Posted on 06/29/2013 10:21:31 AM PDT by neverdem
Chemical analysis links methane in drinking wells to shale-gas extraction.
As shale-gas operations expand across the United States, industry officials and environmentalists are at loggerheads over whether or not shale-gas extraction can contaminate groundwater. Now researchers have traced low levels of methane and other contaminants to a source of shale gas: the sprawling Marcellus Formation, which lies beneath much of New York state, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio (see ‘On tap’) .
The study, led by researchers at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, expands on an earlier analysis of drinking water in northeastern Pennsylvania, where energy companies have used hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to crack the Marcellus Formation and release gas. In that work, the researchers found that contamination rates increased with proximity to wells (S. G. Osborn et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 108, 8172–8176; 2011). Their latest analysis, published on 24 June, goes a step further, by tying the chemical fingerprint of the groundwater contaminants to the gas being siphoned out of the ground some 2,000–3,000 metres below (R. B. Jackson et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA http://doi.org/m3j; 2013).
“The problems we’ve seen are probably more common than people realize,” says Rob Jackson, director of Duke’s Center on Global Change and lead author of the paper. Jackson stresses that the contamination is probably due to poor well construction, rather than hydraulic fracturing itself. But he says that the results are another “wake-up call” for the industry to improve its drilling operations.
The study is the latest salvo in an ongoing debate about the environmental impacts of shale-gas extraction, which has transformed the US energy landscape and is now moving abroad. Such operations are also causing concerns about air pollution and methane emission, which could offset some of the climatic benefits of replacing coal with natural gas...
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
The carbon cultists need to be mocked out of the public square, especially the gross hypocrites living high on the hog, e.g. Al Gore, RFK Jr., etc.
yep. Also we have to deprogram the children who have been brainwashed into believing that their parents kill a polar bear every time they leave a light switched on.
So the take away is that 96% of all wells within a quarter mile of an active gas well have no detectable contamination, and that there’s little direct correlation to show a connection between gas well production and contamination of ground water.
Yep, love how they bury the data...
Exactly. There were plenty of reports in these areas from before fracking of being able to ignite gas coming from an open water tap, due to natural gas being in the water well’s output.
Someone needs to shut the lights on the EPA.
The communist enemy plan is to make sure the Chinese can invade a green country to trash themselves. They don’t want us to scorch the Earth. See, dum liberal whores will make themselves so pretty so the enemy can polute it fully enjoying it. Any other liberal would go “screw it, enjoy and wreck it”, but nooo, our liberals don’t even want to enjoy, positing morale and moral values to enemies they worship.
These people are diseased.
You’re right. I used to own land in that area and the puddles all had an oil skim.
... diseased in “conservation” evil, that is, making it nice for Mao to destroy, as a present.
... and the best way to prevent that gas water polution is... to burn the gas clean, of course.
But that makes me a “climate denier”, not them... go figure.
Last go around by the Luddites they found ONE of the dozen or so chemicals used in the fracking cocktail in tap water.
(IIRC, it was propylene glycol, a common food additive)
They tested for the remaining chemicals and found no trace of any of them.
Then they blamed the fracking chemicals for the contamination, and the MSM trumpeted that in the headlines. The lack of any other chemicals was buried in a squib after the jump, in the middle of a paragraph near the end, under the fold, on the inside edge of the left had page...
Natural gas fracking was bad for me as I almost went broke with the glut on the market and the consequent drop in prices
Oil fracking looks like it may rescue me however
Interesting. Actually, in the northwest part of Pennsylvania where eventually the first oil well in the continent was drilled, oil was known on streams back in the days of the Indians. It was locally called Seneca oil. The local people would dam a stream, and collect the oil scum from the surface by spreading out cloth rags, which were then wrung out into small barrels. The water was tapped off at the bottom of the barrel, and eventually the barrel filled with oil, which could then be carried out on mules to be refined into kerosene. When drilling became successful, the price of kerosene dropped to a small fraction of its earlier price, easily undercutting the cost of whale oil. As I used to explain to my geology students: petroleum saved the whales!
I did a google search for Penn. EPA documents on methane in groundwater. Prior to 2003 all the docs say methane was caused by underground coal.
Post 2003, fracking was the cause.
Follow the money.
I’ve been in the oil business for over 40 years and absolutely make no sence out of what you just posted, please explain.
Surely you know the price of NG went down significantly as shale finds came on line several years ago. The poster was just pointing out that cut into his cash flow but shale oil is not pushing that price down in the same way.
For those who want to see a short 6 minute video showing how horizontal drilling and fracking is done Northern Gas and Oil has done a great video.
This includes a piece on how groundwater contamination is avoided:
http://www.northernoil.com/drilling-video
Knowledge is power, keep the link and pass it on.
A number of factors (including fracking ) drove natural gas prices lower ...which is good for all except those like me who own mineral rights. My income dropped to 1/3 of what it had been.
I just received some good news and some good checks because in West Texas and other places they are going back into depleted oil fields and fracking .I now have a bit of an oil well that is paying quite well....and hopefully more on the way
I’m hoping for similar news in KS at some point in the future.
OK now it makes sence, I guess I’m just getting old. I’m right in the middle of the Permian Basin and operate 72 wells on 32 section plus and 12 on 8 sections nth of town. we own 100% of both the land and the minerals, one of the few still remaining after the crash in 98. had we not been in such a uniqe position we might have went down also. Wheres your wells at? Ours are all in Howard and Glasscock county. We have minerals and several other counties but these are the only ones we operate ourselves. With prices like they are allot of us are going back into older wells and working them over, a 2 barrel a day well will make ya a little money know. If it makes a little gas thats even better!
“...says Rob Jackson, director of Duke’s Center on Global Change”
....and of course, this government-grant-fed turkey would be totally unbiased in these findings....the only study that has shown this result.
Don’t try to fool us, you Lefty Nature News putzes.
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