Fracking, whats the big deal?
 

Seems like this procedure works and that the wells produce way more gas, I don't know much about it, I don't know if they get more oil as well but I've heard that the Environmentalists are all up in arms with the procedure and I can't figure out why. Anybody know what's got the tree hugger's all upset?
Finn

There is a greatly increased potential for ground water contamination. Those that do it say they are so deep that no way is it possible.... Those that are against it say that it's happening and we are all effed.


Just a synopsis. My uncle works for a company that does biocide treating for frac water. This is just the cliffs notes from talking to him. ;)

Pollution of ground water and our aquifers with some pretty nasty chemicals known to cause some horrendous diseases. That's all.

The stuff that's pumped into the ground is supposed to contaminate ground water.

Edit: You guys are fast...

Yeah, so basically nothing serious...:rolleyes:

Frack it
 

Yes it produces way more oil as well as gas - that might not be extracted.

It is accused of polluting ground water and causing earthquakes.

Been in the field with it alot and if done correctly - proper casing of the well bores and handling of frackfluids (source of green anxiety here is no one really comes clean as to what is in Frackfluid), muds and produced water is essential.

As modern Americans we seem to want completely risk free everything and fracking like mining, manufacturing,cooking and crossing the street has some degree of risk. But like anything it seems safe if managed

THis is headed for PARF
Mflo

Well many if not most/all don't have baseline testing of the local water to prove that there wasn't contamination to begin with.

Not saying that fracking isn't a contributor but the locals didn't do what should have been done prior to operations.

Pulling stuff outta ground is always a dirty business. Shoving pressurized water down a hole without planning on where it's gonna end up isn't smart business.

People are naturally afraid of what they don't understand.
People tend to get their info from 5 second sound bytes.
People form opinions based on emotions rather than logic.

Big IF to have faith in if you live in a fracking area.

I'm surrounded by very large ranches. Cow/horse country.

Few years back when gas prices were high the fracking activity around here was heavy.

Still see the occasional well popping up but not 2-3 a week like it was.

It's not pleasant to be around.

We had one in particular go up just outside the community boundary, don't know what the frak they were doing but for 3 straight days (and nights) it sounded like someone left a 747 running full throttle in my neighbors yard.

11.5 seconds.

One of the big issues with fracking is how much water it uses and virtually all of the fracking in TX goes on in areas which have little water to begin with. And as most of TX is in it's third year of drought it is going to get worse. The amount of water per frack varies but runs between 5 - 20 million gallons.. That is a lot of water to pump out of the ground in a semi-arid region and once it is gone, it is gone... (or rather pumped back into the ground as toxic waste).

Pick your poison I guess re: your groundwater: possibility of it being polluted or possibility of it just being pumped dry.

Hmmm. Finally a topic that I actually have quite a bit of experience with!

My job is with unconventional resources (shale formations) and how to release hydrocarbons to maximize profit. These hydrocarbons are locked into extremely “tight” reservoirs due to permeability and porosity of the source rock. These formations do not have the interlocked pore system of the conventional reservoirs like carbonates and sandstones and have to be stimulated using various completion methods.

Most of these methods rely on hydraulic fracturing of a well bore. This can be either a vertical or horizontal depending on thickness of the reservoir and amount of money the operator is willing to spend. The method of fracing a well is actually quite simple to understand. Picture 20 diesel engines in sequence pumping water and sand(proppant) into the well to fracture and “prop open” the fractures. The water is then pumped back to the surface and is then recycled on other wells in the area. The service provider attempts to recover as much water as possible to reduce costs. Water is tough to find in certain areas and can be expensive. The hydrocarbons then flow to the surface and are processed. Bingo, you have drilled and completed an oil well in an unconventional reservoir. It’s actually a very impressive sight to see in person.

Now here is the problem the tree huggers have with the above….

They forget to remember that these reservoirs are 6,000 to 16,000 ft. below the surface. The aquifers are protected with thousands of feet of rock from the fracing and the wellbore is cased and cemented with up to several feet of cement depending on depth of the bore. It is essentially sealed shut. We are talking about thousands of ft. of rock that require thousands of HP to crack. There is no way that the water would travel back up to an aquifer. It just isn’t possible. These are not dangerous chemicals. I have seen the CEO of Halliburton drink a frac “chemical” on live TV and be perfectly fine. The frac solution is a combination of sand and water and ppm amounts of acid to acidize the well to increase P/P.

I have a lot more info to post, and I can do that later if you guys would like sources. We have to deal with the safety aspects daily and I am no stranger to these practices. I wouldn’t be able to do my work if I felt I was in anyway “harming the Earth.” I am a geologist by trade and am not easily swayed by bogus environmental impact reports which always end up to be bogus.

