Bombshell Report Links Water Contamination To Fracking For The First Time

reply to post by AGWskeptic


You're 100% right, i don't want to get too far off topic but since you mention BP's shoddy practices this thread applies because it's similar. In fact I remember you joining in my BP thread where we talked about BP and Halliburton fighting it out in courts.

These bastards get caught doing this stuff and continue on as if nothing happened. Business as usual, I wish people still were held accountable for their actions once caught red handed. Regrettably as long as you have enough money you can continue poisoning the world. I would say humanity but us humans are so selfish to think about just us where we forget our existence punishes all other species.

I wonder what the ACTUAL cost would be for all the safety?

Could be the companies are keeping the difference and the cost would be almost the same as now.

Remember, the oil and gas prices are market driven.

With all the accidents and insurance claims/costs,

maybe the prices would be stable if safety was correct in the first place ?

Many accidents have caused higher consumer prices.

More jobs, better safety = same price ?

reply to post by xuenchen


They charge us fees and taxes to pay for their mistakes, because it makes us safer.

Bleepity bleep can't say how much that makes me mad.

reply to post by Corruption Exposed

And

reply to post by lurker007


An even older thread here. I also have some information on Pennsylvania within the thread.

Which is neither here nor there.

Thank you for bringing this to more people's attention. The greaer degree of scrutiny this matter receives, the more likely is the possibility that some sort of responsibility will be taken.

Not that im holding my breath for that, we can but hope...

Originally posted by AGWskeptic

Originally posted by sealing
reply to post by Aim64C

 

I bet with $11+billion a quarter in profits
they could find a way to extract responsibly .

This is why we have so few jobs now, the big guys are cutting corners and getting away with it.

If BP had used all the failsafes it was supposed to in the gulf the spill never would have happened.

Same thing is happening here.

I agree whole heartedly . And that is a great point.
It's long past time to wring in the real power in this world. Big oil.
But isn't big oils best friend and biggest consumer Our (US) military?
That's two mega powers working in concert
looking out for their interest. (profits)
And,I bet they ain't gonna go easy,my friend.

Of the long long list of ecological destruction we have wreaked on our poor planet this one scares me no end. Because of the huge amounts of money that mining companies have to throw at politicians and report writers (that find results in their favour of course) it seems the madness that is Coal Seam Gas mining has been able to march on despite the obvious terrible cost.

Here in Queensland, Australia, where I live, the coal seam gas circus has started picking up momentum over the past couple of years despite the same objections from farmers, conservation groups and anyone with half a brain that can see the frightening long term cost for very short term financial gain. It's an almost out of control frenzy of mining with a 'do today, think tomorrow' mentality. The amount of licences given out to companies (mostly foreign) who treat the landowners worse than dirt and go onto any property without notice and act like they own the place. Makes me so mad to think our government (and yours) sells off licences to basically destroy our clean water so multinational companies can extract gas for a quick profit. Meanwhile, we have to live with the long term cost with polluted water tables and poisoned farm land.

I hope this report will wake up some of those people with the power to act to stop the madness that is Coal Seam Gas Mining before we lose the most precious commodity on earth - our water.

reply to post by jadedANDcynical


well, from your article link:

While the EPA has not claimed certainty that the contamination came from fracking at this point, the presence of 2-Butoxyethanol (2-BE), a chemical used in fracking, and the lack of contamination with nitrates and fertilizers that would indicate an agricultural source, suggest a link.

so they were uncertain at the time

from my article link:

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced today for the first time that fracking — a controversial method of improving the productivity of oil and gas wells — may be to blame for causing groundwater pollution.

this indicates that it "MAY" be to blame. . just an implication

from corrpution exposed article link:

In the 121-page draft report released today, EPA officials said that the contamination near the town of Pavillion, Wyo., had most likely seeped up from gas wells and contained at least 10 compounds [1] known to be used in frack fluids.

So now they are no longer beating around the bush. The EPA released their report today.

I agree we need to shed as much light on this as possible and make people aware.

This practice needs more regulation! Water pollution is serious business, let alone any connections to earthquakes!

We do need the oil, but must the people suffer? Big oil apparently doesn't care, as they've not even disclosed what all chemicals they use!

Originally posted by Aim64C
reply to post by WilburMercer

 

Good point! I often wonder if oil companies are just retarded or they just don't give a sh$t.

Where do you propose the oil used to make the gasoline that powers your car come from?

