Is Fracking Safe?

If even the Obama Administration's head of the EPA says it's not a risk, I'm gonna take the position that the anti-fracking hype is just... hype. From a story last week (May 25) about the EPA Administrator testifying before Congress about fracking:

At a U.S. House Oversight Committee hearing yesterday, President Barack Obama's EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, admitted the environmental risk of hydraulic fracturing is practically nonexistent.

http://hotair.com/archives/2011/05/25/video-epa-administrator-confirms-no-fracking-water-contamination/

Re: President Barack Obama's EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, admitted the environmental risk of hydraulic fracturing is practically nonexistent.

I have no idea of her credentials or affiliations. And, even if she is very qualified, and has no affiliations with the fracking industry (or some other conflict of interest)--how can she know, how can anybody know at this point.

In Pennsylvania, it seems that some sources of drinking water have been contaminated with natural gas due to fracking. I'd consider that a problem.

And who knows when the chemicals used in fracking are going to migrate into water sources, or when the water table will be lowered due to fracking?

Lisa P. Jackson has a MS in Chem Engineering. In addition, she has hundreds of advisors available to her. This Wiki article has more info than her EPA bio.

"...how can she know, how can anybody know at this point." I agree 100%. This is certainly a hot-button topic. An observation about the thread title: I think you said it best, "... how can anybody know at this point."

Thanks for the link!

I also read / skimmed an article that served as one of the sources for the wiki (N.J. enviros deeply divided over record of Obama's EPA nominee). I'm not sure I want to discuss her particular qualifications--I'll say they are not particularly reassuring, but maybe no worse than any other typical political appointee might have.

I'd feel a lot more reassured if some non-political appointee who has been deeply involved (or, at least, interested in the issue as an "amateur") had made such statements.

Being advised by additional political appointees (whether they gained their position via a political route or via some "non-political" civil service process, they still have, hmm, how to say it--they can be influenced politically (by a variety of means) doesn't add much.

If there was a groundswell of amateurs who said it was safe, I *might* be reassured.

But, then we come back to the point you mentioned and agreed with: "how can anyone know at this point?"

Maybe that's what bothers me most about Jackson's attempt at reassurance--if she had a suitable (to me) level of scientific objectivity, she'd have to admit that we can't really know at this point. For her to say there is no danger, ... especially in the face of reports of problems in Pennsylvania, and, iirc, in some of the western states--I mean, what is she drinking? Or, what does she think we're drinking?

Trying to turn off my rant now. (Before I go too far. ;-)

It really doesn't matter what you know, it matters how you use it. Dr. Kevorkian was medical doctor and chose to use that knowledge in helping others end their lives. He had the ability to save lives but chose a different path using what he learned in his field.

In an oil spill someone complained about the oil in the water harming wildlife and ruining the fishing industry. "Burn if off" says expert #1, then it will be "gone". "But that will produce other deadly by-products and kill the wildlife in the process" says expert #2. Expert #1 says: "I thought you just didn't want to see the oil?"

Obama, or any world leader/president, has the ability to and can appoint people to start/end/repeal/modify environmental policies. That does not necessarily mean they are doing the right thing for a particular majority. You must define the majority at that point. The people who live on top of natural gas wells which were fracked? No, not good for that majority. The people who benefit from the electricity generated by natural gas? Yes, that majority benefits.

All energy policies deal with deadly consequences, it's just what the owners/administrators are willing to trade off for (who they may injure and/or kill).

Here is a website where many operators are voluntarily releasing the chemicals that we pump downhole. http://fracfocus.org/ In the state of Pennsylvania we also disclose our chemicals pumped to the DEP - Department of Ecological Preservation.

A typical fracture consists of 87% water, 12% Sand, and 1% chemical. These percentages are represented by weight, and done by volume they don't look to different, but obviously your sand will represent a smaller portion of volume then it does weight.

A lot of bad publicity has come toward fracturing in recent years due to the confusion with fractionation. This is a process where different components of the hydrocarbon are sorted into their various components, ie. methane, butane, propane, gasoline, etc. We do nothing of this sort when frac'cing a well...

Hydraulic fracturing is just the process of cracking the reservoir rock to allow for communication to the wellbore. Most of the horizontal wells you read about are 5000 ft TVD, or about 1 mile under ground. Rock is not all the same going down to the center of the earth. It is stratified. This stratification adds strength at each rock interface that will not allow a fracture to come all the way to surface.

You also have to take into account rock stresses. We are using water to hydro frac with (hence the hydro). Since water will take the path of least resistance it will break the rock in certain directions only. As you move shallower your lowest stress becomes your overburden. The frac then becomes horizontal rather than vertical. Think of a pancake surrounding a wellbore. So even if the frac miraculously made it high enough, it would simply flatten out.

A bit of history on fracturing: It has been done since the 1960s. Back then they used napalm that was cross linked to increase the viscosity. They then developed water based frac fluid systems to keep the cost of the process down, and eliminate surface risks (napalm is the stuff they used to burn jungle in Vietnam). Currently the most used fracturing system is Friction reduced water and sand. Why? Because it is cheap and effective.

