EPA Finds Compound Used in Fracking in Wyoming Aquifer

http://www.minyanville.com/businessmarkets/articles/earthquake-natural-gas-hydraulic-fracturing-fracking/11/10/2011/id/37872?camp=syndication&medium=portals&from=yahoo ^

[chessplayer]

As the country awaits results from a nationwide safety study on the natural gas drilling process of fracking, a separate government investigation into contamination in a place where residents have long complained that drilling fouled their water has turned up alarming levels of underground pollution.

A pair of environmental monitoring wells drilled deep into an aquifer in Pavillion, Wyo., contain high levels of cancer-causing compounds and at least one chemical commonly used in hydraulic fracturing,

[cripplecreek]

Michigan Oil and Natural Gas Exploration Before 1925

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.

[Explodo]

And kill bugs in the urinal

[crusty old prospector]

The only way is if you have a bad cement job around your surface casing, which is the protective pipe cemented in to protect the ground water. It is a rarity.

[Nifster]

The EPA has not bothered to trace back where the compounds came from. No instead they immediately blame industry. Truth be told, when there is natural gas and petrolieum underground, many of these products show up withput human interference

[stormer]

Name what?

[HiTech RedNeck]

Mission creep on Superfund, which was originally only intended to clean up toxic spills. It sounds laudable to “prevent” allegedly possible toxic spills, but this shouldn’t be a Superfund task.

[HiTech RedNeck]

The fact you have to ask the question sounds shady.

[crusty old prospector]

Most of the early discoveries of oil in Texas around the 1900’s where from communities looking for fresh water. Instead, they found that nasty petroleum that had little use because cars hadn't been invented yet. I might add that the first oil well in the US was at Titusville, Pennsylvania from an unheard of depth of 69’. Don't tell me that oil and fresh water aquifers don't coexist.

[cripplecreek]

People would freak out over the possibility of oil getting into the Great Lakes like it did the Gulf, but natural gas seems virtually harmless.

What do you think they used to get the ban in place?

They used photos of offshore oil rigs (like in the gulf of mexico), oil soaked sea birds and beaches. They just kind of skipped over the parts about the fact that the rigs would be a thousand or more feet inland and that they wouldn't be drilling for oil.

[IMR 4350]

Do you know how many chillin’s drown in buckets of water every year?

Deadly stuff.

We need to ban it entirely.

[UCANSEE2]

I’m from the government (the EPA) and I’m here to check your RADON.

(remember that one?)

[dblshot]

I'll defer to the expertise of one with a user name of Explodo on this subject.

[Vermont Lt]

Only if you clean your home. My kids obviously want me to live forever.

[stormer]

Anecdotes are not evidence. All I am saying is that in this situation the source of the contamination should be identified. If it is shown to be from a failure of technology then the use of that technology should be reassessed. The EPA has already concluded that fracking does not pose a threat to groundwater, and fracking is excluded from the Safe Water Drinking Act. If those assumptions are based on inadequate information, then they need to be reviewed.

[HiTech RedNeck]

I was at an eatery in Kentucky where the water tasted like kerosene... rather authentic I’d say.

Clearly we want to try to avoid situations where extraction activities cause significant amounts of stuff to get into aquifers that otherwise wouldn’t get into them. No sense in making aquifers unusable. But the idea that Mother Nature can’t cause pollution quite handily her own self... that’s nonsense.

[PSYCHO-FREEP]

[”People would freak out over the possibility of oil getting into the Great Lakes like it did the Gulf, but natural gas seems virtually harmless.”]

I happen to be a Directional Drilling Engineer working in the Marcellus Shale Region. Any drilling under the Great Lakes will be done from land with no possibility of a disaster like the one in the Gulf. On top of that, there is no way in hell that fracking can fracture the upper strata levels and cause gas or oil to migrate to the surface. It all occurres at 9 to 10 thousand feed deep, is highly contained and the fractures are less than 50 feet around the Well bore, with hundreds of non permeable formation layers above it, to protect the upper levels.

There are also strict safety standard in place that are closely monitored by State and Federal agencies to insure that these safeguards are in place, documented and tested.

The ignorance and stupidity I am reading from some of these morons who make these ridiculously uneducated claims, makes me furious. Even more so, they are the ones the public believes the most!

[no-s]

And I wonder if that chemical is called dihydrogen monoxide

You should be thinking of deadly chemical OXIDANE, the substance so deadly because it can harm people in a variety of different ways!

Should liquid oxidane enter into the lungs it blocks the entry of oxygen into the blood, which can cause death in minutes. Even if the oxidane is removed before death occurs, severe brain damage can result. Recreational users are at high risk! In the US every year Thousands of people are killed by Oxidane ingestion!

In gaseous form oxidane causes severe, sometimes fatal, burns by contact with the skin! Liquid and Gaseous Oxidane is a major highway safety hazard and many fatalities occur each year due to Oxidane on the roads or in the air over the roads!

Oxidane is highly susceptible to microbial contamination, such contamination has killed millions of people!

Oxidane is also a major component of Acid Rain, and accumulates in rivers, lakes, and the ocean! When Oxidane is released into the atmosphere it may also evaporate into a greenhouse gas many times more potent than carbon dioxide!

[HiTech RedNeck]

“Anecdotes are not evidence”

Which is why you are being asked to name trouble spots and the firms and people concerned. Don’t broad brush with unsupported generalities.

[stormer]

I don’t know WTF you’re talking about. Perhaps you could be more clear.

[ken21]

liberals should not be on this forum.