Oil in my friend's well water. Is she rich?

Factual Questions
21

But a lab would just confirm what I already know, which is that the water has oil in it. That’s not in doubt. And just to reiterate, the area is isolated and rugged, so the oil is not coming from surface contamination or a pipeline.

My question is more for a geologist. Does oil in the water imply a significant deposit nearby? Or could it just be seepage (say, from nearby shale) without necessarily involving a significant pool?

engineer_comp_geek didn’t give his qualifications (except insofar as his username implies them) but his post is the type of information I’m looking for. (And I am assuming, perhaps wrongly, that engineer_comp_geek is a “he.”)

I fear my friend’s dreams of a CEment pond are going to be crushed.

22

And no, the well is nowhere near the septic tank. Not much of a petroleum smell that I’ve noticed (though my sniffer is not very good). Just a thin sticky film on the dishes after they dry, and some rainbowing when the water runs across a dark surface. It’s not like black blobs of tar are coming out of the faucet.

23

Oh, and to answer an earlier question, the water has been like this for ten years, since the well was first drilled.

24

An “oily sheen” could also be insecticides.
Or toxic waste, perhaps dumped illegally (a very common practice, now that the Mob has gotten into it).

Or somebody grabbed a big bunch of old, used gas station underground tanks & improperly disposed of em by burying them on the land. Perhaps the previous owner?

So, no.

Until you have it analyzed, you don’t know if it is crude oil or not.

25

Bosda, I am going to make this as plain for you as I can, without giving you a map to the property:

NO ONE HAS ACCESS TO THE AREA AND IT HAS BEEN IN ONE FAMILY FOR 35 YEARS. THERE ARE NO DUMPS, BECAUSE NO ONE COULD GET TO IT TO DUMP THERE. THERE ARE NO PIPELINES. THERE IS NO TOXIC WASTE. THERE ARE NO INSECTICIDES. IT IS OIL.

Now unless you have some information on geology, please hush.

26

As Bosda di Anagram alludes to here, it may well be, not that her well has access to a hitherto-undiscovered oil reserve, but rather that it’s being polluted by runoff seepage from someone’s industrial or service-station operations. Your state’s Department of Environmental Affairs (I think there are 48 different names across the 50 states, but you’ll know what I mean for your own state) can do some simple testing.

If that proves to be the case, you bring in an environmental law firm as consultant, to write up the case using the amazingly arcane language of environmental law, threaten suit, and negotiate a settlement, and an environmental engineering firm for testing to give them the documentation they need.

And then she’s a rich woman.

27

Having failed to preview and seeing the continued discussion… such seepage can migrate a long way “downgradient” (which does not necessarily mean downhill). Having the state check it costs nothing … and is IMO important for her protection, if that is in fact the case.

28

Fair enough, we’ll go with that assumption, though you might eventually be surprised. Surface oil seeps are not uncommon in certain areas of the country, and, historically, have been used as indicators of where to drill. It didn’t always work. I grew up in the original “oil boom” area in NW PA. The presence of oil floating on the aptly named “Oil Creek”, originating from natural oil seeps was what prompted Drake to drill where he did, but plenty of dry wells have been drilled practically on top of seeps. Here in CA, there are many oil seeps. Portola state and Pescadero county parks in the Santa Cruz mountains, in particular, have them. One small creek is called “Tarwater”, and a ranger at Portola once mentioned to me that they had their large creek checked after some visitor reported a sheen on the surface, and verified that it was caused by a natural oil seep. Historically, some drilling was done in the Santa Cruz area, but most of California’s productive fields were further south, down around Lompoc.

I would guess that natural leakage into aquifers probably occurs, too. Unfortunately, it may just screw up the water quality without indicating the presence of a commercially expoitable petroleum resource, as suggested by earlier posters.

29

Sigh.

The nearest service station is more than three miles away, and downstream (as drainage patterns go). In fact, the cabin is downstream from nothing. Springs originate on the property and flow down and away from it.

The cabin is high on a ridge, at the end of a dirt road. It borders on roadless government land. No one is dumping there because no one can get to it without either driving a truck past my friend’s cabin or taking a seven mile hike through dense and trackless woods lugging a barrel of toxic waste on their back.

I hope that is enough information for everyone to realize that this is NOT a case of contamination.

If it helps you, ASSUME it’s not contamination, and that there is oil in the water. Does anyone have any specialized knowledge of geography? Does the oil imply a deposit?

On preview, thank you yabob, for your thoughtful and informative answer.

30

Geology, I meant.

31

Oh, and the closest service station (3 miles away) is also “downgradient” as per Poly’s post.

Y’all will have to trust that I am familiar with the geography, and somewhat with the geology, of this area (including water patterns both above and below ground). There are no significant industrial sites upgradient. Upgradient there is a large tract of roadless forest on a ridge.

32

Well not to knock you, but you really do need to get in touch with actual environmental engineers for a Phase 1 Assessment (or Environmental Due Diligence Report). How can I say that? I’m with the Ombudsman Office of a State Environmental Department near you. Although I am not your state ombudsman.

My agency, in all it’s infinite wisdom, is built on top of a hazardous waste site. The underground plume here reaches for miles and miles, floating on top of the groundwater, right where private wells are dug. Now, the land was fallow for nearly 50 years before before our purchase. But before that it was a prison where lots of industrial activity occurred before environmental regulation was legislated.

