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golsen
Social climber
kennewick, wa
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Topic Author's Original Post - Apr 18, 2011 - 05:01pm PT
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Frack!
I don't know enough about hydrofracturing to get oil out of the ground to determine whether it is alright or not. But injecting chemicals into the ground to aid it? That is nuts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/science/earth/17gas.html
WASHINGTON — Oil and gas companies injected hundreds of millions of gallons of hazardous or carcinogenic chemicals into wells in more than 13 states from 2005 to 2009, according to an investigation by Congressional Democrats.
Companies injected large amounts of other hazardous chemicals, including 11.4 million gallons of fluids containing at least one of the toxic or carcinogenic B.T.E.X. chemicals — benzene, toluene, xylene and ethylbenzene. The companies used the highest volume of fluids containing one or more carcinogens in Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas.
Millions of dollars have been spent remediating older leaking underground storage tanks used at gasoline stations. the primary contaminants were BTEX.
[url="http://www.egr.msu.edu/tosc/akron/factsheets/fs_btexpdf.pdf"]
http://www.egr.msu.edu/tosc/akron/factsheets/fs_btexpdf.pdf[/url]
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Nohea
Trad climber
Sunny Aiea,Hi
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Apr 18, 2011 - 07:52pm PT
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http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/
Yea that is nuts, the doc used to be on HBO. In it a guy turns on his water faucet and lights it, and the flame stays.
I showed my seniors some of the resources on the website.
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Studly
Trad climber
WA
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Apr 18, 2011 - 09:31pm PT
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The George W. Bush legacy.
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Auto-X Fil
Mountain climber
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Apr 18, 2011 - 10:25pm PT
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I live in PA, right in the center of a shale formation being fracked right now. There are two sides to every story.
Gasland is utter sensationalist bullsh#t. I can't even start a conversation with it because every single facet is twisted to be inflammatory.
People are in an uproar becuase they are injecting diesel fuel in places with the frack water. Where do you think the diesel came from?! The fact that the aquifer is 100 feet down and the gas is 5,000 feet down seems to go over the heads of many folks.
I've seen wells lit on fire around here for decades before the gas companies showed up. The natural gas is, well, natural. It's been in the water here for as long as people have been drilling water wells.
There are some companies doing a lousy job. Cabot Oil and Gas seems to have an environmental policy along the lines of "it's better to ask forgiveness than permission".
Forunately, they seem to be in the minority. Overall it seems to be a fairly low-impact means of feeding our fossil fuel habit. I think the debate on the sources of and issues with that habit belong elsewhere. But accepting that it's going to come from somewhere, even with all this occurring in my back yard, I'm not crying NIMBY.
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Nohea
Trad climber
Sunny Aiea,Hi
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Apr 19, 2011 - 12:57am PT
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Thanks Base, I had to copy/paste to read tomorrow but when I did show my seniors this, I said as I always do "this is one side of the story, what is the other?" SO Thanks, I got some reading to do!
Aloha,
will
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Delhi Dog
climber
Good Question...
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Apr 19, 2011 - 07:31am PT
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Base-thanks,
I always appreciate your perspective on things.
Actually I DID read all you wrote, and well... a lot went right by me but I did get the jist of it-thanks again, interesting stuff...
Cheers,
DD
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Apr 19, 2011 - 10:25am PT
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OP - Yeah, its never a good idea.
No matter how the PR campaigns paint it, if you take a look at what they have done around the country already, you will come to the conclusion that fracking is not good for any human being, or animal.
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Studly
Trad climber
WA
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Apr 19, 2011 - 11:10am PT
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What happens what the casing/plugs corrode away? Maybe not within our lifetime, but doesn't that allow the deep water/chemicals to well up and mix with ground water?
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Bullwinkle
Boulder climber
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Apr 19, 2011 - 12:32pm PT
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It's great to know that Big Oil is so concerned with our safety and health, just as Big Tabacco was certain that smoking doesn't cause Cancer. . .
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Apr 19, 2011 - 01:38pm PT
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Hi Base.. thanks for that explanation of drilling and fracking. That was cool. Can you help me understand something. The NY times article says they use chemicals in the process of fracking, including things like benzene, but you seem to say that they only use fresh water.
Maybe I misread this, but would you address the use of chemicals? It does appear to me that you are saying that ground water is being protected by all of these steps you explain, the cementing and such.. But could you expand on the use of chemicals? And what that article is saying.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Apr 19, 2011 - 01:52pm PT
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GasFrac - don't use BTEX/water mix...
