'Fracking' protesters say drilling jobs not worth environmental risks

CNN ^ | 20 Sep 2011 | Sarah Hoye

[mandaladon]

(CNN) -- Charlotte Bevins' long blond hair blows in the wind as she stands amid protesters, her eyes red and puffy from crying.

Just four months ago, Bevins' brother, Charles, lost his life in a drilling accident in central New York. He was 23, a father of two small children.

Gazing at the ground, Bevins tightens her grip on the handles of the baby stroller that cradles her young niece while hundreds of protesters lining the nearby streets wave signs and yell around her.

No fracking way. No fracking way. No fracking way, the crowd chants.

Bevins recently made the trek from West Virginia to Philadelphia, with her mother and her late brother's son and daughter, to join up with other protesters calling for a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking." The "Shale Outrage" rally took place outside a gas industry conference at the city's convention center this month. Inside, industry lobbyists and gas company executives were touting the natural gas boom in northeastern Pennsylvania and networking with officials, including Tom Ridge, the former Pennsylvania governor and former U.S. homeland security secretary.

Outside, the angry mob continues to chant and wave signs before marching to Gov. Tom Corbett's office near City Hall.

Ban fracking now. Ban fracking now. Ban fracking now, the crowd chants.

The rally not only targeted the shale gas conference attendees, but also served to drum up support and awareness for a critical public hearing on the issue on October 21.

It is the last public hearing before the Delaware River Basin Commission will vote on whether or not to open the Delaware River watershed to hydraulic fracturing.

[cripplecreek]

All too often the environmentalists create panic out of complete fantasy. They passed the great lakes directional drilling ban with the use of photos of oil rigs in the gulf of Mexico, oil soaked beaches, and dead seabirds. None of those things were remotely realistic.

The reality....

State geologists estimate that approximately 30 wells could be directionally drilled under the Great Lakes. Directional drilling, sometimes referred to as slant drilling, is performed at an angle, allowing placement of the well head onshore rather than on a drilling platform in the lake. While director of the Department of Environmental Quality in 1996, I was approached by companies interested in exploring for oil and gas under the Great Lakes. I asked the Michigan Environmental Science Board (a group of scientists, mostly from universities, with environmental and natural resource expertise) to study whether directional drilling under the Great Lakes posed any threat to natural resources.

The Board concluded: "There is little to no risk of contamination to the Great Lakes bottom or waters through releases directly above the bottom hole portion of directionally drilled wells." The Board went on to say: "There is, however, a small risk of contamination at the well head." The board made recommendations on steps that could be taken to mitigate any impact to the Great Lakes from the well head, including locating the wells at least 1,000 feet from the shoreline and implementing proper waste disposal measures. Before the ban, eight wells had been directionally drilled under the Great Lakes without environmental harm.

Great Lakes Directional Drilling Ban Should Be Lifted

Today, if you try to bring up directional drilling under the great lakes the idiots start screeching about the Embridge pipeline leak near Kalamazoo Michigan. In fact, the Embridge spill likely wouldn't have happened if my state had obeyed their own law and actually had an inspector on the payroll.

[cripplecreek]

I must say that I really enjoy the clowns that claim fracking causes natural gas in their well water.

In 1911 Michigan's first commercial natural gas well began production. The tabulation of "Reported Discoveries of Gas in Michigan" in the Geological Survey Bulletins is longer than the oil well list and included 116 wells. These were mostly located in ­southeastern Michigan, including Macomb, Oakland, St. Clair and Wayne counties as well as in Manistee County in western Michigan. Many of the early natural gas discoveries were most likely made not as a result of a search for oil or natural gas but were instead test wells drilled for salt or for fresh water. Strong flows of gas from water wells are not unusual in southeastern Michigan and sometimes the shallower rims of the basin can still provide a surprise. In the mid 1980s holes drilled to provide footings for a highway overpass in St. Clair County "blew out" with natural gas. The flow of gas from these early wells was usually quite small. The largest volume of natural gas was in St. Clair County were wells supplied "several families" in one case, "pumps, drills and two houses" in another case and "one house" in a number of instances.

Michigan Oil and Natural Gas Exploration Before 1925

[redgolum]

I wasn't talking about setting the well water on fire. If that is going to happen, you could probably do that in the first place. Heck, I have been to places where you have to be careful drilling a water well because of the chance of hitting natural gas (eastern New Mexico south of Portales if I remember right)

There have been cases where the driller went through the water table, and managed to get some oil lubricant that showed up in a test well. Nasty lawsuit (in which I was tangentially involved) that involved the local water authority and a whole lot of folks who were suddenly told not to drink their water. It was never totally proven the hyrdo carbons in the water came from the drilling oil, but was nasty enough no one won.

[Charlespg]

No fracking way. No fracking way. No fracking way, the crowd chants.

frack you stupid Luddites

[okie01]

All too often the environmentalists create panic out of complete fantasy.

There was a time when people like this couldn't get an audience. Whether they were on a soapbox in the city square or talking to the media, everybody recognized that their claims were made of one part whole cloth, another part hysteria.

People saw it as a choice between a useful natural resource and foolishness.

Somewhere along the line, we lost our ability to discriminate between truth and fiction -- and actually gave these idiots a hearing.