Add to this the fact that there is simply nowhere you can go in northern Wva , southwest Pa., or eastern Ohio and buy a piece of rural property that has not been affected by this. It all either has piplines on the surface, an existing gas lease under the ground, or you are looking at wellheads, construction, and tons of truck traffic.
I'm not really against it, , but I wish it was not in my back yard.

Yup a good synopsis.

This is what I do, I have numerous patents on hydraulic fracturing technology.

Depending on the frac design, it might use a few hundred gallons up to a few million gallons of water per frac. Some frac's are placed with produced water (water produced from other wells), some use hydrocarbons such as oil, some are gelled propane while others are pure nitrogen. I guess wat I am saying is that a frac that is pumped in the foothills of Alberta is very different to what we pump in west Texas, Pensylvania, NorthEast BC, or Siberia. A lot of engineering goes into the design of each frac and these are tailored to that well bore.

Been doing it for 50-60 years. Here is a good link. What is Fracking? | Energy From Shale

I have mineral rights in North Dakota and a couple of decent producing wells. They are drilling 8 more right now.

They estimate with the technology right now that they are only recovering about 5% of the actual oil.

My wife says if the new wells produce like the last couple of wells for at least a year, I can retire.

Please continue to frack for at least a couple of years. :)

A very deep deep toxin dumping well complying to all EPA regulations at the time is an example of how ground water at much higher levels can and will get contaminated.

6 homes affected by Gelman dioxane plume will be annexed into Ann Arbor
6 homes affected by Gelman dioxane plume will be annexed into Ann Arbor

CARD (1,4-Dioxane)
CARD (1,4-Dioxane) — Official Website of Washtenaw County, MI
http://www.ewashtenaw.org/government.../image_preview
They will not tell us what is in their proprietary fracking liquids/compounds, but most will admit to Benzine as an ingredient, not something you want in your drinking water, not even fit for cattle.

Many suspect fracking is a cover for dumping toxins of many sorts at will, while the government looks the other way on technicalities.

This is one of the problems; people are willing to overlook any environmental issues if they're getting a check and it's not in their back yard.

Fracking - fracturing - is a way to get at oil & gas that could not be economically recovered beforehand. It is driving a huge energy boom in the US, killing off the worst polluting energy source we have (coal, which is about like burning toxic dirt for energy), and increasing energy security for us.

Fracking often entails huge volumes of truck traffic on narrow rural roads, noise, commotion, etc. - all NIMBY factors.

Because it is pretty new, regulations to control pollution, encourage best practices, etc. are not yet in effect.

Env'l groups and some industry groups recently agreed upon a set of best practices to follow & a search here will pull up a thread I started on it.

Things to control include:

- drilling and chemicals used for that
- chemicals used for recovery during operations
- and leaks from methane (which is a potent, but short-lived greenhouse gas)

Chemicals can leak thru layers of rock thought to be impermeable and care needs to be taken in how they are sequestered and discarded.

If done properly, NG from fracking can reduce greenhouse effects by HALF compared with coal (!) If it displaces all coal burning, then mercury emissions (a neurotoxin that concentrates in fish, esp. tuna) will be near zero.

Some env'l groups are not so pleased with the great promise of NG from fracking as they think we should skip it and move to PV solar ASAP. I think that view is naive.

I've been to ND and drank the water. Anything may be an improvement.

Thank you brporsche for posting a small piece of the truth. I too am involved in hydraulic fracing. Haynesville Shale. The hew and cry out of Hollywood is hard to drown out with the truth. If you have a loud enough voice, you can convince people of anything. Matt Damon, a hyd. fracing expert? Really?
I also love the "A lot of people say..." "I heard that..." crowd. How many is a lot? Who said that?
The answers are comical.
It's only been going on for decades. All of a sudden now it's a problem. Meanwhile, people run from CA for jobs in ND. The economically suppressed, reservationed tribes of ND actually finally have a penny or two. Can't let that happen, now can we?
You'll whine until your Viking gas range doesn't work anymore. Who will you whine to then?
Be advised, if you have an IRA or a position in a mutual fund, you are invested in Oil and Gas.
How does it feel to be part of the mean, evil oil machine?
I am proud to supply America with clean, safe, affordable, abundant, AMERICAN energy.
And you'll keep burning it!!

MWAA HA HA HA HA!!!

The money will be made today but the full environmental impact will not be known for a long time.

