cleveland.com
By Jake Zuckerman
May. 04, 2024
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Injection wells owned by an Ohio state senator leaked fracking waste deep underground in Noble County before blasting through the surface miles away at an oil well, warranting a $1.3 million cleanup effort.
The state paid to remediate the mess in January 2021, but it hasn’t asked state Sen. Brian Chavez’s Deeprock Disposal Solutions for a dime to cover the costs. Instead, state regulators billed the owners of the idled production well that the brine used as a chimney to reach the surface before contaminating nearby land and water.
State ethics forms show Deeprock is owned by Chavez, a Republican appointed to the seat in December. He owns several oil and gas companies, and reported investments in several others.
In June of 2021, Gov. Mike DeWine appointed Chavez to serve on the Oil and Gas Commission, a panel of five commissioners that considers appeals of ODNR’s orders against the industry. Chavez represented “major petroleum” until his appointment to the Senate.
That same year, brine from Deeprock injection wells shot out of the ground like a busted sprinkler head.
On Jan. 5, 2021, state records reflected that Deeprock Disposal Solutions acquired two wells housing brine – the toxic, sometimes radioactive byproduct of fracking operations – at high pressure, thousands of feet underground. At that point, their brine already had reached at least three production wells over the prior decade, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
Mere weeks after the transfer, on Jan. 24, a production well owned by West Virginia-based Genesis Resources began spitting out brine at rates reaching 42 gallons per minute, threatening to reach two nearby rivers and a creek. It took ODNR officials and contractors days to plug the leak. Records show officials removed more than 362,000 gallons of liquid from a nearby stream and that 450 fish, salamanders, frogs and other nearby animals died.
The Genesis well hadn’t produced oil in years. Ohio Environmental Protection Agency reports, obtained in a public records request, state that “Genesis Resources was not engaged in the response and had departed the scene.”
This was but one of five well incidents of Deeprock’s brine discharging from nearby production wells between 2010 and 2023. The releases occurred 1.5 miles northeast of Deeprock’s injection wells, and as far as 5 miles southwest. The state’s permits for those wells allow for it only to leach into the ground within a half-mile radius.
Two years after the Genesis blowout, EPA officials determined another production well a few miles away was “releasing oilfield brine into a nearby intermittent stream.” Only then did ODNR suspend Deeprock’s operations and formally attribute the five spillage incidents to its operations.
Instead of Deeprock, the department in January 2023 ordered Genesis to pay back the $1.3 million the state spent on remediating the 2021 well blowout. Genesis argued that Deeprock made the mess and should pay to clean it up. Lawyers for both the company and an insurer suggested ODNR was negligent in permitting the injection wells in the first place.
ODNR, in response, said it’s “legally irrelevant” where the brine came from. What matters is that the brine came up through Genesis’ abandoned oil well like a straw, without which it couldn’t have surfaced. If Genesis thinks this is Deeprock’s fault, the company can always file a lawsuit.
As required by state law, Deeprock posted a $15,000 bond and has provided certificates of insurance totaling $15 million in coverage, ODNR said.
Many in the rural area of southeast Ohio rely on private wells for drinking water. ODNR spokesman Andy Chow said there’s no reason to believe water has been contaminated, and there are no mapped groundwater wells within a half-mile radius of the affected production wells. ODNR, he said, isn’t aware of any ongoing monitoring. But Dave Yoxtheimer, a professor at the Penn State College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, said the pattern of spills should warrant water testing of nearby private sources.
“I’d want my water tested if I lived within a mile or so,” he said.
Chavez declined to be interviewed or answer specific questions about the incidents. He offered a statement via a Senate spokesman.
“As an expert in the field, a former member of the Oil and Gas Commission, and as a responsible operator, public and environmental safety are paramount to Senator Chavez,” the statement reads. “From petroleum engineers to the welders on a platform, these hard-working professionals have families who also want clean air and water, despite what radical political activists and today’s media want you to think. This industry is needed now more than ever, as it responsibly generates reliable and affordable energy that the so called ‘green energy’ political lobby cannot.”