Like it or not - for another 50 years, at the least, the industrialized world is going to require massive amounts of oil to function.

It's not just gasoline - plastics, tar for roadway construction/maintenance, lubricants - just to name a few. All of these are required in massive volume, and while alternatives do exist that come from sources other than oil... none of them can even approach the volume necessary to supply current demand.

All the while - demand continues to grow.

Then I think that it's all about the almighty dollar. (which is really worthless paper)

It's not about the dollar. It's about economics. Resources like oil are in high demand and essential for the normal function of society as it stands. The more scarce it becomes - the more valuable it is in relation to other resources available.

Keep trying - but the same people crying foul are filling up at the pump, pressing buttons on their plastic phones, and ignorantly complaining WHILE they themselves fuel the economic need for oil. (Fuel, geddit??) The loudest people on this issue are the most ignorant, unfortunately.

reply to post by lurker007


From the article which was used as the basis of the one in my OP

The EPA said the water samples were saturated with methane gas that matched the deep layers of natural gas being drilled for energy. The gas did not match the shallower methane that the gas industry says is naturally occurring in water, a signal that the contamination was related to drilling and was less likely to have come from drilling waste spilled above ground.

It would seem as though there was already evidence in place to strongly corroborate the link between fracking and groundwater contamination.

Additionally, from a report published in 1981 we have the following:

Before these unconventional natural gas sources can add significantly to our nation's supply, the public health and safety, environmental, social, economic and legal/political consequences and constraints that may be associated with these technologies must be identified and examined.

Twenty yars ago, before any major activity had begun, studies were done (this being one of them)in order tuo gauge the potential for environmental impact. Wrhat was considered as potential contamination?

During drilling, the major potential sources of pollution are the air emissions from the 1000-to l500-hp diesel engines and ground water pollution from accidental spills from the drilling mud pit.

...

The principal potential pollution sources during stimulation are exhaust emissions from diesel engines during the fracturing job and minor spills of the chemicals used in the fracturing fluid

That the well casing could crack, allowing the frack fluid into surround groundwater was not even considered.


What about aquifer penetration?

Another potential source of environmental impact during well stimulation is contamination of freshwater aquifers with fracturing fluid components. Standard oilfield practices to prevent this seem to be effective. It is anticipated that groundwater contamination will only occur if the cementing of the casing has not been properly done. The possibility of stimulating a well with an inadequate cement job is believed to be low because a cement bond log is run previously to insure a good bond. Some uncertainties surround this issue because the overall effectiveness of the current control techniques is not know.

emphasis mine

Well(unintentional pun), as we've since learned, all sorts of things can go wrong and things not even considered can play a role.

Concern has been expressed that hydraulic fracturing operations might lead to increased seismic activity. Fracturing operations should not result in seismic events in these basins because:

-The volume used in a fracturing job is from one-hundredth to one-tenthousandth of the amount which have triggered seismic events.

-None of the three basins is seismically active.

-Past fracturinq jobs have not resulted in seismic or other subsurface activity (Pakisen et al. 1969, and Tonnessen.1977.)

A couple of problems with these data ooi ts are that modern hydraulic fracturing tecniques utilize hundreds of thousands to millions ofngallons of frack fluid. This report categorizes that as Massive Hydraulic Fracturing, and at the time of writing of this report, was not used as it is today.

Another thing is, that we have indeed seen seismic activity in the study regin (northeast us) resulting from fracking.

And yes, I am writing this post on a device made of plastics which are the result of hydrocarbon production. But I (and MANY others) still maintain that those production practices could be carried out in a way which is much less destructive to the environment than how they are currently practiced.

What is surprising is how timidly the report puts out the information.

Corporate control is getting bolder, and more ruthless.

What nobody bothers to consider is that the reason the U.S. uses sooo much energy, and the rest of the world as well, is because everything is designed for waste.

The corporate world runs on waste.

For as long as man will be on planet earth, this water in these aquifers will be undrinkable. I don't care if frakking made every man, woman and child in the United States overnight millionaires, if you cannot drink the water, nothing else matters.

Perhaps that was always the goal, who knows.

We've known that fracking chemicals were leaking into groundwater for years. I wonder how many people have been poisoned and have died because of the length of time it took the all mighty EPA to figure it out. Go EPA!

/TOA

reply to post by Corruption Exposed


There is pollution, no doubt about it.

Edit: Double post

reply to post by sealing

I bet with $11+billion a quarter in profits
they could find a way to extract responsibly .