The side-bar, if you will, to oil fracking is frac-sand mining. We have a tourism based economy up and down the Mississippi River in MN and WI. The frac-sand companies have bullied their way into our area, yes, our area, and set up shop with very little public input. Some have hired off County staff associated with these very same companies, but from the other side of the counter. Money is the root and route for this evil. Frac-sand mining affects our tourism industry by ruining county roads, hundreds of daily truck trips, large sand-loading docks at the river and at rail yards. The dust from frac sand is known to be a health hazard. Water is pumped from our drought-stricken area up to 1 million gallons a DAY to clean the sand.

Small, 3-person town commissioners are making decisions for thousands of people up and down the river. Just a few (locals) are making any money, the job promises, spending promises are all lies. The false promise of making the US energy independent is the biggest lie. Big Oil never wants the price of gas or oil to go down. Throw in commodity manipulation by Wall Street, and there you have it. Keep drinking the koolaid if you want.

The mindset of some people is 'No one has definitively proven it is safe, therefore it is unsafe'. Toxic chemicals are pumped into the ground, theoretically separated from groundwater by a cement casing.

There is some evidence that fracking can cause earthquakes, I don't believe that is likely, but some people worry about it happening.

There are stories of fracking causing natural gas to enter the groundwater system, to the point where tap water will burn if an ignition source is present, but apparently that was also the case long before fracking.

There are enough points of concern that I don't accept it as 100% safe or desirable. The insatiable need for cheap (domestic) oil is the driver behind this.

The fracing does trigger faults to slip before they would have. The earthquakes aren't very big because people don't frac on the San Andreas Fault. But they do discover previously unknown faults in seismically-quiet areas (like the middle of the country) because of fracing and earthquake swarms. But no one should really worry about the quakes. The issue (aside from the noise, unsightliness in your backyard) is whether or not the groundwater is contaminated by harmful components of frac fluid.

This is my greatest objection so far. Oil companies are pumping something deep into the ground and won't reveal what it is or submit it for evaluation. When an oil company says, "Trust me," I grab my butt, 'cause they are after it.

This thread is representative of the public debate...mostly fear and ignorance (and I mean that in the uninformed way). You have two post by folks qualified to speak and so far the only acknowledgement of facts is by the second of the folks who is actually in the field.

I have no concerns. You have to remember the depth we are talking about. The reasons the oil companies don't want to provide the information on what else is thrown down the hole is because it's all proprietary. Would you want someone else to be able to publicaly access your very valuable information and then drill a well a mile from you and have success? Heck no!

You can only imagine the things that we encounter coming back up the well bore with the cuttings. All kinds of things from tobacco and cotton. If it's cheap, an oil company has probably put it down hole at one point in the history of drilling for oil.

My only environmental concern with fracing and onshore drilling is the the contamination on the surface and the effect of the rig trucks on these small roads. But hopefully with enough O/G revenue from the tax the small towns can build som nice roads.

Where is the proof? A government audit revealed no harmful agents used beyond trace levels if that. If the EPA had data to show otherwise you can bet your last dime this would all be shut down.

The oil and gas industry is very heavily regulated to ensure the public (and environment) health and safety.

Where is the evidence? The US Geological Society has never concluded this that I'm aware of.

They haven't made any definitive conclusions because they take forever for that. But it doesn't take much imagination to realize that injecting water into a fault will reduce friction and lead to more slippage like a tire on wet pavement. But they are small- only a 4.3 maximum in this case. Nothing really to write home about.

ftp://hazards.cr.usgs.gov/maps/sigeqs/20110228/20110228ARupdate.pdf

That pdf takes forever to load, but not the "disposal well sites" and the earthquake/fault locations.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1377118968.jpg

All this says is that drilling into a fault and injecting water causes it to increase its slip rate temporarily as it releases stored strain energy. Seems kind of a "well, duh!" point.

Of course, fracing itself IS earthquakes- fracturing the ground creates seismic waves. They are tiny, tiny but they are still earthquakes. Underground nuclear tests and blasting to mine minerals also cause earthquakes.

Large man-made earthquakes are mostly associated with reservoirs near large faults, such as in China. The weight of the water causes more stress in the fault, and the water can permeate the ground and cause it to weaken.

I'm qualified to talk about this subject too, because I'm the only one here so far that has actually SEEN these faults we're talking about.

I've also seen them go from the surface to 7K or 8K feet in depth, and be several scores of miles long. There's lots of direct contact between the aquifer levels and the shale layers via these large plane faults.

Can frac fluid travel that far along a shear fault? I don't know, I'm not sure that anyone knows. But i know that what I see makes me think that high pressure frac fluid in an uncontrolled environment *could* access aquifer layers.

