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The fracking disaster

lightenup said:
We should wait until the Saudis, and the rest of the middle east run out of oil(OPEC), and Russia....then start fracking......Imagine the power we would hold over....EVERYONE!!!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfUM5xHUY4M
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Why do you think they aren't changing what they're producing right now? They are trying to make it financially impossible for US Drilling and Fracking operations to operate on a profitable margin.
 
CTobias said:
Why do you think they aren't changing what they're producing right now? They are trying to make it financially impossible for US Drilling and Fracking operations to operate on a profitable margin.
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No shit......Really?:nose-picking:
 
Trout Nazi said:
Careful there, the dipshits in this country may elect him as our pres-o-dent someday.
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This is true. They were dumb enough to elect this administration twice.

They also elected Cuomo twice. No thanks to NYC and Long Island. It's funny when you look at the break down of the precincts Cuomo won.
 
nickyfins said:
Thank god NY is going to start doing something, I hope more states follow suit. Even if it means paying more on my trip to fish, at least my son will still have a fish to catch
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Can you point out a single river that was destroyed by fracking? Just one is all we need. Once you realize that fracking is as safe or more so than other energy extraction methods, you'll come to realize how important it is to our economy and our national security. It took this conservative many years, but I finally realized with the Marcellus Shale fracking that the sky is indeed not falling. NY will eventually see that as well, but not under Cuomo is all.
 
I'm still somewhat in the middle. The technology of fracking isn't all that bad and we need the energy. Those are the pro points. My biggest con is not in the technology, but in observations that a lot of the oil field people, like a lot of extractive industry people, make their money in a place and head on to the next boom town. Therefore, they play fast and loose with the rules and have no concern for the community - they will be in a new place soon and the locals are left to pick up the pieces. In PA, the coal and logging (and associated wood chemical/wood acid) industries are examples of past extractive businesses that often left a mess when they could have done better. For example, benzene has been banned as a fracking chemical for a long time, but it keeps showing up in samples because many of the fracking people prefer to work with it. As a result, I think government and community oversight is needed. I don't really support the statewide ban NYS did, but I did support a ban in the upper Delaware drainage. Not for the fishing, but because 20 million people get their drinking water from the system and the cost of a screw up would be huge. Risk analysis is half about how bad is it if an accident does happen. The gas we still be there in decades, so we have the freedom to assure the industry has all the bugs worked out before going into such a sensitive area.
 
JeffK said:
I'm still somewhat in the middle. ... The gas we still be there in decades, so we have the freedom to assure the industry has all the bugs worked out before going into such a sensitive area.
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Well said Jeff - all of it. I don't understand going from a vehement stance on one of side of the issue to bullying those you only recently agreed with.

The most recent science I've read on this reinforces what you're saying. The worst fears of environmentalists are gradually being taken off the table. But regulation and compliance are a different story. Poorly constructed wells have been shown to pollute streams and drinking water in PA and Texas. The actual hydraulic fracturing process may not be causing the contamination, but if the right regs are not in place for the wells, and/or the gas companies are not following those regs, then it doesn't much matter. And no, you don't have to look far in South Dakota or PA for a community that has been come out of an energy extraction boom looking far worse, economically and environmentally, than it did before. That's actually how these things generally work, hence "boomtown syndrome" or "Gillette syndrome." Doesn't have to be that way, but it often is, and needs to be protected against.

Cuomo's policies are one thing - he's a craven political realist and his stance on fracking has very little to do with our concerns, or science, or the financial plight of upstate communities. But "in the middle" still seems like a smart place to be.
 
mudbug201 said:
Well said Jeff - all of it. I don't understand going from a vehement stance on one of side of the issue to bullying those you only recently agreed with.

The most recent science I've read on this reinforces what you're saying. The worst fears of environmentalists are gradually being taken off the table. But regulation and compliance are a different story. Poorly constructed wells have been shown to pollute streams and drinking water in PA and Texas. The actual hydraulic fracturing process may not be causing the contamination, but if the right regs are not in place for the wells, and/or the gas companies are not following those regs, then it doesn't much matter. And no, you don't have to look far in South Dakota or PA for a community that has been come out of an energy extraction boom looking far worse, economically and environmentally, than it did before. That's actually how these things generally work, hence "boomtown syndrome" or "Gillette syndrome." Doesn't have to be that way, but it often is, and needs to be protected against.

Cuomo's policies are one thing - he's a craven political realist and his stance on fracking has very little to do with our concerns, or science, or the financial plight of upstate communities. But "in the middle" still seems like a smart place to be.
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Which streams in PA and Texas were polluted, what were they polluted with, how were they cleaned up, and what was the final outcome? At this point I think we need to get specific, since this stream pollution thing has been tossed out there for a while now, with no examples.

Also, if you do an objective risk analysis or FMEA using a worst-case scenario, like reservoirs and drinking water, you'll probably be surprised by the outcome given the volume of water involved (fracking and reservoir), type of chemicals, and exctraction procedures.
 
