The new EPA regulations make the US completely dependent on fracking moving forwards.
Next on their agenda is to shut down fracking, which unlike CO2 represents an actual environmental hazard.
Disrupting the Borg is expensive and time consuming!
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Absolutely agree. Fracking will be a disaster environmentally particularly with its effect on water supplies. If we are to transition properly it needs to be an energy source that doesn’t endanger our water supply.
What do you mean “will be”? They have been fracking for decades. My drinking water is fine.
In related news Morgan’s drinking water is nowhere near a gas well.
Skeptic claims fracking impairs drinking water without knowing fracking has been used for drilling drinking water wells for decades.
Hi Steven, sorry for the questions, but what are the environmental hazards posed by fracking? My brother-in-law works in the industry and says it’s all safe.
Anytime you drill through the water table you open up potential paths for water contamination. Fracking is causing very high density drilling all over places like northern Colorado. Some gas fields have wells every 100 yards. There will be a percentage of accidents which contaminate water supplies.
As a chemist with many years of ETP experience I would say it is mostly safe. Not much in fracking fluid that can do harm, and a bit of treatment would fix that quite well, like some Al or Fe flocculation. RO would be complete overkill.
We have more of an issue with CSG drilling here in Oz. The coal seams are much shallower, so the water table issue is more valid. CSG is extremely controversial here and creates all sorts of protests.
Interesting. I thought the general consensus was that fracking was cleaner/better than coal. My brother-in-law gave me this website to look through which makes a pretty compelling case: http://www.thinkaboutit.org
Fracking may or may not be a problem, but they have already targeted CO2 which is not a problem. reality has nothing to do with the EPA.
When a company drills through the fresh water tables they drill with fresh water at a very light weight that doesn’t cause penetration or intrusion. (just like drilling water wells) If there was intrusion they would immediately know by loss of fluid. In areas where they have drilled 10’s and 100’s of wells, the engineers know exactly the pressure needed to protect fresh water zones and drill without penetration.
Once they have drilled past water tables a couple thousand feet…they set steel casing with concrete. Once set, they pressure up the pipe and concrete to check for leaks. Again they know immediately if there is a problem.
Any gas or oil that is produced is usually about a mile below any fresh water zones and are protected by multiple layers of casing and concrete., .
Like others have said, fracing has been taking place since the 1950’s and the science behind it is amazing.
After spending 10,000,000 on a land well, these companies take great care not to screw up a well.
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Its quite hard to get an entire nation to agree to sit in the dark. Obama has genius. Strange evil genius, but yes, genius.
You are, in my opinion, misreading the “War of the Insane Left” (my term), long prepared and touched off by the last President Bush’s gross inadequacies and mistakes in office. Obama has only the liberals’ desire for revenge (and continued political hegemony over the widely and falsely demonized Republicans) to sustain him, and to hold his fragmented base together. A genius’s lies would be difficult to uncover; Obama’s have always been blatant, but his followers, as members of his cult of “hope and change leadership”, are thoroughly deluded and simply drink whatever kool-aid he smoothly presents them. I knew him exactly for what he was–a man without any true character, who would lie to the American people about anything to protect himself–from the Rev. Wright episode in the 2008 campaign. The reason so many are so deluded is because they have been taught from youth to take sides between the Democrats and the Republicans, that that is the only game in town. With the succession of hack partisan Presidents over the last 50 years, while the country has been at the height of its wealth and power, and spoiled thereby, the electorate is long addicted to the “Washington game” over the real needs of the country and its individual citizens. It’s a gigantic version of the kids’ game, “Capture the Flag”, with few if any real rewards for the cheering fans. And there is not a country in the world good enough to honestly lecture the US; that is how really bad it is, in the world not just this country. A house divided, all the way down…
There are hazards with everything but the claims against fracking are exaggerated. It’s under the spotlight and this will result in the industry being more cautious and more risk averse, which is good. It has been, can be and will be done safely. New processes are being developed to replace water with propane or even that evil CO2 and these, albeit more expensive techniques, can be used where the availability of water is a concern or where water disposal might lubricate faults.
My point is that fracking is much more of an environmental hazard than CO2, which the EPA is already targeting. It is inevitable that they will go after the gas industry next.
I’d say if they go after the gas industry it will be over methane which could also be a dangerous emission.
Methane! A dangerous emission? Why don’t we just place a cup over your ass and stop you from farting then Skeptic? You’re no better than a bloody greenie hippy.
A REAL truth seeker would know that human ass methane isn’t the problem. It’s ground hole methane that will kill humanity.
I’m sorry everyone else but these fracking denialists drive me mental.
How f#$king stupid are you Skeptic? Everyone knows that both carbon emissions and methane emissions are completely natural. How the f#@k would ground hole emissions be any different than human ass emissions? Neither are a problem. Except for the fact that they stink. Like your arguments.
