Hydraulic Fracturing In The Marcellus Shale
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-05-16/hydraulic-fracturing-marcellus-shale
The Marcellus Shale which lies beneath a number of Northeastern states including Pennsylvania, New York, and West Virginia is thought to be one of the largest known gas fields in the world. Hydraulic fracturing techniques have allowed oil and gas companies to tap into these reserves as never before, and with such success that supplies now exceed demand, and prices are at near record lows. The operations have been a boost to local economies, but there are important environmental and health concerns yet to be addressed: Please join us to discuss natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale.
Guests
Erik Milito
director of upstream and industry operations, American Petroleum Institute
Amy Harder
reporter, The National Journal
Fred Krupp
president, Environmental Defense Fund
David Brown
toxicologist, and an adviser to the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project
Comments
Please familiarize yourself with our Code of Conduct and Terms of Use before posting your comments.
If you want a clue Google: Cheasapeake Energy Corp. The CEO is borrowing billions for himself using corporate assets as collateral. US land and leases are being sold off to foreign interests. Well, so much for energy independence. All those import depots taxpayers underwrote are now actually export terminals.
Another bubble is bursting, and they took our groundwater down with it. It's a Humpty-Dumpty deja vu all over again. Crony capitalism works like Nuclear Exlax.
"Fracking" is inevitable. So are the resulting earthquakes.
So please,please,please, regulate the injection fluid. By some reports they are mixing in unknown toxic waste,claiming "Free Enterprise". It`s only FREE to the violators,not to the taxpayers holding the clean-up bill.
EARTHQUAKES + TOXIC WASTE FLUIDS = BIG TROUBLE
Pancake:
Thought most of drilling for fuel were American companies. You know Halliburton, Baker Hughes, Weatherford, Conoco Phillips. No foreign companies there.
No crony capitalism there, Natural Gas will someday fuel our cars and provide electricity for our power plants with this clean burning fuel.
Guess you have not been in the Oil Patch where hundred of thousands of good paying jobs have been created and will continue to be. Oh well , some people live very sheltered lives.
No crony capitalism here ? It is 100% cronyism here in Ohio. The amount of water taken from Lake Erie was increased along with the contributions to politicians. Cities had their tax revenue confiscated by the State,and now have no money to repair the damaged roads these ventures cause. These Fracking interests got access to public lands,thanks to corrupt politicians, without regard to public safety or the public treasury.Paid politicians banned local governments from regulating these potential dangers.And now they want the State`s public resources to go out TAX FREE !
There is so much money going to politicians,from so many directions,and nobody seems to care.
How can groups like A.L.E.C. be writing our laws for over 30 years, AND NOBODY KNOWS ?
I am glad NPR and the DR show is talking about fracking . I think the industry is not revealing what chemicals are being used for a good reason and that reason will show up when the companies are long gone. If there is nothing to fear from the science of investigation and studies then allow and support it!. Water and air being poisoned.... maybe but until we do the science we will never know for sure...SCIENCE the awful, hated word to the conservatives and their low effort thinkers!!!
Mean Green...when you water is toxic and undrinkable will you still have your chest out thumping it waving your flag extolling the virtues of capitalism????? Nope you will be one of the shrill screaming masses just trying to survive and taking no blame.
The real "game changer" is the damage to the environment. Water pollution, air, noise. With widespread water shortage around the country what is this going to do to our drinking water. Is this going to be worth it in the long run. There are PA natives that have lost their homes and been priced out of the housing market and are now homeless.
Fracking is NOT well-regulated. We need to divulge the contents of fracking fluid, regulate the wells, enforce the clean water and safe drinking water act, and regulate the local noise and pollution at the sites.
Erik's comment that it is regulated now is false. We need FEDERAL regulations and enforcement. The states cannot do it and are too susceptible to industry control of the regulatory agencies.
I can hear the conservatives in 20 years doing a Rumsfeld...."you drink the water you have, not the water you wish you had". they are not making any more of this stuff you know! it is a finite resource, very fragile
Several well informed gentleman Bill Hughes and Ed Wade came to our community in Athens Ohio to warn the people in our area about the horrific problems that they have been dealing with the fracking industry in Wetzel county West Virginia. Polluted waters, gas releases, fires, huge trucks rolling over, blocking traffic for hours endandering school buses etc etc. Would be great if Diane had these two fellas on.
Can your guest discuss how states like Ohio are trying to avoid enforcing federal environmental standards in regard to this extraction industry. If it is so safe why not honor all state and federal envirnomental standards?
