Which sites have so far been hydraulic fractured (fracked)

The request was partially successful.

Lorraine Inglis

Dear Oil and Gas Authority,

In this website http://www.ukoog.org.uk/onshore-extracti... it indicates that around 2,000 wells have now been drilled in the UK, with about 10% of them having been hydraulically fractured.

Could you please provide the list of drill sites/areas that you include in this 10% of being hydraulically fractured.

Many thanks

Yours faithfully,

Lorraine Inglis

OGA FOI requests,

Dear Ms Inglis,
 
Thank you again for your email of 27 July 2017, which has been designated
FOI-2017-0049, and please accept our apologies that it has not yet been
answered.
 
This falls short of the standards we normally set ourselves.
 
Please be assured that our officials are continuing to work on this case
and a response should be sent to you soon.
 
Yours sincerely,
 
Strategy Directorate
 
Oil and Gas Authority is a limited company registered in England and Wales
with registered number 09666504 and VAT registered number 249433979. Our
registered office is at 21 Bloomsbury Street, London, United Kingdom, WC1B
3HF.
 
For information about how we process data and monitor communications
please see our Data Protection Statement and for terms of use please see
our Terms and Conditions, both available on our website.
 
 

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OGA Correspondence,

1 Attachment

Dear Ms Inglis

 

Please find attached the OGA’s response to your e-mail of 27 July.

 

OGA Correspondence

 

 

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Dear OGA Correspondence,

Thanks for your response.

1) Could you please advise as to where I can go for the information of these 200 wells that are considered fracked.
2) Please explain why these drill sites, where they used well stimulation techniques, would not be recorded as hydraulically fractured when HF uses particular chemicals and vast amounts of water? This would surely entail particular permits from the EA and other regulatory bodies. Please advise as to why OGA would not have these permits recorded for each drill site?
3) Could you provide the OGA's definition of 'systemically recorded' indicated in your response.
4)Please provide the date when well stimulation did become subject to specific consent due to increased public interest.
5) Please provide the date that the first well stimulation of onshore wells began.
5) Please explain, if the Infrastructure Act 2015 defines hydraulic fracturing with the amount of water and depth, how can the UKOOG use a quote from the Royal Society from 2012 and claim that approx 200 wells have been fracked? If the definition of fracking is amount of water and depth, would it be correct in saying these a majority of these 200 wells would not be currently classed as being fracked.

Many thanks

Yours sincerely,

Lorraine Inglis

OGA Correspondence,

Thank you for your email which has been received by the OGA.  We will
respond where appropriate as soon as we can, and aim to respond to
relevant enquiries within 10 working days.

 

 

OGA Correspondence,

Dear Ms Inglis
 
 
Many thanks for your email of 21 September, in follow up to our response
to your FOI request, we will answer this as ordinary business and respond
to each of your questions in turn:
 
 
1) Could you please advise as to where I can go for the information of
these 200 wells that are considered fracked.
 
As previously explained, hydraulic stimulation is just one part of the
drilling of a well, and references to it are frequently encountered in the
well reports for the 2000+ historic wells.  These technical reports are
available for purchase from the OGA's Data Release Agents:
[1]https://www.ogauthority.co.uk/media/2430....
The historic well records can also be viewed on microfiche at the OGA's
Aberdeen office if appointments are booked in advance.  See "Data viewing"
on our website
[2]https://www.ogauthority.co.uk/data-centr...
 
You may be interested in a recently published academic paper where these
archives were evaluated specifically to try to find references to historic
hydraulic fracturing and then compared it to historic seismicity.
[3]https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1VfZ6_KxN... As this paper was just
recently published, anyone who clicks on the link until October 23, 2017,
will be taken to the final version of your article on ScienceDirect for
free, after that time a fee will be charged.
 
In addition, some of the historic Field Development Plans which are freely
available on [4]www.UKOGL.org.uk site have references to historic
hydraulic fracturing. These are found in the “Industry Activity Reports”
section of the website.
 
2) Please explain why these drill sites, where they used well stimulation
techniques, would not be recorded as hydraulically fractured when HF uses
particular chemicals and vast amounts of water? This would surely entail
particular permits from the EA and other regulatory bodies. Please advise
as to why OGA would not have these permits recorded for each drill site?
 
Firstly it is important to note that it is not true to say that fracking
always uses “vast amounts of water.” Questions about EA permits should be
addressed to the Environment Agency
([5]https://www.gov.uk/government/organisati...) – the
OGA does not maintain a database of EA permits.
 
3) Could you provide the OGA's definition of 'systemically recorded'
indicated in your response.
 
As previously described, hydraulic stimulation was one of many well
stimulation wellsite operations which were considered to be normal
activity and did not require any special approval.  The operations were
occasionally mentioned in operations reports,  end of well reports and
field development plans.
 
4) Please provide the date when well stimulation did become subject to
specific consent due to increased public interest.
 
Hydraulic fracturing required specific approval from the OGA since the
first shale well was high-volume hydraulically fractured, Preese Hall 1 in
2011.  See the information on our website, “Resumption of shale gas
exploration” 
[6]https://www.ogauthority.co.uk/exploratio... which
describes steps taken to evaluate hydraulic fracturing operations and the
introduction of new regulatory requirements.
 
5) Please provide the date that the first well stimulation of onshore
wells began.
 
There is a Egmanton Field Development Plan report on the UKOGL charity
site which mentions that the field had a frack in 1957.
 
5) Please explain, if the Infrastructure Act 2015 defines hydraulic
fracturing with the amount of water and depth, how can the UKOOG use a
quote from the Royal Society from 2012 and claim that approx 200 wells
have been fracked? If the definition of fracking is amount of water and
depth, would it be correct in saying these a majority of these 200 wells
would not be currently classed as being fracked.
 
The 2015 Act necessarily defined that type of hydraulic fracturing that is
relevant to the Act’s provisions, but there is no suggestion that it
imposed a redefinition of fracking as a technical term for other purposes,
nor does it call into question the validity of reports written several
years before which may have used different definitions. Any questions
about the Royal Society’s report should be addressed to its authors.
 
I hope that this answers your questions to your satisfaction.
 
Yours sincerely,
 
Strategy Directorate.
 
 
Oil and Gas Authority is a limited company registered in England and Wales
with registered number 09666504 and VAT registered number 249433979. Our
registered office is at 21 Bloomsbury Street, London, United Kingdom, WC1B
3HF.
 
For information about how we process data and monitor communications
please see our Data Protection Statement and for terms of use please see
our Terms and Conditions, both available on our website.
 
 
 
 
 
 

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