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Fracking Disclosure Rules Approved In CO
ExE122 writes "Colorado has approved new measures taking a tough stance on the disclosure of chemicals used in fracking. The new law is 'requiring companies to disclose the concentrations of chemicals in addition to the chemicals themselves.' Fracking is a controversial method of natural gas extraction that raises concerns about health and safety issues to surrounding communities. This measure is said to be tougher than similar measures passed in Texas earlier this year."
I live in Colorado (although not near any drilling sites), and I approve of this. Public safety > trade secrets.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Well, it's one thing to have your customers voluntarily ingest a "secret sauce" product, and another one entirely to force everyone nearby to. So chalk it up to shades of gray. Though with the general level of rampant stupidity among the consuming public, one could build a case that volunteerism shouldn't exempt the formar case, either.
Someone had to do it.
Fracking, natural gas, and health risks. Slashdot don't let me down.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
Yes, but will it be enough, and soon enough to protect the water supply?
"No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up." -- Lily Tomlin
Someone had to say it...
"In 2011 Colorado passed a law forcing drilling companies to disclose what just what the hell they were pumping into the ground in massive quantities."
Progress!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
For a nice audio visual aid to fracking:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=timfvNgr_Q4
To see what it can do to your water supply:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U01EK76Sy4A&feature=player_detailpage
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
I thought the Cylons were cussing the disclosure.
For the love of god is ANYONE going to actually bother learning what frac'ing actually is before they start passing laws on it? I have yet to read a single article from any news outlet or any anti-frac'ing website that has given the public a real definition of what frac'ing is. Its utterly terrible, and must be on purpose. Anyone who thinks this technology is new knows nothing about the oil & gas industry. Companies were frac'ing wells decades before it ""suddenly"" started causing problems.
I'm an engineer that has performed hydraulic fracturing treatments for 30 years. My resume includes about a hundred treatments without environmental contamination. People act like this is a new phenomenon - we've been doing this safely since WW2. Fracturing treatments are done on geologic formations that have held oil and gas in place for millions of years. Seriously - what are the chances of these chemicals migrating upward through a couple miles of solid rock?
The ONLY time "fracking" can pose a hazard to potable groundwater is when you have a mechanical failure. If the steel well casing fails, some of the chemicals might exit through a shallow leak. Here's a short list of activities that are a greater risk to potable groundwater:
1. Underground fuel storage tanks. How many existing and abandoned filling stations and convenience stores are near you, compared to oil or gas wells?
2. Disposal of fuel, motor oil, and antifreeze into storm sewers.People actually do that.
3. Old, abandoned or inactive oil or gas wells. Corrosion happens.
4. Railroad derailments. Each locomotive can carry 4,000 gallons of diesel fuel.
5. Refineries.
6. Pipeline leaks.
Please encourage folks to remove their tinfoil hats. There's nothing to see here.
They're just shoving anything that will go down the pipe as some form of fluid to build pressure.
Thinking that there's even some magic recipe for forcing cracks in shale is the height is idiocy.
They oil & gas companies are just shoving in their waste products under high pressure and, low and behold, the shale can't take the pressure.
That happens to release some natural gas some times, if they drilled close enough to some gas pockets.
I'm glad I live on granite.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
F[censored] Disclosure Rules Approved In CO
Even if you don't like the rules, there's no need to cuss about it.
Big government at it again. Fucking socialist twits.
Shouldn't that read "Fracking socialist twits"?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Yes, but that was before it started to promise to reduce the odds that the amount of recoverable oil would drop to the level that we would have to return to the stone age without government intervention. This new development (that fracking will make a large enough amount of fossil fules available to keep our civilization running into the next century) means that if the enviro-whackos are going to get their wish to return us to the stone age, the government will need to intervene.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Could it simply be a volumetric issue? 1 well drilled 20 years ago using the exact same process = little impact. 1000's of wells drilled today in the same manner = tons of issues. Does this mean it was safe 20 years ago? I don't think it proves or disproves it. But I think we are seeing adverse impacts which did not appear until after the fracking started.
