He listened for hissing or rumbling nearly 2 miles below the earth, easing his microphone down the natural gas well known as SS 25. Mitch Findlay heard something that caught his attention.
[one_half][box type=”shadow this-matters”]Regular testing can help experts determine if a well can be used safely.[/box][/one_half]
Findlay, the owner of a leak-detection company, was testing the well for his client, the Southern California Gas Co. It was November 1991, nearly 25 years before the well above Porter Ranch ruptured and spewed roughly 94,000 metric tons of methane into the atmosphere.
It was a “distant noise,” Findlay noted in the typewritten log filed with state regulators. But the thermometer attached to the mic didn’t sense any dramatic cooling — a good sign. The sound, he explained during a recent interview, could have come from moving water or another well in the oil and gas field.
“Put together, they are not alarming,” Findlay, a retired 20-year oil and gas consultant, said of the results from the two leak testing methods.
But annual temperature surveys and the occasional noise test gave an incomplete picture of the well’s integrity, he and other experts say. Another common way to detect leaks, a pressure test, was performed on the well just twice since 1989, according to state records.
California regulators do not require natural gas companies to test the pressure of storage wells, despite the industry’s endorsement and widespread use of the leak-detection method.
“These wells should be pressure tested every five years,” Findlay said. Pressurizing the space between interior tube and the surrounding casing of the well, the area called the annulus, “would have found the leak,” he believes.
In Texas and Kansas, states with modern underground gas storage regulations, the well indeed would have been required to undergo pressure tests at least every five years.
“It’s a common industry practice and the best-regulated states all require it,” said Adam Peltz, an attorney in the Environmental Defense Fund U.S. Climate and Energy Program.
Casings expand and contract like balloons, and can crack under heavy pressure. Officials said SS 25 was leaking from a breach in its 7-inch diameter metal casing. The more than three-month-long leak emitted an unprecedented amount of greenhouse gas, sickened residents and forced the relocation of thousands of families.
To make sure a well is gas-tight, contractors typically seal the annulus, increase the pressure to a certain threshold and monitor it for 30 minutes. Some minor leakage is considered normal. But a loss of more than 10 percent of pressure would be reason for concern, experts say.
“Pressure testing detects whether or not the casing is holding pressure. Period,” said Richard Haut, the director of energy production at the Houston Advanced Research Center.
Temperature tests could detect a casing leak, but they also are used to detect leaks within the well’s interior components, experts say. Gas cools as it moves from a high-pressure area to a low-pressure zone, so a thermometer lowered into a well could detect gas escaping.
Regulations coming under new scrutiny
When the state approved the Aliso Canyon storage facility, regulators required annual testing of each well’s integrity. To fulfill the requirement, they’ve accepted temperature tests. SS 25 showed no significant problems in its temperature surveys each year from 1989 through 2014, according to records from the state Division of Oil, Gas & Geothermal Resources.
California requires some injection wells (such as those for wastewater) to undergo pressure testing every five years, but regulators make an exception for natural gas storage wells.
Critics contend the pressure-testing exemption is an example of long-standing coziness between regulators at the California Department of Conservation and utility managers. The federal government mostly leaves states to regulate underground gas storage.
“DOGGR, until this point, has been incredibly docile. They presume a company will work in a responsible manner and fix wells when they spot a problem,” said Gene Nelson, a physical sciences professor at Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo.
A set of state emergency regulations took effect early this month that requires operators to check each gas well’s pressure daily and report any anomalies to the state. But the temporary rules stop short of full pressure testing.
The permanent regulations will be changing soon, said Jason Marshall, chief deputy director of the Department of Conservation. The reforms could require pressure tests every five years, according to a draft released in January. Last updated in 1984, the underground controls were already under review before the leak struck in October.
Exemptions for natural gas storage wells are “past history,” Marshall said in an interview. “We’re fixing the past.”
Pressure testing isn’t a cure-all
While important, pressure testing isn’t a panacea, said Paul Bommer, senior lecturer in the Department of Petroleum Engineering at the University of Texas, Austin. He remembered pressure testing a well successfully, and practically the next day corrosion ate through casing and caused a leak. At older wells — SS 25 was originally drilled in 1953 — the most revealing test would be a “casing inspection log,” Bommer said. Operators can measure the thickness and condition of a well’s interior with ultrasound and other technologies.
That type of testing is expensive. In a 2014 regulatory filing, SoCalGas said it would cost $390,000 per well for a weeklong process, including pressure and corrosion tests. Pressure testing alone requires specialized equipment and operators.
The gas company did not respond to questions about pressure testing. It is unclear if the company performed any pressure tests on SS-25 that were not reported to the state. In an earlier statement, a spokeswoman said it monitors pressure gauges weekly.
“SoCalGas operates in compliance with relevant regulations, which are set up to ensure the public safety,” company spokeswoman Melissa Bailey wrote in an email.
On Wednesday, state regulators listed all the tests SoCalGas must conduct to resume injecting gas at Aliso Canyon, including pressure testing the wells.
This story has been changed to reflect the proper category of injection well California requires to be tested.
inewsource is partnering with the Los Angeles Daily News to cover the methane leak near Porter Ranch.
Pretty sad that “industry standards” are not being met. Industry standards are very likely well below what the public would consider prudent standards. These high pressure tests should be annual at a minimum, considering the catastrophic result of a failure. Five years seems to me to be way to infrequent.
“Governor Jerry Brown…”fired two officials who had sharply slowed down the process for issuing new drilling permits. He followed that with the year-end appointment of Tim Kustic as the chief drilling regulator —“a geologist who knows the industry,” says Rock Zierman, head of the California Independent Petroleum Association. Occidental Petroleum CEO Steve Chazen gave Brown a nod at the company’s fourth-quarter conference call in January: “We are pretty encouraged by the way things are going now. . . . The governor is very pro-jobs.” City Journal Summer 2012. http://www.city-journal.org/2012/22_3_oil.html
We have similar problems with our nuclear reactors and nuclear waste. For example, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approves thin spent fuel nuclear waste canisters that cannot be inspected, repaired or monitored. We will only know after a radiation release. A Diablo Canyon nuclear waste canister was found to have all the conditions for cracking in a 2-year old canister (temperature low enough for ocean salts to dissolve and start the corrosion cracking process). The NRC said it takes about 16 years for a crack to grow through the container wall once the crack starts. At San Onofre, canisters have been loading since 2003. That means we could potential have a major radiation leak in about 6 years. Instead of dealing with this problem, the Coastal Commission approved the installation of more of these inferior canisters, requiring Edison to promise they would eventually figure out how to resolve these problems sometime in the future, which isn’t even realistic. Even the Holtec canister manufacturer says these thin canisters cannot be repaired and even a microscopic through-wall crack will release millions of curies of radiation into the environment. Edison doesn’t even have provisions in place to deal with leaking canisters. The Coastal permit should be revoked until after these issues are resolved. The real solution is for Edison to procure thick metal dry storage casks (10″ to 20″ thick) instead of the 5/8″ thin-walled canister they plan to procure. That’s what most of the rest of the world uses, including Fukushima Daiichi. The California Public Utilities Commission still needs to approve the funds for the new Holtec canisters. That case is pending with Judge Bushey and Commissioner Florio. Each of these canisters holds about as much radioactive Cesium-137 as was released from Chernobyl. Edison has over 50 canisters loaded and plans to load over 85 more. In Edison’s estimated cost for spent fuel management they are ignoring the cracking issue and have no funds allocated to replace or mitigate canister problems. Learn more at SanOnofreSafety.org