Fracking... What Do You Think?

I was actually born in the next to the last house in the holler.The name was really Sleepy Hollow.It's off lonesome pine trail that runs through Tn.Anyway my Dad used to have great fun showing people how he could set water on fire.He could run a bucket of water and let it set for a few seconds and pitch a match on it and it would flash up and burn for a few seconds.One of the big oil companies came through here I guess in the late 70's and drilled some wells.I know of 3 close here and I don't know how many in all.They said they hit gas in every one of them,but no oil.The rock lays at a slant here and they said they could not drill deep enough for oil because the bit would go sideways and get stuck.They can drill in that kind of rock now but have not done any more drilling.They said at the time that gas was to cheap to make any money so they caped the holes.They are still there of course.I wonder if they will ever use them.
 
What still amazes me is people who really have "no dog in the fight" try to force their opinions on others. We also have areas where tap water has been "flammable" for years..

In my area, the antis (mostly outsiders) come to board meetings in hoards to force the boards to ban it. We drive old cars and trucks while they drive Beemers, Audis and Prius's.. They try and dominate the meetings with their numbers.

Yes, they are mostly all wealthy Democrats or people that have nothing else to do with their lives........
 
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"Yes, they are mostly all wealthy Democrats or people that have nothing else to do with their lives........"

Oh,like the trolls on this Board.
 
Originally Posted By: CenturionLooks like he disappeared again without providing documentation. Over 20 years ago a local businessmen had a house built about five miles from where I live. They had pictures in the local paper of him lighting the methane coming out of his kitchen faucet. There was never any fracking here, and his house is on a hill on a prime piece of land.


Had numerous reported cases of flammable gases at the kitchen tap from well water, by the members of the water system I managed. One gentleman told me that he had his tested, and they found 13 different flammable gases in the water when it was analyzed. Said they also had a bad Radon problem in the home, but all the usual suspect causes had checked out negative; and that radon levels were in fact higher on the ground floor, than they were in the basement. Radon gas was also found in the well water.

No fracking anywhere near that residence, or any of the others, because that was 20+ years ago, back before fracking existed.

We could also discuss well water that looked like anything from light tea, to coffee colored, looked like chocolate milk, ate plumbing fixtures up in a matter of a year or two, killed the grass in the yard if you watered with it, the animals wouldn't even drink it. Then there were the natural elements that create problems - Flouride and Arsenic were the two most common in ND. There is a whole lot of BAD well water out there in the world, until you spend 10 years working with hundreds of folks spread over a very large area, you have no clue how ugly the water problem really is.

 
Arsenic is a naturally occurring element as is Flouride, shootist. There are other forms of Arsenic contamination seen however. In the state of North Dakota, the SE corner of the state experiences extremely high arsenic levels in ground water, over a very broad area. There are a few spots in the western part of the state, and one or two sites in the north central part of the state as well, where public water supplies were impacted under the arsenic rule. How extensive those findings were in private wells I'm not sure, but I do know the findings in the SE corner resulted in an emergency grant of SEVERAL MILLION dollars to develop a rural water system to save everyone. And, while the Health Department did enforce the regulations, imposed upon us by EPA, they all shook their heads in disbelief as well. People have been drinking water out of the same acquifer down there, for well over 100 years, and there are just a whole bunch of antiquated old gray farts wandering around in that corner of the state where the water is going to kill you too. Not sure how any of them survived listening to the EPA talk.

Local contamination may also be seen in farm wells where arsenic sources were disposed of improperly. Arsenic was commonly found on the farm at one time, as it was used as a pesticide to eliminate rodents, predators, and other unwanted pests.

And, it may be found in rather high concentrations near OLD cemetaries, as it was used in the process of embalming bodies for burial back in the late 1800s.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenic
 
Few years ago there was a trailer court for mobile homes around here that closed down because of high arsenic levels. They either had to spend hunders of thousands of dollars to put a filtration system in or close the place. So they closed. Funny thing is the levels never went up in the water in the 40 years it was there, but the EPA's allowable PPM for arsenic levels went down and all of a sudden it was a problem, so now it is plowed up for growing corn. Also funny is that the farms that are all around that old place are still using their wells.
 
