Experts to Highlight Impacts on Groundwater from ‘Fracking’ and New Advances in Risk Assessment

Industry experts from Parsons Brinckerhoff (USA) will tomorrow address an audience of leading groundwater specialists on the likely effects of unconventional gas exploitation (fracking) on the quality of availability of groundwater, and new advances in risk assessment for hydrocarbons in groundwater.

The Groundwater 2014 conference in London on Thursday 15 May is a leading international event at the forefront of debate in the groundwater and geotechnical sectors. It provides a comprehensive overview of the regulatory environment affecting the risk assessment and remediation of groundwater, along with practical solutions to ensure quality and sustainability.

This year’s conference will highlight advances in risk assessment, identification of new pollutants, better modelling of flood risks and the implications of unconventional gas exploitation.

Focusing on the increasingly topical issue of unconventional gas exploitation, Dr Russell Thomas, technical director of Parsons Brinckerhoff’s specialist environmental business and Professor Robert Kalin from the University of Strathclyde, will be speaking about new research they have been collaborating on in the field of unconventional gas.

The research is examining a ‘bio-geo-engineering’ approach for the environmental management of shale gas and coal bed methane. This innovative new research is aimed at understanding the nature of those organisms which inhabit coal measures and shale plays and how they could be utilised to improve the environmental performance of new gas extraction methods and their impacts on groundwater.

Considering the technical challenges in groundwater risk assessment for hydrocarbons, Duncan Cartwright, principal hydrogeologist and head of groundwater risk assessment at Parsons Brinckerhoff, will also highlight tips on overcoming challenges in this area.

Cartwright will examine a number of technical challenges encountered when completing detailed quantitative risk assessments and provide some insight into practical techniques that can be utilised to overcome them and reduce ‘conservatism’ in the modelling while complying with regulatory guidance.  These types of assessments increasingly allow challenging sites to be remediated and brought back into beneficial use in a cost effective and sustainable way.