Fracking is evolving, showing industry can do better

Houston Chronicle ^ | September 29, 2014 | Chris Tomlinson

[thackney]

Fracking is evolving.

There are mutant wells in the Eagle Ford that are producing four times more oil and gas than hydraulically-fractured wells did in 2010. In Pennsylvania, the wells are using less water because drillers are recycling. And in North Texas, the number of earthquakes have dropped dramatically since the good people of Azle through a fit and convinced the Texas Railroad Commission to hire a seismologist to investigate.

When you include the demand that drillers take more care in completing their wells to avoid contaminating the ground water, the only conclusion is that the oil and gas industry is responding to public criticism and finding their way to making money responsibly.

Some industry executives, of course, will deny that public pressure had anything to do with the steps they've taken. They'll insist that more productive wells and less water usage make financial sense. Avoiding liability for contaminated drinking water and induced earthquakes also make good business sense. All of that is true, but they sure were slow in taking those steps.

There are opponents to drilling who will point out that the industry still isn't doing enough. Many of these people want an end to the use of fossil fuels...

[thackney]

Excerpted for Houston Chronicle content

[Crazieman]

through a fit?

[thackney]

I don’t understand the question.

[ConservativeInPA]

Looks like Chris Tomlinson can’t write and doesn’t know jack about business. I guess that is why he is a “business columnist” and not working in the real world. F’n mental midget.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. - Theodore Roosevelt

[abb]

My theory on how a journalists becomes a financial or business reporter is this:

Whenever recruiters visit the journalism schools, they ask the students “which of you can reconcile a checkbook?” Out of any random group of j-students, about 1 in 20 can do that. THOSE are the ones who become “business reporters.”

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Fracking is evolving, showing industry can do better

In other news, computer chip transistor density is evolving, showing industry can do better. So logically, chip makers should be required to sell chips with 100 times the transistor density of present chips. Assuming that the cost and time which the chip makers have put into the tech to increase the density of chips was unnecessary, and the improvements of the past would have happened spontaneously and instantaneously if not for the greedy people who insisted on being paid high salaries for years before they revealed the secrets that they always knew.

Perfect cynicism is natural to journalists, and also to socialists.

[X-spurt]

He was referring to the use of “through” instead of “threw”. To which the MSM reporter is too dependent upon spell check or was publix skool’d.

[thackney]

Thanks, I went right by that...

[SierraWasp]

Ping! Here you see that some will continue to fuss and fume because they want to stop all use of fossil fuels!!!

This is even though they know full well that nothing can provide energy as safely, economically, or with the reliability and portability as fossil fuels.

You just have to be a commonista to resist such truth because even the Chi-Coms are now extremely high users of the superior fossil fuels!!!

[SierraWasp]

Whoah Nellie! Lookit THIS!!!

[thackney]

[alloysteel]

Them as can, do. Them as can’t, go into teaching. Them as can neither do, nor teach others, go into this story telling craft called “journalism”. They are all frustrated novelists.

Because they are not very coherent story tellers, either.

[TurboZamboni]

While as a whole I like the fracking industry, they really have some unscrupulous players. Mrs TZ has relatives in Wisconsin (where most of the world’s frack sand comes from)that had an offer to buy their farm to frack there.

Without even being close to a deal, the frack company had people out cutting fences and old growth oaks. Her relatives had to call the sheriff to kick them out for trespassing.

They really employ a lot of heavy handed a-holes and expensive lawyers who operate under the premise it’s better to be in court than be in the right.