Sorry I should have clarified what I meant by reuseable. Down here in w. Texas there has been a pretty severe water shortage. As in we only get about 10 inches of rainfall a year if we are lucky. As you can imagine water is scarce. When company does a frac, depending on how many stages of fracking are taking place I have personally seen a frac use 6million gallons of water. Comparison is a standard water tower of most cities holds about 3 million gallons. Well what they do is they take this water mix sand and other chemicals in with it and send it down the well at high pressure in order to fracture the rock that contains the oil or gas. Hence frac. Most of this water that is used is absorbed into a gel like material(think of like a wet baby diaper) which fills in the cracks and let's the oil/gas freely flow by and up the well. You don't tend to get any of the actual water from the franc itself coming back up the well. Now what you see as the waste water that you were talking about comes from a slightly different source. Try to follow me on this. You have 15 wells all on your property All of them are spread out over a 5 mile radius but all of them as tapped into the same layer of rock some 2 miles underground and all of them have been fraced already. So you have this layer of
Oily rock 2 miles down that's been spider webbed with cracks. And you have no way of getting it out unless you have a free flowing oil well which unless you live in Saudi Arabia you probably don't. So what do you do to get that oil out of the ground? Well you float it out. What does oil float on? Water. Specifically salt water. Not ocean water. Its about 300x saltier than that. Salt water is used because it is much heavier than regular water and the oil floats on top of it a lot better. Anyway they drill an injection well into this formation right in the middle of all of hour fractured wells and pump this salt water into the rock formation. The salt water gets into the rock and pushes the surrounding oil out to your wells which have those pump jacks on the top helping to suck the oil/water mixture out of the ground and pumps the mix to a central tank battery. That battery has a skimmer type device called of all things an oil/water seperator which seperates the oil from the salt water. Now the oil is shipped off to a refinery but what do they do with all that used salt water? Well if they were smart with it they would recycle it and send it back down hole to get more oil. In most cases that is exactly what they do do. But sometimes you get some left over water that is still mixed in with the oil or maybe the truck driver picks up a load of water or maybe you are shutting down your wells and you need a place that you can dispose of your water properly. Well there are places.around the country called salt water disposal sites that are meant to be used for this wasted water. 98%of the time this water is dropped off there and disposed of properly. Unfortunately sometimes it is not and gets put into ponds. This is highly illegal to do especially up in the northeastern states. There are regulations that have to be followed by the oil companies and if they are not there can be some serious consequences to the company. As far as damage to the environment its more than likely the salt compounds in the water more than any chemicals that do the most damage. After all you can't grow regular plants with salt water nor can fresh water fish survive in salt water....I think someone mentioned arsenic in their drinking water? I used to work for the water.purification plant for my local municipality and the groundwater out here has naturally occurring arsenic and naturally occurring fluoride in it. That's just l
Part of the natural groundwater table out here and has nothing to do with the oil industry. I know because I've been out to the groundwater wells and not one of them is more than 500 feet down. The shallowest oil well which is more than 15 miles away from the closest water well is something like 4300feet deep... anyways just thought everyone could do.with a bit of knowledge....
 
Like a lot of other things,I guess we don't know for sure what this process will do in the long run,if there is a long run.
I think about what George Carlin said years ago,He said the earth will be fine,it will take care of itself.It's the people who are going to be leaving here.I have already lived long enough to see the earth take back land that was once dominated by people.The earth can rid itself of all traces of man with time.
 
Originally Posted By: elixys. 98%of the time this water is dropped off there and disposed of properly. Unfortunately sometimes it is not and gets put into ponds.

I am not concerned with the 98% that do it correctly, I am concerned with the "fly by night" operators that take the illegal short cuts. I am also concerned with the operators that have an inexperienced crew that have no idea of what they are doing. The current boom in West Texas and New Mexico can literally ruin our water supplies with illegal and "stupid people doing stupid things. That 2% along with the ignorant are the ones that can ruin us.
 
Originally Posted By: frozenbuttFew years ago there was a trailer court for mobile homes around here that closed down because of high arsenic levels. They either had to spend hunders of thousands of dollars to put a filtration system in or close the place. So they closed. Funny thing is the levels never went up in the water in the 40 years it was there, but the EPA's allowable PPM for arsenic levels went down and all of a sudden it was a problem, so now it is plowed up for growing corn. Also funny is that the farms that are all around that old place are still using their wells.


Absolutely FB! That was the problem with most of the contaminants developed under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Technology developed to the point they could find traces so small that it would be impossible for it to ever affect you, however there was no "needs assessment" required in the original draft of the Safe Drinking Water Act legislation. The EPA was told you will determine XX number of contaminants this year, this many more 3 years down the road, this many more 5 years down the road, and XX number per year, every year thereafter.

