Posted on 05/18/2011 5:00:21 AM PDT by Kaslin
I just learned I'm going to save money! My apartment building in New York will switch from heating oil to cleaner natural gas. Gas is much cheaper than oil now because energy companies found ways to get more of it out of the ground.
Even more astounding is that by using this technique, America won't run out of natural gas for 100 years or more! Time to break out the Champagne?
Not so fast, say environmentalists. To get gas out of the ground, companies use pressurized chemicals to blow up rock. It's called hydraulic fracturing -- fracking. An Oscar-nominated movie, "Gasland," says that fracking contaminates our water supply with chemicals. In the movie, some homeowners set their tap water on fire.
That got my attention. I've seen Michael Moore's movies and environmental documentaries, which I thought were nonsense. But "Gasland" is more convincing.
Unfortunately, "Gasland" producer Josh Fox turned down my interview requests, as did representatives of the big national environmental groups that oppose fracking. I think I know why. The movie and the left's arguments against fracking are deceitful.
First, the movie implies that nasty chemicals get into the water table. That seems logical, since they shoot them down into gas wells. But it turns out that the shale gas wells are thousands of feet below the water table. Do the chemicals flow up -- against gravity?
But then what's the explanation for the most dramatic part of the movie: tap water so laden with gas that people can set it on fire?
It turns out that has little to do with fracking. In many parts of America, there is enough methane in the ground to leak into people's well water. The best fire scene in the movie was shot in Colorado, where the filmmaker is in the kitchen of a man who lights his faucet. But Colorado investigators went to that man's house, checked out his well and found that fracking had nothing to do with his water catching fire. His well-digger had drilled into a naturally occurring methane pocket.
"There are lots of ... naturally causing effects that occur," says Matthew Brouillette of the Commonwealth Foundation, a think tank in Pennsylvania -- where much of the film was shot. "It's really no surprise. We find that 40 percent of the wells in Pennsylvania have some sort of naturally occurring methane gas and other types of things."
John Hanger, former director of Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection, who also appeared in the film, is less sanguine:
"Gas can migrate ... from poor drilling into people's private water wells. ... We have had gas move from poorly done gas drilling through the ground and reach people's water wells. So there is a need for oversight ... gas does have some impacts. It is not perfectly clean. But compared to coal and oil, which are more dirty fossil fuels, natural gas can be produced and consumed in a manner that is cleaner than coal."
Filmmaker Josh Fox concedes that the states concluded that the fire wasn't caused by fracking, but he says the government regulators collude with industry, or don't use good science. His movie portrays Hanger as an indifferent bureaucrat. Hanger says the movie is just inaccurate. "Josh Fox has a mission. ... He is trying to shut down the gas -- drilling industry."
Frankly, I'm skeptical of all of them: lefty moviemakers who smear companies, companies with economic interests at stake and the regulators, who are often cozy with industry and lack essential knowledge. The surest environmental protectors are property rights -- and courts that assign liability to polluters.
But hydraulic fracturing is a wonderful thing. It's not new. Companies have done it for 60 years, but now they've found ways to get even more gas out of the ground. That's the reason gas is getting cheaper and panicky politicians no longer rant about America "running out of fuel."
Natural gas is not risk-free, but no energy source is. Perfect is not one of the choices.
If the cold fusion plant in Greece is a success this fall, the greenies will find something wrong with that.
CSI did a recent episode on this. I never realized that the producers of that show are such eco-wierdos. Like Law and Order, CSI is on my DO NOT WATCH list from now on, or if nothing else is on, I’ll watch it but boycott their sponsors.
If we were to receive manna from Heaven, the Greenies would say that we should be prohibited from gathering it. It is not that they love the earth, they just hate people.
That is it, you have hit the nail on the head, they hate people
Surprise, surprise, surprise. It's a big lie.
"There are lots of ... naturally causing effects that occur," says Matthew Brouillette of the Commonwealth Foundation, a think tank in Pennsylvania -- where much of the film was shot. "It's really no surprise. We find that 40 percent of the wells in Pennsylvania have some sort of naturally occurring methane gas and other types of things."
We were talking about this the other day.
There really needs to be some way to take these lying b@stards to task.
Considering the definite profit motive in not losing production to leakage (lost oil/gas is lost revenue AND a liability--a two-fer to the downside), the 'economic interests' come down solidly on the side of doing things right. Surface casing, cemented in place will stop the problem of gas leaking into aquifers from drilling activity. The next casing string goes inside the surface casing and is also cemented in. Either production is carried out through the second string of casing, or a liner placed in the wellbore beyond the casing shoe.
Considering that natural seeps of oil and or gas into groundwater are one of the fundamental exploration tools when looking for new reserves, the natural occurrence of either oil or gas in aquifers is not only nothing new, but well documented. If I was getting enough gas out of my water well to burn at the tap, I think I'd invest in a separator and maybe even means to store that gas for later use.
That sort of operating tax (fee, call it what you will) will only get marginal producers plugged sooner.
Will that apply to people who can light their water faucets? After all, those wells are producing gas, too.
” America won’t run out of natural gas for 100 years or more!”
Same goes for oil, if it were drilled for here.
No "blowing up" of rock occurs. Hydraulic "fracking" is just what it says....to "fracture" the rock of a gas-containing formation in a controllable and reprocible way. As I recall, the drilling folks experimented with "explosive fracking" (from dynamite to atomic bombs) and found that more often than not, it collapsed the well-bore and ruined ANY possibility of production.
One of the “other things” here in my part of New Jersey, where over 90% of the water is from wells, is arsenic. In a departing shot Bill Clinton lowered the EPA level to 10 ppb. In New Jersey the greenies got down to 5 ppb. My well is 17 ppb, above both limits, so I had to install an expensive arsenic removal system, or I could never sell the house.
