New Concerns Over Hydraulic Fracturing
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-12-19/new-concerns-over-hydraulic-fracturing
This month we’ve seen a lot of stories on fracking, hydraulic fracturing to get natural gas from shale. Among these, an EPA statement on water pollution, a report on earthquakes happening in unusual areas, fights over which government controls the land and how shareholders get information on fracking risks that landowners don’t. Shale natural gas accounts for 27 percent of natural gas production in the U.S. And natural gas provides a large part of this country’s energy needs. With jobs, energy and the impact on the environment, Diane and her guests look at new concerns over hydraulic fracturing.
Guests
Ian Urbina
investigative reporter, The New York Times.
Dusty Horwitt
senior council, the Environmental Working Group.
Bill Leith
manager of the Advanced National Seismic System at the U.S. Geological Survey.
Lee Fuller
vice president of government relations for the Independent Petroleum Association of America.
Peter Robertson
senior vice president of legislative and regulatory affairs of America's Natural Gas Alliance
Comments
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I have been touring well sites in Carter Road PA as a guest of Cabot , lauren salesman an environmental engineer, And have attended many lectures from boths sides. As a very small landowner I am for the safe extraction of Natural Gas and I am convinced that those who oppose the gas are caught up into eachothers rhetoric and are missing the science. NY has a golen opurtunity not only at taxing the benifits of earned income, but at showing the world we really are open for business if you can work within our regulations. It is time to Drill here in NY, 3 1/2 years is long enough
Victor furman
Hydraulic Fracturing is banned in France !
EU is considering the same
Marek Ranis
Charlotte NC
When the industry releases the information concerning the combination of chemicals they use in fracking, then we'll be able to make a better decision. Your comment about "missing the science" is not complete without all the information needed in determining if this practice is safe. I'm sure you'll agree, unless you're just interested in the money.
I would like to see Urbina and others who claim that water will be broadly contaminated by horizontal fracking, to put such contamination in context.
What is the chance meaningful water contamination will happen from fracking, compared to existing contamination from leaking underground fuel tanks, road salt contamination, and septic systems? Or, compared to other large industries, has the failure of wells comparable or worse?
Put it into dependable context, "compared to what?" Possibility has no meaning--probability does.
I wish they would talk about putting markers in the drilling fluids. That way if the company that drills the well does something wrong they can be held responsible.
I still find it amazing that industry continues to deflect the real topic at hand which is the obvious and well doucumented dangers of the PROCESs of fracking and continues to highlight all the benefits of cleaner burning natural gas. If it is such a safe process why does industry continue to give millions to lobby congress to keep fracking UNregulated bt clean water, air, drinking water, etc. If fracking is safe, then regulation should not be a threat!
From my experience in Wyoming, landowners seldom own the mineral rights to their land. Those rights have been sold or otherwise lost in the past. (My experience dates from 1993 to 2001 and was in SW Wyoming.)
duplicate post
Please ask your guest about what plans are in the works in case there is contamination of drinking water, or any other "accidents". I'm tired of hearing oil and gas companies stating that they have contingency plans for these accidents, when, in reality, they use 40 year old technology to clean up these accidents.
Whenever we have an oil spill, the oil companies rely on decades old technology, booms, etc. With all the profits they make, you'd think they would improve their methods of cleaning up their mess.
FRACFOCUS.org is an industry-funded propaganda site that been up for a long time. Very slick. Gives lots of data, with very little real information, and leaves out key information. Intent: blinding people with science.
Lee Fuller claims there have been no other incidents of contamination due to fracking other than in Pavilion, Wyoming. (And he seems to be claiming that the EPA study of Pavilion is suspect.) This is the standard industry line of propaganda, and the only way they can say it without catching on fire, is because drilling companies aggressive seek out victims of fracking contamination to settle with them and get a non-disclosure agreement signed to shut them up.
I know this because I have a cousin who is an engineer working for a small drilling company in Pennsylvania. 100% of his job is going around the state checking on reports of methane migration into drinking water wells. Almost all of these reports check out.
Why haven't we heard about this contamination? Non-disclosure agreements. So there are hundreds, maybe thousands of water wells contaminated by shale gas drilling, and until disclosure is required by the state or US govt., we will never know the full extent of contamination that's already occurred.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that Cleburne, Texas, a "small city at the epicenter of the region's natural-gas boom has been shaken by another arrival from underground: earthquakes. Five small temblors this month have some people pointing the finger at technology that drilling companies use to reach deep into the earth to shatter rock and release new stores of natural gas...."
State Farm Insurance is sending letters to landowners in the Cleburne area telling them that they can buy earthquake insurance is available.
What a golden opportunity for corporations! Drillers cause earthquakes, and insurance companies sell additional policies.