Try sticking to REAL facts you frack-lover. If we drill too many holes in the earth it’ll become like a lump of swiss cheese. Ever tried to water a crop with swiss cheese? That dog won’t hunt.
The greenhouse effect is a scientific lie. The real threat of fracking would be the possibility of compromising or damaging underground water resources, either the large aquifers many depend upon, or the general availability of water very near the surface, characteristic of the verdant areas of the globe, that sustain the trees and grasses so widely distributed. I assume those who defend fracking know something I do not, that that real threat is quite negligible. For myself, I don’t trust any expert in the earth and life sciences anymore, since I know there is a general incompetence in those sciences due to ignorance of the past worldwide reformation of the Earth, by deliberate design; the present paradigm of undirected evolution of the Earth, and all the life on it, is a false one.
re: harrydhuffman (@harrydhuffman) June 22, 2014 at 2:56 pm
The greenhouse effect is a scientific lie.
On this same basis, little “h” harry should also declare water vapor to be ‘ineffective’ in ‘capturing heat’ (as they seem to put it) up to the point where it is also “a scientific lie.”
Sadly, he would be wrong on that point as well.
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The record on fracking so far has been really good. If you visited most of the places where fracking has occurred you would have to hunt for the well heads and nobody is complaining about real water problems. At least Pennsylvania and Louisiana have always had problems with methane in the water before anybody was thinking of drilling for oil or gas. Videos of burning tap water have been found to be faked. One man in Pennsylvania who claims that everything including plutonium is in his water has had it tested three times and been approved by the EPA. The EPA.
Methane breaks down quickly in the atmosphere to carbon dioxide and water. The amounts released are ridiculously small. The real danger is improperly constructed and approved wells. I’ve seen estimates that say one in ten has cement problems. Improved regulation is already in the works. Perhaps budget disrupting fines and jail time are also in order?
Methane gas is the oncoming next scare tactic from the government and environmental groups. Worldwide, they are losing the CO2 battle. So don’t expect informed citizens to jump on that bandwagon. Most of us don’t live in fear of what we are doing to the atmosphere because we see the fraudulent science behind every government scare and we observe the weather over time. I want to see the wasted billions spent on real pollution problems, not enriching the pockets of already wealthy politicians and their cronies.
I think that has already happened, my gas bill has gone way up. Supplier charges.
CO2 emissions represent zero hazard and certainly benefits the biosphere. Fracking (frac’ing?), like most mining and extractive industry processes, theoretically imposes some environmental risk but the rewards far outweigh the risks. Unfortunately, the risks of fracking have been blown all out of proportion.
There you have struck gold; we now have a risk-averse country mis-guided by a risk-averse president (who isn’t grounded in reality to start with) and administering risk-adverse federal regulatory agencies who believe only unicorns and fluffy bunnies are legitimate sources of energy.
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Because of fracking, the US has reduced CO2 emissions equal to twice that of the actual results of the Kyoto Protocol for the rest of the world.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/project_syndicate/2012/09/thanks_to_fracking_u_s_carbon_emissions_are_at_the_lowest_levels_in_20_years_.html
Looks like the scare campaign from the anti-frackers is still working on some folks.
You know the EPA is going to go after fracking. But first they had to kill off the coal industry.
Steve,
It’s just the same with health in the UK. Ban smoking in work, in public buildings, in public open spaces. E-cigarettes come along place the same bans on them. Then move onto fast-food and sugar. Red meat and dairy products nex in the firing line.
Then move onto protecting those with allergies (there are two members of my family gluten intolerant and one with a peanut allergy) so we’ll just have a total ban on gluten, peanuts and eggs, that should sort the over population issue.
The population issue is already sorting itself out. Look up the fertility rates worldwide by country. Western civilization is going to disappear over the next 100 years. World population will peak around 2050. By 3000 there will be a rapid decline in the number of humans, especially Europeans. Remember we need a fertility rate of 2.1 to sustain a population at current levels. The worldwide rate is currently 2.5 and falling. Without the high birth rates in Africa and some Asian countries we would already be in decline.
Even a mini-ice age in the coming years will result in faster declines just as we are now mostly feeding the current world population. That will be from starvation induced by drought and productive land not getting enough warmth and sunlight. Warmists will be praying and tithing heavily to their Gods, world governments, for warmth to no avail. Quite the bright picture, huh.
Even some educated skeptics can’t seem to grasp that Obama and his cronies want to turn this country into a poor, 3rd rate, country by doing whatever it takes.
It’s to do with his Muslim faith. Most Muslim countries are poor, so Knobama wants the U.S. to follow suit.
