitoring to continue over the next several years.
PARTICIPANTS IN THE PROJECT
* Kentucky Geological Survey
* University of Kentucky
* Commonwealth of Kentucky
* Kentucky Energy and the Environment Cabinet
* Western Kentucky Carbon Storage Foundation: (Members: ConocoPhillips, E.ON US, Peabody Energy)
* Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity
* Tennessee Valley Authority
* Schlumberger Carbon Services
* GEO Consultants, LLC
* Sandia Technologies, LLC
* Smith Management Group
* Wyatt, Tarrant, and Combs
This information comes from the web site:
http://opencrs.com/document/RL34601/2008-07-29
Please click on the link to their site to read the full article.
Related Bills: S.3036 S.2323(Note- S. 2323 This item is from the 110th Congress (2007-2008) and is no longer current.)
"We must be prepared to manage public communications to ensure we do not destroy years of hard work on CCS, and to help make it a reality. It is never too early
to seek public acceptance."
"Another suggestion for improvement at a future event is the provision of additional
networking opportunities including the suggestion of a ‘speed schmooze’ to lay the
foundation for constructive dialogue."
"Communication and engagement are key elements of effective stakeholding. There are a number of tools that decision makers can use to increase their chances that stakeholders become part of the solution rather than part of the problem."
"Despite internal calls for accelerating the stakeholder outreach, a public relations firm was hired instead. The PR firm addressed the issue as a technical (or Type I) problem and set out to inform the community that the issues were minor. To prove this they showed the results of an Environmental Assessment that had a "finding of no significant impact.” However, by the time this official research was communicated, the surfer community had started a bumper sticker campaign “Stop CO2 Dumping,” and anger had been generated in the local population. This put a big damper on ocean research, not just in Hawaii, but everywhere,despite the fact that the ocean is the largest carbon sink on the planet."
Heather Lauer, Media Relations Coordinator for the Ohio EPA said that Batelle’s TAME Project Seismic Plans were approved on June 1, 2009.
A letter was drafted to David Ball, Project Manager, Battelle Memorial Institute that read:
Re: TAME Project Seismic Plans
Dear Mr. Ball:
The underground Injection Control (UIC) Unit of the Ohio EPA’s Division of Drinking and Ground Waters (DDAGW) has reviewed the proposed seismic reflection survey plan for The Andersons Marathon Ethanol, LLC (TAME) carbon dioxide (CO2) sequestration project. The original seismic plan was submitted by Batelle Memorial Institute (Battelle) on April 27, 2009. A revised plan was submitted May 4, 2009, and reviewed in accordance with Ohio Administrative Code (OAC) 3745-34-40. The seismic plan, with revisions, is approved as submitted.
The TAME project is a Phase III Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (MRCSP) development and demonstration project of geologic sequestration. The MRCSP is a consortium of Midwestern states, geological surveys, non governmental and private companies led by Battelle and funded by the Department of Energy (DOE). The seismic survey is designed to help ascertain geologic conditions at the TAME site.
You are hereby notified that this action of the Director is final and may be appealed to the Environmental Review Appeals Commission pursuant to Section 3745.04 of the Ohio Revised Code. The appeal must be in writing and shall set forth the action complained of and grounds upon which the appeal is based. the appeal must be filed with the Commission within thirty (30) days after notice of the Director’s action. The appeal must be accompanied by a filing fee of $70.00 which the Commission, in its discretion, may reduce if by affidavit you demonstrate that payment of the full amount of the fee would cause extreme hardship. Notice of the filing of the appeal shall be filed with the Director within three (3) days of filing with the commission. Ohio EPA requests that a copy of the appeal be served upon the Ohio Attorney General’s Office of Environmental Enforcement Section. An appeal may be filed with the Environmental Review Appeals Commission at the following address:
Environmental Review Appeals Commission
309 South Fourth Street, Room 222
Columbus, Ohio 43215
If you have any questions regarding this correspondence please contact either Lindsay Taliaferro or Chuck Lowe of my staff at (614) 644-2752.
Sincerely,
Chris Korleski
Director
"In the early stages of the first two-year period, the study team will also conduct a site characterization to gather detailed information about the site. This will include a seismic survey of the area to determine the nature of geologic layers and ensure that the area is free from the type of faults that could provide pathways for leakage. The team will drill a test well to gather geologic data about the storage potential in the injection zones and the ability of the overlying caprock layers to contain the carbon dioxide. The well is constructed of the several layers of steel casing and concrete to protect the drinking water supplies near the surface.
3. During this time also, the team will install site infrastructure improvements, including a carbon dioxide compression facility and a pipeline. This line will transport the carbon dioxide a short distance of several hundred feet from the ethanol vent stack to the compression site and eventually to the injection wells, located on site.
4. Before injecting carbon dioxide, the MRCSP must prepare an application for a permit to the regulators at the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA requires an operational plan which will include factors such as maintaining the integrity of the well and the injection volume and pressure. The EPA also requires a plan for monitoring the safety of the operations. Before the permit becomes final, the EPA will issue a draft for public review and comment. These activities are expected to take place during 2009 and 2010.
