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US Energy Panel Cautiously Endorses Fracking
Hugh Pickens writes "The Christian Science Monitor reports that a U.S. Energy Department advisory panel has endorsed fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, a promising technology that injects a mixture of water, sand, and chemicals underground to fracture rock and release shale gas previously thought unretrievable, paving the way for tens of thousands of new wells. If fracking can be done safely, it could be a major source of domestic energy over the next century. Shale gas makes up about 14 percent of the U.S. natural gas supply today, but is expected to reach 45 percent by 2035. But first, serious environmental concerns must be addressed. Earlier this year, a Duke University study of 68 private groundwater wells in Pennsylvania and New York state found evidence that shale-gas extraction has caused them to become contaminated with methane. One key recommendation by the panel is a call for transparency regarding the use of chemicals in the extraction process. Drillers say they would like to keep the exact formula of the chemicals they use secret because it represents a competitive advantage."
The U.S. Energy Department endorses this horrible process?!? All of the places where this technology was used has resulted in contaminating the neighboring population's water.
Oh wait, it also resulted in the harvesting of gas... well that trumps everything then.
~Syberz
"Drillers say they would like to keep the exact formula of the chemicals they use secret because it represents a competitive advantage" Good luck with that. Food and beverage manufactures were required to list their "ingredients", and they sky didn't fall.
I personally tend to agree with this cautious endorsement, but because I live right on top of the Marcellus shale, my otherwise sane friends are freaking about about hydrofracking. I'd love to have an independent and evidence-based source to help me make sense of this. Don't tell me about Gasland and other anecdotal accounts. I'm finding that even I and other educated people don't have much of an idea just how typical Gasland-style anecdotes are, how much gas is won for each such case of methane leakage, and just how bad it is to get methane in your well water? Is this the sort of thing for which we have a filter?
CSM has amazing articles and unlike most of the drivel coming out of places these days is actually well written and researched. The "Christian" part throws a lot of people but it shouldn't.
"Drillers say they would like to keep the exact formula of the chemicals they use secret because it represents a competitive advantage."
Too fracking bad.
Besides, there's no need for secret competitive advantage when it comes to energy. They all rake in billions regardless. It's a natural resource and it's up to us to monitor how it's used. If you don't want to be in the lucrative energy business because you dislike the transparency that needs to accompany it, then you need to find another business to be in.
Asking people to think is like asking them to buy you a new car
Here's an easy solution: require oil companies to put trace additives that are uniquely identifiable into the chemicals they inject. (e.g. custom molecules that identify the oil company/well). Then if these chemicals are found in drinking water, lakes or streams, you know where they came from, and can issue a massive fine to the oil company and well owner. This way they can keep their fracking formula secret, and will self-police themselves to some extent as long as the fines are sufficiently large that it destroys any profit from breaking the rules.
There have to be a few chemists, oil guys, and political wonks reading. Do it.
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
While transparency in public policy(and the contents of one's water supply) is generally better than the alternative, there is a very, very, important caveat:
Without accountability, and without means of redress(at least sufficient to be useful in practice, ie. typically not civil court for anybody who doesn't have substantial resources, and ideally sufficient to restrain, rather than merely punish, wrongdoing), transparency is basically just a PR stunt.
If it is wholly legal, or de-facto legal because nobody can afford to sue and wait a decade while the lawyers hash it out, to expose my water supply to fracking chemicals, it barely matters whether I get to know what is in them or not. If I do, writing that retrospective paper for the Journal of Epidemiological Toxicology will be a lot easier for some researcher. If I don't, I'll just have to live with the suspicion that my water's observable properties are alarming, and the local cancer rates seem high.
Short form: Impunity renders transparency irrelevant.
the film that causes gas industry PR people to shit bricks, because it shows several people, on film, setting their water on fire, and because it has interviews with people who have had the gas companies pay for their new water supplies (trucked in periodically), and because Josh Fox has discussed what happened to those people for daring to talk to him - the gas companies shut off their supply of water.
initimidation and persecution are not the tactics of an group that has the facts behind their cause.
Same bullshit argument, different day.
I grew up in a small town in the Pacific Northwest. The lion's share of the town's economy was tied to the forest products industry. The timber barons got rich, the rivers and streams got silted and polluted, the old growth forests were destroyed (and won't be back for centuries), and "the jobs" so loudly touted by those industry barons are long gone. On the whole, I'd say that was a lousy trade. The argument that the temporary economic boon is welcome despite the risks is laughable. That deal will make a few folks rich, and will eventually leave the community worse off than it is now (jobless and
poisoned. Think harder.