Leaks
Fracking – technically known as hydraulic fracturing – entails spraying high volumes of a mixture of water, sand and chemicals to free methane from shale thousands of feet underfoot. The process produces “flowback” brine as a byproduct, which can pick up some of the radioactive elements from below. This toxic brew needs to be either treated or properly disposed of.
There are 250 Class II injection wells in Ohio, each housing millions of gallons of brine at high pressure underground. Basic physics and geology explain the splashy episodes. If there’s fluid underground injected at very high pressure, it naturally wants to go toward the low-pressure conduit of the production well.
“The surprising part to me is that they’re allowing injection at high enough pressure that you’re seeing fluids migrate miles away, which is a pretty large distance for an injection well,” said Yoxtheimer, the Penn State professor.
While Ohio law requires production well owners to plug their wells after they’re done producing, the Genesis well in question is but one of the estimated tens of thousands in the state that are no longer being used to produce oil or natural gas and for the most part are considered abandoned.
On Jan. 3, 2023, ODNR formally ordered Genesis to reimburse the state for $1.3 million in cleanup costs. Six days later, ODNR suspended Deeprock’s operations given the history of its brine discharges. But in somewhat contradictory fashion, the agency didn’t seek money from the company.
“Certainly, if you read between the lines, that would appear to be what ODNR is saying: you guys [Deeprock] caused the problem,” Yoxtheimer said. “But on the other hand, we issued you a permit that allows you to cause the problem.”
Appeal
When asked why ODNR is both blaming Deeprock for the mess but asking someone else to pay for it, Chow said “based on Ohio law, that’s who we sought reimbursement from.” He didn’t specify which law.
Genesis appealed its case to the Oil and Gas Commission in February 2023, which has not yet issued a final ruling. In June 2023, the commission voted 4-0 in denying a request from Genesis to pause ODNR’s $1.3 million reimbursement order as it considers the appeal. Chavez recused himself.
By December of that year, Chavez left the commission to begin working as a senator. Genesis has since alleged that ODNR has refused to turn over documents regarding its issuance of permits to Deeprock, and its investigation that led them to blame Deeprock for the spilt brine. Genesis questioned whether ODNR was negligent in awarding the permits, or failing to warn nearby well owners of the potential dangers.
“One of the great mysteries here is why the state is pursuing us so hard and apparently not going after Deeprock,” said Kevin Maloney, a Genesis attorney, in an interview.
ODNR argued that all that matters is that Genesis failed to plug its well when it stopped producing oil. And that well leaked brine. Genesis can sue Deeprock in court if it wants, but ODNR said its job is to get the most proximal party to clean up the mess.
“Genesis, instead, simply points the finger and nearby injection wells and argues that if the leaked brine originated from those wells, it cannot be liable for any subsequent issues at its own,” ODNR lawyers wrote.
Appointed
Chavez earns at least $100,000 per year from both Deeprock and Utica Assets LLC, ethics forms show. He also reported earning between $50,000 and $100,000 from Deep Rock Investments LLC, and the same from serving as a vice president of Condevco. And he owns at least $1,000 each of common stock in Devon Energy Corp, Diamondback Energy, Halliburton, and Marathon Petroleum.
He appeared on a recent podcast hosted by Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman and his press team. Chavez said he took over a business started by his in-laws, operating 400 vertical oil and gas wells.
Speaking to the senate president, he downplayed risks of climate change, noting that while gas emits carbon dioxide, so do humans while breathing or opening a can of soda. Carbon dioxide in the air, he said, is no bad thing.
“In fact, when we go back and look at the historic time, the reasons why the dinosaurs were so big is because there was a lot more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the earth was warmer,” he said. “The plants were bigger. They didn’t have to work so hard so survive. They were big. The earth is always changing, and it’s something that we need to be able to understand, and not just point fingers and look at short term solutions, or short-term manufactured crises.”