It seems to me that fracking per se is not a huge problem. Gas is undoubtedly less environmentally risky than coal. The problem is that fracking, tar sands, and mountaintop removal all prolong the age of fossil fuels, which will ultimately have a huge negative impact on the carrying capacity of earth due to global warming and all the disasters that follow from it. We may well have already passed the tipping point -- we can't keep doing this!
please address these two issues on the air:
Speakers are not differentiating between horizontal and vertical hydrofracturing.There is a world of difference. At this point horizontal hydrofracturing is not permitted in New York.
The New York State Bar Association journal this fall released an issue addressed the many legal and banking problems associated with hydrofracturing. Insurance, mortgages and other agreements can be seriously compromised or negated by unknowing landowners who sign. Banks do not think land being used for hydrofracturing is a good investment.
As one who lives on a lake in northern Michigan, with a well as the only available water supply, I would like to see any company with a fracking operation required to set aside a very large amount of money in a bonded account to cover costs to any in the future who lose the value of their home due to water contamination.
I am not aware of ANY Gold Standard Environmental study on gas drilling. Why not?
Why does the gas industry still have the power of the “Supremacy of Mineral Rights”? -- A World War II emergency statue. This is not a Democratic approach to good government. Why does the gas industry
need this power? Is it even legal?
Also, please refer to the excellent study by Amy Mall – at the NRDC – called “Drilling Down”. It is a very scary prediction for the health and welfare of those areas that are being drilled.
Amy Mall
Natural Resources Defense Council
1809 Mariposa Avenue
Boulder, Colorado 80302
office: 720-565-0188
mobile: 720-219-0730
Would love to here if fracking were found to be hazardous to human safety would industry voluntarily quit using the process.
We spend so much money talking about obtaining new resources when no one really ever speaks of the De-regulation of the Jones Act. We have the capability of using the 12 or so pumping stations in Alaska ready for operations to produce 2.3 million barrels of oil a day; turning our entire economy around overnight. The pipeline is now only good for one super tanker the Exxon Valdez, but instead we talk about Fracturing? We can still talk about it, but why don't we tap into the resources ready for our use now?
David
NC is now the focus of gas industry. There is legislation pending SB 709 that focuses on "studying" the potential benefits and risks of shale gas exploration. Interestingly, a timely "regulation" bill SB 781 passed earlier this year that would prohibit state environmental laws from being more stringent than federal law. End result? The 2005 Haliburton loophole would rule the day. That is no regulation of fracking at all. Industry is not being transparent about their intent and trumping up detractors to being just "wacky environmentalists".
This debate about fracking reminds me a bit of the debate about smoking.
There was a time when tobacco companies actually ran commercials about how smoking was good for you and had all sorts of beneficial effects. In hind site it is easy to see that there is basically no circumstance in which it is a good idea to suck the smoking from burning anything into your lungs. I mean, common sense right?
And now we have fracking in which we are injecting massive quantities of water (in increasingly limited resource) mixed with toxic chemicals into the ground at a deep level and cracking underlying rock creating instabilities and potentially damaging ground water and other structures. All so we can have to store the fluid by-product and get yet more CO2 producing materials out of the ground in order to burn it further pumping particulate matter into the atmosphere affecting health and the environment not just around extraction sites but in places far distant. I just cannot understand why it is not common sense that this is a bad idea.
Aside from insisting that the landowner be appraised of potential risks equal to any investor information, the landowner should test their water prior lease signing and drilling for future protection There have been many cases where after drilling has done damage, the company response has been that the water pollutants existed prior to drilling and that any negative consequences of ill health or property damage cannot be blamed on the drilling.
Thank you.
Glenn Hunsberger
I understand that landowners who are fortunate enough to have these resources on their property are yielding significant financial gains. With the potential gain so great, i believe most landowners would be capable of pursuing appropriate legal counsel prior to committing to the lease.
Your guest's statement that a town should not be able to raise the speed limit above the state speed limit is a flawed analogy. The issue is whether a local government can impose more stringent regulations than the state, not less stringent regulations. It is quite common for local speed limits to be lower than the state limit.
The focus on economic benefits is ridiculous and disturbing. These are short term benefits at best. There could be considerable long term damage that will continue long after fracking has ended. It is just incredibly short sighted to mortgage our environmental future for this technology.
I thought this industry did not have to comply to the Clean Water act.....
When, in any given area where fracking is being, or has been done, there is no clean water (and also when the coal indusrty has destroyed the atmosphere), maybe the industry can alter their barrels of money and magically create clean water and air from it......
No one has brought up that we are far shorter of water than oil and while we can live without oil we cannot live without water.
