MANDAN, HIDATSA AND ARIKARA NATION, BAKKEN ENVIRONMENTAL ACCESS RESEARCH SITE

The Marcellus Shale Energy and Environmental Laboratory (MSEEL) in West Virginia has demonstrated that cooperative research on a shale gas play leads to greater understanding of risks and reduction in uncertainty. The Fort Berthold Reservation, home to the Mandan-Hidatsa-Arikara (MHA) Nation lies within the Bakken Formation, an area of tight oil production. The MHA Nation is interested in understanding the potential environmental impacts of Bakken wells in their Nation and is in the early stages of establishing a field research laboratory similar to the MSEEL, -the Bakken Environmental Access Research Site (BEARS). The BEARS facility will conduct in-depth scientific and engineering investigations to determine how chemicals from Bakken development might enter the environment, and their fate and transport. The focus is on fluid migration, leaks, and remediation. The BEARS will also emphasize indigenous science research frameworks and methodologies where possible and appropriate. Non-industry researchers who wish to collect environmental field data on shale wells are constrained by lack of access, however; the MHA Nation controls the land and access to the well sites on the reservation. The BEARS will be managed and operated by the MHA Nation, and tribal authorization will be required for outside researchers to access the facility. The MHA Nation invites collaboration from university, government, and other researchers, and non-sensitive data collected from the site will be shared publicly, similar to MSEEL. The BEARS will be located within a small watershed that has not been previously drilled and the site will be representative of Bakken production in terms of pad size, layout, configuration, and spacing. The location will have shallow groundwater aquifers that are typical for the area, characterized, and not being used for nearby domestic water supplies and will also not be downwind of any major air quality impacts such as gas plants. An air-drilled, vertical science well will provide formation water samples, drillstem core, logs, and microseismic monitoring sites in the target formation, and be used as the tophole for a short lateral placed above the Bakken Formation to monitor for a tracer emplaced with the frac fluids. Post-production monitoring is expected to continue for five years or more.