http://www.oaoa.com/inthepipeline/oil_gas/article_6f3b31fe-7a82-11e5-9e15-c39d26e35ddc.html
Oil seepage threatens Monahans Draw
A year after discovery, cleanup continues
Posted: Sunday, October 25, 2015 8:00 am
BY COREY PAUL
Leaking oil from a lease atop the Monahans Draw raises worry of
contamination of the waterway, and more than a year into the
state-ordered cleanup effort the extent of the damage remains unclear.
Oil was discovered seeping through soggy earth on July 16, 2014, at the
oil lease in the 3200 block of Second Street, the western fringes of
Odessa city limits. There is little activity apparent on the land, a
tract home to litter such as deteriorating tires and adjacent to a yard
of scrap truck parts.
Today, the excavation site includes a pit roughly 12-feet deep that is
caked with what appears to be black crude on the walls and floor and
with an oily sheen on rainwater or runoff that pooled at the bottom.
Just east of the pit, the Monahans Draw becomes more visible with
vegetation growing alongside the waterway.
The Texas Railroad Commission, the regulator overseeing the cleanup,
estimated 270 barrels were spilled from a flow line connected to a more
than 40-year-old well owned by Austin-based Viejo Energy, according to
agency documents (Representatives of the Railroad Commission did not
respond to telephone and email requests for comment).
The initial leak stemmed from a flow line running from a well just north
of the site to a tank battery just to the south. And there is no
official explanation for what caused it.
But officials with the City of Odessa and the oil company say there
could be a separate source for the oil leak, which could be worse.
“They found the source of the surface leak,” said Jason Farnsworth, the
city’s Storm Water Program manager. He learned of the spill during a
routine inspection. “As they kept going, they kept finding more and more
and more. And that’s what this is, they are finding more and more and
more. They haven’t identified the source of what was on the surface, but
they haven’t identified the source of what is causing this to still leak.”
The spill was Farnsworth’s second such discovery near city property
since city administrators ramped up the program about a year and half
ago. The other discovery came earlier in the summer, when Farnsworth
found thousands of abandoned oil drums on Marco Avenue, where an
Environmental Protection Agency crew is continuing a multi-million
dollar cleanup.
Viejo Energy President Dick Schmidt said the oil company’s employees
discovered the spill at about the time of Farnsworth’s visit as they
tended to a nearby pumpjack.
“We are trying to get this all cleaned up and move on,” Schmidt said.
“This doesn’t help anybody.”
Viejo Energy bought the well that leaked, the Lyda Mae No. 2, in 2009
when the company acquired Momentum Energy Corporation, records show (The
company still operated under the name Momentum Energy Corporation in
West Texas today). The well, one of about 40 Viejo energy owns in West
Texas, still pumps about 30 barrels per day, Schmidt said.
Schmidt said the line leaked for “a couple weeks” after it was severed
on a weekend. He said a pumper, which is an oilfield worker whose duties
include monitoring surface gathering equipment, “should have discovered”
the leak sooner.
But Schmidt said the company believes someone on the surface severed the
flow line with a back hoe or other heavy equipment, after visiting with
other people in the area and examining the line. The company’s workers
since replaced the flow line with an above-ground line.
“It was clearly snapped,” Schmidt said. “It wasn’t like there was some
kind of corrosion or something like that. It was just snapped. It took a
tremendous force. It wasn’t like there was just someone out there doing
something. It would take a mechanical force to have severed it the way
it was severed.”
The state-mandated clean-up has cost more than $1 million, Schmidt said,
and he said the company or its insurance company could end up trying to
force whoever severed the line to help pay.
“But we are trying to take care of the oil that was leaked, because it’s
our oil,” Schmidt said. “So we are the responsible party. That’s what we
are doing.”
The clean-up crew tied to remove the oil with catawater, microbes that
essentially eat oil, but stopped because it did not work as well as they
hoped, Schmidt said.
Today, a berm surrounds the clean-up site that workers installed to
prevent storm runoff from escaping, but the reach of the oil spill
remains unclear. Other pipelines and wells surround the area.
City officials said initial tests at the spill site stopped at a layer
of caliche about a dozen feet below the surface. As clean-up crews kept
digging to remove oil, they found crude below the rock layer that is
still visible today.
City workers also tested parts of the Monahans Draw, but Farnsworth said
those tests also stopped at the “layer of resistance,” or rock layer,
like the initial tests by the oil company’s cleanup crew at the spill site.
So far, there is no evidence of a public health hazard or any
contamination of drinking water. The Monahans Draw is not a source of
city drinking water, even though it moves through the town and some
Odessans fish from it.
But the City of Odessa’s employees have found “trace amounts” of harmful
pollutants in a pond of the Monahans Draw about a half mile from the
site on the other side of Interstate 20, Farnsworth said.
Those pollutants, known as “BTEX,” an acronym for chemicals found
naturally in petroleum — benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes —
that in high enough concentrations carry risks such as cancer and damage
to the nervous system. But the source of those chemicals is unclear, and
finding out is complicated by most of the city pouring into the draw,
said Vanessa Shrauner, the city’s development coordinator.
“There are potentially thousands of sources, so to sit here and say it’s
from that is not fair,” said Shrauner, adding that identifying the
boundaries of the spill will represent “a huge step forward” in both
cleaning it up and determining the level of damage caused.
The Monahans Draw rises five miles north of Penwell in central Ector
County. From there, it runs east for 53 miles to its mouth north of
Interstate 20 in northeast Midland County.
During wet periods, such as the recent rains, the draw is a freshwater
marsh with oak growing along its banks.
“We want to make sure when these types of thing are found, they are
cleaned up as soon as possible to avoid any potential damage,” City
Manager Richard Morton said. “You can’t necessarily say this has caused
damage, but it shouldn’t be happening.”
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