Mike Ray, Southwest Ledger
The Oklahoma Corporation Commission filed an enforcement action recently against Nject Disposal LLC, seeking fines and reimbursement of “various costs” arising from a saltwater “purge” flowing in Caddo County for the last two months.
In his “Complaint for Contempt of Rules and Regulations” filed Nov. 6, Jeremy Hodges, director of the OCC’s Oil and Gas Conservation Division, said his division may seek “the maximum lawful amount of $5,000 per violation per day” as allowed by state statute He also requested an order to revoke the permit that authorized Nject Disposal LLC of Houston, Texas, to operate the Pearcy #1 saltwater disposal well. Hodges said his division also may seek forfeiture of whatever surety Nject posted for its disposal well, or may seek to increase that bond.
A hearing on the ap plication is scheduled for Nov 25.
Hodges alleges that Nject’s “operations, action and/or inaction, resulted in an emergency situation posing potentially critical environmental or public safety impact,” and the expenditure of public funds “to address the emergency.”
Carl Saucier, field inspector with the OGCD, wrote that after he was contacted on Sept. 16 by Dillon Robbins of the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality about a report of cattle and wildlife deaths in Caddo County, he launched an investigation.
Mike Loula of Colony told an Oklahoma City television station on Sept. 18 that he lost 25 head of cattle after they drank water from Five Mile Creek where it traverses property he owns near Eakly.
Saltwater was discovered pouring into the creek two miles upstream from Loula’s property. The saltwater “tested over 130,000 parts per million (ppm) total dissolved solids,” Saucier reported.
A saltwater “purge” was discovered on land owned by Jim Ridgeway of Carnegie, Saucier reported.
The Pearcy #1 commercial saltwater disposal well – the only disposal well in the vicinity of the purge – was shut down “in an attempt to slow and stop the purge,” Saucier wrote. Several other producing wells also were shut in “so that casing pressures could be monitored,” he explained.
Nject Disposal, operator of the Pearcy #1, helped dig a pit and a trench to divert the flow from Five Mile Creek, which feeds Cobb Creek and Fort Cobb Lake – which is a source of drinking water for Chickasha and Anadarko.
The level of total dissolved solids in the creek slowly declined throughout the week “as Nject worked on removing saltwater from two deep pools found in the creek – one where the purge began and another four miles south of it.” As a result, Five Mile Creek “has been brought back to beneficial use,” Saucier wrote in an Oct. 6 report.
Nject also trucked purge water away from the site, “but that assistance ended on Sept. 19 due to lack of funds,” Saucier told a commission administrative law judge.
Consequently, the OGCD “is now containing the purge,” commission spokesman Trey Davis said. Fluid from the Caddo County purge is being transported via tanker truck to a disposal well north of Hydro in Blaine County operated by S&S Star, he said.
Each truck holds 120 barrels, and the purge was filling about six tanker truck loads per day as of Nov. 10, Davis said.
The volume of saltwater trucked to the disposal site was 747 barrels on Nov. 11, Saucier reported. That’s down by more than half from the peak of 1,582 barrels on Sept. 26, Davis told Southwest Ledger. One barrel is equivalent to 42 gallons.
The OCC retained two tanker truck operators to collect the fluid and “haul it away” to the licensed disposal site, Davis said. The commission was averaging “about 11 to 13 truck tank loads per day” on Oct. 8, he said.
It was costing the OGCD approximately $3,700 per day to continue hauling away the purge water to the disposal well “and containing the site so no additional pollution occurs,” Saucier told the ALJ on Sept. 16.
Commission Chair Kim David sent a letter to Gov. Kevin Stitt on Sept. 24, advising him of a “serious environmental emergency and threat to public health and safety” from the Caddo County saltwater purge. The governor immediately authorized the agency to “employ the necessary service contractors to abate this environmental emergency and threat…” Also that day the three-member Corporation Commission agreed that “the use of unencumbered and unallocated State funds to contain and hopefully stop the purge … is appropriate in this case.”
Several water wells in the vicinity of the purge were tested “to determine the extent of any contamination,” Saucier reported.
State regulators began conducting field tests throughout Five Mile Creek, Cobb Creek, and Fort Cobb Lake on Sept. 17. The OCC collected samples for analysis of produced water from nearby leases and from the purge. Davis said the purge poses “no current risk to the residents of Anadarko or Chickasha.”
Although the commissioners wrote that the cause of the purge has not yet been identified, an “unknown well” in Caddo County is suspected of discharging saltwater “as the result of injection into the Searcy #1 saltwater disposal well,” Hodges’ Nov 6 application indicates.
The Corporation Commission has vowed to “continue its operation” to collect and dispose of the saltwater spewing from the Caddo County site “until such time as the flow stops,” Davis said.
“We’ll get ’er knocked out eventually,” Saucier said.