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Old 06-30-2010, 09:54 PM
 
Location: Looking over your shoulder
31,304 posts, read 32,793,625 times
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Are the Gasland “debunking” websites all paid for or supported by the gas and oil industry? Personally I consider websites like commercials, they tell you what they want you to know and it’s for their benefit. An individual has to do some critical thinking on their own and fact gathering to get closer to the truth in any subject issue.
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Old 07-01-2010, 07:47 AM
 
2,673 posts, read 3,239,217 times
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Quote:
No offense, but there are probably less than 10 people who understand exactly what went wrong with BP's well (neither you nor I are in that club), whether it had anything to do with the Halliburton cement job or the BP cement design and all of the above is pure speculation with the exception of "the reality is we're going to need oil and gas for years".
I mostly disagree with the conceit of the above statement. Likely, there were many things that went wrong prior to the explosion. I agree with you that there may be very few people who know or suspect what things led to the explosion. However, after listening to the statements of some who were onboard, and some of the engineers, I believe one of the mis-steps was the short cut on the cement job. That's just one mistake of many.

I bet we can agree that the incident on Deepwater Horizon will be studied for years. I'm not an oil and gas worker, engineer or geologist, so there is a lot I don't know. I work in the environmental field; live in an O & G producing state, and have an interest in learning, so I try to grasp some of the science behind what we're doing to get the resources for our energy. Some of us have seen great O & G producers and some of us have seen the damage left behind by those who don't give a &%.
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Old 07-01-2010, 10:52 AM
 
Location: Looking over your shoulder
31,304 posts, read 32,793,625 times
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I'd like to see more posts stay on topic within the Gasland disaster thread.

thanks
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Old 07-16-2010, 02:26 PM
 
Location: Looking over your shoulder
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Fracking problems in Dish Texas

New case of drinking water contamination after hydraulic fracturing in Texas | Amy Mall's Blog | Switchboard, from NRDC

Bluedaze: DRILLING REFORM FOR TEXAS: Hydraulic Fracturing contaminates Barnett Shale water

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Old 07-16-2010, 02:56 PM
 
Location: Out in the Badlands
10,420 posts, read 10,787,806 times
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Let's all go back to horsees and rickshaws.
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Old 07-19-2010, 08:09 AM
 
Location: Visitation between Wal-Mart & Home Depot
8,307 posts, read 38,699,406 times
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I did some basic research over the weekend on the Texas RRC website:
The Railroad Commission of Texas

and a subscription site with a rudimentary land database called Drillinginfo. It isn't perfect, but you can build a decent picture of an exploration area with it.
http://www10.drillinginfo.com/login.jsp (broken link)

I think that the wells in question are part of Devon Energy's Peggy Smith "B" Gas Unit (Devon often names its units after the largest single surface owner). It does not appear that Ms. Smith has a mineral interest in these wells, or at least her name does not appear on any recorded oil & gas instruments in an online records search. Can you read between the lines a bit? If Ms. Smith only owns the surface estate and Devon has an oil & gas lease covering the minerals below her land, she can't stop an oil company from drilling on her land unless there are some unusual circumstances. The oil company must pay her for any damages to the surface caused by its operations and the oil company must reasonably accomodate the landowner's right to use and enjoy the property, but she can't impede the mineral owner from the use and enjoyment of the minerals either. I postulate that she became adversarial in her negotiations for surface damages, refused to sign a damage release and was paid on an actual damages basis. If you thought you were owed $50-100K in damages, dug your heels in, got railroaded and received a check for, say, $8,000 as determined by an independent real-estate appraiser, you would probably be pretty unhappy with the oil company and you may decide to use the emerging anti-fracturing culture to hit back in any way you could.

This well is completed at about 7,600' below the surface. That means the actual fracturing of the Barnett Shale would have been happening over one mile away from Ms. Smith's water zone.

The Texas Railroad Commission requires that every well have surface casing set a certain distance below the deepest fresh-water bearing zone - in this case it was probably set to at least 3,500'. Before Devon would be allowed to proceed with drilling it's production string, it would be compelled to perform a "shoe test". This means that the finished surface casing, drilled and cemented into place to isolate fresh-water bearing zones from hydrocarbon bearing zones, must be tested to a certain pressure and must hold that pressure with no leak-off for a certain amount of time. It's a big deal; if your well doesn't pass this test you are hosed.

Anyway, I think it is very suspicious that Ms. Smith's well was unfit for human consumption before oil & gas operations and that further testing has revealed a lot of heavy metals not associated with oil & gas operations. I think this is very likely to be a vindictive assault.

Devon has a reputation as a hard driving operator that may not have the most accomodating culture, but I don't think that a court will find them at fault and I don't think that a reasonable environmental geologist would find them at fault either.
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Old 07-19-2010, 12:03 PM
 
Location: Looking over your shoulder
31,304 posts, read 32,793,625 times
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^^ interesting read, thanks for the research and information!
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Old 07-21-2010, 02:04 PM
 
Location: Wherabouts Unknown!
7,841 posts, read 18,953,515 times
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texdav wrote:
Don't foregt you have to also be will to pay the price. It isn't goign to be cheap at all.It will make the price of gasoline look cheap......
The best repsonse to this widely held assumption is to say...maybe, maybe not. Perhaps there will be an energy discovery that is far less costly than so-called cheap oil. It could happen! There's always a wild card in play, something right under our noses that nobody sees. Then with just a slight shift in perception it comes into awareness....seemingly out of the blue.
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Old 07-21-2010, 02:17 PM
 
Location: Nort Seid
5,288 posts, read 8,845,456 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AksarbeN View Post
I see where renewable energy helps decrease pollution and improves the environment. There's no meter on how much wind or sun you use.
I've actually read some findings from UIUC physicists that are stating wind farm A can definitely end up taking wind energy away from wind farm B if it is "upwind," similar to how a dam upstream affects water current downstream. Wind power is finite, and if you pull it out of the air to move a massive turbine, it's not available for someone else.

Still plenty of good reasons to expand wind power production, but as it progresses people are going to start paying more attention to placement and proximity with existing wind farms.
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Old 07-21-2010, 09:33 PM
 
2,673 posts, read 3,239,217 times
Reputation: 1996
Yeah! I finally got to see Gasland. We even had Josh Fox there along with a small panel of three other men to answer questions after the viewing. All of it was quite intersting.

I hope all of you will write your state representatives and tell them we need federal regualtions that cover NG fracking. It's being discussed in D.C. now. Once federal regs are developed it will be promulgated to state authority for the states to develop regs which will suitable for their geology and hydrology. That's the way all the other federal environmental regs work.

Another thing, propieatary needs to be disallowed for any fluids used in the extraction of NG. That will probably happen.
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