Fracking uses us huge amounts of water and even the polluted water that comes up naturally is added to ponds etc. which adds to pollution, not to mention the polluted water that seeps out.
It also uses up huge amounts of energy. What is the net production? (i.e. inputs vs. outputs of energy) when all is done.
Also industries routinely don't pay for their pollution and destruction of our environment. The people are taxed to clean up their messes. Witness so many superfund sites, lakes, etc. that are cleaned up with government monies supplies by the masses. Neither, for the most part, do the industries pay for the medical problems that arise from their activities.
Diane, with all due respect, asking Fuller or Robertson (or anyone from the natural gas industry) about safety is analogous to asking the fox which chickens he wants from the hen house.
Now for some facts:
-- In about an hour, the Earth receives (at its surface) from the Sun more energy than the entire human race consumes in a year. Though most of the attention given to solar energy has to do with photovoltaics (turning photons into currents of electrons), the largest fraction of incident solar radiation is thermal (heat). Even with current off-the-shelf technology, we can harness more than enough of both to meet our planet's human demand.
-- Available wind in, and off-shore of, the contiguous forty-eight states have the potential to generate up to 37 million gigawatt-hours of energy annually; by contrast, total U.S. electricity generation from all sources was roughly 4 million gigawatt hours in 2009 -- http://www.nrel.gov/wind/news/2010/816.html .
-- A 2006 report for the DOE by MIT concluded that from recoverable geothermal sources alone in the lower forty-eight states, we have available well over one-thousand times the total energy demands of the U.S. -- http://web.mit.edu/mitei/research/studies/documents/geothermal-energy/ge... .
Excess energy can easily be stored utilizing current technology (which is rapidly improving).
We can continue our addiction to extractive energy sources, remaining wedded to technologies of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, while despoiling our air, water, soil -- and health, or harness energy that is safe, clean, reliable and available in virtually unlimited quantities essentially forever -- which source-cost is IDENTICALLY ZERO. That we are not is the result of greed, ignorance, stupidity and spite. Ignorance, even greed and spite, are correctable; stupidity is not.
Diane,
As an Appalachian Ohio food processor partnering with dairy farmer food producers, we are terribly threatened by fracking. We require the milk of 500 cows a day, which requires 25,000 gallons per day of extremely clean safe drinking water. Thousands of visitors per year come to see our fresh milk processing plant located on a pasture grazing dairy farm in the rolling Appalachian hills of north Meigs County. Well drilling rigs, the attendant noise and air pollution, and the threat to the underground aquifers which supply our water are no longer regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act. I contend that it is criminal for a business to remove my right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness by compromising the clean water by which I make my living in a sustainable and unharmful way. Our elected officials are acting like cheerleaders for the gas and oil companies, slamming any information in the media which suggest there is potential contamination.
Clearly what we need to do is drill a couple of exploratory wells into our aquifers right now so there is no question the state of them before fracking began. This will keep us from being victims like those in Wyoming who waited for 10 years for the EPA to look into the aquifer and see what was going on. Ohioans deserve an immediate accurate assessment of the state of their aquifers so that any future claims by the petroleum industries that they were already contaminated can be put to rest now.
Thank you,
Warren Taylor
Snowville Creamery
740-698-2340
info@snowvillecreamery.com
As of 2005 the EPA has exempted Hydraulic fracturing from the safe drinking water act, clean air act and the Superfund, leaving the dangerous chemicals unregulated and allowing the industry to classify the flowback water and other bi-products simply as Industrial Waste. This leaves gaping holes in the accountability of these shale gas companies allowing their operations to go on unchecked by the Hazardous waste and Radioactive waste distinctions that SHOULD apply. In addition Methane migration into atmosphere, in many cases causing Ozone clouds, is allowed to go on, unchecked, where as if it were considered would place the Carbon footprint of shale gas EQUAL or GREATER to that of Coal. (Please note the work of Dr. Anthony Ingraffia, professor of Fracture Mechanics, Cornell University and Dr. Sandra Steingraber, Ithaca College)
I am disappointed that they did not entertain more than one question. The issue of the NYC watershed ban was misleading. NYC is one of a handful of cities that has an exemption from a costly water filtration system. It's not that they are afraid fracking will contaminate their water. They are afraid if they go anywhere near fracking the EPA will pull their exemption and it will cost them a boat load of money. Concern for drinking water is not the issue; money is the issue.
As usual the "scare" of water contamination was used to bludgeon us into a fearful corner. As a landowner with a gas lease in upstate NY, someone who takes her stewardship of the land seriously, and has researched facts in order to make an informed, ethical decision with regard to allowing gas drilling, I have yet to hear a formidable, honest argument that would dissuade me from my lease. Still waiting...
Kate