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Did you read that article or even the original research? The guy from Duke is blaming faulty wells, not fracking.
I read it !!!
“I have no agenda to stop fracking,” Jackson says. He notes that drilling companies often construct wells properly. But by denying even the possibility that some wells may leak, the drilling companies have undermined their own credibility.
some scientists maintain that chemical analysis of the gas can reveal whether it slowly bubbled up through thousands of feet of rock or zipped up a leaky well. Jackson is now analyzing methane samples in that way.
Thus far, he says, it appears that “a higher percentage” of Marcellus Shale fracking wells are leaking than conventional oil and gas wells drilled into other formations. Stay tuned.
Here's one of thousands of "scientific" articles for your perusing pleasure and to add to that massive knowledge base you have on fracking.
You didn't read your article, did you??? From your own article.
Quote:
The study does not prove that fracking has contaminated specific drinking-water wells
I get it. You fell for the title and didn't actually realize that they found correlation but causation. Not surprising as it's been known for quite some time about the high methane levels in that area anyway. The whole water lighting on fire thing? Yeah, natural phenomenon - guess why. Methane occurring in higher levels there naturally.
Back in 2008, residents in Dimock, a small community in Susquehanna County, Penn., on the highly productive Marcellus Shale formation, began complaining of the quality of drinking water from their water wells. Testing revealed heavy concentrations of methane. It was also said that one water well exploded and that toxic chemicals were also found in the water.
Dimock subsequently became “ground zero” in the fight against fracking. Residents reached a financial settlement worth nearly $4.2 million with the mining company, Cabot Oil and Gas.
Nevertheless, an analysis by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP, to which Cabot also paid over $1 million in penalties) "determined that nearby gas well hydro fracturing activity has not impacted local wells."
Further investigations cast doubt that the alleged well explosion had even occurred. According to their sworn affidavits, the fire chief and the emergency managing agency director who responded to the call about the well explosion both found no evidence on the scene of a fire or incendiary explosion in the well pit.
Peer-reviewed research in the May/June 2013 issue of the scientific journal Groundwater tested 1,701 wells and concluded that hydraulic fracturing was not responsible for the methane in the wells, that methane is and has been prevalent in the groundwater in Susquehanna County for hundreds of years, and that the well gases were consistent with upper formation gases, not Marcellus Shale gases.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency conducted its own survey of drinking water in Dimock, and it concluded in 2012 that there were not levels of contaminants present that warranted additional action by the EPA. PADEP subsequently allowed Cabot to resume drilling there.
By the way, this 'big mouth' just showed you how wrong you were.
I have 8 wells within 10 miles of my house and 3 within 1 mile. No issues with my water and it has been tested multiple times.
My neighbor has 2 wells on his property. 1 is no more than 300 yards from his house. No water issues.
We all have water wells where I live.
We have a gas well right in our neighborhood, only a few hundred feet from our homes, and other wells within miles, no idea how many. They are everywhere around here.
Tuesday, when I was outside working, my neighbor came over and asked me if I was having any trouble with my water, I said no. Then he tells me the other day his water turned black so they ran their water for hours until they felt it was clean again.
He was wondering about the gas well and concerned about these HUGE machines, that moved at a snail's pace, that they drove down our road earlier this summer. Those machines made the ground shake, vibrating and sending sound/shock waves deep into the ground.....some kind of sonar looking for something to drill for? He is wondering if those shock waves could have cracked his well casing or disturbed something that could have fouled his well.
Later that evening, I called another neighbor a couple of houses down on the other side of me and asked him if he ever had that happen to his water. He said "Hell yeah, once or twice a year." He just runs his water until it clears up. The gas well is literally 100 feet from his house.
One neighbor, on the other side of the road, hooked up to city water this summer, none of us knows why. Not a cheap proposition, and you have to annex into the city to get it.
All of our homes were built in the early 70's, and now, within 10 years of these wells going in, funny things are happening to the water.
It makes you wonder.
Also, just because they say the wells are safe, doesn't mean they are. How many times have we had oil spills because someone didn't do something the way they were supposed to do it?
My main question, which no one will answer, is: "What's the plan? What is the plan if some well driller cuts corners and fouls the water table because of it? What happens to the community that now has no source of water? Who is going to make the homeowners whole?
Certainly not the well drillers, they will file bankruptcy, cut and run, leaving everyone else to live with the consequences. Certainly not the investors, they will be held blameless.
Tell me, who is going to buy my house, at pre disaster value, once it no longer has a source of water?
WHAT IS THE PLAN?
And, don't tell me well drillers can be trusted to do things the right way. This outfit owned the gas well that is only a couple of hundred feet from my house.
Going back to the 8 hour period under ideal conditions firstly you need enough capacity to meet your energy needs at that moment. This would roughly be equivalent to the average output of fossil fuel plants. That is times one.
You still have 18 hours left in the day, perhaps the capacity has to double to meet those demands, that's times two.
Now you need to account for the power and efficiency losses for storage. Perhaps that's another .5 times.
You're up to 2.5 times the generation capacity of fossil plants for one day under ideal conditions.
You're not going to have ideal conditions, do you want storage for one day? Your capacity needs just doubled to 5 times the output of the current capacity from fossil fuels and you have to hope the sun shines every other day.....Seeing the issue? The same thing applies to the storage.
As I said, you have compounding escalation of the capacity and storage required.
The science is still out on fracking, earthquakes, disposal of contaminated water, increased methane release into the atmosphere. The larger question is what is the rush and why do we need to provide more cheap energy at this point in time to the strongest economy in the world, seems like this would be best saved for a rainy day until we are sure of the impact.
