A study of groundwater quality from domestic wells in the Sussex and Elgin regions, New Brunswick: with comparison to deep formation water and gas from the McCully gas field
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The exploration for shale gas in Canada has led to the identification of a huge volume of in-place and marketable natural gas with the potential of supplying clean burning fuel for many decades. However, some controversies exist on the technique used to unlock these new riches; that is hydraulic fracturing from high-pressure injection of slickwater, a mixture of water, chemicals and proppants (sand) in order to create and keep open small fractures in the target shale. The Carboniferous Frederick Brook shale and the overlying Hiram Brook sandstone in southern New Brunswick are identified as promising sources for shale gas. Preliminary evaluation of in-place resources by one operator in the Moncton sub-basin suggests 67 Tcf of natural gas in their acreage. At the McCully gas field, there is production from one vertical well in the Frederick Brook shale but most of the production is from tight sandstone of the Hiram Brook Member. Initial exploration specific to shale gas has led to high expectations but inconclusive results. In the same period, societal concerns about the risk of groundwater contamination from shale gas exploration activities have increased significantly in New Brunswick. The Geological Survey of Canada, in collaboration with eastern Canada provincial stakeholders has initiated a four-year research project (2011-2015) designed to evaluate the potential of natural connectivity between the deep-seated shales and the shallow groundwater. In 2012-2013, the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of New Brunswick carried out a sampling program of 26 water wells from the area around the McCully gas field near Sussex; the operator of the McCully gas field provided gas and brine samples for chemical and isotopic comparison. This gas field has experienced multiple hydraulic fracturing events in vertical wells for the development of the tight sandstone gas reservoir from 2000 to 2008. The research program consisted of field measurements (pH, redox and alkalinity) as well as groundwater sampling for isotope analyses (18O and 2H) and inorganic chemistry, measurements of dissolved hydrocarbons (methane, ethane and propane) and isotope analyses (13C and 2H) of dissolved methane. Methane from the gas field was isotopically characterized as well as the inorganic chemistry of the brine. The McCully brine has concentrations of Na, Cl and Br that are hundreds of times higher than that of shallow groundwater. Concentrations of K, Ca, Mg and SO4 are also higher than those of shallow groundwater; from its chemistry, the brine is likely derived from seawater and comparison with shallow groundwater does not indicate mixing. Gas produced at McCully is methane (91 -- 94%) with ethane (2 -- 6%) and propane (0.1 -- 1%). Isotopic analyses of the methane suggest a thermogenic origin. No ethane or propane was measured in the groundwater and methane was detected in 3 domestic wells. Concentrations are very low (0.01, 0.11 and 1.17 mg/L); the 3 samples are outside the McCully gas field area. Two of these samples had enough methane for isotopic analyses, one suggestive of a thermogenic origin and the other is enriched in 2H that could be related to oxidation of methane.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".