Triangle Petroleum fracking radioactive waste water cleanup target missed in Nova Scotia

Fracking cleanup target missed by Brett Bundale, November 29, 2012, The Chronicle Herald
A junior oil and gas exploration firm won’t be able to meet today’s deadline to clean up two Hants County holding ponds filled with hydraulic-fracturing waste water. Peter Hill, chief executive officer of Triangle Petroleum Corp., said the Nova Scotia government wanted the contaminated ponds near Kennetcook cleaned up by today. But Hill said a string of setbacks, including the discovery of naturally occurring radioactive materials in the waste water, pushed the timetable back. The head of the Denver resource firm said he has sat down with provincial government officials to find an acceptable solution to clean up the nearly 15 million litres of water.

Environment Department spokeswoman Lori Errington said in an email the province realizes Triangle Petroleum will not meet the deadline set out in the terms and conditions of its approvals. “Scientific and technical issues have emerged that have taken both the department and the company additional time to fully understand.” Staff recently met with the resource firm to discuss the issues and to develop revised plans to dispose of the water and decommission the pond sites, Errington said. The approvals will likely be amended to reflect dates that are achievable and reasonable based on the complex issues associated with the sites, she said. The waste water has been sitting in two large ponds since 2007, when Triangle Petroleum drilled two wells on the Windsor block.

Although the company is still waiting for provincial approval, Hill said the remediation plan will now likely involve filtering and cleaning the water on site and trucking it to a waste treatment facility. “We’ll clean up the ponds as quickly and safely as we can. One of the options being considered is we will filter the brine at site and only ship treated water.” … The company estimates the potential size of its shale gas discovery in Hants County is roughly 69 trillion cubic feet. However, Hill said there are technical challenges to making that gas come to the surface in a sustainable and profitable way. [Emphasis added]

This entry was posted in Global Frac News. Bookmark the permalink.