You have evidence they aren't?

"The polluted water!"

How much pollution is there? Are we talking about how they can detect artificial sweeteners in some ground water supplies (even though it is in terms of femptograms per liter? - infinitesimally tiny amounts)? ... Or amounts to actually be concerned about?

How did it get into the water?

Does it represent negligence on behalf of the companies doing the fracking?

You have to understand how this stuff works. You get a board together, and you talk about what bad things can happen. Then, you talk about how to keep those bad things from happening (bring in subject matter experts, budget analysts, etc).

Sometimes, it's not entirely accurate (it can't be - because you can't know the outcome of everything before you do it). Fail-safes don't work as well as expected - or as well as they do in other applications where they have been tested. Something unique to the local environment presents you with a unique challenge that you did not see, before.

Afterward, you have to revisit your operations.

reply to post by Corruption Exposed

I agree with you, in fact they should extract responsibly regardless of whether they make a profit or not. Our well being should be the number one priority, not resources or profit.

Realistically, humans are a renewable resource - whether you agree with that, accept it, or not.

Our well-being is a resource that is constantly evaluated against the value of other resources in accordance with market dynamics. This is why human values tend to come more naturally with skilled labor (where experience and well being are more vital to productivity than raw labor resources), and lower in areas with unskilled labor (where you pump kids out left and right to overcome attrition against illness and to accomplish labor tasks).

That is just the way it is. Contaminated water can be resolved with treatment. $20/gallon gasoline will send food prices beyond the range of most incomes and you will see most industrialized nations collapse into third world nations within weeks.

Pick your poison.

This is why we have so few jobs now, the big guys are cutting corners and getting away with it.

If BP had used all the failsafes it was supposed to in the gulf the spill never would have happened.

Actually, this is incorrect.

BP, Exxon, etc - they contract with smaller businesses for oil. Often, it's these smaller businesses that are to blame for failures like the gulf oil spill. The problem, however, is that these businesses are not "big" and do not rake in billions each year ... or build islands in the middle of the ocean because they have nothing better to do with their capital gains (the UAE - also known as a price-fixing scheme).

Which is part of why oil prospects are being forced out of America, as well. Regulations in other countries are not as strict and it is less expensive to comply with those regulations (which may or may not improve safety).

The reality is that oil is a fairly valuable resource. Oil spills represent wasted money. One of the good things about mining/drilling operations is that the resources at stake are often more valuable than the equipment - IE - the profit that would have been made off of all the oil lost in the Gulf may not be all that much... but the cost to the business is enormous by comparison to the costs of proper equipment and installation.

Therefor - it is always cost-effective (in the long term) to ensure safe and reliable operation.

The problem is when you get into the gambling mentality, and your small contractors start playing "hot potato" - and just hope they are not the ones holding onto the potato when it's time to pay the piper for problem installations.

reply to post by Blackmarketeer


Maybe they're deliberately causing earthquakes to release tension so as to avoid a much larger one. There's a lot we don't know simply because they believe people can't accept the realities. Maybe this is one of those things they do for reasons kept from us, that is actually to try to prevent something worse. Just a possibility, but if they knew a huge quake were coming and thought that this method would help, they'd do it. However if they told the public that they were purposely creating earthquakes, the public would blame them. Just a thought. There may be better ways to subvert large quakes; I don't know.

reply to post by daynight42


Well, if that's what there trying to do, they really need to step up their earthquake making:

Q: Can you prevent large earthquakes by making lots of small ones, or by "lubricating" the fault with water or another material?

A: Seismologists have observed that for every magnitude 6 earthquake there are 10 of magnitude 5, 100 of magnitude 4, 1,000 of magnitude 3, and so forth as the events get smaller and smaller. This sounds like a lot of small earthquakes, but there are never enough small ones to eliminate the occasional large event. It would take 32 magnitude 5's, 1000 magnitude 4's, 32,000 magnitude 3's to equal the energy of one magnitude 6 event. So, even though we always record many more small events than large ones, there are never enough to eliminate the need for the occasional large earthquake.

USGS

So we would need a LOT more smaller earthquakes to release any appreciable amount of pressure. But is making small earthquakes such a smart idea, even if enough could be generated?

My post here show that this may not be a good idea at all.

Originally posted by jadedANDcynical
I think part of what Robin is concerned about is the effect all of these small quakes may have in the NMSZ which could trigger a larger quake.

