This timeline shows the accidents and spills that have occurred in the US between April 2009 and September 2013.
2009
2010
2011
In October 2009 in Hopewell Township, Pennsylvania, a spill of fracking fluid into a water body resulted the death of fish. Pennsylvania regulators fined the company responsible $141,175. In September 2009, residents of Dimock, Pennsylvania experienced three spills of fracking fluid totaling more than 8000 gallons. The spills entered a nearby creek and the
operators were fined $56,650 by Pennsylvania regulators. In April 2009 in Caddo Parish, Louisiana seventeen cattle were found dead near a drilling site. Louisiana regulators concluded that fracking fluid leaked from the well pad and ran into an adjacent pasture. The private companies involved were reportedly fined $22,000. In April 2009 in Foster Township, PA, drilling activities impacted at least seven drinking water supplies. According to a report by the Tyndall Centre “Stray gas became evident in wells and residents complained. Two of the affected water supplies contained methane and five had iron and manganese above established drinking water standards. After investigating, the Pennsylvania Department for Environmental Protection found that the stray gas occurrence is a result of 26 recently drilled wells, four of which had excessive pressure at the surface casing seat and others that had no cement returns.”
40 Fracking: What’s The Evidence?
In June 2010 EOG Resources had a blowout in Pennsylvania well that reportedly discharged 35,000 gallons of fracking fluid into a state forest. The firm said in a statement that “at this time, EOG believes that any impact to area streams and springs and to the environment is minimal.”
2012
2013
In July 2013, XTO Energy – a division of ExxonMobil – reached a settlement with US regulators to pay $100,000 and spend millions to upgrade existing facilities after a 2010 spill of toxic wastewater in Pennsylvania. They are now being sued by Federal government. The U.S. Department of Justice claims XTO Energy allowed flowback fluid and wastewater byproduct to reach water supplies. The complaint from the Department says that “flowback fluid and produced fluid contain brine, proppant, hydraulic fracturing chemicals, dissolved solids, heavy metals and radionuclides.”
In September 2013, more than 40,000 gallons of oil and an unknown amount of waste drilling water leaked from sites in Colorado last month because of floods that killed eight people and damaged nearly 2,000 homes. The incident meant a visit to Noble Energy’s site by the UK Minister for Energy and Climate Change, Greg Barker, had to be rescheduled.
The State of New Mexico has reportedly documented 700 cases of water contamination from waste pits linked to the oil and gas industry. A map of fracking accidents has been made by Earth Justice, however the data in the map has not been verified by Greenpeace. The Case Against Fracking 41