5. After obtaining a permit, the research team will begin injecting carbon dioxide. This is expected to occur in 2010 and continue for four years.
6. As required by the permit and for research purposes, the MRCSP research team will monitor activities at all stages, including after injection, to track the condition of the well and the injected carbon dioxide.
7. After completing the injection test, the team will continue to monitor the stored carbon dioxide and evaluate the results for the remainder of the Phase III project."
Legislation pending to allow EPA control over CO2 “fracking” (protection of drinking water)
Fracking (fracturing) is a procedure identical to CO2 sequestration used by the oil industry to drive gas/oil to the surface.
On Thursday, June 4th Democratic Reps. Diana DeGette of Colorado and Maurice Hinchey of New York said they plan to introduce legislation to allow the EPA to regulate fracking under the Safe Drinking Water Act, which would repeal a 2005 law that exempted it from EPA oversight.
Submitted article -
The “Fracking” CO2 Sequestration must to be stopped!
Please excuse the “crude” (as in oil) language but:
“Fracking” (fracturing) is the term used in the oil and gas industry that involves the injection of millions of gallons of water and chemicals into oil and gas wells at high pressure. Fracking is used to fracture or crack open dense rock formations thousands of feet underground allowing trapped gas to flow to the surface. That description should give you a clear vision of the dangerous potential of a million of tons of liquid CO2 has as it emerges through a “frack” (fracture). Unlike water, liquid CO2 will expand by over 100-fold with explosive force as it emerges toward the surface. For this reason CO2 is preferred over water for fracking. According to the calculations of Darke County Engineer Jim Surber, the proposed CO2 sequestration could amount to a fraction of a cubic mile of the gas. This fact grossly underestimates the potential for such an event to kill. For most people breathing 5-10% CO2 (certainly the elderly and children) will prove fatal. Therefore this volume must be multiplied by a factor of 10-20. Furthermore since CO2 is of a greater density than air it will spread horizontally as it emerges, thus potentially putting several square miles at risk. Indeed fracking, which is used by the oil and gas industry to drive gases to the surface, is the same process used to permanently sequester the gas CO2 underground. Can this be? The fracking process and CO2 sequestration are identical procedures– except for the fact that fracking is vented by wells reducing the risk of explosive pressures developing. CCS is not vented but capped like a carbonated drink. Due to hydraulic pressure this cap can be “fracked” at any point of time followed by the explosive release by the expanding CO2. Indeed such a thing has happened on numerous occasions in the oil industry.
"The other issue is one of metallurgy. CO2, in the presence of water turns into carbolic acid. Carbon steel as well as most higher strength stainless steels are subject to severe pitting corrosion from carbolic acid. I have a piece of pipe that was in an oil well for two weeks in wet CO2 environment. It quite literally looks like a piece of wood that termites have been eating. Pitting corrosion is the most dangerous kind of corrosion because it is random and unpredictable in how deep it will go. Therefore you cannot build in a "corrosion allowance" into your designs to compensate for it the way you can with general corrosion. A corrosion allowance is when you specify a thicker wall for a pressure vessel than needed to account for the lost thickness due to corrosion over the vessel's life. But since pitting is localized and can go very deep very quickly, you cannot compensate for it in that manner."
"Carbolic acid also attacks the cement used to plug and case wells as well.
The way to compensate for it is to use group IV corrosion resistant materials. These materials are invariably very high Chrome, Nickel, Cobalt, and Molybdenum content materials. These are as you can imagine not cheap or plentiful, and were generally not used to drill or case the original oil wells that are to be used as CO2 injection wells. They also tend to present operational issues due to their propensity to gall. You cannot inject CO2 into a reservoir that has carbon steel cased wells that intersect it for there is a high likelihood that those capped wells may blow out later due to corrosion. Therefore using old oil wells is extremely problematic. Sure, it will work for a short time, but long term, those wells are ticking time bombs."
"Another issue is the energy required to capture, purify, liquefy, transport and pump the CO2. That energy has both a carbon and a financial cost associated with it. What good does it serve to sequester 1 MMCF of CO2 if you generate 1.25 MMCF in the process?
For example, carbonic acid in groundwater can dissolve limestone to form natural caves. We don't know what type of effect pumping such a volume of CO2 into the ground would have, so saying there could be an off-the-shelf system in the near-term is not reasonable."
Below are excerpts from the web site -
http://tinyurl.com/ov9264"Potential problems
Beside the problem of carbon dioxide leaking out of old abandoned wells, there are other concerns.
Forcing carbon dioxide under pressure into rock formations could force natural gas and salt water out of those formations in unpredictable and undesirable ways – into shallow water wells, for example or to the surface, spilling natural gas (a potent greenhouse gas) into the atmosphere, or pushing brine into fresh water aquifers.
And in an ironic reversal, pumping gas under pressure into some rock formations could cause the surface of the ground to actually rise – as opposed to land subsidence caused by deep mining coal – damaging structures and affecting streams and drinking water aquifers.
