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Study Finds Fracking Chemicals Didn't Pollute Water
RoccamOccam sends this news from the Associated Press:
"A landmark federal study on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, shows no evidence that chemicals from the natural gas drilling process moved up to contaminate drinking water aquifers at a western Pennsylvania drilling site. After a year of monitoring, the researchers found that the chemical-laced fluids used to free gas trapped deep below the surface stayed thousands of feet below the shallower areas that supply drinking water."
How can they be sure that they didn't detect the fracking chemicals when the industry continues to refuse to reveal the identity of said chemicals? It is nearly impossible to do a study where you watch for every conceivable chemical that ever has or ever could exist.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
So what the hell is being done about keeping your damn hippie drinking water from contaminating my fracking solution??
One site, one test well. Big whoop.
>shows no evidence that chemicals from the natural gas drilling process moved up to contaminate drinking water aquifers at a western Pennsylvania drilling site
> one was injected with four different man-made tracers
Assuming everything's above the board (so to speak), these results are all fine and dandy, but this single scenario doesn't itself make for a glowing endorsement of fracking's safety. For one thing, I'm wondering how the results from sites with fracking-related earthquakes might look.
Does anyone really want to bet that aquifers near other fracking sites are just as fracking-chemical-free?
It's not possible! The results are politically incorrect and will go against the dogma of 'we must be miserable'. Not to worry, someone will quickly find a way to bury this, spin this or otherwise make this moot. We can't let science speak, that's what we have greenpeace for.
Sure, it didn't get into the groundwater this time. My concern is whether proper studies are being done to ensure that other sites do not see different results from the supposedly clean ones here.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Nothing made its way up in a year, hardly surprising.
I'm sure people will be happy when they see these chemical showing up in the water a couple hundred years from now, then discovering records about fracking in archives. They will probably say things like : they could not have been this stupid?!
Again, the problem here is timescale. One should not think in decades but in centuries.
Great! Now do it at hundreds of other sites and do it for the next 7 years with yearly reports!
"While the lack of contamination is encouraging, Jackson said he wondered whether the unidentified drilling company might have consciously or unconsciously taken extra care with the research site, since it was being watched. " Ya think?
This segment of oil and gas propaganda was brought to you by the good ol' folks of the Marcellus Shale Coalition and its friends at ANGA. What a joke! I'm sure the American Natural Gas Association (ANGA) will advertise even more on your station now as a thank you for this puff piece you proffered as news. I live in SW PA. I sadly know many, many families whose lives have been destroyed by the onslaught of drilling and fracking. For them, this might be the most insulting study I have seen to date. Why not point out, CBS, that the state of PA never even had 1 cumulative impact study on human health or the environment before they allowed the takeover of our state and government by big oil and gas. No consideration whatsoever for what this would do to our health, our air, our water. We are here to be the guinea pigs and no one really seems to care thanks to a lack of media integrity and coverage about the reality of living in the gasfields. CBS should be embarrassed to even play along with this type of bought and paid for "journalism". Congratulations Duke! You found a company here that can drill and maintain a gas pad exactly as it should be without a single complication and did a study (like the 7 or 8% failure rate on the cement well casings. This is one of the major reasons we have had so much water contamination and methane migration in this state. Check the DEP numbers here in PA. That is failure of cement casing on just the completion of wells, not the overall failure rate, over time, that is much, much higher). It is terrifying to think about all of the damage that the fractures (1800 ft) themselves can or will do in addition to the failed casings. You seem there are hundreds of thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells, and coal mines in all corners of this state that are further complicating this type of migration and contamination. Why not investigate that? Looking at one well and saying "Hey, this is how it is supposed to work when it does. See, it can happen." is not any kind of science or research that helps those of us screaming "WHAT DO WE DO WHEN YOUR DRILL SITES FAIL; WHEN YOUR FRACK PITS LEAK TOXIC WASTE; WHEN YOUR TRUCKS SPILL AND YOUR WORKERS ILLEGALLY DUMP ON OUR ROADS AND IN OUR WATERWAYS? WHAT DO WE DO WHEN WE CAN'T BREATHE THE AIR OUTSIDE OF OUR HOMES AND ALL OF OUR POLITICIANS and REGULATORY AGENCIES ARE BEHOLDEN TO INDUSTRY AND NOT THE PEOPLE THEY WORK FOR?" Now there's a story we here in Gasland would love to see. I will take any honest journalist on a tour of what fracking really looks like when things go wrong, as they often do, from the view of the harmed, the sickened, the destroyed forests and farmland. I will show you the massive frackpits that sit behind people's houses and poison their air. I will show you what black, putrid water looks like where it used to run clean and water animals. I will let you smell the smell of flaring and burning of god knows what from giant cyrogenic plants next to the home of toddlers and daycare centers. I will show you where toxic waste is buried on farmland and where water catches fire and well after well is destroyed, thanks to all of the disruption of the earth below it. I could show you all of this and yet the sad truth is that you wouldn't even investigate or report on it, just like the media round these parts. You have an organization to run and that takes lots of advertising dollars, not honest reporting. Just keep spewing the BS about jobs, safety, doing it right, American independence from foreign oil, and every other lie and industry talking point that you tell to justify the plight of my neighbors and the destruction of our land and the profit of your news organization. I'll be here shaking my head at your fault, but fighting back. I'll watch as our resources are shipped to China and India, while more and more foreign companies drill and have more rights in our backyards than the citizens of this state. I'll watch with great sadness, your participation in the destruction of my democracy. And I will continue to speak truth to power. My eyes were opened a long time ago. I understand how the world works. I know what part in the coverup media outlets like you play. I only hope that many of your viewers wake up and take your news for what it is, good old American journaltizing at its best.
"Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair" - George Washington
But what about the videos of people lighting their tap water. Are there explanations that don't directly implicate fracking? I asking seriously. I haven't read up on those films and I'm sure someone has a perfectly reasonable sounding story for how that could be.
And suppose the fracking chemicals themselves don't migrate. What about the petrochemicals they've broken loose (which is the whole reason for fracking in the first place, as I understand it)? Can those work their way up into the water supply?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
even if fracking itself is safe. The process contaminates millions of gallons of potable water that becomes hazardous waste. And it can never be reclaimed.
From my understanding, part of the problem with fracking is that the well casings don't always hold. So the chemicals and methane can leak out farther up the well where the drinking water is. The failure rate is supposedly pretty high, with 5% leaking immediately and 30% leaking over 10 years, or something like that. I don't know exact figures and it's hard to know who to trust these days anyway.
Having just watched Gasland II, I don't necessarily trust the government's pronouncements either. According to that documentary (which is a bit propagandistic to be honest) the EPA did a study in Wyoming and found greatly elevated levels of chemicals in the drinking water. When the press release came out it gave the water a big thumbs up. Like I said, it's hard to know who to trust these days. Seems like everyone has an agenda.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
It seems the US government has a very loose definition of "polluted".
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/06/fracking
Who did the study? Who funded them?
If its from a red state, toss that shit out with the used diapers.
So, they didn't test water pollution, only checked that fracking didn't contaminate water by using markers.
Hower, other studies showed a correlation between fracking and presence of water pollutants.
Therefore, the only logical conclusion is: water pollution causes fracking !
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
How much do you suppose CHK Energy forked over for that article to appear?
Article doesn't address other much more serious incidents all over the NE in recent years...
Some fracking wells are very deep and have an impermeable layer of rick between the gas shale and the water table. In this type of fracking if is almost impossible to contaminate the water table. These wells have no more impact that the average oil well.
Some fracking wells ate shallow with no impermeable layer between the gas shale and the water table. In this case, when the gas starts moving it can contaminate the aquifer. That is where the burning water issue comes in.
The problem comes in that most anti-fracking groups look at all wells as shallow wells and most industry groups look at all wells as deep wells. They are both wrong. Deep wells are safe while shallow wells should not be done.
The initial round of drilling is only half the problem. Disposal after fracking isn't mentioned, but should also be studied. Fracking fluid disposal is prone to problems like spills at the surface level, which will contaminate an aquifer. Fracking fluid disposal has also been shown to cause earthquakes. http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2012/03/shale_gas_drilling_caused_smal.html
It can take years, decades, or even centuries for water to filter down into a deep aquifer, yet they've decided that after one year that there's no contamination from deep wells?
Sounds more like a study performed by the Fracking industry than real scientists.
Watch Gasland II.
All wells will eventually leak into surface water. About 5% failure rate per year. (The cement around the pipe develops cracks.)
They studied one well which didn't leak in the first year.
Gasland II shows what happens when they do eventually leak.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
I know I'll get modded way down for this, but it sounds reasonable to me. How can fracking at depths of 10,000+ feet contaminate ground/drinking water that is less than 200 feet deep?
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
The real problem is natural gas that rises into the water table and contaminates wells. Not a mention of that though.
No background testing has been done to ascertain what chemicals naturally occur. No permanent testing has been mandated. Independent testing is the only believable testing, who pay-rolled the testing who is involved in the testing, there is a revolving door between industry and government so many are tainted. If in doubt, don't do it. The protests worked in northern NSW, home of the tree-hugging hippy.
Go well
....groundwater moves 1) very slowly, and 2) horizontally as well as vertically.
I honestly believe them. However, what they investigated is not relevant. All they claim is that it is not the stuff they pump in that comes back out and contaminates the water. The study does NOT claim that the pollution is not an effect of the whole process, which it very possibly is.