For a long time, the food industry has had to label their products indicating what exactly they contained. Trade secrets must take second place to public safety.
Why is this not obvious to our legislators?
Just because it isn't new doesn't mean it can't be dangerous. sheesh.
Vehicles didn't cause air pollution in Los Angeles until there were a million of them.
Infecting the Ogallala reservoir with 10ccs of anything except plutonium isn't going to poison that many people. But dumping in ten million gallos of almost anything will affect the water.
It isn't the use of any resource that causes issues; it is only the overuse (by definition).
I don't think you understand. A well was fracked 30 miles from a woman's house and now her kitten is sick. It's the duty of our news media to make sure that this stops immediately before fracking in the Rocky Mountain region starts causing AIDS in Africa or antisemitism in Florida.
Okay, maybe that's not fair. But this is: It is the business model of the news media to create controversy where none exists so that they can report on the controversy.
This is your brain on Rand.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
true, but the 2005 changes to Underground Injection Control in the Safe Drinking Water Act let the companies off the hook for disclosing toxins that are going into fracking. And there is quite a bit of work going on to get the EPA defanged / defunded (http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/05/06/164077/senate-republicans-introduce-bill-to-abolish-the-epa/).
http://www.gilbertsville.com/fracking/frackaccidents.pdf
Turns out the EPA in their zeal to discredit tracking, drilled way past normal well depth and actually into the same gas layer the oil companies are targeting!
AND the chemicals they found, they also found in control samples...
The EPA at this point has gone way beyond the mandate they are supposed to have, they are no longer protecting public health based on science but on feeling alone.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Of course, it's so much safer to leave all that petroleum and benzene in the ground, and let it seep up naturally into the water table and contaminate it for millions of years. One little earthquake and nobody has a water well.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmMp7evxRjw
Perhaps I watched too much Battlestar Galactica, but from reading the headline, I thought this had to do with adult consent laws in Colorado!
*Wyoming - benzene, a common chemical used in fracking, was discovered throughout a 28-mile long aquifer. (ProPublica, 12/31/09)(http source- http://www.gilbertsville.com/fracking/frackaccidents.pdf )
So say we all.
I don't think anyone is saying it's new. I think it's just getting a lot more attention now because of the new natural gas "gold rush" in the U.S. A lot more people are seeing these drilling operations out their windows these days, and becoming concerned (especially if they're suddenly able to light their well water on fire).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Sorry, I never listen to Rand Paul or his father.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Hopefully, this will also push for substitutions using less-toxic fracking fluid components, even if some of these components may be higher cost.
For instance (pulling hypothetical example out of my butt, no personal expertise in fracking fluid chemistry) a mineral-oil based carrier vs. a diesel-fuel carrier. I mean, the mechanical properties of the fracking fluid seem like the most important, right? So there should be some fungibility regarding exact chemistry used.
Hydraulic fracturing for stimulation of oil and natural gas wells was first used in the United States in 1947.[2][3] It was first used commercially by Halliburton in 1949,[2] and because of its success in increasing production from oil wells was quickly adopted, and is now used worldwide in tens of thousands of oil and natural gas wells annually. The first industrial use of hydraulic fracturing was as early as 1903, according to T.L. Watson.[4] Before that date, hydraulic fracturing was used at Mt. Airy Quarry, near Mt Airy, North Carolina where it was (and still is) used to separate granite blocks from bedrock.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing_in_the_United_States
OK, so it's been around awhile..
With the explosive growth of natural gas wells in the US, researcher Valerie Brown predicted in 2007 that "public exposure to the many chemicals involved in energy development is expected to increase over the next few years, with uncertain consequences."[24] As development of natural gas wells in the U.S. since the year 2000 has increased, so too have claims by private well owners of water contamination. This has prompted EPA and others to re-visit the topic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing
and it's getting more prevalent...
I don't think anybody is saying that it's "suddenly" causing problems. It seems like the concern is the growth. As much as I dislike using a car analogy, I think if we hadn't have chosen automobiles as our primary form of transportation, we wouldn't have emission standards and the like, because what makes it an issue is quantity. We'd be fools to not question or investigate this, especially since fracking is questioned international. It's being investigated in many countries, and it's already banned/stopped in others. What if they're right?
