Stochastic Assessment of Groundwater Contamination Risks From Onshore Gas Development Using Computationally Efficient Analytical and Numerical Transport Models

Regulators require the gas industry to assess the risks of unintentional release of chemicals to the environment and implement measures to mitigate it. Industry standard models for contaminant transport in aquifers do not explicitly model processes in the unsaturated zone and groundwater models often require long run times to complete simulation of complex processes. We propose a stochastic numerical-analytical hybrid model to overcome these two shortcomings and demonstrate its application to assess the risks associated with onshore gas drilling in the Otway Basin, South Australia. The novel approach couples HYDRUS-1D to an analytical solution to model contaminant transport in the aquifer. Groundwater velocities and chemical trajectories were derived from a particle tracking analysis. The most influential parameters controlling solute delivery to the aquifer were the soil chemical degradation constant and the hydraulic conductivity of a throttle soil horizon. Only 18% of the flow paths intercepted environmental receptors within a 1-km radius from the source, 87% of which had concentrations of <1% of the source. The proposed methodology assesses the risk to environmental assets and informs regulators to implement measures that mitigate risk down to an acceptable level.

Automated summary

This study proposes a stochastic numerical-analytical hybrid model to assess the risks associated with onshore gas drilling in the Otway Basin. The model couples HYDRUS-1D with an analytical solution to simulate contaminant transport in the aquifer. The results show that only a small portion of the chemicals reached the environmental receptors, with concentrations below 1% of the source.