Groundwater methane in relation to oil and gas development and shallow coal seams in the Denver-Julesburg Basin of Colorado.

ABSTRACT: Unconventional oil and gas development has generated intense public concerns about potential impacts to groundwater quality. Specific pathways of contamination have been identified; however, overall rates of contamination remain ambiguous. We used an archive of geochemical data collected from 1988 to 2014 to determine the sources and occurrence of groundwater methane in the Denver-Julesburg Basin of northeastern Colorado. This 60,000-km(2) region has a 60-y-long history of hydraulic fracturing, with horizontal drilling and high-volume hydraulic fracturing beginning in 2010. Of 924 sampled water wells in the basin, dissolved methane was detected in 593 wells at depths of 20-190 m. Based on carbon and hydrogen stable isotopes and gas molecular ratios, most of this methane was microbially gen

SUBMITTER: Sherwood OA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4968736 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature