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Agreed with all this, having been raised in an area where the oil and gas industry has always been prevalent, I know of men that had major accidents, guys who have died or were severely injured, I went to school with some kids that had their father die in a drilling accident when they drilled into the combustible gases causing an explosion on top of the rig and killed all three men that were on the rig. I have personal friends from high school that are missing parts of their fingers and toes due to minor accidents. Everybody around these guys know that safety at the sites is always a major concern, they know a mistake can kill them.
They also live in the communities, their wives and kids live in the communities, their mothers often live in the area. People have this vision of oil and gas companies as these huge multi-national organizations, and the fact is there are more small and mid size companies that drill and frack the wells then there are multi-national companies, these guys learned the business by growing up around it. They know what happens when mistakes happen, they have daily safety meetings, they have constant inspections, if anybody is not paying attention or is making mistakes they are ran off the site so fast you would not believe it. They know that if the groundwater gets contaminated then it affects them and their kids as well as it does mine. personally I am less worried about the oil field guys contaminating our water then I am worried about eating fruit and vegetables from Mexico where they can and do use any and every chemical they can get their hands on, or the pharmaceuticals that these doctors are prescribing to every that will take them with no regards to the side effects.
Right on.
My husband's own FATHER was KILLED working on an oil rig - at the age of 27. My husband grew up without a father due to negligence by a small company - this was before stringent regulations regarding working time were in place, and his dad had worked 18 hours straight before slipping and falling from the top of an oil derrick.
I think it's pretty safe to say that my husband knows the dangers of irresponsible work and lax safety standards - as does any professional working in that field these days. As has been mentioned on this thread, standards are very high - and so are fines and penalties for not following those standards.
...standards are very high - and so are fines and penalties for not following those standards.
No way - not even close by a million miles. I'm very familiar with Texas and it's ways. Standards are very low, shortcuts and concealments are high, and fines and penalties are a complete joke. The recent chemical explosion in West, TX is a classic textbook case into the way things work down there. Many similarities with shortcuts and accidents that occur in the oil & gas industry (Beaumont, La Porte, Texas City, you name it).
I'm familiar with the "Texas proud / Texas is awesome / Texas can do no wrong" defensive mentality that shields thought from the way things really are there. So it's not surprising to see support for things there. Plus it's part of your income, so another reason to defend it. I'm surprised though that your husband stayed with the industry after losing his father due to them. Most would go the other direction due to that, as well as not take the risk of that repeating. I know there is lots of money in the industry though, and that's a powerful lure. So it can make sense depending on one's perspective.
Last edited by Sunderpig2; 04-20-2013 at 12:36 PM..
No way - not even close by a million miles. I'm very familiar with Texas and it's ways. Standards are very low, shortcuts and concealments are high, and fines and penalties are a complete joke. The recent chemical explosion in West, TX is a classic textbook case into the way things work down there. Many similarities with shortcuts and accidents that occur in the oil & gas industry (Beaumont, La Porte, Texas City, you name it).
I'm familiar with the "Texas proud / Texas is awesome / Texas can do no wrong" defensive mentality that shields thought from the way things really are there. So it's not surprising to see support for things there. Plus it's part of your income, so another reason to defend it. I'm surprised though that your husband stayed with the industry after losing his father due to them. Most would go the other direction due to that, as well as not take the risk of that repeating. I know there is lots of money in the industry though, and that's a powerful lure. So it can make sense depending on one's perspective.
Actually, Texas' rate of workplace illnesses/accidents/injuries is BELOW the national average.
A lot has changed in the oil and gas industry (for the better, especially in the area of safety and environmental concerns) since my husband's father was killed fifty years ago. My husband, who is objective and who makes his living dealing with facts rather than emotion, knows this. He is extremely safety conscious (after all, he knows from first hand experience what unsafe working conditions can do to a person, and their family) and absolutely would not work in any industry or work area that did not put safety first - and by safety I am including the safety of the environment.
He backs up this personal standard with real action - for instance, he absolutely refuses to work for BP, though he's been offered the opportunity (along with a hefty paycheck) several times. He has said for years (long before the BP oil spill in the Gulf) that they are a company which does not have the proper attitude toward or application of safety standards and practices.
I have not expressed any of what you call the "Texas proud / Texas is awesome / Texas can do no wrong" defensive mentality." I am presenting facts - and backing those facts up with objective sources. I have courteously offered you and anyone else on this thread the opportunity to get direct and clear answers to any questions you have about fracking, from "the other side of the coin."
You, on the other hand, apparently rely on personal insults rather than facts when discussing this issue. So, I won't waste any more time answering you unless you adopt a more courteous mode of discussion.
do you understand some of the regulations these guys face when drilling a well, or even fracking a well? I was meeting a driller last week on the drill site to get some paperwork signed, a young guy from one of the crews happened to leak anti freeze from the bottom of his pickup, literally for the next 2 hours I had to stay on the site while the spot was cleaned up by a hazmat crew and an inspector could get to the site to verify that no other contamination had spread to the surrounding area or people.
sure there are accidents, but these companies are extremely careful, I have a friend who worked for a Fracturing crew for 2 years, there was a minor spill of less then 1/8 of a ounce of chemicals on the job site, with a full clean up overseen by the EPA, and the cost covered by the company hired to do the fracturing. For what amounted to a minor spill that company was forced to pay a fine of over $100,000 and the costs of clean up, and even still ended up having to close their yards in Colorado and lay off over 150 guys, due to drilling companies refusing to hire this company after 1 guy spilled 1/8th of an ounce of a chemical that can be found naturally in the environment.
so you can believe the hype that the government and businesses are being bullied, or you can spend some time researching and talking to people in the industry so that you realize that the companies are under extremely strict regulations and even still somehow manage to make money and have a huge effect on local and state economies, not to mention the federal economic benefits. No other industry that I have ever heard of is vilified for things that happened decades ago, is trashed for having a profit margin of 2-3%, and faces huge regulations, yet continue to do business when they have other options that can produce as much if not more income, and the governments really will let them do as they please.
Fact is much like Walmart, certain companies and industries are constantly attacked, and the oil companies are a prime target these days. You want to talk about bullies, look into companies like advanced energy and woodward governor in Fort Collins, and the money they have been able to raise through tax credits and such just through threats to the local government. When is the last time you heard of an oil company getting any kind of benefits from local governments for creating higher paying jobs and considerably more tax revenue?
Yeah, I'm not buying this "strictly regulated" line. I was told that the chamber of commerce only caved in after they realized the insurmountable legal cost of combating belligerent oil companies. There are unique considerations fracking along a faultline as well as upstream of several other states.
At the end of the day Fort Collins always has the reservoir. I'm more concerned about everyone downstream of us. We're the headwaters for the aquifers riveting Nebraska and Kansas down to Texas.
Quote:
I'm no expert, but my husband has been working in the oil/gas/fracking industry for thirty years and is currently a "fracking" consultant. So if anyone has serious questions and would like to hear from an expert on the subject, I'd be happy to pass the questions along to my husband.
Would he be willing to tell us the specific compounds they use? I'm very curious about that, and will happily research available whitepapers on google scholar.
Last edited by poseidon1157; 06-04-2013 at 11:29 PM..
Yeah, I've done a little reading on this since the daily show episode on Gasland 2. John Hickenlooper (our dear governor) is an energy conglomerate shill who has threatened to pursue any Colorado municipality with legal action from the state if they ban or restrict fracking. This is substantiated in several articles, for example:
So the tenuous judicial framework this statewide fracking campaign is based on is that mineral rights holders have an implicit right to retrieve any and all materials located within the boundaries of their property without oversight or municipal regulation of any sort. The resultant belligerent lawsuits, both from the states and the lessors, is tantamount to barratry. A mineral rights leasor can't strip mine a mountain with houses on it, and in any fair interpretation of the law the mineral rights holders in Colorado should be implicitly responsible for any and all adverse side effects to the wildlife and resultant medical conditions of the fracking materials and hydrocarbons that are left in the environment. They should also be responsible for any relocation necessary for families with pre-existing medical conditions within their claimed properties.
This all breaks down to two simple contentions:
1) Citizens of Colorado have no right to know what the fracking solution is made of.
2) The right to develop the land supercedes the right to live on the land.
The first contention is patently absurd. Without any understanding of potential environmental contaminants there can be no meaningful regulation of these materials.
The second contention is absurd in any but the most cynical interpretations of representative democracy in which dollars supplant votes. This can only be true if there's no substantial discussion on the above topics.
Well said poseidon1157! Thank you. This message needs to get out more visibly, and be put in front of Coloradans. Though we have lots of wonderful distractions - especially in the scenic realm - we should never get too busy to see what's going on around us, and act when necessary. They are banking on busy people, busy lives, and the public being easily intimidated by their brute force tactics and threats.
Well Sunderpig, this is fundamentally a federal issue. Natural resourcing issues like this may be sourced in Colorado, however the effects are national.
If you would earnestly like to see any meaningful change in this arena it will require nothing short of prohibiting corporate agriculture firms from using water contaminated with fracking compounds. Let the industries fight one another rather than taking out their legal belligerence out on the public sector.
Update: After talking with someone with direct experience our water is provided primarily by the Poudre river. This does directly impact the drinking water in Fort Collins. It has a larger effect on private wells for those unfortunate enough to own land in Larimer county and the surrounding regions. They don't have the collective resources for water purification and treatment. I was told by an expert studying this from an academic perspective that farmers around the wells are essentially bribed large quantities of money not to fight for their land. It's very lucrative to be complicit, however as other states have demonstrated these individuals learn quickly that you can't drink cash. To my knowledge the best way to drag corporate agriculture firms into this would be to disincentivize deliberately reducing supply and prohibit utilization of contaminated groundwater with fines exceeding the quarterly margins these firms operate under (which is a LOT).
Update 2: For those of you more curious about the etiology the Koch brothers are the most influential anti-regulation advocates in the United States for energy. While intermediary organizations siphon their money where they consider it most effective, David Koch is an outspoken opponent of regulations protecting those of us living here in Colorado. Interestingly some of these ideologies have been parroted in discussions around this issue.
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