Leaking carbon dioxide could find its way into drinking water aquifers, and while this sounds like it could produce club soda from the kitchen faucet, it would make the water more acidic, dissolving calcium and other minerals and creating a hard water problem, or in some cases dissolving toxic metals, raising trace elements to dangerous levels."
Joint project involves state, public and private participants
Fifteen months after project planning began, drilling has started in Hancock County, Ky., for a test well to research the permanent storage of carbon dioxide (CO2) deep underground in western Kentucky. The 8,300-foot well will help determine the feasibility of injecting CO2 into geologic formations to help reduce emissions of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. The project is the result of a joint effort between Kentucky state government agencies, the Kentucky Geological Survey (KGS), and a consortium of public and private participants.
This project was made possible by a $5 million grant awarded to the geological survey from the Kentucky Department for Energy Development and Independence as a result of appropriations from the Kentucky General Assembly. A portion of this grant is used for the west Kentucky project, with substantial matching funds provided by industry partners. The KGS recruited corporate partners who have contributed the majority of the funding and services crucial to completing the project.
NorAm Drilling, Inc. of Houston, Texas, has been selected to drill the well, a task that is expected to take 45 to 60 days. To protect shallow groundwater and oil and gas resources of the drilling site, the upper 3,800 feet of the well will be lined with steel casing.Project plans call for drilling through the Knox and Mount Simon formations to test their potential to permanently store CO2. Studies have indicated these formations may have characteristics needed for such storage. The well will penetrate Precambrian basement rocks at its total depth. Samples of geologic formations will be taken for testing and analysis, and up to 1,500 tons of carbon dioxide will be injected into deep formations to further the understanding of the feasibility of commercial CO2 storage.
State grant funding will also be used for a similar deep carbon dioxide storage test in eastern Kentucky and enhanced oil/enhanced gas recovery projects. Progress reports on all of these projects are available at the website of the Kentucky Consortium for Carbon Storage, www.kyccs.org.
TENTATIVE PROJECT TIMELINE:
PARTICIPANTS IN THE PROJECT:
scroll up and down... you will find it addresses things like - risks to workers, the public, ecosystem, microbes in the ground, drinking water and the contamination it is likely to cause, it is one of the most complete sources of risks that I have seen for CCS ( Carbon Capture and Sequestration)
"Chasing CCS is a money burner and an energy hog, and it may not deliver much carbon savings. The whole reactive proposition raises
extreme security and liability issues for industry and taxpayers alike.
It Takes Energy to Bury CO2
The chief obstacle to CCS is cost. Right now, no country buries lots of CO2 because it is not economical. John Pavlish, a senior U.S. researcher on CCS at North Dakota's Energy and Environmental Research Center, notes that CCS would raise the cost of a power plant by 35 to 100 percent which, in turn, would increase electric bills by 30 to 80 percent. Without a $40 to $80 price tag on a tonne of CO2, not much carbon will ever get buried.
It takes a lot energy to capture, compress and inject CO2 into the ground. In fact 30, percent of the power generated by a coal-fired facility or tar sands power plant would be cannibalized by a CO2 retrofit.
That’s great news for coal companies because CCS demands that utilities burn more coal instead of building windmills.
Storage problems
Security of storage is also a concern. Not too many places in North America are suitable for carbon burial due to earthquake risks or high density oil and gas drilling. Improperly sealed wells or faulty cement jobs could invite great volumes of CO2 back to the surface. Leaks could also acidify groundwater.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for example, dutifully notes that Alberta is a pin cushion. With more than 350,000 oil and gas wells, it is one of the most intensely drilled landscapes in the world. In other words, CO2 could find its way back to the surface and into people’s basements and wells.
CO2 injection may also cause man-made earthquakes. The rapid depletion of gas wells and the water flooding of oil wells have caused a series of documented earthquakes in Alberta, Texas and the Netherlands. Geologists call it “induced seismicity.” The largest earthquakes ever recorded in Alberta were triggered by oil and gas activity. Natural Resources Canada recently studied a series of earthquakes caused by sour gas removal at the Strachan gas plant in Rocky Mountain House.
Although the technology for capturing, compressing and piping carbon is doable, not much is known about rapid CO2 injection into old oil reservoirs or salty aquifers.
Independent research by University of Calgary engineer Minzghe Dong shows that each and every reservoir behaves differently and has to be carefully prepared. If most of the oil and water isn’t removed, the reservoir will chemically react with CO2 and limit the amount of disposal space. Scientists have yet to show that the rock cap sealing salt aquifers can actually safely contain CO2.
Liability is no small cross in the carbon cemetery either. Buried CO2 must be monitored for thousands of years, a task few regulators really want to undertake. Industry doesn’t want to invest in CCS until government (read taxpayers) assumes the liabilities of leaks and groundwater contamination. Wyoming, the largest coal producing state, wisely passed legislation that places the liability for the unintended consequences of CCS on the utility or oil company that injects it.
It is reactive program, not a proactive one. The technology costs too much and won't scale up in time to make a difference. It directly robs taxpayers and subsidizes the world’s wealthiest industry. And it steals dollars from renewable programs. What CCS does is give coal and oil companies taxpayer money to accelerate hydrocarbon consumption by nearly one third."
