The Ohio Department of Natural Resources announced Friday afternoon a halt to operations at an injection well in Youngstown.
The well is located on the D & L Energy Group's Ohio Works Drive property, and D & L CEO Ben Lupo said he and his company are in full cooperation with the state.
The area surrounding the well has experienced 10 low-level seismic events over the past eight months, including one on Christmas Eve, according to a release by the ODNR. All of the quakes have been centered around a brine injection well on land where U.S. Steel's Ohio Works once stood.
While conclusive evidence cannot link the seismic activity to the well, ODNR Director James Zehringer has adopted an approach requiring prudence and caution regarding the site, the release states.
“Our top priority is the health and safety of the public and the protection of Ohio’s natural resources,” said Zehringer. “We are going to make sure this process is done right and won’t hesitate to stop operation of disposal sites if we have concerns. And while our research doesn’t point to a clear and direct correlation to drilling at this site and seismic activity, we will never gamble when safety is a factor.”
Lupo said the ODNR called the company about 9 a.m. Friday and asked them to shut the well down and cooperate with the state on some tests they were doing to determine what was causing the earthquakes. The testing will begin Jan. 6 and should last about a week, Lupo said.
"The test will include a radioactive dye test to show where the radioactive beads are going. It'll show every place in the open hole that we have where the water is going. If it's going where it's not supposed to go in the precambien formation, that is a zone that we are not permitted to put water in, and that is a zone that could cause some possible quakes," Lupo said.
Lupo said until the tests are completed, the company will plug off the bottom 100 feet of the well for safety purposes.
"So that we can prove if there is another earthquake, it's not being caused by us," he said.
The Class 2 injection well is owned and permitted by Northstar Disposal Services, of Youngstown.
Following a series of low-level seismic events this year in the area surrounding the Youngstown injection well, ODNR invited Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory to position four seismometers in the area to capture more detailed information about seismic activity, the release states.
“Information freshly obtained from the Columbia University scientists, and further analyzed by ODNR geological experts, indicates that an earthquake occurred on December 24 approximately two miles below and within a mile of the injection site,” said Zehringer. “As a precautionary measure we’ve reached agreement with the well’s owner to halt injections until we are able to further assess and determine any potential links with recent seismic events.”
So far this year ODNR’s seismic monitoring network has documented 10 seismic events occurring in 2011 within two miles of this injection well. Each of these events registered at 2.7 magnitude or lower. Generally, only earthquakes that register above 4 magnitude are known to cause surface damage. As a relative measure, a 4 magnitude event would release approximately 40 times the energy of a 2.7 magnitude event.
ODNR spokesman Andy Ware said deep wells have been operating in Ohio since the 1970s. Regulatory oversight was turned over to Ohio regulators from the EPA in 1983.
Ware said there are currently 177 deep wells operating in Ohio and this is the only one where they have seen seismic activity.
Lupo said these are issues he's never dealt with before.
"We have approximately 1,000 wells between Ohio and Pennsylvania and we've never had a problem where we've had protestors or were shut down by the state of Ohio. We do have other disposal wells that we've had for 20 years and never ever had a problem with an earthquake or spill or any problems whatsoever," Lupo said.
See the chart below for the earthquakes recorded in the Youngstown area.
** Earthquake information taken from the U.S. Geological Survey