The most dangerous chemicals that we pump are biocide and acid. Both of these chemicals spend themselves very quickly and have very short lives. The acid is used to clean up the cement around the perfs and lower perf friction. The biocide is used to kill any bacteria. If bacteria get into a well they can cause H2S -hydrogen sulfide. This is very expensive to remove from the produced gas, and it is worth treating any water that goes downhole rather than risk sending sulfate reducing bacteria downhole.

The friction reducer is a derivative of Guar. Guar is a thickening agent used in a lot of foods. FR is just used to keep surface treating pressures lower, by lowering pipe friction.

Thanks,

All I'll say is that whenever something new is found it takes a while to perfect. Fracking is here to stay but we're still learning how to use it.

I would recomend that a moretorium is applied for the purpose of studying the long term effect of cross contamination.

What is done cant be undone and there are some very real concerns, we have done a good job of polluting various parts of our environment on the surface lets not repeat it below ground.

Lisa Jackson was head of the NJDEP under Gov. Jon Corzine.It was hard to distinguish which of the 2 were the most useless. She made no headway with the NJDEP in clearing up backlog or getting land returned to usefulness. No one wanted to make a decision and their plan of attack was generally to hire people right out of college who took Environmental Science and make them "case managers"after 2 weeks of training. It was generally a case of the blind leading the blinder. It's pretty much why the current course in NJ is to have private companies do the clean up and downsize the DEP with their pensions and benefits that are bankrupting the state.

Pennsylvania recently had a spillage from a fracking liquid holding tank and that got into the ground water. There are also numerous videos on U-Tube with people lighting the water as it comes out of the faucet because of the gas entrained. Coincidence or major environmental issue?

It may come down to "Do you want to be warm in Winter but die of thirst before Spring". There was already a thread posted on CR4 about the use of propane as a fracking medium being used. It's a little more expensive but less hazardous to the water supplies. Unless there are other major issues with the process you would think that the EPA would require that process until the toxicity of the hydro-fracking system is resolved.

The NY state assembly obviously has some concerns. They voted back in Nov. 2010. Now that the deadline has passed I wonder what their findings were.

MANHATTAN - The state Assembly voted Monday night to put a six-month hold on hydraulic fracturing or hydrofracking - a controversial process to drill for natural gas, which many believe could contaminate the city's water supply.

The Senate approved the bill in August. If the governor signs it into law it would halt hydrofracking in New York until May 15, 2011.

"I will not let anything stand in the way of making sure all New Yorkers have clean, safe water," Assemblyman Sheldon Silver, who voted for the bill, said in a statement.

Hydrofracking is a process that involves pumping water and chemicals into the bedrock to release natural gas and oil. The state had proposed using hydrofracking to mine New York's section of the Marcellus Shall, where the city gets its drinking water.

"When it comes to keeping pollution and dangerous chemicals out of our water, there is simply no acceptable level of risk," Silver said.

The bill is meant to give the Environmental Protection Agency time to conduct a safety study on hydrofracking and it's effects on the environment and watershed.

"The moratorium will allow time for such analysis to be commenced, analysis that we are confident will affirm absolutely our contention that hydraulic fracturing should never be done within New York City's upstate unfiltered water supply watershed," City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Environmental Committee Chair James Gennaro said in a joint statement.

Read more: http://www.dnainfo.com/20101130/manhattan/assembly-votes-halt-hydrofracking-near-citys-upstate-water-supply#ixzz1OiKhDD2T

As I discovered at a recent seminar led by Australias leading scientist (Impartial) in this field, it's very interesting.

Fracking as a process was well described, and especially the difference between SHALE fracking to extract gas, condensate and such as compared to COAL seam fracking and the gas extraction that is carried out.

Same process name, different chemicals, different geological risks, different above ground risks and so on.

Fracking as done for SHALE to me seems dangerous, uncontrollable and significant risk. Coal seam still has some issues for me, but actually captures gas that would be released to environment if the coal was mined conventionally.

There may be some analogy with "nuclear" where one process provides weaponry (with associated risk levels) and another process provides energy outcomes (with a different set of risk levels) and both requiring different embeded controls.

To brand all "fracking" with the same brush might be unfair.

Here we go again in this "fracking" storie. This hydro-fracturing is going on around the globe, not only in USA but the big oil companies are looking all over for shale gas. They are currently looking to do fracking in South Africa in a very sensitive ecological environment. I recently watched to film Gasland and although some of the stuff you must take with a pinch of salt, I can belief that most is true and that this method of extracting gas is dangerous for the ground water table but also it is polluting the air around the extraction points. I sure there are less dangerous methods of generating electricity than pumping gas from underground and using unknown chemicals to break open the shale. I am a big advocate for nuclear energy mainly because it is strictly controlled and monitored. What happen in Japan is bordering on stupidity, how can you build a nuclear power station in a earthquake prone zone?

Dumb question. Can it be safe? Yes. Will it be safe? Not if the cost of safety reduces profits for the oil companies. On principal, the oil companies would prefer to risk a heavy fine to save a small cost for safety. The insurance covers the liability but not the additional cost of preventing it.

New York just allowed a restart, so long as the drillers stay out of the NYC and Syracuse watersheds. My feeling? Until we move to an oil-less transportation system, and a coal-free generation system, everyone who needs to drive and see in the dark should think long and hard before complaining. Gas could be the bridge from coal and oil to renewables, and at a low-GHG rate too.