Whether the fault that ruptured in 1811-12 does so once more or another yet-to-be-defined fault breaks and generates a M 7+ quake, the truth is we would all be in a world of hurt.

Robin's not the only person who thinks that small quakes could trigger a larger quake.

Importance of small earthquakes for stress transfers and earthquake triggering is a study published on the Cornell University Library database which indicates just that possibility:

The stronger the spatial clustering, the larger the influence of small earthquakes on stress changes at the location of a future event as well as earthquake triggering. If earthquake magnitudes follow the Gutenberg-Richter law with b>D/2, small earthquakes collectively dominate stress transfer and earthquake triggering, because their greater frequency overcomes their smaller individual triggering potential.

This is telling us that even though each individual quake represents only a small amount of energy release, the cumulative effects are more than the sum total. In other words there is a possible synergistic effect with a multitude of small quakes on a (non) related fault system within a certain geographical area.

Why hasn't this been given more research?

Because large earthquakes modify stress over a much larger area than smaller ones, and because computing Coulomb stress changes requires a good model of slip distribution available only for large earthquakes, most studies have neglected the influence of “small” earthquakes.

So, how does this influence propagate into a fault system?

• A triggered earthquakes size is independent of the magnitude of the triggering event (“mainshock”) as suggested by [Helmstetter, 2003]. This implies that the crust is everywhere close to failure, such that any small earthquake, triggered by a previous small one, can grow into an event much larger than its trigger

As one takes notice of the rifts that circle the globe and then thinks about the fact that there is spreading taking place around the globe, one cannot help but conclude that all of the that spreading is going to be causing pressure to increase in areas which are being "crowded." This results in a globe who's surface is everywhere fractured, thus on the point of rupture at any given time with no prior notice.

What does all of this mean?

These results imply that a small earthquake can trigger a much larger earthquake. It thus validates our hypothesis that the size of a triggered earthquake is not determined by the size of the trigger, but that any small earthquake can grow into a much larger one [Kagan, 1991b; Helmstetter, 2003; Felzer et al., 2004]. The magnitude of the triggering earthquake controls only the number of triggered quakes

emphasis mine

So, smaller quakes can trigger larger quakes and it is merely the number of quakes triggered, not size of subsequent quake which is affected when considering remote triggering.

It all boils down to this:

Although large earthquakes are much more important than smaller ones for energy release, small quakes have collectively the same influence as large ones for stress changes between earthquakes, due to seismic spatial clustering.

emphasis mine

Since smaller quakes occur in a more compact area, they have influence equivalent to larger quakes due to the closer proximity to one another.

Another study I found some place (I can go dig it out if it is really necessary, I don't remember what thread I posted it in, but I think it dealt with induced seismicity incidents in India related to petroleum production) indicates that induced earthquakes (like those caused by fracking) are similar enough in energy release and signature that the seismic waves behave as if they were naturally occurring.

This means, that all of the fracking induced quakes that are taking place are acting like a series of firecrackers popping off continually on top of a larger fault system (NMSZ) and are potentially going to cause that system to release any pent up energy.

Remember, it's not the fact that it's an earthquake, or volcano (seems to be a bit of activity on that front around the world presently), but it is more a function of energy that is being released and thus moved to another location. Which causes a build up of stress (energy in potential) increasing until friction is overcome (a rupture happens) and then that energy flow is unblocked, albeit briefly, and thence the energy seeks a new equilibrium.

Maybe it's juts me, but every time I hear about "fracking", I think of Battlestar Galactica. Those fracking Cylons!!!

Thought this could add to this post.

Nice to see whole cities starting to re-examine this harmful practice.


Commerce City adopts 30-day moratorium on fracking to study the potential impacts
Posted: 12/20/2011 02:00:14 AM MST
Updated: 12/20/2011 05:02:13 AM MST

The Denver Post

The Commerce City Council late Monday unanimously approved a 30-day moratorium on oil and gas activities.

In a statement released after the meeting, the council characterized the moratorium as a "timeout" to discuss the issue before the council makes a decision on a longer-term moratorium on the controversial hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

A timeout period had been requested by the industry and the state.

"City Council's decision allows Commerce City to assess how best to balance necessary oil and gas development with the growth of our city," Mayor Pro Tem Dominick Moreno said in a statement released at 11:30 p.m. Monday.

"We look forward to working with all interested parties to provide thoughtful discussion and increase awareness and education on this important topic," he said.