CHRONIC
POLLUTION TOXIC DRILLING FLUIDS
Royal
Dutch Shell, like every other oil company, uses tons and
tons of additive and auxiliary substances to enable oil and gas
drilling — drilling muds and drilling fluids among them.
Some of this material can be very toxic, especially when mixed
with oil and gas, or with the "production waters" that
come to the surface during drilling. Some of the chemicals used
can also be changed chemically during drilling due to heat, pressure,
and/or interaction with other compounds. For years, much drilling
waste was simply discarded in the environment, left in pits or
evaporation ponds at land-based operations, and discharged to
the sea at offshore operations. Little of this waste — known
as exploration and production waste, or "E & P"
waste — is regulated, even in the US. Globally, the annual
oil industry discharge of E&Pwastes is about three million
tons. As a leading player in the E&P business, Shell’s
share of this discharge is considerable. True, some changes have
begun to occur with offshore drill cuttings, now brought to shore
for proper disposal. Still, with drilling fluids, there is a re-maining
and significant environmental problem. For the last 75 years or
so, Shell has been using some fairly standard — and toxic
— substances to enable its drilling. Chief among these are
barite and syn-thetic drilling oils. Barite, in reaction with
other substances, and due to changes during drilling, becomes
barium, a toxic substance. Barite, however, is no small business.
Sold by Halliburton and other oil service companies, it is a $500
million annual global market. But barite isn’t the only substance
that can do the job. In fact, there are some neglected existing
alternatives available that are environmentally safer, more productive,
and cheaper to use.
"Tell
Shell"— He Did
I note that Shell operations created around 450,000 tonnes of
hazardous waste in 2001, and most of this waste was drilling fluids
and cuttings contaminated with oil and toxic heavy metals. When
I was with Shell Research in The Netherlands I helped develop
a novel ecological drilling fluid system based on formate brines.
Shell rarely uses this exciting technology, but these benign and
biodegradable formate brines have been widely used by other oil
companies through-out the world over the past 8 years, and they
have been particularly useful in reducing the amount of hazardous
wastes created by drilling operations. Agip’s use of formate-based
drilling fluids in the environmentally-sensitive Barents Sea is
a fine example of how formates are being used to great effect
by a responsible oil company to minimize the environ-mental impact
of its drilling operations. Fortuitously, the use of formate brines
as drilling fluids also appears to result in spectacular increases
in oil and gas production - so there is a clear financial reward
to be gained from using these ecological fluids. Given Shell’s
commitment to "finding new ways to reduce the environmental
impact of its operations", why are Shell operations not using
their own formate brine technology to reduce the volume of their
hazardous waste production?
Yours
sincerely, John Downs 25 July 2002
2nd Letter, different Shell forum, same day
Every
year the oil industry uses some 3 million tonnes of a toxic heavy
metal (barium) in its well drilling fluids. Shell researchers
showed as long ago as 1960 that common components of drilling
fluids can solubilise the barium, creating a hazardous waste.
Much of this hazard-ous drilling waste containing solubilised
heavy metal ends up being discharged into our environment. Despite
having developed an ecological drilling fluid technology to replace
barium, and professing a desire to reduce the environmental impact
of its operations, Shell is still a major user of barium in its
drilling operations worldwide. I would like to open up a debate
about whether Shell is ethically or morally justified in continuing
to use large volumes of barium in its drilling fluids when it
has a cost-effective and ecological alternative technology, in
the shape of its patented formate brine system, readily available
but largely unused by the Shell drilling community.
Yours
sincerely, John Downs (As of late August 2002, Mr. Downs had not
received a reply from Shell to either letter).
Nearly
15 years ago, in fact, in 1987, two enterprising Shell scientists
working at The Hague came up with better and safer drilling fluids.
They discovered that sodium formate brine and potassium formate
brine could serve as very effective drilling fluids. This was
a significant discovery, and Shell patented their work product.
But it wasn’t until 1993 that Shell first tested a sodium
formate brine at its Draugen field in offshore Norway. Shell did
little with its new invention from that point on, as most of the
scientists who developed the new fluids left Shell. John Downs,
one of those former Shell employees who developed and advocated
the formate brines, became involved at a company named Cabot to
develop the languishing fluids. Downs then licensed the technology
from Shell, and began selling the for-mate brine technology to
Shell’s competitors including BP, ExxonMobil, TotalFina,
and others. Shell, however, was still not using its own in-vention.
Instead, it continued to use what some have called "stone
age" drilling fluid technologies known as the Di-Pro and
Brine-Drill systems. All of this prompted Downs — frustrated
with Shell’s history of non-use of its own better and safer
product — to avail himself to the "Tell Shell"
web page to make his story public. In late July 2002, Down’s
wrote two letters, in different forums, to the Tell Shell web
page. Click here to see them.
To
date, Mr. Downs has yet to receive a reply from Shell. Part of
the reason, he speculates, is that Shell has no one competent
enough to reply, as all the scientists and technical staff that
once worked on the formate brine project have left, with Shell
now relying on contrac-tor services to deal with things like drilling
fluid. What Down’s has received, however, are queries from
within the Shell empire from engineers and project managers wanting
to know more about Shell’s own drilling fluids. Meanwhile,
Shell’s competitors are reaping the benefits of safer and
more productive drilling fluids. Agip, the Italianoil company,
has successfully drilled exploration wells in the envi-ronmentally-sensitive
Barents Sea with the new fluids, which cost Agip half the price
of the synthetics. Shell, however, continues to use its 75-year-old
drilling fluids, pro-fessing to the public that it is working
hard for a "sustainable future" — but actually
doing little in the present, at least in drilling fluids, to change
its polluting practices.
In the Gulf of Mexico, for example, where Shell is a major player
with hundreds of rigs, barium pollution is occurring daily. But
only a few hundred miles away from most of these Shell rigs are
the large-scale formate brine production plants of Texas, which
now classify their formate "side-streams" as waste,
shipped out for disposal. Royal Dutch Shell may be projecting
a good image with its "sustainable development" rhetoric,
magazine ads, and CEO speeches. Yet when it comes to the actual
execution on these promises, and making obvious improvement on
practices right under their noses like drilling fluids, there
appears to be a big gap between talk and action. If Shell can
let a proven, better technology like the formate brine drilling
fluids languish for nearly 15 years, what else hasn’t it
brought forward?
For a copy of the book send e-mail to info@shellfacts.com