Read the recently released EPA report, or at least reporting on it. Wells which had been pure for years have suddenly had massive influxes of hydrocarbons which cannot be explained by bacteria means. Chemicals used in fracking are also showing up in these drinking wells in significant quantities, with no other plausible source. Fracking is polluting our water table and should be stopped immediately.
I'd rather frack Starbuck (2003 Version, please).
I wonder when they will make their reactor designs a trade secret and we are not allowed to know about them anymore. It seems insane that somebody would even consider pumping huge amount of fluids into the ground and the only thing we know is that they say "It won't cause problems."
Then why is it that drilling on a massive scale didn't occur until after the Energy Policy Act of 2005 was passed, exempting drilling companies from the Safe Drinking Water Act?
CLEARLY something is different - otherwise the regulatory changes in 2005 would have been a no-op instead of causing a major boom in drilling activity.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
A step in the right direction but not adequate. I we had adequate laws in place already, BP's Gulf disaster, and others like it*, would be far less frequent and less disastrous. In short, this ain't enough to keep your groundwater from igniting. It's just going to cost corporations a little more money to keep doing what they're already doing. The only real answer here is to cull the demand if what your after is environmental conservation. Expect egregious and negligent violations whenever money and energy are involved.
[*] - http://www.osha.gov/dep/bp/Fact_Sheet-BP_2009_Monitoring_Inspection.html
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In Pennsylvania the government is going to give corporations the right of eminent domain, so they can run gas pipelines just about anywhere they want.
And you can't do anything about it:
http://articles.philly.com/2011-12-13/news/30512176_1_pipelines-pipe-firm-marcellus-shale
My sister owns a water quality lab in Montana. Every town is required to test their water supply regularly for biological and chemical contaminants and for years they have submitted their samples via regular mail to labs like my sister's for testing. Except that the EPA has shortened the window for getting your samples in to a lab from 48 hours to 30 hours, which the Post Office cannot manage with current levels of service. UPS and FedEx don't serve many rural areas, so there is no way for many towns to test their water any more. Add in large, imminent cutbacks at the USPS, and you have a looming public health crisis as it is.
Now with the advent of fracking in the state there is a real possibility thousands of people will be poisoned by ground water contamination, but thanks to the breakdown in the testing it won't be discovered until it's far too late.
Winning more natural gas is a plus for energy independence, but if we're doing that at the cost of putting benzene into our drinking water then perhaps we need to look at other ways to generate power.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
I think he meant Ayn.
Not like this practice is new. But the number has tripled in recent years.
Were you hoping that nobody would notice that in your zeal to discredit the EPA you linked to a column that parroted the Encana company line regarding the Pavillion study from *Liz Peek*, noted right-wing whack-job, TARP wife, and former investment advisor who earned her living serving the interests of Wall Street's oil and gas investors?
Your beloved government is precisely who told these companies that polluting your water and air is just fine, as long as they remain within the arbitrary -- excuse me, "official" -- limits.
You put up with it because you have no choice -- government has already seized control of all water, air, and soil sources, and therefore all of your eggs are in one basket -- their basket, not yours.
If natural gas replaces a significant amount of electricity generation and vehicle power (electric or compressed gas), the US carbon growth could slow down considerably. NG combustion emits about half the CO2 of petroleum or coal per BTU. The difference here is this is motivation by corporate profit rather than government subsidy.
One caveat is that methane is a significant greenhouse gas - 20x stronger by quantity than CO2. So any significant leakage in the system would negate its environmental advantage.
No they intentionally drilled to the same depth as fracking operations in order to determine the extent of horizontal transfer of fracking fluids and how much fluid was left after being pumped out. This was in addition to testing at normal water well depth. Their paper lists as a regret that they were not able to drill to intermediate depths to better understand how the fluids are moving.
The majority of Encana "refutations" are pure bullshit, and the few minor issues that aren't are mentioned in the EPA report as limitations of the current study. In particular the EPA report does compare the current water well against historical values, contrary to that propaganda piece you linked.