Our household in Ohio depends on a private well for all our water, and it would surely be miserable if it got contaminated.
Just today, our dogs were freaking out because of the fracking machinery running on the neighbor's property.
Poor Blanche just shivers and pants. It's better with her Thundershirt, though she's still fearful.
And my wife told me she felt another earthquake this afternoon. She's from CA, so she knows earthquakes.
I guess we can live with all that, but you gotta have clean water! It's just such a relief to know that our well is safe.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
if not, why not?
Amazing how skepticism on scientific studies is modded up when fracking is mentioned, but modded down when it's AGW.
Looks like the media jumped the gun.
http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/press/2013/StudyStatement.pdf
If done properly and carefully, fracking does not produce environmental damage.
If done properly and carefully, deep sea oil drilling does not produce environmental damage.
If done properly and carefully, nuclear power does not produce environmental damage.
However, we know from the last two examples, things are not always done properly and carefully.
If we allow fracking, we have to assume that failures will occur, and have public plans, with pre-arranged financing, on how we will handle the inevitable failures
The term "cherry picking" relates to selecting a small sample of data which proves your point.
All this study has proved is that AT THIS SITE fracking HAS NOT YET produced contamination of the water-table.
The problem is that The Industry will now point to this SAMPLE OF ONE as proof that "fracking is non-polluting" and therefore needs to be LEGISLATED as "not requiring environmental evaluation, not requiring pollution checks, and generally ignoring concerned scientists/enrivonmentalists/local people dying from(or concerned about dying from) industrial pollution.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
This makes me really feel safe. I'm all set to live in Western PA for EVER!
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I suspect this is like many human activities: it can be done right, which explains we can find occurrence where water is not contaminated. But as usual if operators are just looking for profit, it will is badly done, and we get water pollution.
Anyway in both cases, it will produce greenhouse gases, therefore I would be pleased if we could focus on other cleaner ways to get energy
And The Obamanation is a U.S. born citizen, 9/11 was perpetrated by arabs, the check's in the mail and nobody is spying on Americans because I said so. Really? If you believe Snowden is a traitor, then who among the voting populace voted for the NDAA? We have met the enemy and they are stealing our constitution, our homes, our jobs, our future as we know it. They are burdening us with immeasurable debt that has no end. Where's all the gold that is supposed to be in Ft. Knox? Why are our youth dieing in foreign lands? Who is really profiting from the way too high fuel prices? Why is hemp illegal when it is superior to other fibers? Go ahead, mark me as "troll", it is easier to do that then miss your sports, your booze, your TV show, oh wait...SQUIRREL!!!
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
So what happens when the shallow water supplies run out and we need to use the ones that are thousands of feet below the ground? Sure, it's currently economically unviable to drill that deep... but it was also economically unviable to frack just 10 years ago.
I just can't fathom the stupidity of knowingly polluting a source of fresh water that our grandchildren will almost assuredly need to rely on some day.
By far there is not enough data for them to come to a good conclusion about "fracking" in general. The problem is they use concrete to line holes and direct fluids, its not a matter if, but when something like that cracks. It's the same reason you have a gutters and drain spouts that lead water away from your house, that fluid pushing against your foundation constantly pushes and seeks an entrance. Your house shifts a fraction of a fraction and that water can seep in.
Good leaders run toward problems, bad leaders hide from them.
Does anybody still believes what federal study "finds" ? They lied aboud GoM. They lied about financial fraud for years. They're busy covering up malfeasances of their corporate friends and they don't give a crap about ordinary citizens. They're busy spying everyone and jailing folks who point out their corruption and coverups. Is there anybody who still believes statements from our lovely government ?
Seriously, though, just in case there's somebody reading this who really is interested in an objective analysis, this study certainly does have some probative value. How much value, of course, is a function of the design and the scope of the research methodology, and the conclusion should be considered within the context of existing research. These results might be game-changing; but they might be characterize a case that's three standard deviations from the mean; or they might be wrong. And the sources cited here don't provide enough detail to figure that out. Interested parties should investigate further before spouting opinions.
Although asking the right questions, like some are doing here, seems to me to be a logical first step toward putting these findings into perspective. Bravo to you!
D
first, fracking has come to mean the whole sphere of environmental damage involved with natural gas wells, not specifically actual specific fracking. (Yeah, I don't approve of imprecision either, but...) for instance, methane contamination of water which is so frequent a complaint, or as widely publicized recently, the release of methane as part of the gas extraction process, which, given the very high AGW potential of methane, can easily overwhelm whatever advantage natural gas has in terms of lower AGW.
second, is every fracking carried out 3,000 feet below the water well depths? (not rhetorical, I really don't know)
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.