Trout Nazi said:
Which streams in PA and Texas were polluted, what were they polluted with, how were they cleaned up, and what was the final outcome? At this point I think we need to get specific, since this stream pollution thing has been tossed out there for a while now, with no examples.

Also, if you do an objective risk analysis or FMEA using a worst-case scenario, like reservoirs and drinking water, you'll probably be surprised by the outcome given the volume of water involved (fracking and reservoir), type of chemicals, and exctraction procedures.
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I just spent the last 7 years watching some of my fellow staffers at TU working hard (and for great reasons) to ensure fracking is being done as well as it can in states like PA and in training volunteer monitors across the Marcellus shale region within PA to ensure fracking is not, in fact, polluting our groundwater or our trout streams. I am unaware of a single site they found fracking fluids in to date, and that is our PA trout streams. NY is irrelevant since they are not fracking that state yet. You would think that over a 7 year period, some streams would get hit and hit hard.

To be sure, we will have some minor incidents with fracking and with any and all other energy extraction sources. And we need to be diligent in ensuring we're putting the best management practices in force at all times. But so far, I just don't see the damage I was once sure i was going to. Not even remotely close. There will always be folks that say no to all energy production and that includes wind and solar. I see it everyday.

But none of them is living their lives without these energy sources......
 
The studies I was thinking of are by a research team from Duke. They have gone from being vilified by gas industry flacks for linking contamination to fracking in their previous research to gas industry darlings for finding no pollution from the actual fracking process in the most recent study.

But nothing suggests to me that they are being paid off by the industry, as previous researchers were. Given that they've published their research regardless of which side it supports, I think they're a solid source.

They found radioactive fracking fluids in a public stream near Pittsburgh last year downstream from a treatment plant. And then in the fall they released a study finding a bunch of contaminated drinking water wells in PA and Texas.

But look, I'm not an "anti-" at this point either. The earlier Cuomo pump fake: permitting fracking only in experimental southern tier counties, only in communities that haven't banned it, doesn't sound terrible to me at this point. Roll it out slowly in the state, monitor the consequences closely, and let the NIMBYs have their way in their own communities.

But the fact of the matter is this wasn't actually an experimental plan for fracking, it was a way for Cuomo to try to build a record that he could later depict as pro-environmental or pro-industry when seeking national office, depending on the audience, or the way the wind was blowing. Apparently he decided to go with the NIMBYs and Antis.
 
Rusty Spinner said:
I just spent the last 7 years watching some of my fellow staffers at TU working hard (and for great reasons) to ensure fracking is being done as well as it can in states like PA and in training volunteer monitors across the Marcellus shale region within PA to ensure fracking is not, in fact, polluting our groundwater or our trout streams. I am unaware of a single site they found fracking fluids in to date, and that is our PA trout streams.
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Probably worth mentioning that your TU friends' work is in some respects more representative than the Duke researchers, who have looked in wells and streams where you would most expect to find contamination, not in a random sample of streams in the state.

Well, a sample of WTS... not totally random. :)
 
mudbug201 said:
But look, I'm not an "anti-" at this point either. The earlier Cuomo pump fake: permitting fracking only in experimental southern tier counties, only in communities that haven't banned it, doesn't sound terrible to me at this point. Roll it out slowly in the state, monitor the consequences closely, and let the NIMBYs have their way in their own communities.

But the fact of the matter is this wasn't actually an experimental plan for fracking, it was a way for Cuomo to try to build a record that he could later depict as pro-environmental or pro-industry when seeking national office, depending on the audience, or the way the wind was blowing. Apparently he decided to go with the NIMBYs and Antis.
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Which is ironic when you realize that Obama sounds like he invented fracking and you'd be hard pressed to find a more ideological person from the left than our POTUS. OK, perhaps DeBlasio, but you know what I mean :)

The tree hugging left is in a quandary. They vilified Republicans over that party's "Drill baby, drill" mantra and said that no amount of drilling would ever fix our energy problems. Now they (current Administration) want to take credit for low energy costs because private industry did just that - drill. Oil and gas drilling on private lands is up a whopping 61% (but down 9% on federal lands) since Obama took office. Now tie in energy extraction to the craziness of radical Islam coming out of the Middle East and the terrorist attacks around the globe (with more coming we are told), and suddenly the drill baby drill doesn't sound so bad....
 
Rusty Spinner said:
drill baby drill doesn't sound so bad....
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Actually, drill baby drill still sounds moronic to me. But I get your point.

Look, the politics of energy extraction have less to do with a left-right divide than with a local-state or state-national divide. Which is why Washington democrats support fracking while their NYC counterparts do not. Also why Alaskans have been for drilling ANWAR all along, while contiguous state residents are more queasy about it. Delaware County wants fracking. Sullivan does not. And so forth.

But hey, it's always cathartic to dump on the guy in charge, especially if he's from the other side. If the economy goes south, maybe the GOP will give us yet another president Bush to f*&k everything up again. The last stooge you guys gave us made it pretty easy to blame everything on Republicans, even for Republicans. In the meantime, yes. Everything that's wrong is Obama's fault.:)
 
mudbug201 said:
Actually, drill baby drill still sounds moronic to me. But I get your point.

