Stettler Alberta faces frac contaminated water supply

STETTLER, Alberta – A warning by Health Canada was issued today for the town of Stettler, Alberta. The warning comes after the revelation that a locally-owned petroleum exploration company, Bahmeensno Resources, has contaminated the town’s drinking water though the process of hydraulic fracking.  The contamination of the groundwater is thought to be extensive and has begun showing up in buttermilk slough, near the industrial-area of the small Alberta town.

Bahmeensno Resources is a small PNG operator with only one small field of focus.  However, the company has none of the typical exploration staff, and largely comprises farmers and Junior A hockey players.  The development plan was to follow the KISS principle, and simply get oil out of the ground to market.

We don’t need no damn rock sniffers or enginerds planning this out for us.  We know there is oil in there somewhere and all we need is enough time to find it.  With these new fracks and cracks we were just going to drill in a nice pattern and then BANG!  Bust that shit up.  We still don’t think it’s our problem that the water table got screwed up.  Wasn’t us.  We were drilling and fracking at least 100 feet underneath the well on Jonesey’s ranch, no way we could have hurt anything. – Jake Smithereens, CEO of Bahmeensno

Bahmeensno Resources drilled 31 horizontal wells at an average target TVD depth of 130 meters.  Without any official approval from the AER, it also remains to be seen if they will be penalized for drilling without licenses or government approval.

The wells were completed with multi-stage 21-23 tonne fracture completions, which undoubtedly caused massive damage to the local water supply.  Many of the chemicals used in the completions were left over from old fertilizer plants, tailings from copper mines in northern Ontario, and fluids from an old textile mill near Lethbridge.

We have no idea where the reservoir is, we just kept drilling new horizontal lengths, we went in every direction, even up in an attempt to find the damn oil!  We never did see any traces of oil, but I would not have expected any that shallow.  When we brought in Sanjel to run the multi-stage fracking operation they were amazed the company was still planning to frac the well. – John Cummingtonite, Well Site Geologist

 

I`ve never seen anything like this in my 2 years of working in the oilfield, the core samples that have been examined contained mostly clay, and non-porous rock. There are no indicators of hydrocarbons, but they still want to spend another few million fracking this duster of a well. – John Dumper, Pump Your Hole Energy Services

 

While the environmental and sustained damage to the water supply are obvious, residents are also concerned about the aesthetic damage to Buttermilk Slough.  A popular local venue for events such as marrying your sister or celebrating the birth of a horse, Buttermilk’s recreational appeal may be washed away by the brown sludge floating on the surface.

In response to local outrage, Bahmeensno has presented its opinions on new and useful things to do with the contaminated ground water.  They suggest that there may be no more need for soap in residents’ showers or laundry, and that the water can now be used as an industrial solvent around farmyards in the area.  They have even gone so far as to suggest the water is more valuable now that it has more in it than just plain old water.