As Morgan states, the oil industry has been fracking for decades. In all modern oil and gas wells, whether fracking is contemplated or not, aquifers are protected by heavy steel pipe lining the hole. The pipe, called casing, is cemented in place. If installed correctly, the cemented casing prevents produced fluids (including but not limited to fracking fluids) from entering any aquifer through which a well is drilled. The breaking of oil or gas producing shales is done at depths well below any aquifer containing fresh water. There are multiple impervious sediment layers which prevent gas from the fracked shales from reaching an aquifer. Used fracking fluid is disposed of in deep, permitted injection wells. Properly conducted, the process is environmentally sound. Of course, humans are involved so problems will occasionally occur. The casing, cement bond may weaken, allowing fluid through. This can be fixed by squeezing additional cement into the bond. Casing can crack, but an easy fix exists in the form of a patch. The biggest problem has been hot dog operators in the Northeast improperly disposing of fluids. I think this problem is lessened as the industry polices itself, and states new to the industry adopt regs modeled on those in Texas and Louisiana, where fracking as a secondary recovery method has taken place since the 50s.
Very good explanation!
That last comment was for truthseeker, not the other patriots in this feed.
Hydraulic fracturing has been done for over 50 years. To make the argument that one well out of thousands might contaminate the fresh water is like making the argument that car accidents kill people unless we limit the speed limit to 10 mph. Since I have designed and implemented hydraulic fracture operations for nearly 40 years please be aware of a few facts.
1) It is physically impossible to have a fracture height grow much more than 3 to 5 feet per barrel per minute of injection rate. The maximum rate one can pump is around 100 bbl/min due to pressure limitations and friction losses. Fresh water is seldom found below 1000′ from the surface and most fracture stimulations are 5000′ or deeper.
2) Hydraulic fractures are pumped through at least 2 casings of high strength steel, sometime more whose capacities are well known and design parameters after pressure testing seldom exceed 80% of the burst capacity.
3) The fracturing fluid contains chemicals that are no more toxic than what you have under your kitchen sink.
4) In the event of a casing failure it takes me less than 10 seconds to become aware of the failure as the pressures required to pump into a shallow horizons are significantly less than the pressure required to put the fracture where I want. It then takes me less than 10 seconds to shut down the pumping and less than 2 minutes to begin flowing back what I have pumped. Therefore any contamination of fresh water is minimal and what little could have entered is flowed back out as rapidly as possible in order that the fracturing proppant does not accumulate in the well that is time consuming and costly to remove.
5) Finally for Sceptic-Why would I want to spend a million dollars in order to produce gas and not assure that the treatment goes where I want?I have a high motivation to make sure the fracture goes where I want for capitalist reasons which in this case is completely compatible with the agenda to protect fresh water horizons, that don’t make me any money.
Been fracking wells for years you do know that after the water table we case with a short string then after cement a pressure test’s we drill ahead after TD run the long string cement pressure test’s then purffe then frack ! People should learn before bleating like sheep 🙁
Good thing accidents never happen.
Point out one fracked well that did anything to the water table just one ? =-O
Good informative (mostly) discussion about the topic here. I just hope that each participant is listening to the other side. The issues can be addressed if the EPA is reigned in on the CO2 and methane business. Otherwise, discussion and/or agreement is futile. We are all going down.
From a governmental point of view, and totally besides any issues of water contamination, fracking has one great advantage. Power plants that run on coal can easily stockpile enough coal to run for months; all you do is dump it in a big pile. Weather effects are relatively negligible. On the other hand, if you effectively shut down coal — either through excess regulation, or simply by undercutting its price — then the electrical power of the US is now under your control. Power plants cannot stockpile enough natural gas to make a difference. All you need to do is send one small team to shut down the pipeline feeding the generating plant, and it stops generating.
“As President of the United States I wish to reward my friends and punish my enemies, so I — uh, what I mean is that “under my authority as President of the United States and in view of the severe winter in several northern states, I am ordering that the limited natural gas be shut off from certain uses in the south-western section of the US and be redirected to the suffering citizens of Michigan and Illinois.”
People will love all the things politicians do until it affects them directly in either reduced standard of living, which is occurring now, or more money out of their pockets. It is all about power and control. People need to realize the worst oppressor of human beings throughout history has been governments. The more power a government obtains the more oppressive it must become to retain that power. Hence the solution the politicians love, franking, will eventually become the problem. Coal and nuclear are already being treated this way. Fracking is next on the hit list.
The comments are debating the merits and risks of fracking, which is meaningless. That’s the debate the powers that be want us to have because it’s not the real issue. It simply doesn’t matter if fracking has serious risks or not. So long as it has the perception of causing environmental harm that is good enough. The aim is to restrict energy for the sake of political power. Less energy means more power for the ruling class and its political class. All energy sources will be targeted until the masses can afford none.
I have long said that if tomorrow there was a zero-point device that could be manufactured such that it would sell for $10 it would be labeled an environmental hazard and banned, quicker than anyone can imagine.
Cheap affordable energy is what they seek to eliminate, everything else is an excuse or a vehicle towards that end.