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Natural gas drillers facing Ocean-size problem - millions of gallons of wastewate
times tribute ^ | 8/25/08 | BY LAURA LEGERE

Posted on 09/01/2008 8:59:08 PM PDT by Flavius

Tim Budney scoffed at the fliers spread across the table in front of him.

The pieces of paper, arrayed for an audience of natural gas drillers at a recent Harrisburg meeting, boasted of one wastewater treatment facility’s daily capacity to treat hundreds of thousands of gallons of the dirty water produced during gas exploration in the Marcellus Shale.

Mr. Budney was unimpressed.

He had recently pumped and recovered more than 4 million gallons of water to develop just two Western Pennsylvania gas wells for Pittsburgh-based CNX Gas Corp.

(Excerpt) Read more at thetimes-tribune.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: drilling; energy; enevironment; gas; naturalgas; water
if i may

Wednesday, 29 November, 2000, 22:22 GMT North Sea wreck in methane myster

What event took the steam trawler down to the seafloor? A trawler found at the bottom of the North Sea may have been sunk by a massive and very sudden release of methane gas, scientists speculated on Wednesday.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1047249.stm


1 posted on 09/01/2008 8:59:08 PM PDT by Flavius
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To: Flavius

What ever happened with just cooking it off?

That is what we used to do in the old days.


2 posted on 09/01/2008 9:09:59 PM PDT by dila813
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To: Flavius

A million gallons of water?

Pfah. That’s less than a typical irrigation pivot uses in a day.

People who haven’t been around large quantities of water get impressed by talk of “millions of gallons.” A gallon is chump change.

That’s why irrigation permits are often written out in “cubic feet per second” or “acre feet.” The numbers would be absurdly large if they used “gallons per day” or “gallons per year.”


3 posted on 09/01/2008 9:26:00 PM PDT by NVDave
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To: NVDave
Exactly, and good on you for pointing that out.

However, you don't REALLY expect any ditz in the LBM to know or understand that little point, do you? (shrug...)

4 posted on 09/01/2008 9:44:40 PM PDT by SAJ
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To: NVDave
Good points. Here's a handy calculator for anyone who wants to express quantities in acre-ft. (e.g.: 1mm gallons = 3.068887 acre ft.)

http://www.western-water.com/Acre-Foot_formula.htm

For instance, you could ask for 0.000061 acre-ft. of regular, next time you pull up at the pumps.

5 posted on 09/01/2008 10:10:48 PM PDT by USFRIENDINVICTORIA
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To: Flavius

Send it to New Jersey. They wouldn’t notice.


6 posted on 09/01/2008 10:25:46 PM PDT by AZLiberty (You can't power the U.S. economy on Democrat snake oil.)
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To: USFRIENDINVICTORIA

Exactly.

In most western states, irrigation water rights were allocated based on the historical use of water to grow pasture and hay, and were often allocated about 4 feet of water per acre (ie, 48” of water applied to every acre of righted ground).

Sooooo... let’s say in the typical high inland valley of the west (northern CA, northern NV, UT, ID, inland OR, inland WA, etc) that we have about 100 to 120 growing days per year.

Let’s say (for the sake of argument, and because I know from personal experience) that hay needs about 36” of water (applied through a pivot or other sprinkler irrigation - more if you’re using flood or surge irrigation) per acre per season to grow the hay crop. I’m using hay because it is the lowest point in the food chain of ag - you feed it to cows, who give milk or beef, etc. No hay, no cows, no milk, no ice cream, no steaks, no burgers, no cheese, etc.

Let’s say that a “family farm” growing hay in Nevada, Idaho, Oregon, Utah, etc is about 500 irrigated acres. That’s all the work a family can do without hiring help.

500 acres * 3 feet of water = 1500 acre-feet of water. Divide that by 3.0689 acre feet per million gallons and we get 488.77 million gallons per year on a western family hay farm.

488 million gallons per year on a single-family hay farm.

That should put things into perspective for city slickers.


7 posted on 09/01/2008 10:40:13 PM PDT by NVDave
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To: NVDave

I got some ya’ can have...;0)


8 posted on 09/01/2008 11:09:51 PM PDT by 1COUNTER-MORTER-68 (THROWING ANOTHER BULLET-RIDDLED TV IN THE PILE OUT BACK~~~~~)
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To: NVDave

Liberals don’t do math.


9 posted on 09/02/2008 12:26:07 AM PDT by Leisler
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To: dila813

You cooked off water?


10 posted on 09/02/2008 4:35:41 AM PDT by thackney (life is fragile, handle with prayer)
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To: thackney

yea, heat it up and dump it out into a pool, let it settle an d evap off.

What doesn’t evap off makes wonderful bass.


11 posted on 09/02/2008 3:49:58 PM PDT by dila813
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