[Mudcat]

I used to work in the water table cleanup business. Mainly we cleaned up DNAPLS - basically heavy petrosludge that seeped out of a leaky oil tank. The D in DNAPL meant the sludge hit the water table (below ground) until it found a ledge or cubby hole to sit on. So that might answer part of your question - with fracking at 7000 feet, the DNAPLS will go down not up.

There are LNAPLs - L is for light - those could be problematic because they rise up until they float across the top of the water table. Most companies are pretty cautious but there are a handful of rogue firms out there basically blowing up rocks at depth to see what happens. It’s a bonanza akin to the gold rush. At a GREAT time for the US too, with China and India adding expotentially to the world energy demand.

Personally I think it would be a good idea for the industry itself to come up with a way to reign in the wildcats most likely to cause headaches for everyone. That would be better than a few bad apples closing off this great opportunity (ala coastal oil drilling or building nuclear power plants).

[mountainlion]

There are water wells that have had natural gas in them for 100 years. If fracking were a major problem like the so called environmentalist say then there would be major problems with gas and oil in water well fracking. Drakes first will in Titusville was 65 feet deep. This is the depths of water wells. My area goes up to 1000 feet deep for water wells. Oil wells are quite deep going over 15000 feet.

I like your comments.