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Mark Not-circlehead
climber
Martinez, CA
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Apr 19, 2011 - 02:04pm PT
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Now, I didn;t read all the psts (and all the responses in the lonoonnnggg posts), but I have this comment;
Most of the chemical everyone os afraid of getting into groundwater, were already in the ground (as crude) to begin with......The only connection to groundwater would be through the wellbore.
Am I off base?
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AP
Trad climber
Calgary
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Apr 19, 2011 - 02:16pm PT
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We have a big energy problem on this planet. Nuclear looked good until the Japan incident, much of the world's oil has a big political issue, and wind&solar can't fill the gap. We should conserve and use less but this won't fix the problem.
Shale gas and shale oil will go a long way on this continent to helping us manage for longer. Shale gas in particular is abundant in some areas and should play a much bigger role in the future as it is probably less damaging than the alternatives. In fact we should stop using coal for electricity generation and use more gas.
Disclosure: I work in oil and gas exploration
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golsen
Social climber
kennewick, wa
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 19, 2011 - 03:38pm PT
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Thanks Base,
when I started this thread my main concern was in two areas; the potential for contamination to groundwater, and that the regulators actually do not require the fracking fluid to be identified. I saw that the "recipe's" are proprietary, and my response is that it is my earth too and I want to know what is being injected, pretty simple.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Apr 19, 2011 - 03:42pm PT
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+1 for Golsens point above.
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slabbo
Trad climber
fort garland, colo
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Apr 19, 2011 - 03:59pm PT
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One of the CO nukes was near Silt ? I was reading a bit ago about the Book Cliffs shale stuff, seems a bit crazy since SO much goes into getting it out.
Op Ploughshare also wanted to nuke a new harbor in Alaska so they could mine and ship out coal. Even got Teller up there try and convince the locals to be coal miners instead of fishing
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Daphne
Trad climber
Mill Valley, CA
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Apr 19, 2011 - 04:22pm PT
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Base, you posit that oil business is not extracting oil in ways that may be dangerous because they are afraid of environmental costs. I counter that that fear of a possibility of punitive measures versus the certainty of profit now has led to many abuses. For example, what happened in the gulf.
My mom worked for an oil businessman and asked him if he wasn't concerned about global warming affecting the polar bears. He said, "Who cares about the polar bears?"
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Dick_Lugar
Trad climber
Indiana (the other Mideast)
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Apr 19, 2011 - 05:52pm PT
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I haven't seen anybody ask about what happens to the fluids after they are used in the fracking process for disposal?
Much of it is flushed through municipal wastewater treatment plants that is then flushed downstream in rivers used for drinking water of 18M people!
This fracking fluid contains BARIUM, STRONTIUM, AND OTHER RADIOACTIVE ELEMENTS. And who knows what else is in the fluid as the O & G industry is not required to reveal what they use in their fracking fluid...
But hey, no big deal...people can buy bottled water if they are worried about their tap water being contaminated.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/us/02gas.html?_r=2&hp
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golsen
Social climber
kennewick, wa
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 19, 2011 - 06:29pm PT
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Our drinking water is precious. One of the reasons that we Americans have good drinking water is not because of high tech water and wastewater treatment, but because we protect the raw water supplies (surface and ground).
It is sometiems scary what Publicly Owned Treatment Works (POTW) can process through their wastewater treatment systems. Frequently, those technologies employed do not remove the contaminants, but through shear volume the dilution will then allow the POTW to meet effluent requirements.
At one Superfund Site I worked on, the Record of Decison (ROD) was to treat through Carbon Adsorption some 1 million gallons of pesticide (compounds such as Aldrin etc. now banned) contaminated water. I designed and specified a system for the contractor do do this. When the contractor was out getting ready to do the work he called me and wanted relief as he said that the local POTW that discharged into the Mississippi River would take the contaminated water with no pre-treatment. There would have been minimal treatment of these compounds in that plant. Given the logic, that the POTW would not have removed the contaminants, it was then a dilution process. Needless to say that contractor was unhappy as I disallowed his request.
The point here is that protecting our groundwater is essential. I totally understand that there are instances where the fracturing will have no impact on GW aquifers. However, for a regulatory process to not even understand what is being injected is unacceptable and not confidence inspiring.
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