Gas Drillers Tap Coal Beds

USA TODAY ^ | Friday, July 5, 2002 | George Hager

[BOBTHENAILER]

POWDER RIVER BASIN, Wyoming - Eight years ago, Duane Zavadil was driving through this vast prehistoric basin in northeastern Wyoming hunting for natural gas prospects, when his boss looked out the car window and wondered out loud, "What are those little boxes?"

[Grampa Dave]

Great find Bob!

These two excerpts say all we need to know about the enviral nazis and their intentions to keep us energy dependent on Opecker Oil.

A report by the fedeal Energy Information Administration on the potential for gas production here and elsewhere in the Rocky Mountain region refers to the area as a possible "Persian Gulf for natural gas," noting its resources "are more that adequate to meet the expected increase in (U.S.) demand."

That is the good news, now for the Enviral Nazis Slant, which is bad news for Americans:

Conservationists say many of the 8,000 producing wells here have already scarred the terrain, lowered the water table and changed the character of the land. They charge the water's salt content eventually impairs or destroys the land's already limited ability to support agriculture. And they fear that the new roads and water disposal required to more than quintuple the number of producing wells to a planned 51,000 will compound the damage."

More data re the link between the Enviral Nazis and their buddies the Opecker Princes. Opec does not want anything to decrease our dependence on Opecker Oil, be it natural gas or this gas. So their buddies, the Enviral Nazis will fight this on every front.

[RightWhale]

"Impacts to the lanscape are just astounding," says Jill Morrison

There is hardly a more pleasant sight in nature than seeing, upon rounding a curve along the highway in barren, rocky terrain, a clean, well-maintained, productive natural-gas well-head.

[backhoe]

Thanks- the Utah coal ripoff has long stuck in my craw...

[BOBTHENAILER]

Less than 10% of the wells produce water that has any salinity, and those are located in the extreme northern part of Wyoming and into Montana. Desalination plant might be one solution, however, most operators believe a disposal well drilled to a much deeper formation (Madison) will be the answer.

The vast majority of the wells produce water that is purer than the local aquifers produce. There was talk among a few ranchers of bottling the water for sale.

[RonF]

"You sit wherever in your high and mighty seat and spout sh!t you know nothing about."

Which is why I said, "on the face of it". It is true that use of salty water eventually can lead to problems in an agriculural area. What I don't know for a fact is what the salinity of the specific water we are talking about here is. I don't know jack about ranching, but I'm pretty good with water chemistry, and I'm not ignorant about soil chemistry. And I know that there are practical examples of areas where water has been used in such a fashion that salts from said water have accumulated in surface layers of soil and have rendered that soil infertile.

I asked for answers about the specific issues the environmental groups have raised. I didn't pretend to have them myself. If the technical facts don't support their position, then fine. The issues as presented in this story are real in some areas of the world. The question is, are they real in the Powder River Basin? These issues shouldn't be dismissed out of hand simply because of the people who raised them.

[RonF]

To my knowedge, the term "agriculture" includes not only waving fields of grain, but also raising livestock. I think the latter is a major activity in the area being discussed here.

[Willie Green]

Desalination plant might be one solution,

Nuclear Desalination

[BOBTHENAILER]

There is hardly a more pleasant sight in nature than seeing, upon rounding a curve along the highway in barren, rocky terrain, a clean, well-maintained, productive natural-gas well-head.

I wish Ms. Morrison would bother asking most of the ranchers with wells, their opinion of this so-called scarring of the landscape.

More than a few long time family ranches haved been saved by the royalty money.

Ms. Morrison needs to take a drive from Palm Springs to San Diego to witness the true scarring of of landscape caused by the giant wind farm there, which produces a miniscule amount of energy, compared to the Powder coal gas.

[BOBTHENAILER]

See post #24. The enviros are concentrating on the few that do have some salinity.

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

Wyoming bump!!

[Carry_Okie]

So while the sprawling field here has the potential to produce prodigious amounts of gas, it takes thousands of wells to do it, and each one requires road access and deposits thousands of gallons of water - drinkable but a little too salty for irrigation - onto the bone dry high prairie.