Look, the politics of energy extraction have less to do with a left-right divide than with a local-state or state-national divide. Which is why Washington democrats support fracking while their NYC counterparts do not. Also why Alaskans have been for drilling ANWAR all along, while contiguous state residents are more queasy about it. Delaware County wants fracking. Sullivan does not. And so forth.

But hey, it's always cathartic to dump on the guy in charge, especially if he's from the other side. If the economy goes south, maybe the GOP will give us yet another president Bush to f*&k everything up again. The last stooge you guys gave us made it pretty easy to blame everything on Republicans, even for Republicans. In the meantime, yes. Everything that's wrong is Obama's fault.:)
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How did you get there???? I made fun of Obama and the left for making fun of drill baby drill when it turned out that drilling our own energy did, in fact, lessen our reliance on foreign oil. So much that today the US is the world's leading producer. That is a fact. Now Obama wants to take credit as if drill baby drill was his idea. That's the joke in all of this. It happened in spite of him, not because of him.
 
Rusty Spinner said:
How did you get there???? I made fun of Obama and the left for making fun of drill baby drill when it turned out that drilling our own energy did, in fact, lessen our reliance on foreign oil. So much that today the US is the world's leading producer. That is a fact. Now Obama wants to take credit as if drill baby drill was his idea. That's the joke in all of this. It happened in spite of him, not because of him.
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Right. Got it. I wasn't sure how you got to Obama and drilling from Cuomo and fracking, which is how I ended up with blaming Obama for everything. Only way I could connect the dots.

I guess it could be ironic that Cuomo's taken an anti-fracking stance, given Obama's gone the opposite direction? Was that the idea? But that's hardly ironic - what plays in primaries doesn't play in the white house. Cuomo probably sees himself trying to outflank a Hilary by playing up his pseudo-progressive credentials and pretending to be an environmental crusader. That's the only angle I can see.
 
mudbug201 said:
They found radioactive fracking fluids in a public stream near Pittsburgh last year downstream from a treatment plant. And then in the fall they released a study finding a bunch of contaminated drinking water wells in PA and Texas.
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Radioactivity in fracking fluid defies logic. I'd like to see the data on what they found, where they found it, and how they traced it back to fracking.

The purpose of fracking is to create pressure, and the key attribute of the fracking fluid is its viscosity. It needs to be viscous enough to stay in the area long enough to create the pressure, yet flow and seal. So the key ingredients are some type of thickener, surfactant, and preservative to prevent bacterial spoilage between when its manufactured and reaches its destination (baterial spoilage kills viscosity since most thickeners are organic). Some examples of the witches brews that I've seen contain chemicals that are in most house-hold products that you flush down the toilet or in the sink, actually providing more of a chance to contaminate water. I can also foresee trace amounts of formaldehye and benzene due to the preservatives used (same as in most cosmetics).

Radioactivity makes no sense at all though.
 
Trout Nazi said:
Radioactivity makes no sense at all though.
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Except that it scares the masses who have no idea what fracking is all about, only what others tell them:crap:

Again, I remain cautiously optimistic that fracking will not lead to unforeseen environmental disasters decades from now. But there is no denying that it is helping reduce our dependence on foreign supplies from nations that hate us, and it is demonstrating US ingenuity and creating high paying jobs at the same time.
 
Trout Nazi said:
Radioactivity in fracking fluid defies logic. I'd like to see the data on what they found, where they found it, and how they traced it back to fracking.
.
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I don't think it was necessarily from the fluid injected into the ground, but the stuff that comes back up, which can contain radioactive elements trapped underground.

But I'm no scientist. Here's the damn study. And an updated one, just published. And the one from last fall. Google them yourself next time. :)
 
mudbug201 said:
I don't think it was necessarily from the fluid injected into the ground, but the stuff that comes back up, which can contain radioactive elements trapped underground.

But I'm no scientist. Here's the damn study. And an updated one, just published. And the one from last fall. Google them yourself next time. :)
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This makes sense, since we're in the radon belt. The way you posted it before implied that this was part of the fracking recipe. On the balance though, the data isn't that bad. Not saying that water shouldn't be treated (it absolutely should, and be recycled). Pretty sure if you test what comes off of the road during a rain storm, you'll find worse when it comes to heavy metals and hyrdocarbons. In this washes into streams every single time it rains.
 
Haha guys take a breath. We can blame both parties..isn't that the fair thing to do:)
Rusty Spinner said:
How did you get there???? I made fun of Obama and the left for making fun of drill baby drill when it turned out that drilling our own energy did, in fact, lessen our reliance on foreign oil. So much that today the US is the world's leading producer. That is a fact. Now Obama wants to take credit as if drill baby drill was his idea. That's the joke in all of this. It happened in spite of him, not because of him.
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lightenup said:
Yes, you are correct......I NEED to go fishing, it's been two months(or whenever Moosekids dog humped my leg), the longest stretch in five years!!!!!!:smokelots:
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Wanna come ice fishing Saturday? All the perogies, sausage and whiskey you could take down...
 
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