In developing a Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL), the contaminant was fed to lab animals to the point that they find carcinogenic (cancer causing) or lethal dosage. That level of ingestion is then fed into a computer model that translates it into human dosage levels. Then taking into account those with weakened immune systems, (immune system disorders, elderly, infants, pregnant women, etc.), wherein the contaminant may have a greater impact, a multiplication factor is introduced dependent upon toxicity of the contaminant, and the MCL is then calculated to determine how much may be necessary to negatively impact 1 person in 1,000,000. So your MCL is essentially a computer generated model, of a computer generated model, of a dead lab rat, that MIGHT cause ill effects in one person in one million.

As stated above on the Arsenic in well water, there are 90 - 95 year old people in southeast North Dakota that have drank from the same wells all their lives, and never experienced a problem from arsenic in well water. Not one single health problem ever reported in that area associated with arsenic ingestion. No indication of any greater carcinogenic effect in that area than any other. Yet the EPA issued a $10,000,000 check out of the SDWA Emergency Fund, to save everyone's lives.

Same crap with the Lead/Copper Rule... There are people out there that have drank from the same water pipes all of their lives, and never had a problem; and lead accumulates in your system over time, it is not dissipated. Furthermore, there is not 1 documented case of lead poisoning as a result of lead in drinking water, in the US, ever. Not one! On top of that, Copper is an essential element in the Human Body, it is beneficial. However, it was used as an indicator that lead "could" leach from the water pipes in the homes, and if more than 1 copper sample exceeded prescribed levels, the system had to treat for lead, even if no lead results exceeded the MCL, when the lead/copper found was in the user's home, not in the system itself.

Prescribed method of treatment was to inject Zinc-Ortho-Phosphate into the water, to coat the inside of the water pipes, and prevent the water from leaching the lead and/or copper from the line. Zinc is likewise an essential element, necessary to the body. However, Ortho-Phosphate is essentially a fertilizer, and it promotes bacterial growth, which in turn places additional demand on chlorine, lowering your disinfectant residual on far reaches of large systems. With certain waters/treatment methods, it can also cause disinfectant by-products called chloramines, which are also carcinogenic. So treating for one carcinogen led to development of another.

And, that's all on top of the fact that you're injecting a known poison into the water to treat for bacterial growth.
 
Being in Marcellus Shale Frack Central here in PA, we've seen some interesting things. First, it seems many of those folks with tap water that you could light had that going on a few decades ago too - nobody really knew about it outside the areas they were from, until that kid came along and made a movie about it.....and made a few million off of it. Even the evil EPA doesn't consider the gas a contaminate in water since it leaves the water as soon as you get it out of the faucet - you'd have to wrap your mouth around the spigot to ingest any. That gas is shallow gas, not the stuff they are drilling and fracking for a mile and a half down now. Same shallow stuff that guy is seeing coming up in a stream. Same way oil was first discovered in PA in the US - it was on top of the ground - coal too - they saw it on top before they started bothering to dig for it.

The fracking fluids are the scary part, and after sitting with my Soil Scientist group thru a presentation with the PADCNR guys in charge of their gas leases (DCNR handles our state parks and forests), I came away thinking it's not as potentially bad as some would like us to think, but precautions should be taken, and rules enforced strictly. We've had some bad incidents, but the fluids by and large are not introduced till casing and grout is in place to a depth of around a mile or more depending how deep the shale layer is where they are working. DCNR's head geologist worked in the petroleum industry for almost 30 years, and then came over to DCNR way before the Marcellus boom, but had a good working knowledge of the whole thing. If the grouting job is good (I have a buddy working for Haliburton doing grouting right now), there should be little chance of frack fluids infecting our groundwater that we use as it's at less than 1000 feet depth. 'Course, how many times have you heard "That'll never happen...." only to find out decades later that we're now paying for yet another environmental clean-up that someone profited from years ago. Just look at the seemingly endless scar that coal strip mining left in our state unregulated 100 years ago.

The chemicals they use are not publicly disclosed as they are "proprietary" secrets. That's a bit disconcerting. And we have the endless flow of companies and "workers" coming from all over to cash in on it all. Poaching is seemingly at an all time high around here now - seems some of these out-of-state rig workers like to kill stuff in between shifts, irregardless of laws.

