I reserve the ‘evil’ label only for select corporations; still, you can’t just believe everything you read, no?
If you’re inclined to follow the OP link into the sub-links, you come across this slide, which claims:
Or from point 24 of the cited PDF:
And point 25:
Is it reliable? I dunno. I checked out the PDF and came across this at bullet point 13:
So… they kind of take both sides at once, don’t they? Ultimately the authors are pro-gas. Me, I’m still on the fence.
Well, the PDF comes from ‘The Global Warming Policy Foundation’. Maybe that is some coal-backed think-tank, I don’t know.
And, from the ‘It’s Time to Ban Fracking Link’ above, there is this:
If it isn’t cleaner than coal, frankly I’d rather pay more for some solar panels. Honest. Poison an aquifer or a water table and you can’t take it back. Why not instate a death penalty for the board of any company that poisons an aquifer? That would make me a lot more confident.
It is possible that it is nothing but political pandering. I haven’t seen anything too convincing on that point so far, and the fact that the frac bans are taking place in such diverse places is at least one data point suggesting that this isn’t the case. But I’m still on the fence.
And, speaking of waiting for results before making big decisions, shouldn’t the US government wait for the courts to rule on whether or not BP (Earth’s #1 evil corporation) was grossly negligent or not with their spill in the Gulf before they extend their leases? Apparently not according to HR 1229, which renews leases for everyone across the board, but I digress…
I thought that, at least in New York’s case, these data (for gas anyway) are only a matter of lack of development. I thought the New York Marcellus shale, if drilled incompetently, would threaten New York City’s water supply, which apparently is considered more important that Joe Schmoe’s water out in Bumfrac, Oklahoma or what-have-you (but not France’s!), hence the lack of development. Are you sure the resources aren’t there?
Indeed, especially considering that the liquid is mostly water, it is going into rock thousands of feet below the water table, and that it comes back up again and is disposed of?
The problem of methane contamination of water supplies has been documented. There is no reason for fracking fluids to contaminate anything if it’s done right. Whether it’s a new fuel boom or short-lived, ill-advised fad remains to be seen.
Page 2 of the report I linked is well worth a read:
**"Critics have long contended it could be contaminating drinking water. But industry representatives have said it cannot be, because the fluid is injected too deeply underground, a mile or so, to get back to drinking water near the surface.
The Duke researchers said the gas they found in water is not coming up through rocks from the pressure of fracturing but coming up through the wellbore.
“The study found no evidence of contamination from hydraulic fracturing fluids or saline produced waters,” their report says. But it also suggests more study into whether the intense pressures used in fracturing may cause more leaks in the wellbore.
The study also found that not all water wells close to drilling operations had methane, suggesting that the methane leakage is not an inevitable side effect of drilling but improperly run drill-pipe, called casing.
“It’s leaky well casings,” Jackson said.**" All italics mine.
And, what if there is an earthquake, and we’ve injected 11 bajillion tonnes of poisonous chemicals into the Earth. Couldn’t that pose a problem? And- IIRC the Macondo oil deposit is thousands of feet below the oil table.
Hydraulic fracking fluid is basically water with additives to increase its penetration into porous rocks and fissures. Detergents, diesel oil, glycol, that sort of thing. Not wonderful, but not cyanide either.
Once the rock has been fractured, most of the fracking fluid comes back up again at once and the rest almost certainly comes up over time with the gas. We’re not talking about creating underground lakes of toxic waste here.
I don’t think anyone’s house has exploded yet, although it will happen eventually if the mining companies don’t get their well casings sorted out. I don’t believe any cows have been killed by fracking methane, nor will they be. Unless their cowsheds explode. I don’t know the circumstances of the Louisiana cow incident - might try and dig that up.
Only according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, a green group with an act to grind. They may be right, and there was definitely a fracking fluid spill, but I’ll wait for the results from the investigation by the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality.