Since no one test wells here on a regular basis, no one knows what the percentage of arsenic in well water is, but the guy who drilled my well said over half the wells he drills are over the New Jersey limit.
The NJDEP wrote the rule but the home owner is responsible to test and correct. Typical bureacracy.
our nominee needs to flood the airwaves with ads showing people freezing in the dark under a second Obama term....
“The United States is threatened far more by the hazards of too much energy, too soon, than by the hazards of too little energy, too late.”
-Envirowhacko, John Holdren
“Giving society cheap, abundant energy . . . would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.” Paul Ehrlich
These are some serious anti-humanity ideas here.
Very good idea!
Also show them out of work and having to walk to look for a nonexistent job
The movie and the left's arguments against fracking are deceitful... The best fire scene in the movie was shot in Colorado, where the filmmaker is in the kitchen of a man who lights his faucet. But Colorado investigators went to that man's house, checked out his well and found that fracking had nothing to do with his water catching fire. His well-digger had drilled into a naturally occurring methane pocket. "There are lots of ... naturally causing effects that occur," says Matthew Brouillette of the Commonwealth Foundation, a think tank in Pennsylvania -- where much of the film was shot. "It's really no surprise. We find that 40 percent of the wells in Pennsylvania have some sort of naturally occurring methane gas and other types of things."
Interesting, but expensive.
When you consider the difference in cost between LPG or Propane per gallon vs. water, ouch. A well up here (Williston Basin--North Dakota and Montana) that did a 28 stage frac used over 200,000 barrels (at 42 gallons/barrel) of water in the frac. They saved a small fortune running agricultural irrigation pipeline overland 9 miles to fill the reserve pit for the frac and pumping water from the water source to the pit instead of trucking it in.
I'm not sure what propane or LPG cost per gallon right now, but multiply that out and the frac fluid alone (just the base, not anything else) would cost 8.4 million times the cost per gallon of the LPG or Propane. Note that the parts of the Bakken and Three Forks formations oil and gas are being produced from are not shale, but a mixture of very fine sand, microcrystalline dolomite, fragmental limestone, and siltstone with some inherent porosity, so they may take more fluid to frac than a well drilled solely in shale. These wellbores (the fracked part) are generally about 9500 feet long as well, and the wells they are fracking in Canada and elsewhere may be considerably shorter in the lateral.
Storage of sufficient frac fluid on site for the frac job might become a problem, too, as pressure vessels would have to be used rather than a combination of frac tanks and an open pit.
The LPG or Propane, would go into the wellbore as a liquid, but would come out as a gas. In this area, while there is a considerable amount of gas, the oil is the main objective. Recovering the gas, processing it, and storing it would be an added expense.
In areas where less fluid is needed and gas is the primary objective, that might work out better.
Here, though, water is far, far, cheaper. It is also noncompressible, for all practical purposes, and it doesn't present a fire hazard.
Another advantage of water is that it can better carry the 'proppants', the other part of the frac, which are usually size graded sand, to fill the fractures and keep passageways open for oil and gas to exit the fractures (otherwise, the fractures might close, causing a significant reduction in long-term benefits from the frac). Some of the chemicals used enhance this, and are designed to break down after a short time (which is why no one wants to release their recipies, they've invested as much research time and money in these as a new drug).
Anyway, I see a host of logistical problems and hazards not present with water based fracs.
Please note that frac fluids are 'tailored' for specific rock formations in specific regions, depending on the chemistry of the rock to be fracked, the pore fluid chemistry in more permeable formations, the presence or absence of solids which can be moved but which will cause problems (certain clay minerals, mainly), and other factors.
So a list of "all" the chemicals used in frac fluids would be longer than the list for a frac fluid in a certain rock layer (generally known as a 'formation')and region.
Yes, 'biocides' are used, primarily to prevent the formation of Anerobic bacteria which exhale Hydrogen Sulfide--a more significant hazard to both humans and most ferrous metals alike, and which complicates production and refining of the gas/oil (not to mention the oil or gas does not command as high a price as 'sweet' gas or oil, which does not have those problems).
We use biocides in our water, too, (chlorine is a fine example), and sodium hypochlorite in swimming pools and while doing laundry (AKA Chlorine bleach). While the name may sound scary, and you wouldn't want the concentrated stuff on you, in the right proportions it keeps your pool from turning into a pit full of pond scum, and helps keep the cholera away--it has saved countless lives just killing germs hostile to humans--while making your whites whiter and helping the laundry smell a mite fresher.
If casing string integrity is the problem, that should be addressed.
Pre-frac bond logs permit the evaluation of both casing and cement integrity, and those should be required and evaluated by State inspectors. The same goes for fracking any existing well which has not had such a log run recently. Pressure testing casing prior to drilling out after cementing casing in place can be a requirement, which if enforced, will attest to the integrity of that part of the system and prevent leaks into uphole formations, as does pressure testing after drilling out of the casing shoe.
Produced frac fluid can be processed and re-used or injected into either porous non-producing formations which do not contain useable water, or in the case of porous formations in some areas, reinjected into the producing reservoir to maintain reservoir pressure, a pressure maintenance tactic which has proven advantageous in keeping dissolved gas from bubbling out of oil in the reservoir and choking off pore throats reducing, or in some cases, stopping production of oil.
Which leaves spills and mishandling. Short of the most serious mechanical failures and vehicle accidents, production locations can be designed to contain any spilled fluid.
Fines and sanctions can be levied against those who intentionally mishandle or discharge frac fluids.
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