Penn State PH'd's were at the meeting too - they are finding some issues with all the roads that are being blown into otherwise unmutilated State Forests, or unbroken core forests that were not roaded before now. Their finding issues with some animal populations dealing with all the activity, and all the limestone from quarries being drug into the acid forest soils and allowing invasive species to grow that are drug in as seeds on out-of-state trucks - stuff that wouldn't have survived if they had no source of limestone to raise the pH for them. They're also a bit peeved that some "engineer" in a cubicle in Houston is "designing" gas pad locations cookie cutter style without seeing the site. Major issues with pads being placed in swales that should carry stormwater away, being blocked off with the pad cuz nobody bothered to look - on a multi-million dollar site?!?!?!?!? Similarly, stormwater from the new roads and pads is not always accounted for and causes erosion in these areas. You'd think people would think a bit more if they want to keep working in an area worth billions at least to them??

As a hunter I worry about all the roads being installed where they are back into areas that most people were too lazy to walk into before - now every redneck with a 4 wheeler can just go ripping back there to tear it all up, legal or not. Everybody's got a 4 wheeler, but few own land to ride it on.

And we had about a million big trucks show up 4 years ago to haul all the materials around and were blocking up the roads, and tearing up the little mountain roads never meant for more than a truck a month. They got all fixed up eventually, but were filled in with just stone for a year or so till the money and politicians could catch up. Still not sure how much of that I paid for and how much they did. It was pretty obvious that our current Gov. (who I like overall and support) was bought and paid for before he was even a candidate. We didn't even have a tax on extraction or comprehensive rules for all these out-of-state firms till last year.

On the upside, we did get a lot of jobs out of it, although many went to out-of-staters. And we're getting a domestic source of power from it all. 'Course, it can't be pumped too far yet as there are no new big lines to the cities in the ground to handle it all yet. The push is to get the rights to it, and get the holes in the ground and the fracking done before anyone stops them.

Good and bad in everything I suppose.
 
This was looked at 1000 times, how many people do you think agreed that there is something wrong with the chemicals used in fracking, and the industry being given a free pass on what those chemicals are and any future liabilities from cleanup when it destroys water and land?

My guess is quite a bit more than 50%.
 
Originally Posted By: woodguruThis was looked at 1000 times, how many people do you think agreed that there is something wrong with the chemicals used in fracking, and the industry being given a free pass on what those chemicals are and any future liabilities from cleanup when it destroys water and land?

My guess is quite a bit more than 50%.

I haven't found a single scientist that backs up your claims..
 
Originally Posted By: woodguruThis was looked at 1000 times, how many people do you think agreed that there is something wrong with the chemicals used in fracking, and the industry being given a free pass on what those chemicals are and any future liabilities from cleanup when it destroys water and land?

My guess is quite a bit more than 50%.

Typical liberal stupidity, this is an example of liberal junk science. Because people read your ignorant drivel for the entertainment factor and wanting to see you have your azz handed to you in no way can be interpreted to mean that even one of them agree with you. Anyone who is dumb enough to agree with you a majority of the time would be posting that support, they couldn't help it, they would be too dumb to recognize they're dumb.
 
I laugh every time I see Fracking. Frac is an abbreviation of Fracture. So us oilfield trash guys spell it FRACING. We have never done a Frack job, but have done thousands of Frac Jobs. LOL If ya'll think it's so bad stop driving your cars and trucks and stop buying the other 14,000 products that are derived from oil.
 
azmastablasta said:
woodguru said:
This was looked at 1000 times, how many people do you think agreed that there is something wrong with the chemicals used in fracking, and the industry being given a free pass on what those chemicals are and any future liabilities from cleanup when it destroys water and land?

This is coming from a "fracking Idiot" what else could you expect? Where are thos 1000 times? Woodpecker Show us! lol On your last "lead ban issue most was from 2009 or before. I googled it. MY post showed recent info with a link, not with just some info from an Oscar Mayer yanker at a BBQ.
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Originally Posted By: woodguruThis was looked at 1000 times, how many people do you think agreed that there is something wrong with the chemicals used in fracking, and the industry being given a free pass on what those chemicals are and any future liabilities from cleanup when it destroys water and land?

My guess is quite a bit more than 50%.


My guess would be you overestimate that position significantly or there would be more posts suggesting that there is a problem with it than you'll find here.
 
I don't have time to read this thread but I saw somthing about 600 chemicals sounds a little crazy. I don't have much time, I'm sitting in a Halliburton truck waiting for stage 4 of a frac job to start..The chemicals that we use are mostly unrestricted, the restricted ones have no special permits and are available to other companies.I have only seen 5 or 6 chemicals that required a hazmat to drive. Sorry I have to go, maybe later if I have time.
 
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