Okay, the Louisiana incident was back in 2009 and it appears confirmed that cows did die from drinking spilled fracking fluid, or at least the companies involved paid fines. Details buried in the middle of this article: Politics | News from The Advocate
You can lead a cow to fracture water, but you can’t make them drink. Seriously, put a fence around the wells and whatever other common sense safety item that needs to be installed and move on.
Allright. The cows were the only environmental concern I listed in the OP, as some of the other claims are questionable. For instance, we’ve probably all heard about the flaming faucet water in people’s homes. Maybe that is from fracking, maybe not. Maybe if it is from fracking it could be prevented, maybe not. Some of the details are as confusing as the narrative around the killing of OBL.
Anyway, I imagine there are all kinds of projects that would result in dead cows if they wandered on site. Dead cows isn’t enough for me to get on the ban-wagon. What bugs me about that incident is 1) Obviously that fracking fluid is pretty damn poisonous for the cows to die almost instantly from drinking it and 2) the Chamber of Commerce types who promote fracking always point out that the fluid is 99% water. Sounds like they are trying to mislead us -“Oh, 99% water, why then it must be totally harmless. When is Two and a Half Men on?” People are credulous in this country, and I smell bullshit here.
And then there is a return to the theme of waiting until the results are in before making a decision. With fracking it seems like the drillers have positioned themselves such that we all have to prove that it is dangerous before we question them (without a full set of information) instead of them proving it is safe before they proceed. We don’t know what is in the fluid. I am told the practice has been exempted from the Clean Air and Clean Water acts- is that true? If so, it isn’t cool.
25 years from now when gas is $50 per gallon and natural gas has merely tripled in price, while the rest of the world is languishing in a poisoned water Mad-Max hellscape, France could decide they have figured out a safe way to frack and simply lift the ban. Once an aquifer is poisoned it is too late. And one point I don’t have much doubt about is that some major companies don’t really care what happens as long as they turn a profit.
Okay, I’ll take a stab at looking at that slide show. I can tell you that as far as sources go, I’ll take the United States governement, a coalition of countries, and Universities over Business Insider who I have never heard of but apparently was started in 2007 and keeps an updated ranking of “Sexiest CEOs”. Nevertheless, I’ll treat them as if they were a reputable source.
First, I started looking at the slide show, but I quickly quit on that when they start off on slide one with the odd statement that the Shale Gas boom started in the 1990s with the discovery of the Marcellus Shale. Obviously this is factually incorrect. The Barnett Shale started the boom in the 1990s; the Marcellus was more like a decade later. Therefore, knowing that the writers of the article and slide show are clueless, I decided to go to the source material.
That report at least starts out reasonably. When you get to the some experts talk about 7years supply, the report makes it clear that it is talking about Art Berman. You can read here where he talks about all of those things, 10% recovery, one third being dead after 4-6 years, 200% to 400% of cash flow being spent on capital.
I’m not a geologist or petroleum engineer, but I can tell you that the top reservoir engineering firms in the world don’t agree with him. I’m talking about the Ryder Scott, Netherland Sewell, DeGolyer & MacNaughton level firms that are the highest respected in the industry.
From the financial perspective of what he is talking about, I can say for an absolute fact that most companies are not spending 200% to 400% of their cash flow on capital expenditures. That’s simply not even close to reality. He talks about Chesapeake Energy as one of the big boys of shale, and that is certainly true. CapEx is about 100% of cash flow for them (91.85% over last twelve months). Devon, which is the biggest in the Barnett, spends 81.66% of LTM cash flow on CapEx. Southwestern, which is the dominant Fayetteville shale producer spends 129.37% of LTM cash flow on CapEx. Continental, which is the biggest Bakken Shale producer (which is more of an oil play) spends 136.29%. EXCO spends 109.29%, Range spends 122.28%. The big guys (Exxon through their XTO acquisition) are no where close to that. They would be more like 50%, but I haven’t done the analysis. The only way you would get the 200% to 400% numbers is if you are only talking about small start-ups, which would be an absurd way to look at it.
