Fracking - where is it headed ?

[footfootfoot]

three cheers for cheeriness!

[Griff]

Originally Posted by HungLikeJesus

Dimock? Isn't that Cantonese for death touch?

It is becoming that, which is really pissing off the locals who are not party to the dispute.

[Trilby]

We're gonna frack in Ohio.
We're gonna frack it but, *good*

[footfootfoot]

Cabot Oil and Gas are coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drilling,
Four fracked in Ohio.

Gotta get down to it
Frackers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if your water
left you dead on the ground
How can you drink when you know?

Gotta get down to it
Frackers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if your water
left you dead on the ground
How can you drink when you know?

Cabot Oil and Gas are coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drilling,
Four fracked in Ohio.

[ZenGum]

We can Frack if we want to
We can frack your farm's behind
Cuase your farms don't frack
and if they don't frack
they're no farms of mine

[footfootfoot]

How can we frack when our earth is turning
How do we frack while our faucet's burning
How can we frack when our earth is turning
How do we frack while our faucet's burning

[ZenGum]

I wanna frack you like an animal!
I want to drill you from the inside
I wanna frack you like an animal!
My whole aquifer is flawed
You get me closer to Gawd.

[classicman]

frank you all. Imma go sit and watch my windmill turn...

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by Griff

EPA: Water quality OK in Pa. gas drilling town
Contamination in Dimock wells within safe levels, it says

SCRANTON, Pa. -- Federal environmental regulators said Thursday that well water testing at 11 homes in a northeastern Pennsylvania village where a gas driller was accused of polluting the aquifer failed to show elevated levels of contamination.

The Environmental Protection Agency, which is sampling well water at dozens of homes in Dimock, Susquehanna County, said initial test results "did not show levels of contamination that could present a health concern."

Dimock has been at the center of a fierce debate over the environmental and public health impacts of Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale drilling industry.

State environmental regulators had previously determined that Houston-based Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. contaminated the aquifer underneath homes along Carter Road in Dimock with explosive levels of methane gas. Residents who are suing Cabot assert their water is also polluted with drilling chemicals. Many other residents of Dimock say that the water is clean and that the plaintiffs are exaggerating problems with their wells to help their lawsuit.

Do you trust these government regulators?

[Lamplighter]

Taking lease money from fracking companies may seem like a good deal... (right now).
But when these property owners go to sell or refinance,
they suddenly may wish they had paid more attention to the warning signs.

Neighbors should be talking with one another about what is going on in their area,
including this policy development....

NY Times
IAN URBINA
March 18, 2012

Mortgages for Drilling Properties May Face Hurdle

The Department of Agriculture is considering requiring an extensive environmental review
before issuing mortgages to people who have leased their land for oil and gas drilling.

Last year more than 140,000 families, many of them with low incomes and living in rural areas,
received roughly $18 billion in loans or loan guarantees from the department
under the Rural Housing Service program. Much of the money went to residents in states that have seen
the biggest growth in drilling in recent years, including Pennsylvania, Texas and Louisiana.

The program is popular because it generally requires no down payment.
As its financing has grown and credit markets have tightened in recent years,
the program’s loans have roughly quadrupled since 2004.
<snip>
The proposal by the Agriculture Department, which has signaled its intention
in e-mails to Congress and landowners, reflects a growing concern that
lending to owners of properties with drilling leases might violate the National Environmental Policy Act,
known as NEPA, which requires environmental reviews before federal money is spent.

Because that law covers all federal agencies, the department’s move
raises questions about litigation risks for other agencies, legal experts said.
<snip>
Over the last year, some banks and federal agencies have started revisiting their lending policies
to account for the potential impact of drilling on property values.

“We will no longer be financing homes with gas leases,” Jennifer Jackson,
program director for rural loans in the Agriculture Department’s New York office,
wrote in an internal e-mail this month, citing several factors,
including the costs of conducting such reviews.

[Lamplighter]

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

Do you trust these government regulators?

I do... but only for what it's worth in the exact wording of the EPA statements.
I have not seen this EPA report, but I read somewhere that they were
testing only for certain specific fracking-additives in the ground water.

For those tests, I would believe the specific data values obtained
and those values being below EPA's "maximum allowable limits".
This would then allow EPA to state their tests "did not show levels
of contamination that could present a health concern."
This statement does not say the values were zero or non-detectable

Beyond that, there might be additives for which EPA did not test, or
toxic levels that are below the limits EPA now considers to be safe.
Likewise, they may not have tested all appropriate water sources.
(The unknown boogeyman argument.)

I feel EPA is generally what you want in a governmental agency.
That is, their actions are based heavily on scientific sampling, testing and lab assays, etc.
From my experience interacting with EPA , they are pretty "unbiased".
Also, they are subject to public hearings and inputs, so there is a "real world" link in their actions.
Compared with agencies (such as the Dept of Agriculture) that
have missions "to promote...", I put EPA at a pretty high level of authenticity.

Industry and business don't always have the same opinions of EPA.
Remember the politicians who pledged to voters they would "get rid of EPA" ?
The other side of industry is, if EPA says it's OK then it's OK,
regardless of some lab data values being above zero.

[Griff]

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

Do you trust these government regulators?

Not with great depth in an election year. They (DEP and EPA) are, however, our only option so I hope their decisions are based on the best science. Like lamp I rate them higher than whoring agencies like Dept of Ag.

[Griff]

MIT study I never saw before. Too tired to read tonight.

http://www.slideshare.net/MarcellusD...of-natural-gas

[classicman]

This came up on my news feed.

The natural gas jobs-and-investment scene is going gangbusters, but despite the boon to our economy and energy portfolio, environmentalists just can’t abide forms of energy that a) make money, and b) provide affordable energy to the masses. They’ve got all sorts of projects going to shoot the whole industry down.

The battle plan is called “Beyond Natural Gas,” and Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune announced the goal in an interview with the National Journal this month: “We’re going to be preventing new gas plants from being built wherever we can.” The big green lobbying machine has rolled out a new website that says “The natural gas industry is dirty, dangerous and running amok” and that “The closer we look at natural gas, the dirtier it appears; and the less of it we burn, the better off we will be.” So the goal is to shut the industry down, not merely to impose higher safety standards.

This is no idle threat. The Sierra Club has deep pockets funded by liberal foundations and knows how to work the media and politicians. The lobby helped to block new nuclear plants for more than 30 years, it has kept much of the U.S. off-limits to oil drilling, and its “Beyond Coal” campaign has all but shut down new coal plants. One of its priorities now will be to make shale gas drilling anathema within the Democratic Party. …

The federal Energy Information Administration reports that in 2009 “the 4% drop in the carbon intensity of the electric power sector, the largest in recent times, reflects a large increase in the use of lower-carbon natural gas because of an almost 50% decline in its price.” The Department of Energy reports that natural gas electric plants produce 45% less carbon than coal plants, though newer coal plants are much cleaner.

and this ...

The controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas does not pose a high risk for triggering earthquakes large enough to feel, but other types of energy-related drilling can make the ground noticeably shake, a major government science report concludes.

Even those man-made tremors large enough to be an issue are very rare, says a special report by the National Research Council. In more than 90 years of monitoring, human activity has been shown to trigger only 154 quakes, most of them moderate or small, and only 60 of them in the United States. That’s compared to a global average of about 14,450 earthquakes of magnitude 4.0 or greater every year, said the report, released Friday.

more links at the link
Link

[Ibby]

Meh. Very glad that Vermont's banned that shit. I actually interviewed for a job with/had an observation day the other day with VPIRG, the VT public interest research group, who were instrumental in getting that legislation passed.