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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
There are already thousands and thosuands of wells all over the United States, that was the whole point of part of Cheney's energy plan.
Please see GASLAND by Josh Fox.
Fun fact - the people who own those mineral rights probably don't care about the environmental damage, they are getting massively rich. if you could somehow spread out the wind-power profits to tens of thousands of people you might see more political support for wind farms.
"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.
Actually, I'd encourage you to give the Christian Science Monitor a look. It is a well respected newspaper, certainly in the same league as major daily papers such as the NY Times and Washington Post, and has been around for about as long. Personally I think it beats the hell out of cnn.com and the like. You don't have to be Christian to like it. But judge for yourself.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Here's the complete list of the things the US Energy Panel has Cautiously Endorsed this week
* Shooting for oil
* Bristols for oil
* Peeving for oil
* Fracking for oil
* Berkeley Hunting for oil
* Cork-sinking for oil
* Motherfracking for oil
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.
the national association for the advancement of civilization,
the companies who love birds and squirrels and bunnies alliance
the patriotic america loving job creation coalition
the brilliant people who hate losers organization
the anti-baby-killing league of mothers committee
and many many other independent groups, none of whom receive 100% of their funding from the oil and gas companies
Drillers say they would like to keep the exact formula of the chemicals they use secret because it represents a competitive advantage.
And they should be allowed to keep their formulas secret.
However, if they do, they shouldn't be allowed to inject them into the environment.
(COMPANY: "I need approval to make a chemical release into the environment." EPA: "OK, what chemical?" COMPANY: "We can't tell you, it's secret." EPA: "OK, here's your permit."
WTF?
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
This is not just crusading journalists and panicking farmers. The (peer-reviewed) journal of the American Waterworks Association, September 2010, which mostly has articles like "Characterization of filter media MnOx(s) surfaces and Mn removal capability", also has an article on "The Threat From Hydrofracking" by Paul Rush, the deputy commissioner for water supply for New York City. It's an opinion article, not a scientific paper, but he lays out his case as if it were.
The industry's largest concern is that everybody has been forbidden to get involved in the regulation or permitting of these businesses - talk about your big-government incursion into (very) local concerns, like what's in your water source. Normally, water supply utilities are also charged by the state with protecting the watershed, and can do things like bring suit against hog farms that would let in e. coli. Not here.
As Rush puts it, "...the technical assessment indicated that migration of methane or fluids through natural fractures in the bedrock, some extending for miles, could compromise the city's aqueducts and shafts...Additionally, given the New York State regulatory infrastructure and the rules governing compulsory integration, drillers could potentially receive a permit authorizing horizontal drilling directly below a water supply tunnel without city authorization".
Being the guy responsible for the water quality, and then having any power to challenge a threat to it removed because Dick Cheney wanted to make sure no NIMBYs got in his friend's way, is fairly frightening.
The thing is, this stuff won't go away. At least if it were nuclear waste, it would naturally decay. But once they fill up a network of cracks with this stuff, in the exact geology where you know there's pressure from below, could result in a slow steady feed of it up through cracks and into the water, for decades. Or centuries. And you can inject it in, but you can't suck it out; no way to clean.
It's not unreasonable to study it further before using this technology near much-used watersheds like, well, all through densely-populated New York and Pennsylvania; part of the industry strategy has very, very clearly been to NOT study this issue so far.