MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — A new study says problems with natural gas well leaks, not the fracking associated with horizontal drilling are to blame for the methane found in more than 100 drinking water wells near drilling sites in parts of both Pennsylvania and Texas.
“Well integrity is the most important issue for maintaining drinking water quality,” according to the four-year study from a team of researchers that was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Some people fear that the fracturing itself at the shale formation — about two, three miles at depth — is the mechanism that caused the occurrence of methane and contamination of the drinking water wells,” said Avner Vengosh, a Duke University professor of geochemistry and water quality.
“Based on our study, we were able to exclude this option and say, ‘No, it’s only coming from the leaking.'”
Vengosh is part of the well research team that includes experts from Dartmouth, Stanford, Duke, Ohio State and the University of Rochester.
“We found only gas contamination. We have not found any evidence for fluid contamination like fracking fluid or brine that’s typically associated with fracking,” Vengosh said on Tuesday’s MetroNews “Talkline.”
“Based on our methods that we developed, we can tell what was the pathway of the gas that’s going into the drinking water wells and we are showing that it’s coming from leaking from the shale gas wells directly into the drinking water wells.”
Industry officials have called well integrity failures “exceedingly rare” and said, in other studies, methane found in well water has been determined to be naturally occurring.
The full study can be read here.