Fracking Our Way to a Toxic Planet

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Posted by Ed (510 days ago)

First, it is important to point out that despite industry claims that hydraulic fracking for natural gas has been in practice since 1947, the type of fracking used now is a new entity altogether. Ingraffea refers to it as unconventional hydraulic fracking because it combines four types of relatively new technologies to unlock unconventional gas shale.

Traditional hydraulic fracking involved one well that was drilled straight into the ground to tap a pocket of natural gas. The gas was trapped in a relatively permeable material such as sand or limestone. The new type of hydraulic fracking is trying to extract gas located in microscopic pockets and joints within relatively impermeable shale rock. In order to do this, there are two types of drills for each well: one that goes straight down for five to ten thousand feet to reach the shale, and another that drills horizontally through the shale for another five to ten thousand feet in multiple directions.

Unlike traditional gas fracking, shale gas fracking requires many wells and much larger areas of land. Ingraffea states that traditional hydraulic fracking required clearing a small area of land and drilling one well. But shale gas fracking must drill into as much of the shale in the area being extracted as possible. This means bulldozing an area of 10 to 20 acres and drilling 8 to 20 wells on that pad of land. This is repeated at other locations throughout the shale area. The Marcellus Shale Basin alone is expected to contain 400,000 wells.

Shale gas fracking requires substantially more energy and resources than conventional gas wells, too. In addition to the drilling rigs, each well requires a large generator to run the hydraulic pump, hundreds of truckloads of water and chemicals to provide 5 to 10 million gallons of fracking fluid, and traincar loads of sand. Each well consumes ten times the amount of water and produces ten times as much waste as a conventional well. When this is multiplied by the number of wells on a pad and the number of pads required to fully extract gas in an area, it becomes clear that the use of resources is exponentially greater in shale gas drilling - and waste continues to be produced over the multiple-year active life of the well.

The waste comes in three forms: liquid, solid and gas. Water and chemicals are injected into the well and they return to the surface carrying heavy metals, organic compounds and radiation picked up from the shale. Ideally, the fracking fluid is captured and safely transported to a storage facility. Mud from the well comes to the surface carrying toxins, too, and must be contained, transported and stored. Some of this waste is placed in open pools or landfills, or is spread on the land and roadways in areas that permit this. Some is injected into storage wells. And some is dumped into waterways illegally. Gas waste in the form of leakage to the atmosphere occurs. Ongoing research suggests that 3 to 8 percent of the methane produced from each shale gas well is emitted into the atmosphere.

According to Ingraffea, it is true that natural gas produces less carbon dioxide than other fuels when burned. What is not talked about enough is how fracking unleashes methane, which has devastating effects on climate change. Natural gas is primarily methane, and when methane is leaked into the atmosphere, it is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide by a factor of 30 to hundreds, depending on the time period over which it is emitted and other factors. Every gas well leaks to some extent, but the current industry standard is that one out of every 20 wells leaks large amounts of methane before it is discovered to be failing.

It is known that shale oil wells release over 100 million of cubic feet of gas each day as the oil is collected. This gas is burned on site rather than captured because it does not make economic sense to capture it. Only recently have studies started to ask how much methane is leaking overall from shale gas fracking, and it looks like the answer is twice as high as initially anticipated. Rather than serving as a bridge to a clean energy future, Ingraffea states, natural gas will hasten climate change, and is a climate bomb with greater potential impact than the Alberta Tar Sands.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/14958-us-climate-bomb-is-ticking-what-the-gas-industry-doesnt-want-you-to-know

(I am based in Hong Kong)

Posted by Ed (384 days ago)

See below - no Al Jazeera links...

If you follow this site I have used the Big Feature on our home page to highlight Canada's environmental catastrophe - otherwise known as the tar sands... you can also find multiple references in this Forum re: deep water drilling, mercury poisoning from coal...etc etc...

The reason I feel the need to expose the fracking nightmare so vociferously is because we are being told this is like the nectar of the gods (it has even been reported that a CEO of a fracking company drank the fracking fluid ... I will put up USD10,000 right if someone can find this guy bring him to my office and we video taping him drinking a litre of fracking fluid... 20 grand is he forces his kid to do do)

We are being LIED to and told it is environmentally safe... we are being LIED to and told fracking will provide us with 100 years of clean energy.

These are outright LIES as evidenced by the links below.

All fossil fuel extraction is dirty and puts our environment at risk... but fracking is the ultimate nightmare - we are pumping millions of gallons of chemicals into the ground under high pressure - and we are to believe this is not going to ruin our water table?

Anyone with half a brain would say 'hey - that doesn't make sense'

Fracking companies lobbied the Bush admin to be exempted form the Clean Water Act. Say no more...

And I might note - try selling a farm that has been fracked...