Wetzel County Action Groupwww.wcag-wv.org/Cached - Similar
You +1'd this publicly. Undo
Ray Renaud resigns from Wetzel County Action Group - New October 16, 2010. Waterfall Removed from Blake Run - Updated October 4, 2010 with Video ...
Can someone address the real threat of manufactured earthquakes such as experienced here, in Ohio, when this started? After an investigation, it was determined the drilling hit a natural fault line. Can there be guarantees this will not happen again?
How can we trust that regulations will be put into affect and implemented and not weakened by government. How can we trust that companies will be held accountable. I point to some previous examples (some is the key word:
* Enron
* Exxon
* BP
* Savings and Loans crisis
* Banking crisis
* Water quality from companies dumping chemicals illegally (Erin Brockovich's battle with the California power company)
We saw in the previous decade the pervasive goal of starving regulation organizations and putting people in place that were incompetent.
This administration has still not prosecuted anyone in the banking crisis giving the perception that it's close to Wall Street.
Why should the American people believe that we can do fracking safely?
In the last 24 hours just received this alert from individuals concerned about the potential fracking in Ohio and in the Wayne National Forest "It is a legal mandate that an Environmental Impact Statement be ordered before any leasing of Wayne land is allowed. However, Anne Carey, the Supervisor of Wayne, is on the verge of releasing them anyway. We must remind her of her duties. Please come and be heard, or at least sign the petition. AND PLEASE FORWARD THIS EMAIL."
Can your guest discuss how states like Ohio are trying to avoid enforcing federal environmental standards in regard to this extraction industry. If it is so safe why not honor all state and federal envirnomental standards?
industry spokesman with GOP backing...nothing to worry about here. just move along. In fact we feel we could produce gas more efficiently and cheaply if we could just be left alone and regulate ourselves. we will always do what is best for the workin' folk. LOL!!!
billtmore wrote:
I can hear the conservatives in 20 years doing a Rumsfeld...."you drink the water you have, not the water you wish you had". they are not making any more of this stuff you know! it is a finite resource, very fragile
Firstly, I am against the use of fracking due to the environmental impact, but throwing out poorly formed arguments do not help either. While there is a Finite amount of water in the world it is disengenuous to phrase it as such. The water we are drinking today has been processed through humans and animals and plants thousands if not millions of times. There by what is finite is essentially infinite in reuse. Also we are constantly being bombarded by micro meteroites that contain numerous ingredients including water.
after all the research that has been done over the last 65 years of fracking with the addition to chemicals to the water and sand......... or, how much in percentage, does the addition of these secrete chemicals add to the overall yield compared to just sending down sand and water?
Typical shale well can use 6 to 7 million gallons of water laced with sand and chemicals. We do not know what chemicals are used only that this briny brew cannot be recycled.
In Ohio we are expecting possibly 100,000 additional frack (horizontal deep shale) wells in the coming decades and we are one of the most densely populated states -- not like Texas or Wyoming.
Fracking water is taken from one site and buried at another.
What plan is in place to protect our life sustaining water?
Judith Majher
Kirtland, Ohio
The method of fracking breaks up the rock formations, making them permeable. They will no longer hold gas, so it leaks out.
It does not only leak out into the gas well piping. Gas leaks out to the surface in random locations in the area of drilling. Cows have died, as methane, propane or butane displaced normal atmospheric gasses on the landscape.
What technical fix, I wonder, could be applied to such a problem? (I doubt seriously that a thorough technical fix is possible, because of the nature of the problem.)
The destruction of these geological structures means the loss of natural helium storage capacity, along with depletion of gas supplies. This is a little-mentioned cost of this method of gas extraction.
Helium cannot be replaced by any other material.
Where is the public discourse that includes the idea that emissions should be kept within limits that most human beings agree are acceptable limits?
To what extent do these companies inject poisons into the ground, with the claim that they are trying to force the gas out, simply because they have nothing better to do with the poisons (which they would have to pay to dispose of, otherwise)? I understand that the EPA does not regulate these injections of chemicals into the ground.
(Do these drilling companies fund independently-managed projects that assay or survey exactly what is in the groundwater BEFORE they start operation, so that reliable benchmarks can be gotten for comparison with water quality AFTER drilling has been ongoing for some time?)
A cure for what ails the planet:
http://gaiabrain.blogspot.com
mnemecek I am just stating an opinion. it sounds like you are a scientist with facts behind you. Please feel free to drink as much of the water used in fracking as you wish! have a wonderful day!
i live in Lee county North Carolina that has been named as a prime site for drilling.
