Open-FF1 has found many chemical disclosures that misreport concentrations of fracking sand and water in North Dakota. These errors seriously distort the chemical profiles of the fracking jobs.
We last reported sand-dominated disclosures from a company in Oklahoma. Here, we consider an operator fracking wells in North Dakota. As we pointed out in a recent post and shown in the first figure, the typical profile of fracking fluids is dominated by roughly 88% water, followed by 11% sand2 and the rest is chemical additives3. However, we’ve found many North Dakota fracking disclosures dominated by sand instead. In this post, we detail problem disclosures from Marathon Oil, operating in North Dakota.
As you can see from the next figure, most fracking jobs from Marathon Oil (empty circles) have sand percentages of about 10%. But for 34 disclosures (filled circles), sand makes up over half of the fluid4. As we outlined earlier, we believe these sand-dominated disclosures are an error. This fundamental error has ripple effects throughout the other records.
Summary values are shown in table at the bottom of this post and fracking jobs are mapped here5:
FracFocus Support has informed us that they are preparing an alert to companies about these sand-based issues.6 We hope the Marathon will correct these disclosures to reflect the actual percentages and masses used in those fracking jobs. Without accurate disclosures, FracFocus is not a trustable instrument. Open-FF monitors changes to FracFocus and we will update this post if Marathon Oil modifies these disclosures.
Disclosure list
Below is a list of the North Dakota fracking disclosures for the company, Marathon Oil, that have sand percentages greater than 50%. Click on the API Number to view the FracFocus disclosure for that fracking job.
| APINumber (and link) | County | job end date | Sand PercentHFJob |
|---|---|---|---|
| 33061048000000 | Mountrail | 2021-05-01 | 97.8 % |
| 33025009570000 | Dunn | 2023-01-02 | 74.3 % |
| 33025009060000 | Dunn | 2023-01-03 | 63.6 % |
| 33025043820000 | Dunn | 2023-01-05 | 70.7 % |
| 33025007920000 | Dunn | 2023-07-07 | 76.3 % |
| 33025045800000 | Dunn | 2023-07-23 | 72.5 % |
| 33025045810000 | Dunn | 2023-07-24 | 73.3 % |
| 33025045900000 | Dunn | 2023-07-24 | 73.2 % |
| 33025045930000 | Dunn | 2023-08-26 | 72.2 % |
| 33025045960000 | Dunn | 2023-08-27 | 72.3 % |
| 33025045970000 | Dunn | 2023-08-28 | 75.5 % |
| 33025008510000 | Dunn | 2023-08-29 | 75.8 % |
| 33025045940000 | Dunn | 2023-08-30 | 75.7 % |
| 33025046380000 | Dunn | 2023-09-13 | 72.1 % |
| 33025046360000 | Dunn | 2023-09-13 | 72.4 % |
| 33025046370000 | Dunn | 2023-09-14 | 74.9 % |
| 33025046390000 | Dunn | 2023-09-14 | 74.9 % |
| 33025046400000 | Dunn | 2023-09-26 | 71.8 % |
| 33025046420000 | Dunn | 2023-09-27 | 72.2 % |
| 33025046430000 | Dunn | 2023-09-28 | 75.0 % |
| 33025046410000 | Dunn | 2023-09-28 | 76.6 % |
| 33025047020000 | Dunn | 2023-11-10 | 71.1 % |
| 33025047010000 | Dunn | 2023-11-10 | 74.8 % |
| 33025047030000 | Dunn | 2023-12-05 | 70.6 % |
| 33025047530000 | Dunn | 2023-12-05 | 72.5 % |
| 33025047040000 | Dunn | 2023-12-06 | 71.4 % |
| 33025047060000 | Dunn | 2023-12-06 | 71.1 % |
| 33025047210000 | Dunn | 2023-12-06 | 71.2 % |
| 33025047050000 | Dunn | 2023-12-06 | 70.8 % |
| 33025047180000 | Dunn | 2024-01-10 | 67.5 % |
| 33025047150000 | Dunn | 2024-01-11 | 67.5 % |
| 33025047170000 | Dunn | 2024-01-11 | 68.8 % |
| 33025008290000 | Dunn | 2024-02-20 | 84.9 % |
| 33025047220000 | Dunn | 2024-02-20 | 84.2 % |
- Open-FF is a public service project to foster better understanding of fracking chemicals disclosed at FracFocus. See the Open-FF home for more information and links to resources. ↩︎
- The CASRN for sand is
14808-60-7and is commonly called “crystalline silica, quartz” in FracFocus. ↩︎ - We’ve been told that foam-based carriers, that appear in about 2% of FracFocus disclosures, may tolerate more sand. These disclosures use carbon dioxide or nitrogen gases to replace a substantial fraction of the water carrier. None of the disclosures in this report use those gases. ↩︎
- The data for this analysis is from the Open-FF data repository created from a FracFocus bulk data download on July 18, 2024 ↩︎
- Click on colored circles with numbers to zoom in to individual well. Clicking on the marker provides more information. ↩︎
- Email to Gary Allison, August 1, 2024. ↩︎
Photo citation: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2020. (modified by author)
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