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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."
"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
I'm pretty sure they aren't fracking with 1000 Island dressing.
Strangely enough, a major component of fraccing fluids is guar, which is also a major component of most salad dressings.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
Frankly, imposing almost-certainly-negative externalities on unconsenting bystanders' persons and property during the course of your business makes you the ethical equivalent of a serial mugger. It is a pity that it doesn't make you the legal equivalent of one.
That's what I've never understood about the notion that these sorts of environmental regulations are 'anti-freedom' or 'anti-free-market'... Effectively, emitting pollutants that leave your property(as they almost always have a nasty tendency to do...) is some combination of assault and destruction of property, depending on exactly how much damage to other people's health and damage to other people's property you cause. That would seem to bring you trivially under the police power of the state to protect its citizens from violence against them by others.
Failure to protect the people from pollution involuntarily forced on them seems different only in degree from failing to prosecute poisoners or fly-tippers. Also arguably, environmental regulations that allow some harmful levels of pollution are actually more statist; because they assert the state's right to submit everyone to damage to the benefit of specific parties(almost exactly the same thing as the almost universally reviled Kelo v. City of New London decision: The state asserting its right to involuntarily transfer part of the property of everybody to the polluter for 'economic development' purposes). The only real areas of economic regulation that would seem to be purely 'environmentalist' in motivation, as opposed to a downright libertarian exercise of the state's right and duty to protect its citizens from violence, force, and fraud, would be those that govern pollution affecting only the polluter and those who have given informed consent to the pollution(employees accepting high risk for higher pay, say, with knowledge of that risk) and those that protect species and wetlands and things in themselves even when they are fully encompassed within a single chunk of property.
Politically, it isn't exactly a surprise that "libertarian" and "environmentalist" usually don't get along all that well; but ideologically, I've always been fascinated by how immediate, direct, property crimes for profit have no friends at all, and we can't seem to hang the perps high enough for anybody's satisfaction; but covert, indirect, property crimes for profit are eminently respectable, and have friends in all the most desirable places... (As for the case of the 'secret sauce' product, it seems like it would depend on exactly why the sauce is secret: if, as is common at the experimental edges of medicine, nobody knows exactly what the sauce will do, it would seem to be the right of a competent adult to take risk upon themselves. If the sauce is secret because I'm just not telling you what it is, it becomes much harder to argue that we have actually achieved a genuine consent in the contractual sense, since I'm deliberately keeping you in a state shy of 'informed consent' for my own convenience.)
Yeah sure, that's why you posted anonymously with a talking points bullet list.
Soon enough? Fracturing has been done in the United States since 1947.
And if you think today's fracking is anything like what was done in 1947, you have no business in this conversation. Industry misinformation like this is not relevant to the discussion.
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).
Seriously - what are the chances of these chemicals migrating upward through a couple miles of solid rock
Well, that would be kind of hard to independently assess without actually knowing what chemicals to test the water for, which is kind of the point of the law under discussion.
Someone had to do it.
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?
Evidence that this is different?
Energy Policy Act of 2005 - specifically the Halliburton Loophole exemptions to the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Fracking for gas didn't "take off" until that loophole was passed - so clearly SOMETHING they are doing is different that the loophole enables them to do.
The problem is that the same exemption allows them to hide what they are doing.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Except that wells that have run clean for decades started showing signs of contamination within months of drilling commencing.
Dimock, PA had clean water for decades in their wells - not any more.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Evidences that it's different? NO? I didn't think so.
Evidence? Anyone who has spent 10 minutes caring about this issue knows there are significant differences. Let me save you a few keystrokes on Google and start with much deeper wells, moving from vertical wells to horizontal ones, and greatly increasing the amount of fluids used and waste generated.
Irrelevant i any case, there is no evidence fracking impacts any water supply.
You're a bit behind the times I'm afraid. Again, let me save you a trip to Google:
This information might have been out there for you years ago had Cheney not inserted his Haliburton exemption in his energy bill back in 2005.
Mayor McCheese seeks a restraining order to prevent you from disclosing his trade secrets.
Wow, I had forgotten about Captain Crook and The Professor.
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.
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.
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.