Has methane drilling left us high and dry?

It took two decades to pump about 174 billion gallons of water out of the Powder River Basin. Until now, those numbers have been speculative, but a new report by the Wyoming Geological Survey shows the amount of water actually pumped out of Powder River Basin aquifers since coal-bed methane drilling started. The report has not been analyzed yet, but will give regulatory agencies an idea of the effects of a decade of intense coal-bed natural gas development in the Powder River Basin. The Geological Survey’s Keith Clarey puts it in perspective. Clarey, who authored the new report on coal-bed methane water drawdown, says the water pumped from 1993 to 2006 would roughly fill Lake DeSmet twice. Clarey compiled information collected from 111 monitoring wells — some starting as early as 1993; but all were studied through 2006. Some of the monitoring wells were placed in coal aquifers and some were placed in sand aquifers. The purpose was to find out what effect coal-bed natural gas production is having on aquifer levels in the basin — the same aquifers many communities and ranchers get their water from. He appears to have come up with a glass-half-empty, glass-half-full answer. “The data are showing there are hundreds of feet of drawdown in some of the water monitoring wells, but it is a complex issue because some of the wells are showing increases in water levels,” Clarey said. The impact of that drawdown differs depending on who you ask...read more