For instance (pulling hypothetical example out of my butt, no personal expertise in fracking fluid chemistry) a mineral-oil based carrier vs. a diesel-fuel carrier. I mean, the mechanical properties of the fracking fluid seem like the most important, right?
The main component by volume of fraccing fluid is water.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
The COGCC approved these rules, NOT the Colorado legislature. I'm fine with the rules but assuming the people had any say in this decision is bullshit. Once again non-elected government bureaucrats are deciding and not the people who should be.
These fracking folks are the same folks who thought asbestos made a good insulation and that lead was a good paint additive. Once the aquifers are polluted there's no cleaning them up.
And that counters his arguments how? Hmmm?
You are either a) an actual idiot, b) willfully ignorant, or c) a shill for the gas companies, if you really believe that.
People should not be able to light their tap water on fire. If you think this happened naturally, CONVENIENTLY after companies were fracking in the area, you are truly a moron.
I'm not going to lie, his arguments are impossible to counter, just like the Reptilian conspiracy.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Shhh, the Reptiles are listening ...
A little science from a former Petroleum Engineer:
Fracking occur in 2 stages. In the First Stage, a series of pumping trucks are lined up and push a goopy gel into the ground, who's whole purpose is to carry grains of sand deep into the fractures created by the overpressure. The exact composition of this snot-like mixture is considered a trade secret, because of its ability to perform in stage two.
In the Second Stage, a "breaker fluid" is pumped into the well, which is supposed to instantly liquify the goop and allow it to flow out, leaving the sand grains to prop open the cracks. Opinions vary on how well this process works; I worked on the oil company side, so I can tell you, it doesn't always work. Sometimes your well is gummed up with snot, especially if they don't pump the breaker long enough.
Both the propellant and the breaker are trade secret compositions, but both probably have some interesting chemical comps.
The irony here is that an old friend of mine said that after a frack job ruined a very lucrative well, he started insisting that water and sand be the only fluids used in his frack jobs. He said the pumping companies pitched a fit, but he got some of the best, most improved fractures of his career using sand and water.
you can frak your brains out, but you can only use: water, natural sand, and CO2.
What is frelling wrong with you people?! What kind of lame expletive is "frack" ? :-P
Farscape > BSG, even with the annoying characters ^_^
Although, strictly speaking, Fraking among crew members is against regulations: I'm sure he's happy that they're pushing for safe Fraking.
Kansas is downstream, and what it gets from Colorado (after suing them for keeping far more water than the compact specified) is less water and more of a slurry containing salts, pesticides, and herbicides after Colorado has passed it through every possible produce farm first.
Oh, and now we're into the bonus round: Uranium from haphazardly-abandoned mines in Colorado is now showing up in the Arkansas River.
Isn't diesel fuel a mineral oil? Is there some distinction which I am not aware of?
Yes, and there are many minor ingredients, including lead and naphthalene(pdf warning). Small concentrations times massive quantities give quite high total amounts.
Is there any reason whatsoever that Slashdot would run this story? It doesn't seem to be "news for nerds" at all. (Aside, that is, from kids eager to make vulgar puns about "fracking".)
...means that if the enviro-whackos are going to get their wish to return us to the stone age...
Enviro-whackos? Return us to the stone age? WTF, boy, put that oxycontin down and shut off that stoner on your AM radio. You have no clue how bad it was before the "enviro-whackos" got the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act passed. Do you work in the oil industry, by chance, or are you just ignorant?
By the way, get that damned car you have on blocks out of your front yard. Moron.
Free Martian Whores!
As much as I dislike using a car analogy, I think if we hadn't have chosen automobiles as our primary form of transportation, we wouldn't have emission standards and the like, because what makes it an issue is quantity
Way back in 1876 a rather prescient fellow predicted that in a hundred years there would be a terrible pollution problem.
"In a hundred years we'll all be up to our asses in horse shit."
Free Martian Whores!
Have you listened to what some of the "environmentalists" are proposing? Have you noticed how every time some energy source starts to show promise of allowing economic prosperity to continue, one or another of the "environmentalism" groups starts to object to it on the basis of some new environmental concern?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
First, I've seen the gasland movie.
