An Environmental Crisis Triggered by Oil Exploitation

Apr 17, 2013

On March 26th, 2013, the Guardian presented a news report attracting the global spotlight that the Peruvian government located in Amazon Forest suddenly declared the environmental state of emergency in a part of its northern Amazon Rainforest because the oil exploitation of Pluspetrol, an Argentine oil company, resulted in excessive pollution to local land by lead, chrome, barium and oil-related compounds.

The declaration arose from the discovery of Peruvian Ministry of Environment through testing in February and March that lands in different regions of Pastaza Valley contain excessive pollutants related to oil exploitation, such as lead, chrome, barium, etc. In the process of oil exploitation, the drilling waste is a kind of mixture composed by drilling sewage, drilling fluids ( drilling mud ), drilling cuttings and dirty oil, which is a sort of rather stable colloidal suspension containing clay, weighting materials, various chemical agents, sewerage, dirty oil, cuttings, etc. Main environmentally hazardous chemical compositions include hydrocarbons, salts, a variety of polymers and heavy-metal ions, as well as sundries and asphalt in barite, which feature high chroma, high oil, high COD, high suspension, high salinity, etc. and play the part of primary pollution sources generated in the oil exploration and exploitation. Where there is a completed well, there is an abandoned mud pit. If there are thousands of wells at an oil or gas field, there are thousands of abandoned mud pits. Each mud pit has a capacity of drilling waste up to hundreds or thousands of cubic meters. Once the waste stacked or buried at well sites is soaked in rainwater or is eroded by the river, the soluble inorganic salts, heavy metals and organic hydrocarbons ( oils ) contained in the waste will bring grave environmental risks to surrounding soil, water source, farmland and air.

Bordering on Peru and Ecuador, the Pastaza River Basin has been always serving as the homeland of Achuar and Kichwa, Peruvian aboriginal tribes. For decades, the natives have complained about the pollution, but the government failed to solve the issue. A Peruvian official said that the State had no necessary environmental quality standards over the years.

In order to fill in the system gap, a new law enacted by Peru on March 25, 2013 specified the acceptable standards of soil pollutants for the first time, which was deemed as a crucial progress. By the law, Peruvian Ministry of Environment demanded Pluspetrol to clean up the polluted areas within 90 days so as to reduce pollution risks to the local residents.

As the largest oil and gas producer in Peru, Pluspetrol took over the Peru Oilfield from Occidental Petroleum in 2001 and neither side cleaned up the pollution then. In recent years, Pluspetrol has been fined millions of dollars, including 11 million dollars ( approximately equivalent to 68.32 million CNY ) fined for its failure to clean up the oil spill in the largest national park of Peru in January. Peruvian Ministry of Environment said that they would also perform environmental detections on other well sites of Pluspetrol.

Environmental protection pains for the moment and gains for the millennia. Nowadays, many countries legislate against the worsening global environment and expect to protect the environment by law. As a high-pollution industry, the oil exploitation must seek out a new production pattern to balance environment protection and benefits.

Based on the aforesaid market demands and combining the experience and practices in waste management at home and abroad, KOSUN launches an integrated waste management solution that starts with the source along the drilling waste generation process: use drilling fluids solids control equipment to purify mud and separate solids at the source, dewater the discharged waste to minimize its water content, conduct water treatment and recycling, utilize Hi-G shale shaker and vertical cuttings dryer for further dewatering and solid-liquid separation to minimize the waste discharge, and apply solidification, biodegradation, thermal desorption and cuttings reinjection to the discharged waste for a reasonable and effective treatment on the drilling waste.