And there it is folks, the RICOnut interest in controlling roads and water. It's a bunch of CWAP!

[rockfish59]

An 'F' for Ron.
I was talking with a guy who worked with the drillers. He told me how cheap the coal is and I wish I had 10 tons to burn in my stove.
Of course 'Butch (Zeig) & Sundance (Heil)' will be the first to run crying to congress about trashing the environment.
I suppose we'll now be seeing 'coal huggers!'

[Grampa Dave]

Good Morning Sunshine!

I wondered when you would see this target rich statement from enviral whacko land: So while the sprawling field here has the potential to produce prodigious amounts of gas, it takes thousands of wells to do it, and each one requires road access and deposits thousands of gallons of water - drinkable but a little too salty for irrigation - onto the bone dry high prairie.

Aren't their mantras so tired and predictable re roads and water. They will probably import Coho Salmon from Oregon, declare them a native endangered fish and try to stop any water being used in that area except to be in the streams for the new Native Coho. Soon a tribe will come up and say that their fore fathers used to have religious ceremonies with the Coho before Custer showed up.

Did you get all of that evil used concrete replanted?

[CedarDave]

And of course, they use the worst case as the example to characterize the entire basin. If it's drinking water quality (per EPA secondary standards), it's lower than 500 ppm TDS. Heck, my morning coffee water is at least 1000 TDS. We in the southwest would kill for that quality water. As said above, this is just another way for the enviro-Nazis (in cahoots with their BLM/FS/EPA buddies) to kill any type of energy production that doesn't meet their definition of "green".

[Carry_Okie]

Good Morning Sunshine!

Uh, lesssee, so far this morning it was revise a letter to a Congressman, and explain to my 8-year-old how to use identities when converting mixed feet and inches for an averaging problem (I do have a school to run).

Aren't their mantras so tired and predictable re roads and water.

Yup, although we do disagree on one thing. You call them Opecker Princes. I think that's missing it a little. It's the major stockholders of the oil companies and their satellite banks that are the real players (Rockefellers, British and Dutch Royals, and the bankers who fund global energy development). These thugs have the Saudis et al. in hock to their own greed (they have us in hock to the welfare state).

Did you get all of that evil used concrete replanted?

Nawww, I got about a third of it down there. I have to set and chink it before I move more or it rolls over the dam down the hill. Brutal work, steep ground.

[BOBTHENAILER]

If you want a real pretty one, freepmail me your e-mail address and I'll show you a real beauty from NM. This one is a burner, 6 million cubic feet of gas a day.

[Grampa Dave]

I think eventually when this thing unwinds re terrorism, we will see that the Opecker Princes as well as your indentified targets have been financing these enviral nazis from hell. Then, it will be interesting to see how many petro $'s from the Opecker princes have ended up buying stock in the corporations which you have identified in the past to the demise of the Opecker Princes.

Careful with that concrete, and why are you having school today? You must be some cold hearted conservative home school master!

[Carry_Okie]

LOL! We did some school yesterday too!

Yeah, one of those home-school tyrants. The nine year old finished her last problem in a self-taught High School geometry course yesterday.

I'm relentless. After math class, I sent the eight-year-old upstairs and made her read the Iliad (in rhyming verse, her choice). Then I really ground it in by making her sister read a sixth-grade reader... from 1901. Cooper, Longfellow, Tennyson, Buckley, Swift, Dickens, Patrick Henry, Emerson, Kipling, Ben Franklin, Irving, Wordsworth, Carlyle, Holmes, Browning, Shelley, Walter Scott, Milton, and Shakespere... a Sixth Grade Reader.

Later, I finished them off for the day by making it clear what what we celebrate on Independence Day:

It is the guts of a bunch of guys who will sit down in a room, write down their ideals, and then SIGN THE PAPER. These great men were spitting in the face of the most powerful empire on earth, risking EVERYTHING in the process for nothing more than principle. Then we went on to why the second paragraph in the Declaration is so essential to ALL of our liberties, especially that phrase, "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights."

When rights don't come from God as unalienable, all rights become negotiable.

[Free the USA]

Index Bump

[Grampa Dave]

You children are fortunate to have you as their father and teacher!