[PiperShade]

I truely enjoyed Rowe’s take on the realities of the working man ! I agree with his assessment too much of what “information/data our youth is fed is bogus ! I see its consequences every day !

Just yesterday I listened to a conversation between a “supervisor” and an inmate. The “supervisor” was spouting a lot of worthless platitudes and the IM was - apparently - sucking them up ! I interupted to give the IM - in two brief sentences - some real workplace/job search direction that could/would lead to earning potential and community status. And then stood back and watched the IIC (idiot in charge) - who never had a real job, BTW - dig his ass out of reality ! >PS

[PiperShade]

“Fracking” has been around a long time ! Seems its only hit “above the fold” when serious reserves were defined nearby the East Coast Megaopolis ! Wonder why that is ? >PS

[kcvl]

It looks like gray hair to me instead of blonde.

I think I"ll take drillers opinions over these old farts any day.

The drillers can FRACK in my yard/land any damn day they please...Bring it on! Let these nut jobs WALK.

[cripplecreek]

Locally we has liberals lobby long and hard for HUD money to build an “Art Colony” as a means of getting past our blue collar heritage as if it were some kind of shameful thing.

[kcvl]

Why isn’t she protesting “heavy equipment”?

According to recent news reports from Smyrna, New York, 23-year-old Charles Bevins III, of West Virginia, was killed on Sunday, May 1 after an accident involving heavy machinery occurred at a gas well drilling site near SH 80 and Stowell Rd. Bevins was an employee of Braden Drilling, a contractor for Norse Energy. He was taken to Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse where he later died.

http://www.texas-construction-accident-attorney.com/entry.asp?eid=1739

[familyop]

All of the anti-drilling folks in my community are old, middle class, HOA members, and most of them, Republicans. The bipartisan socialism, environmentalism (anti-competition tool) and animal worship (anti-competition tool) must be stopped. Things are getting really messed up, when most of those in favor of uranium mining in a state are Democrats.

[PiperShade]

Won’t disagree the U.S. has vast troves of SCM available along its coasts! In fact, MH is the bane of offshore drillers ! Once again, we’re facing the “economy of no energy” our resident luddites insist is the “norm” !

Perhaps we ought to be insisting our Congresscritters - or better pehaps, our industry - start publishing real analyses of the cost/unit of our energy reserves and how they compare to “green” energy ! >PS

[5thGenTexan]

Did they drive to the protest or walk? Until they show they can live without oil, they can stop asking me to.

[Melchior]

Balderdash. Google Bakken map and take a look at the numer of wells already fraced in the Williston Basin. The problem is not water, if you really do want to know, it is the absence of rigs.

[Melchior]

The anti-fracing mob is anti-oil, anti Big Oil, anti- American ingenuity, and if truth be told, pro-Marxist and anti-America.

[PSYCHO-FREEP]

There you go again, you are full of it.

Tell me how a “driller” somehow got “oil lubricant” in the water table? Since they always drill with fresh water and Oil is not in the drilling water in any form. Or, they drill with air until they set a surface casing well below the levels that contain Ground Water, as well as, seal that casing string by bonding the casing to the formation using cement.

It is a well known fact that several hundred years (Hell, for millennium) before Oil was ever drilled for, that Oil has migrated into upper level drinking water and aquifers on a natural basis. Which again, explains why the case was dropped.

[org.whodat]

LOL, last week there was a story that the so called jobs were grossly over stated. Once the wells are drilled and pipe lines run, there is not much of a job left.

The Keystone Research Center found that the drilling created only 10,000 jobs in the whole state in four years. That’s a whole lot less than the 48,000 claimed by the industry. The Marcellus Shale Workforce Needs Assessment done by the Pennsylvania Institute of Technology and Penn State Extension concluded that the unconventional nature of fracking means it is performed mostly by national or international contractors, working in multiple locations.

http://www.dispatch.com/content/index.html

[familyop]

Agreed. They’re ruled by their noisy, leftist hens, and they don’t like to see real men at work. They should give it up in regards to “property values.” Real estate is dead. So will the property tax revenues be, after the commie lawyer hold up of foreclosures is relinquished.

Let ‘er rip, and good riddance.

[PSYCHO-FREEP]

I am typing to you from a well in the Marcellus at this very moment. In fact, we are completing another successful well.

Of course fracking is done by International companies. It takes that kind of capital to afford the vast and technical equipment needed to perform the task. They are American founded, American based companies like Halliburton, Weatherford, as well as several Texas based companies.

There are also lots of Domestic companies that are doing quite well, and they employ hundreds of thousands of people. not just tens of thousands. The added drilling activity that fracking has created also contributes to millions of jobs for truckers, drillers, roughnecks, service people, welders, supply companies, motels, restaurants, etc,,,. (Get the picture?) Or are you still stuck on being a cynical pessimist the rest of your life?

[EERinOK]

First Frac job ever was in 1947

Hundreds of thousands of wells in the US and Canada have been treated with the technique.

Not one proven case exists the technique caused any shallow fresh water contamination.

Poor surface handling of chemicals and fluids on the other hand, aka spills, are the most likely hazard, and a highly regulated aspect of the industry.