as much of the drilling fluid as possible because it’s expensive. However, due to technology limitations, much of the drilling fluid remains on the rock particles. In fact, as Stan explains, “there’s enough fluid on the waste that it behaves like a fluid, picture wet cement being poured for a sidewalk.” “Therefore, the oil and gas company needs to dispose of what is now a toxic and fluidic waste, but it can’t be disposed of in an ordinary municipal landfill. Because oil base muds are primarily made from diesel fuel, the waste needs to be stabilized before it can go to an industrial landfill.” But how abundant is this waste stream? According to Stan, “nearly every shale gas or shale oil well that is drilled in North America is using oil base muds in either the vertical or horizontal section, or both sections in many cases.” Those wells, he says, are producing anywhere between 200 tonnes to 1500 tonnes of oil based drilling waste, so “when you consider there are 10,000 wells drilled in a given year, you have millions of tonnes of drilling waste soaked in diesel.” “What’s truly eye opening is every tonne of that waste contains one barrel of recoverable diesel. That means millions of barrels of diesel are going to landfill every year and as a commodity – and that diesel has an inherent value, if it can be recovered.” Beyond the lost value, Stan also explains that diesel biodegrades in landfills and contributes significant volumes of greenhouse gasses. An independent study from ‘Life Cycle Associates’ has shown that every tonne of drilling waste contaminated with diesel THE CONSTRUCTION SOURCE CANADA Drilling Waste in a Class II Industrial Landfill
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