Here’s a good place to start : http://www.gaepd.org/Documents/hwb.html - Specifically the **State of Georgia Environmental Protection Division’s Generator Compliance Program ** at *Phone: 404.657.8831 * or Fax: 404.463.6676. Or the **Watershed Protection Branch ** at *Phone: 404.675.6232 * or Fax: 404.675.6247.

33

My brother’s a reservoir engineer in the oil business. I’ve picked up a couple of things from him. Firstly, do get the well checked out for contamination as the others have suggested. This stuff is floating on the water, which means that it is going to migrate uphill through the water table until it comes to impermeable rock. Secondly, if there is oil there, it doesn’t mean that it’s economic to extract.

In the interim, I suggest getting a large butt or tank with a tap at the bottom and filling that with water. When she needs water, draw it from the bottom of the tank, and periodically skim off the oil floating on the surface.

34

So you’re suggesting a food binge and enema? :eek:

35

There is one other thing that can cause an oily sheen on natural sources of water (and I’m surprised nobody else has mentioned it) - fats from the decomposing bodies of animals that have fallen into the water and drowned. So look on the bright side! it might not be mineral oil at all!

36

It is entirely possible it is oil, however the presence of oil in an aquifer does not imply there is a suitable trap.

Oil (so the current theory goes) is generated in shales and general gunky slime laid down under anerobic conditions (no oxygen). The slime and gunk is buried and compacted and movered around and hopefully heated up. If the rock ( known as source rock) is buried under the right conditions the organic matter will be cooked up into an nice healthy hydrocarbon mixture.

This will them migrate upwards following what ever path it can through permeable rocks.
If you are lucky it will enter into a formation which is porus - sandstone and limestone formations are typical. But not only does it need to be porus, it must have a seal that prevents the oil moving on up. Examples of a seal would be a imperameable shale cap rock, a sealed fault boundry or a salt layer.
(oddly enough the seal rock for most of the north sea oil is the kimmeridge clay, which is also the source rock. The source rock ends up above the reservoir and becomes the seal due to all maner of faulting and rocks being thrown up and down).
(should you be in the UK and go down to kimmeridge bay in the south coast, the kimmeridge clay is at surface, it smells bad.)

If there is no seal then the oil will keep moving until it exits. If it does hit a seal , you may well get an oil accumulation and mr and mrs hillbilly can place an order for that ferrari assuming the accumulation is worth while, the cost of drilling down to the reservoir is acceptable and the permeability of the reservoir will allow production rates to recoup the upfront investment before the interest rates kill you.

If what you have in your water is oil and is not contamination from somewhere else, then there is indications you have a source rock feeding the area.

The problem is finding a good trap. As mentioned by others above, the early oil fields in the US and azerbaijan were indictated by large accumulations at surface, so there certainly was a healthy source rock feeding the area, there were also local shallow traps. Hand dug pits , water skimming and shallow (75m) wells were all that was needed to extract it. Note these were source bubbling to surface, no a mild sheen in the water.
On another tangent - if you go and visit the mud volcanos just south of Baku, you will see cold water bubbling to surface with a sheen of oil. The caspian basin reservoirs that are left (and tehy are blinking huge) are mostly to be found offshore under some fairly challanging conditions to get to. The point of this tangtent is that there may be oil moving up , but it also moves laterally along the dip of the formations, so oil at point x may have moved form ponit y 150 km away.

In your case, the question remains - can you find a good sealed trap - and will it be large enough. Take a look around - are the rocks fairly well broken up, lots of ridges etc etc? As you are looking at oil which is already failrly shallow (I assume your well is not more than 100m deep) then you have to determine the possiblility of a formation with no natural faults/fissures and a good seal between you and the bottom of the well. My geuss would be that it is unlikley.

It is not an unusual occurance for oil to be produced but subsequently lost. I was working through a recent mass balance study of a reservoir basin. There were 2 good source formations, which had been cooked under the right conditions and a shallow marine environment had left large salt layers above for a good seal. Alas tectonics got in the way several million years back and heavily faulted and fractured the area and threw up a hill range as a by product. End result, a geustimate would be 97% of the hydorcarbons produced never found a good trap as the ground was folder and shifted around after they were produced. (the remain 3% is still a multi Tcf gas basin, but hey ho). IRRC Destin dome offshore florida was another area where the source rock was good, alas the reservoir and seal formed several million years too late.

So in short - if you have oil moving through, don’t get too hopeful, no sizable trap then no worthwhile accumulations. If you have a spare 10million to fund a drilling campaign, my advice would be to take it to vegas, you will get better odds.

On the contamination front, if you are up dip of a salt storgae for LPG or oil, these salt cavern have been known to crack and leak into acquifers. Do not under estimate how far this crap can travel. If you do nothing else, get it sampled, your best chance of getting rich is suing someone for groundwater contamination.

for the record I am involved in the oil industry exploration side of affairs which may or may not lend the above waffle with some credibility. Or not.

37

Thanks NaturalBlondeChap, for taking the time to give me a thorough and thoughtful answer. That’s exactly the information I needed.

And thanks to everyone else for info and suggestions regarding the possibility of contamination.

38

Since you put an :eek: there, I assume (pun fully intended) you’re being serious that you don’t know that butt has many meanings, one of which is a cask.

39

You… er… assume correctly. I figured it may have been some strange slip from “bucket” or something. So I guess I can change my :eek: to :o