1) How much water is used and where will it come from? Area is prone to drought.
2) where will used water go?
3) Where will the gas go? The infrastructure does not exist to get natural gas to industry and homes.
scott livesey
Maybe I missed something in the interviews so far, but what about all the fresh water that is needed for the fracking process? We are contaminating millions of gallons of our most important natural resource in order to provide fuel...? Doesn't make sense to me.
Seriously? LOL! Yep, we're sure gonna count on those meteorites to maintain our needed water supply.
I am a former researcher in the area of radon gas. Radon moves through pre-existing cracks in bedrock; if it did not, there would be no indoor radon problem.
The explicit purpose of hydraulic fracturing is to open cracks in the rock. But those are NOT the only cracks. I am skeptical of the industry's assurances that their activities CANNOT affect potable water supplies.
I would also like to point out that rural people are 100% reliant on private wells. The cost per capita of providing a permanent new source of safe water in the case of contamination is much higher for private well users than for public water users.
A huge rally will be taking place today at the Wayne National Forest Headquarters in southeast Ohio. Hundreds will be demanding that an environmental impact statement be completed in regard to these public lands before any consideration of leases being signed. Can your guest please discuss why states like Ohio are avoiding implementing federal environmental standards to the fracking industry? If these extraction methods are so safe what is the fracking industry so afraid of?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last chance—We are NOT being heard!
Rally at Wayne National Forest Headquarters
Wednesday, May 23, 4:00 p.m.
Last chance to save our water
Last chance to save our local economy!
We have gotten word that the Wayne intends to move ahead with releasing land for oil and gas leasing with “strict” permit stipulations —ODNR and BLM regs!
Any leasing will threaten our public drinking water supplies, air quality*,
tourism, bike path, local food economy and safety.
We must convince Supervisor Carey
that this is NOT OKAY with Southeast Ohio residents.
We will deliver 500+ signatures on petitions calling for an Environmental Impact Study (EIS) of horizontal hydraulic fracturing on the Wayne with full public input.
POTLUCK picnic after our rally. Please bring your own table service and beverage, a dish to share, and blankets or chairs.
Meet at Athens Community Center solar lot at 3:40 p.m. if you’d like to carpool. Or join us at Wayne headquarters on U.S. 33 between Athens and Nelsonville.
My family is from Ft Worth where there is a lot of natural gas and fracking going on. A huge problem for the area is that fracking requires a lot of water. The companies pull water from the local water tables / aquifers for the fracking technique. We are still in drought conditions in Texas. Lots of people had their wells go dry due to the water being taken from the tables due to fracking. Those people had to pay out of pocket to dig new, deeper wells.
But what about the UTICA SHALE? Can you please address what will happen in this geological formation in the future? Are existing Marcellus wells the first steps for future drilling into the Utica Shale?
Dear Diane,
When you first made your disclosure statement on a broadcast several months ago referring to your family's ownership of land in the area, you mentioned they had no plans of leasing the land to the oil companies; has that changed since this morning you did not make the same statement as before?
-Edward
Boston, Mass.
CONT:
"If you haven’t signed our spring petition to the Wayne and would like to electronically, please send your name and address to heather.cantino@gmail.com. Please continue to send your letters to Anne Carey (addresses at acfan.org) and to the press. Thank you! If you would like to speak briefly, please rsvp to Heather by e-m or at 740-594-3338.
Petition and other Wayne docs at www.acfan.org
Please join us for a strong community turnout!
Numbers matter.
THIS IS IT, FOLKS!
I was happy to read in the German newspaper Rheinische Post (http://www.rp-online.de/niederrhein-nord/emmerich/nachrichten/gewaessers...) that there are politicians active in Germany working on laws and regulations which would ensure that retrieval of drinking water has priority over retrieval of any raw materials. It seems so obvious that protecting water is paramount for everyone.
Fred or David made an important point. Industry plays a game where they make the people have to identify the source of the toxic water, air or whatever.
The issue is: before industry came in, the air and water were fine, now they are not. Why?
Who knew there were chemicals applied to drill bits, to casings, where else???
John & Jane Q. Public does not know the process, but does know that before the process began, the environment was fine. So now they have to discover ALL processes involving chemicals, while Industry fights their general with specifics.
Industry needs to disclose all the processes involved and all the chemicals involved because the sickness could stem from a chemical used to encase a pit, or something, rather than the actual fracking process. Industry then says, it isn't the fracking, so the case is lost. You get what I mean
-Michael