FRACKING OUR WAY TO A TOXIC PLANET

Elevated levels of methane, ethane and propane gases were found in drinking water wells in Pennsylvania, close to operations that shake natural gas loose from underground shale formations in a process known as fracking, scientists reported on Monday. Based on analysis of 141 drinking water wells in northern Pennsylvania that sit atop a natural gas-rich underground formation called the Marcellus shale, Mr. Johnson and his colleagues found 82 per cent of drinking water samples contained methane, with concentrations six times higher for homes within 1 kilometre of natural gas wells than for homes farther away.
Ethane concentrations were 23 times higher for homes close to natural gas wells; propane was detected in 10 drinking water wells, also within 1 km of a natural gas well. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/methane-found-in-drinking-water-near-natural-gas-wells-study/article12783760/

POISONING OUR LAND
Over the past several decades, U.S. industries have injected more than 30 trillion gallons of toxic liquid deep into the earth, using broad expanses of the nation's geology as an invisible dumping ground. No company would be allowed to pour such dangerous chemicals into the rivers or onto the soil. But until recently, scientists and environmental officials have assumed that deep layers of rock beneath the earth would safely entomb the waste for millennia.
There are growing signs they were mistaken (or lying of course) http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=are-fracking-wastewater-wells-poisoning-ground-beneath-our-feeth

THE FRACKING PONZI SCHEME
Robert Ayres, a scientist and professor at the Paris-based INSEAD business school, wrote recently that a "mini-bubble" is being inflated by shale gas enthusiasts. “Drilling for oil in the U.S. in 2012 was at the rate of 25,000 new wells per year, just to keep output at the same level as it was in the year 2000, when only 5,000 wells were drilled." http://www.forbes.com/sites/insead/2013/05/08/shale-oil-and-gas-the-contrarian-view/

FRACKING WILL CREATE AN ECONOMIC CRISIS

Overinflated industry claims could pull the rug out from optimistic growth forecasts within just five years. A report released in March by the Berlin-based Energy Watch Group (EWG), a group of European scientists, undertook a comprehensive assessment of the availability and production rates for global oil and gas production, concluding that: "... world oil production has not increased anymore but has entered a plateau since about 2005." Crude oil production was "already in slight decline since about 2008." This is consistent with the EWG's earlier finding that global conventional oil production had peaked in 2006 - as subsequently corroborated by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in 2010

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/earth-insight/2013/jun/21/shale-gas-peak-oil-economic-crisis

(I am based in Hong Kong)

Posted by Ed (197 days ago)

Fracking Chemicals Dumped in the Ocean

Offshore Fracking (And Dumping Chemicals Into Coastal Waters) Beyond The Public Eye

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency published a rule on January 9, 2014 requiring oil and gas companies using hydraulic fracturing off the coast of California to disclose the chemicals they discharge into the ocean. Oil and gas companies have been fracking offshore California for perhaps as long as two decades, but they largely flew under the radar until recently.

An Associated Press story in August 2013 revealed that oil and gas companies had engaged in hydraulic fracturing at least a dozen times in the Santa Barbara Channel – the site of the nation’s first offshore drilling site as well as the first major oil spill. The 1969 well blowout in the Santa Barbara Channel became the impetus for a series of environmental laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Water Act.

Related article: Peak Oil becomes an Issue Again after the IEA Revised its Predictions

Documents published through a Freedom of Information Act request showed that federal regulators have allowed drillers to dump chemicals into the ocean without an environmental impact statement assessing the effects of doing so. This was largely unknown to California regulators and the general public.

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement – the federal agency responsible for regulating offshore oil drilling – has issued “categorical exclusions” for fracking offshore California, essentially giving frack jobs a pass on environmental assessments. The logic is that offshore fracking has largely occurred in existing wells, locations for which companies already jumped through all the environmental hoops long ago.

Offshore fracking could be much more widespread than even federal regulators are aware. According to the Environmental Defense Center, BSEE only began to learn about the extent to which fracking was occurring offshore when pressed to respond to FOIA requests.

The industry maintains that hydraulic fracturing is safe, and BSEE officials point to the fact that fracking offshore requires only a fraction of the water needed to do the job onshore.

But offshore fracking differs from the onshore practice in at least one important way. After an onshore well is fracked, the waste water is often re-injected into the ground for storage. However, offshore drillers often simply dump the waste water into the ocean – although the industry claims the water is treated before entering the marine environment.

The latest EPA rule would merely require companies to report the chemicals that they are discharging into the ocean. The rule is a weak one because relies upon companies to self-report their activities.

EPA’s announcement is a new wrinkle in the story of fracking in California, which has been much more raucously debated onshore. Last year, the state passed a controversial law that introduced the first regulations on fracking. It requires companies to disclose the chemicals used in the drilling process, obtain permits, and monitor air and water quality. Environmentalists rejected the law and are calling for a full moratorium.

Governor Jerry Brown does not support a ban on fracking and insists the new law is rigorous. Despite the complex geology that could prevent California from ever living up to its oil and gas potential, the industry and many policymakers remain in favor of trying to exploit the vast oil and gas reserves in California – both on and offshore.

http://www.testosteronepit.com/home/2014/1/13/offshore-fracking-and-dumping-chemicals-into-coastal-waters.html

(I am based in Hong Kong)