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AOGCC asks for Class I disposal well primacy Agency already regulates Class II disposal wells; long-term goal to have only one class on North Slope Kristen Nelson Petroleum News Editor-in-Chief
Alaska is making two efforts this legislative session to gain state primacy. In addition to National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit primacy (see story in Feb. 27 issue of Petroleum News), the state is also going after primacy to regulate oil and gas related disposal wells.
A bill in the Alaska Legislature would give the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which already regulates the majority of oil and gas related disposal wells, authority to apply to the Environmental Protection Agency to acquire primacy over Class I wells.
AOGCC Commissioner Dan Seamount told the Senate Resources Committee Feb. 28 that “if we were to obtain this primary, then we would have oversight over all oil and gas related waste injection wells in the state.”
The state already had primacy over Class II wells, one type used for “waste that is generated by oil and gas operations” for disposal down hole and the other type for enhanced oil recovery.
Seamount said two agencies, EPA and the commission, are basically performing the same job now, regulating injection of oil and gas related waste. The Class I wells regulated by EPA are “supposed to protect underground sources of drinking water,” Seamount said, but there are “no underground supplies of fresh water on the North Slope where there are oil and gas operations.”
Legislative approval is the first step; the EPA would then have to approve AOGCC taking primacy. Seamount said EPA supports the change in primacy, but doesn’t see a legal way to do it. AOGCC has formed a taskforce with EPA, and passage of the bill will allow the commission to continue working with EPA to achieve Class I primacy.
The Safe Drinking Water Act created five classes of disposal wells, one of which is no longer legal, and at one time, Seamount said, there was a move for the state to take over primacy of all disposal wells in the state.
The EPA doesn’t have a problem with that, he said, but the state is asking to add primacy for just one class of well, and the partial primacy is what EPA views are a problem. Seven Class I wells Alaska has seven Class I wells, all on the North Slope; there are 1,155 Class II wells, which the AOGCC already overseas.
Redundant programs cost the state and federal governments and industry money and time, Seamount said.
“There’s also confusion by the operators over what kind of waste is allowed to be disposed in … each class (of well), and there’ve been a lot of legal problems with that.” If AOGCC had oversight over both Class I and Class II wells, he said, there would be less confusion: well operators would be dealing with one set of experts and one set of inspectors.
The EPA has to send inspectors and engineers to the North Slope to watch the seven Class I wells. “We look at them anyway. We’ve got five inspectors, two fulltime on the North Slope,” and those inspectors check the Class I wells anyway, and “our engineers consult to the EPA on these wells and how they’re constructed.” Class I and Class II wells are very similar in construction, “so we could take over the program with very little additional expense,” Seamount said.
The best solution would be to have a single class of disposal well on the North Slope, Seamount said, but that would take a ruling by the EPA and a change in Alaska statute, and would take time. If that happened, he said, there would be less energy used for waste determination and tracking and less industry confusion. Industry, he said, spends a lot of time and resources “trying to figure out what kind of waste goes into each well. There is a lot of time put into that by EPA and AOGCC and industry right now.” AOGA supports legislation The immediate goal, however, is for the AOGCC to regulate both Class I and Class II wells.
Marilyn Crockett, deputy director, Alaska Oil and Gas Association, told Senate Resources that AOGA supports AOGCC primacy over Class I wells.
The seven Class I wells are operated by members of AOGA, she said, and AOGA supports Class I primacy being given to the commission because it “has the technical expertise to conduct the subsurface evaluations and the structural integrity … review that has to be conducted in permitting these … wells.”
She noted that AOGCC already provides “a considerable amount of technical assistance to EPA in its decision making on Class I wells…”
AOGCC has had regulatory responsibility for the Class II well program since 1986, Crockett said, and received “high marks” for its management of that program in a 2003 peer review of the program by the Ground Water Protection Council.
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