Do I support fracing? In as much as we've done an increasing number of projects involving horizontal drilling and fracing, yes, because it pays my bills. I prefer deep well classical oil drilling, but that's because it pays my bills faster. Ultimately, the three people who have commented here who are in the industry will say that we support fracing, because we're all doing well for ourselves thanks to it. The tree hugging part of me thinks that there must be a better way.

I've been there several times and have a few architecture projects going up right now.

The builder I'm working with will not drink the water, nor will he let his kids and wife drink it.

Better safe than sorry.

Bottled water is very big in ND.

The cost to build roads capable of handling the fracking traffic is way beyond what small towns can ever afford as the only benefit they will usually receive is maybe increased sales tax revenue and increased property taxes. Towns don't usually get any O/G revenue itself. The reality is for many of the towns in Eagle-Ford anyway, fracking is truly a good news/bad news situation.

The road problem isn't just the "small towns". The bigger problem are the Farm roads. They are being destroyed in many areas by the trucks throughout Eagle-Ford and the states remedy appears to be to convert them to gravel roads... such a deal if you happen to live on one of them.

Until we moved last year we drove between Port A/Rockport area to San Antonio often. The last year or so we went way out of our way to get to IH37 to avoid the massive number of trucks and torn up roads we encountered going the usual way through the heart of Eagle-Ford.

There ain't no free lunch..

Also, lots of fracing is done by "tiny" companies, not the Exxons and such. These small independents are, for lack of a better work, jackholes. They treat the town poorly, they treat the neighbors poorly, they treat their employees poorly and they treat the contract companies poorly. Bporsche can probably give you the same list of companies that I can who piss him off by treating him or his company like worms. I might be more for it if it was run by companies that I don't end up cursing by the end of a project.

I was not worried about the fracking. The normal tap water is horrible. Very hard and alkaline I believe is the problem.

Faith in government. How quaint.

There is plenty of proof. All you have to do is look around. Poor casing installs, cracks, natural fissures, all contribute to the opportunity for contamination, but let me break my comments down for you:

The OP asked what the concern is all about.
Answer: contamination of ground water and aquifers

The industry has admitted over and over that hazardous chemicals are used, that's why they focus on how "impossible" it is for the fracking fluid to reach the water table. Impossible and Mother Nature should never be used in the same sentance.

Some sources for you as you seem to lack the motivation to look yourself. You may want to pay particular attention to the last link:

Natural Gas Explosions and Contaminated Water From Fracking Accidents

The Growing Evidence of the Threat of Fracking to the Nation

Fracking | Water Defense

Incidents where hydraulic fracturing is a suspected cause of drinking water contamination | Amy Mall's Blog | Switchboard, from NRDC

Fracking is awesome, in Battlestar Galactica!

Fracking: The Operations and Environmental Consequences of Hydraulic Fracturing (Energy Sustainability):Amazon:Books

Hmmmm. Well, yup.

This is BS. We HAVE disclose what is in our frac fluids. Search for Fracfocus... Better yet, looky here:

Home | FracFocus Chemical Disclosure Registry


Home | FracFocus Chemical Disclosure Registry

We have had frac fluids that would pass microtox since 2006. To give you a hint, baby shampoo won't pass microtox. The main component in most gel based frac fluids (other than water) is guar, the same edible plant product found in jelly beans, ice cream, etc.

If you are worried about the stuff we pump into these hydrocarbon containing reservoirs coming to surface, why doesn't H2S and other poisonous chemicals that occur naturally get into the ground water before we show up and drill a well?

Every 1/4 section adjacent to mine has a well on it, each of these wells has been frac'd. My well water has not been compromised. These are relatively shallow well of only 3000' or so.

All the above links are published/posted by individuals/organisations with an anti-oil/gas agenda.
Research them before you take what they say as gospel.
This is an automotive forum, and you're here furthering the propaganda and agenda of people dead set against fossil fuels of any sort.
It just don't pass the smell test.
BTW, I am also a tree farmer. I do more for the environment than any of the organisations/individuals linked above.
If you think they don't frac wells in CA you're wrong.
Bottled water comes in plastic bottles. Plastic is made from petroleum. Those bottles will take longer to break down in the landfill than any supposed groundwater contamination caused by hyd. fracing will ever last.
Reduction of the aquifer in West Texas has been going on for decades. The cause? Center-pivot irrigators. This is well documented. The previously stated cause, not so much.
States experiencing the recent energy boom are receiving tax money from the oil/gas production. This has helped insulate them from the effects of the economic downturn. I guess that's a bad thing, since it isn't CA or NY.