Yes we have had fracking for decades but nothing close to the levels in places like the Dakotas, needs more time. Good article, the problem is not just the process it is what happens before and after.
Quote:
A. The problem is not "fracking." The oil and gas industry has made hay out of the word "fracking" to redefine the issue. They say, "we've been doing this for 60 years and there's never been a documented case ..." ["Fracking"] is a relatively brief period of time in the life cycle of an enormous industry when water laced with sand and chemicals is pumped down wellbores and the shale is re-fractured. That's when something very, very distant from people happens. It takes months, maybe years to completely develop a modern shale gas pad. It might take months to process and transport the methane to a market. The fracking process takes a few hours per well. People against fracking don't think of everything that happens before and after. That's much more risky to human health and the environment. The highest risk to water is when the fracking chemicals are on the surface being stored and being pumped down for fracking, and when they and the harmful materials that had been sequestered in the shale return to the surface after fracking in what is called flowback fluid. Fracking per se presents little risk to air quality, but the air pollutants from diesel engine exhaust and methane emissions associated with the processes of excavation, drilling, dehumidification, compression, processing and pipeline transport do present serious problems with air quality and global warming. The single most significant element of shale gas development that seems to just not be understood by many is its spatial intensity. It is an extreme form of fossil fuel development because of the very large number of very big wells, total vertical and lateral length and volume of the frack fluid, that have to be drilled throughout a shale play ["play" is the engineering and industry term for "formation."].
The science is still out on fracking, earthquakes, disposal of contaminated water, increased methane release into the atmosphere. The larger question is what is the rush and why do we need to provide more cheap energy at this point in time to the strongest economy in the world, seems like this would be best saved for a rainy day until we are sure of the impact.
Yes we have had fracking for decades but nothing close to the levels in places like the Dakotas, needs more time. Good article, the problem is not just the process it is what happens before and after.
The same could be said of solar or hybrid cars or wind turbines. We're finding out there's negative effects from those as well from the birds frying in the air from that large solar array to dangerous batteries in hybrids which could have long lasting environmental impacts in landfills. The difference is that fracking HAS been around for a lot longer and if sixty years is too short for people, then we'll never make progress on being energy independent. Those other green energy initiatives are quite a bit younger and if you want to say one hasn't been time tested, it would be them.
I think saying we're a fairly wealthy country is not reason enough to stop searching for energy independence - a concept which first gained considerable traction back in the 1970.
The same could be said of solar or hybrid cars or wind turbines. We're finding out there's negative effects from those as well from the birds frying in the air from that large solar array to dangerous batteries in hybrids which could have long lasting environmental impacts in landfills. The difference is that fracking HAS been around for a lot longer and if sixty years is too short for people, then we'll never make progress on being energy independent. Those other green energy initiatives are quite a bit younger and if you want to say one hasn't been time tested, it would be them.
I think saying we're a fairly wealthy country is not reason enough to stop searching for energy independence - a concept which first gained considerable traction back in the 1970.
The impacts of solar and hybrids are minimal, and as stated we have never had anything close to this level of fracking very few even knew it existed 5 years ago. Solar has been around for decades and has very little downside compared to fracking. Birds frying is really localized to some areas and can't be compared to the extensive water use and release of methane and destruction of habitat by fracking. Natural gas is an is not a renewable resource, what's the rush at this point in time, is the US in need of cheap energy.
The more we have cheap energy from fossil fuels (energy independence), the more we avoid meaningful long term solutions.
“A Cascadia subduction zone earthquake would generate the most widespread damage of any scenario. Although the maximum intensity of shaking would be less than for a large shallow earthquake, such as on the southern Whidbey Island fault, Seattle fault or Tacoma fault, strong ground shaking would be felt from northern California to northern Vancouver Island. In addition it would be accompanied by a tsunami that would be devastating within a few miles of the coast.”
So, no. But if states like Oklahoma and such want to do it, that's up to them; we can't take that chance.
Right. Little being done in Oklahoma about the fracking and waste water injection wells as earthquakes continue to happen by the dozens every week: Recent Oklahoma Earthquakes
The impacts of solar and hybrids are minimal, and as stated we have never had anything close to this level of fracking very few even knew it existed 5 years ago. Solar has been around for decades and has very little downside compared to fracking. Birds frying is really localized to some areas and can't be compared to the extensive water use and release of methane and destruction of habitat by fracking. Natural gas is an is not a renewable resource, what's the rush at this point in time, is the US in need of cheap energy.
The more we have cheap energy from fossil fuels (energy independence), the more we avoid meaningful long term solutions.
And now you're making assumptions that are not scientifically accurate. Methane and destruction of habitat by fracking??? Even the EPA has not been able to prove that - as I have shown in previous posts with articles showing this. You claim that the impacts of solar and hybrid is small. Yet those are new technologies and you claim they have been definitively shown to have minimal impact??? Meanwhile fracking has been employed for over 50 years and even though people have tried, the evidence does not support the assertions you made above. Do you see the hypocrisy of your position?
Right. Little being done in Oklahoma about the fracking and waste water injection wells as earthquakes continue to happen by the dozens every week: Recent Oklahoma Earthquakes
And then you have the science. Let's see what the USGS says...
A 2012 report from the Department of Interior using United States Geological Survey (USGS) states
USGS’s studies do not suggest that hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as “fracking,” causes the increased rate of earthquakes [of magnitude 3.0 and larger]. USGS’s scientists have found, however, that at some locations the increase in seismicity coincides with the injection of wastewater in deep disposal wells.
The translation? Fracking may well cause rumbling in and around areas when the water used in it is disposed of, but it doesn't have a connection to the increase in the sorts of earthquakes people are talking about in Oklahoma and elsewhere.
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