“Fracking fluid chemicals have never been found in the drinking aquifers. Please correct me if I am wrong.”
I don’t know exactly what was found. But something got in the wells in Dimock, PA. after the fracking began. And I’m not talking about natural gas.
“I’m hoping the Haynesville Shale development extends 10 more miles to the south to reach my retirement property.”
Why is that?
As with any drilling if the operator used substandard equipment or procedures there is always a risk of losing integrity of the drill string. This is not just a frac problem but a drilling industry wide issue that has been address since the 1950's by the industry. There is no way that a properly maintained well string fracing a formation that is 5000+ feet deep can reach communication with an aquifer that is 200-800 feet deep. It is just not geologically possible to propagate induced fractures that far the max induced fracture distance is on the order of 10's meters almost never into the hundreds let alone the kilometers that would be needed to cross that much strata sorry just wont happen.
Gasland is propaganda by the econazi's pure and simple. Natural Gas has been associated with ground water in a number of places that happens naturally. The TRC just threw out 2 cases where N-gas was found in shallow drinking wells near a drilling site because after isotopic analysts of the gas present it was determined what every one knew all along that the gas in the water was shallow, young, and local coming from a naturally occurring seepage from an organic shale layer just below the aquifer not from 5000+ feet deep. These types of local seepage are well known, having been documented since the 1920's much much older than frac technology. The gas operators set samples of Their deep shale gas and the gas from the drinking wells to a interdependent mass spectrometer. Which proved without a shadow of a doubt that the fracing released gas was not the same as the shallow well water associated gas.
Yes as a matter of fact I am a Geoscientist :)
As with any drilling if the operator used substandard equipment or procedures there is always a risk of losing integrity of the drill string. This is not just a frac problem but a drilling industry wide issue that has been address since the 1950's by the industry. There is no way that a properly maintained well string fracing a formation that is 5000+ feet deep can reach communication with an aquifer that is 200-800 feet deep. It is just not geologically possible to propagate induced fractures that far the max induced fracture distance is on the order of 10's meters almost never into the hundreds let alone the kilometers that would be needed to cross that much strata sorry just wont happen.
Gasland is propaganda by the econazi's pure and simple. Natural Gas has been associated with ground water in a number of places that happens naturally. The TRC just threw out 2 cases where N-gas was found in shallow drinking wells near a drilling site because after isotopic analysts of the gas present it was determined what every one knew all along that the gas in the water was shallow, young, and local coming from a naturally occurring seepage from an organic shale layer just below the aquifer not from 5000+ feet deep. These types of local seepage are well known, having been documented since the 1920's much much older than frac technology. The gas operators set samples of Their deep shale gas and the gas from the drinking wells to a interdependent mass spectrometer. Which proved without a shadow of a doubt that the fracing released gas was not the same as the shallow well water associated gas.
As for half recovery that's because half the fluid remains in the formation it was injected in. The reason the gas is there in the first place is the formation has a caprock over it that is not only watertight but has to be gas tight too or the gas would have dissipated away eons ago. The frac fluid that is recovered is cleaned and as required by federal law disposed of in deep saline injection wells below the caprocks of the shale formation. where like the saline waters that have been there for 10,000 to hundreds of thousands of years they are trapped in the rock pores. this is easily verifiable again with isotopic data specifically the O16 to O18 ratios which will tell you how long the formation has been capped and out of communication with the biosphere for. Putting the saline frac waters in an already deep isolated saline sandstone is common practice, in the industry. Those waters will be entombed there for all of man's existance. Think in geologic time not human time. 10,000 years is not even a blink in geologic time if those waters have been stable for that long they will far outlast humankind.
There are companies now making edible yes edible fracing fluids that use algae and seaweed surfactants and gelling agents. Those fluids should put an end to the chicken little people since even if a well operator broke the law and lost integrity and then even when his instruments are telling him that he has lost well integrity kept fracing the leakage would biodegrade and in is drinkable from the start.
The pressure curves would clearly indicate a lose of well seal, as would down bore flow meters and as a third glaring signal the micro seismic events from the fracturing would diminish and there would be clear seismic signals shallow at the site of the lose of integrity. Believe me a well operator would see his instruments screaming at him that he lost his well strings sealing. The new fluids would prevent even this crook from damaging shallow water stratas. Yes as a matter of fact I am a Geoscientist :)