Second, Why don't we pump up all the "fresh" water from those wells into tanks and transport it to the intake of the fresh water plant closest to the white house and release it there.
If the quality of the water is so good that you can drink this water, there should be no problem at all. Only new jobs created.
Third, Why not have an banquet and invite all those that are for fracking and cook all meals on that water.
What is frelling wrong with you people?! What kind of lame expletive is "frack" ?
Smee. Smeeeeeeeeee. Smeeeeeeeeeeeee-
Excuse me, I'm dreadfully sorry for that outburst. POLITENESS PROTOCOLS DISABLED.
Smeghead.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Chemical trade secrets or hiding their fingerprints?
Will it be easier to determine pollution due to fracking knowing the chemical fingerprint?
Heck.. we can tell what hardware store a bomber bought his materials from - can we streamline fraccing forensics?
Lead and napthalene are present in everything including mother's milk and rainwater as minor ingredients.
It really IS necessary to look at what the actual concentrations are rather than just spouting off 'oh my it contains xyz which is toxic.'
Otherwise you are just spouting nonsense.
Why is everyone substituting "u" with "ra" in these posts? What the fruck is is fracking? Call it what it is.
First off, it has been shown that some fracking wells CAN fail and leak fluids into the upper water areas. So, what is REALLY needed is to be able to TRACE back to a company and ideally, to a well. So, each fracking solution should contain a trace marker. But then prior to injecting, the drilling company should add a different trace marker. Ideally, they would add a different marker PER WELL as well. With that approach if the solution is found in reservoirs, then the markers would ID the frack solution, the company and the well.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Lawsuits? Surely you jest! Libertarians and Conservatives have been passing laws that erode our right to sue for a long time. When the lawmakers (I say this because I want to include the states also) aren't passing laws to limit the common folk access to the courts, they are expanding what corporations can sue about. The system has been really badly slanted in favor of big money.
Pressure stupid! The fracking process includes forcing the fracking fluid under high pressure. The oil might not have enough natural pressure to be a problem but when you add the pressure of fracking, it suddenly has enough.
The main component by volume of fraccing fluid is water.
It is right, of course, but also totally irrelevant. So no, in order to counter LoyalOppositions argument, I don't need to cite concentrations. Had I wanted to, I would have cited Haliburton. From there, it seems the typical content of thing other than water, nitrogen and propant is about 0.5-3%. Of this, about 1/10 is surfactants, which is probably where the aromatics will be. Of the surfactants, up to 5% is naphthalene. This means that Haliburtons fluid is up to 150 ppm naphthalene. If we multiply that by the amount of fluid used in Texas, that is around 600 gallons of naphthalene used. That is a heaping lot of carcinogenous PAH, and it is only one of the aromatic compounds in there.
Sorry for the self-reply, but: The amount of carcinogenous compounds in the fluid is of course not that interesting, the interesting part is where they end up. But that was not the point LoyalOpposition made, and so, not what I commented on.
600 gallons over the state of Texas is an absolutely trivial amount of napthalene considering the volumes of other sources of this material.
US consumption of napthalenes in just the form of pthalic anhydrides and naptalene sulfonate is on the order of 200 million pounds per year. 600 gallons is about 4000 pounds.
And this doesn't count the legions of other sources of this class of materials.
Ludicrous.
Phthalic anhydryde has got nothing to do with naphthalene, except that it was originally synthesised from it (it might still be, I don't know). Naphthalene sulphonate is closer, in that it isn't completely implausible that some of it could be transformed to naphthalene, but it is very unlikely that it is going to do that in any significant amount. They are not forms of naphthalene. They are both much more polar than naphthalene and thus easier for the body to excrete.
Using the first limit I found when searching for "water limit naphthalene", those 4000 pounds is able to pollute 13 billion liters of drinking water. If we take into account that it is not uniformly distributed acros Texas, that can easily be significant. And that is only one compound. I am not saying it is a problem, but saying "The main component by volume of fraccing fluid is water." as if that makes it harmless is not correct.