Front Range sitting on a billion barrels of oil. (Colorado Springs: homes, construction)

[wanneroo]

Originally Posted by phetaroi

You keep talking about the upsides. You seem to be ignoring serious groundwater pollution due to fracking.

After learning about the process, since it happens down the street from me and is obviously a concern, that doesn't seem to be the case if done right.

[phetaroi]

Originally Posted by wanneroo

After learning about the process, since it happens down the street from me and is obviously a concern, that doesn't seem to be the case if done right.

But how many times have we heard that same kind of promise and then ended up with a super-fund cleanup situation?

[Goodnight]

Originally Posted by wanneroo

It is now the technology has come along. They can drill down thousands of feet and then horizontally hundreds of feet down to a foot. And tech is getting better and better. People I've talked to say that it will not be long before they can go down 20000 feet if they want.

If your drinking water came from wells, would you be feel safe with the injection of chemicals into the ground surrounding your home?

[proveick]

Why is it always "not in my backyard"? We need the oil and gas, frack it, get it and use it. Our entire way of life is based upon it. Everything you see around you has been manufactured with it and shipped, barged or trucked here with it. There's no way out regardless of what the dreamers have to say. RP

[phetaroi]

Originally Posted by proveick

Why is it always "not in my backyard"? We need the oil and gas, frack it, get it and use it. Our entire way of life is based upon it. Everything you see around you has been manufactured with it and shipped, barged or trucked here with it. There's no way out regardless of what the dreamers have to say. RP

It's not a case of what dreamers have to say.

It's a case of where is it wise, and where is it not wise.

[zenkonami]

What are we going to do as that oil and gas starts to decline? Our entire way of life IS built around it, as proveick correctly stated, but at what point do we start questioning the wisdom of that and start moving in a different direction?

I also have to raise the question, how much energy do we put into extracting this stuff? How long can our economy survive when we spend more energy than we get out...but fractional banking practices allow more money to created in spite of diminished value? This has always been something that's bothered me about the extraction of fossil fuels...I'm still looking for a good study one way or another, but I've yet to see anything that indicates the net amount of energy and capital that goes IN to the process is less than that EXTRACTED.

Can we / Will we / Should we get that "oil"? We may have no choice simply because we can't stand that big a disruption...but even that will only last a short time, so we better be looking at plan B, and soon.

[proveick]

With the politics and "powers that be" you'll never see a change in our energy policies. Starting with the "seven sisters" and the intricate ties to the auto industry and government lobbyists all I can see is a painful decline of our way of life.
I remember back in Canada we started converting our big trucks to propane. You guessed it, within a year the price of propane tripled. There was no benefit from the price of the conversion. We can't win.
With our infrastructure being what it is, we're going to use the cheap middle east oil first and ours last.
Even though it's harder to get now, we still have several hundred years worth of fossil fuels. RP

[Shuffler]

So back on the subject of this oil, I could assume that "a billion barrels" projected likely has a big margin of error...depending on how much is technically/financially feasible to recover, and it's just oil that will be sold on the open market and won't result in any direct benefit to me, while the prime contractor and its supporting cast of service providers will run away with all the money.

My simplistic view: Gas prices won't go down. Taxes won't go down. Quality of life won't improve. The environment won't benefit. The housing market won't come back.

"11 days of supply" is the statistic I keep coming back to. In the grand scheme of things, it's about as significant as spitting in a lake.

[lalahartma]

Woo!

Colorado Springs Enacts Drilling Moratorium | KUNC

[debbie at bouontiful]

Originally Posted by jazzlover

Well, it will be real interesting to see what happens when all those suburbanites who have populated a good chunk of western Weld County feel when a drilling rig shows up in their front yard. Since most of them don't know that, in most cases, their mineral rights were severed from the land years ago, they will get to "enjoy" all of the impacts of oil drilling and production and get no financial benefit from it.

jazzlover is absolutely right. We moved to OK from upper midwest and didn't know a thing about mineral rights. Well, I have a ranch and I go crazy with oil people all the time. Thankfully, there is 15000 open acres behind my ranch that someone owns all the mineral rights too and there is all the wells. They horizonical on to my property. I still get headaches from them not to mention hearing a well in the middle of the night when I bought here for the quiet. Well, if I buy land in the future (NM, CO) you bet I'll check mineral rights. Mine were severed from the property about 80 years ago.