However, after reading a few of his writeups, his biggest issue with the Department of Energy report is that he doesn’t think the wells will be economic at the prices they state. He’s basically saying that you will shut the wells in earlier than their forecasts because operating costs will exceed revenues. That’s a self-correcting phenomenon though. If commodity prices are so low that the wells are uneconomic and people don’t produce, then that lack of production will increase commodity prices to the point that it is economic. Obviously this extremely low natural gas price environment won’t last forever. Everyone in the industry acknowledges that $4.00/mcf gas is way too cheap. That’s why people are only drilling to maintain acreage in the Haynesville and other expensive places. They want to keep the leases but want to shift toward more economic plays. That’s why everyone is much more active in the Eagle Ford, Bakken, and Permian right now.
You don’t think it is odd that when there is already a suspension on hydraulic fracturing in France and a report coming out in June from the French government about the impacts of Frac’ing that they wouldn’t wait until that report comes out? Really? What possible benefit have they gotten by banning in May when they could wait until June and no wells are being frac’d anyways? The only possible benefit is a political one.
Also, your diverse places list is France, Maryland, and New York. My point is that they are not diverse; they all have one thing in common: they don’t produce natural gas right now to any significant degree. It’s easy to ban something you don’t already do.
Really? I’m pretty sure that’s not true. I believe instead what has occurred is that President Obama announced in his weekly radio address that he would extend all existing leases that were affected by the moratorium by one year. That does have some logic to it, you know. These companies paid for leases for predetermined sets of time. The moratorium took away a year of that. Extending it by a year seems like a pretty reasonable thing to do and Obama seems to agree. Nothing about that requires the BOEMRE to approve any permits that it deems unsafe. If they don’t think BP can safely drill a well then they should just deny all of their permits.
As far as I know, the bill you have linked to has nothing to do with renewing leases. I could be wrong, and I haven’t read it; however, my understanding is that they are simply pushing to speed up the permit approval process.
This is all simply untrue. These processes are regulated already by several different organizations but most prominantly by the states. Further, there has not been a single example of a frac causing water contamination. All of these examples are not a part of the frac. It is either a well casing problem or poor containment at the surface. Neither of those have anything to do with frac’ing. There have been recent studies conducted by the EPA on hydraulic fracturing that concludd there was no risk to ground water. Now that study was done in relation to coalbed methane wells and not shale wells, but the simple fact is that coalbed methane is shallower and more likely to cause groundwater contamination since it is closer to the water table.
If the issue has been studied by a reputable organization (the EPA) and there has not been a single documented case of contamination from the actual frac process then it seems like it is reasonably safe. If the problem is well casings, then change the regulations on well casings. If the problem is poor surface controls, then change the regulations on that.
If a state wants to ban that activity, fine. If another country wants to ban that activity, fine. However, if a state has not had any issues, wants to continue the activity, is not damaging federal lands, is not damaging other states lands, and has local regulators that actually know what they are doing in place, then the federal government doesn’t need to add another layer of regulation on top of that.
Did I say anything about them not having resources? I said they don’t have any current production. My point is that they are inexperienced. In fact, I specifically said New York has some potential with the Marcellus and Utica shales, amongst other plays. My point is that New York, France, and Maryland don’t have any current production or experience (whether that be experienced landowners, state regulators, or what have you). France and New York both likely have tremendous resources that are untapped.
To draw an analogy, what if the legislators from Texas, Lousiana, Florida, and Arkansas all said that the method that is used for de-icing roads after snow storms leaves the roads in dangerous conditions and that they want to push a bill to regulate how that will be done nation wide. Further, until a study can be done showing it is safe, people can no longer travel by road as it is simply too big a health hazard. I’d say that the people and legislators in New York, Wyoming, Pennsylvania, etc all would tell the first group to fuck off. That’s exactly what it is like when some asshole from Maryland tries to tell Louisiana or North Dakota about the oil and gas industry.
Well. I think the history of the development of the roads has enough history that they cannot be treated in that way.
I don’t represent any of the States mentioned, or any State as a matter of fact.
My statements are not to be construed as the imprimaturs on a set of instructions. I really am just some guy on the internet, concerned about fracking, here and in France. Poland too. Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, you name it.