North Dakota Will Soon Ban All College Pollution Research.

Ha ha! That's Funny!

As for our spills the vast majority came from and still do come from poorly or not at all maintained production water lines and outright illegal dumping by crooked water and well waste hauling companies.

Wylie Bice trucking being the one I heard about on a near daily basis while I was in the oil fields.

Most dishonest water hauling business in ND.

Just dump it anywhere.

It's the poor to never maintained stuff (largely from the 1970's - 1980's oil boom. Not today's stuff) and the half dozen or so crooked operators in the state that are where our ground and surface run off level water pollution problems are coming from and it's not really a secret around here either.

Very little of the problems are from any companies or actions that were done legally or faulty equipment owned by companies or operators who work in a legal law and regulations abiding manner.

Illegal operations and systems that have been abandoned by their owners who left their stuff for dead when they got bought out or went under are where our largest problems are coming from.

BTW Ethane has an Ozone depletion rating of zero and GWP value of 6.

Your farts score higher than that.

Um? What?

First, it's fraccing pollutes and releases Ethane gas and I show where the pollution is coming from and it largely illegal activities and it's on to ground level Ozone.

Sorry but Ozone at ground level is not my area. Especially so if it's causing you breathing problems and you don't live here.

It's those damn liberal college students.

You express your opinion about where the pollution is coming from.

The damage is just as bad and just as permanent no matter the source.

Denial is a river in Egypt. That isn't where the brine came from.

Okay. where did it come from?

Brine water is not the same as the fraccing water unless the well id being fracced with brine water from other wells.

The thing is all that nasty stuff you hate so much and associate with fracking is not from what goes down the well but what was already down there with the oil to begin with and no matter what process is used to extract the oil that stuff will always be coming up with it.

All fracking does is make it possible for one well to tap into as much oil as multiple wells did in the past.

As a person who actually work in fracking I can tell you that what goes down a well is mostly just municipal grade water, industrial guar gum(Jello mix), sand and soap and biocides measured in parts per million.

Now what comes back up is is oil mixed with every nasty thing that nature could brew up over the las countless million of year including concentrated salts and radioactive isotopes which si why the standard procedure to deal with it is to pump it back down another well to where it came from.

As I have pointed out in links in other threads as of yet there has been absolutely zero confirmed leak into or on to groundwater that came from modern day legally ran fracking jobs.

Now what get's there from illegal doing that's a whole different matter and not the fault of those who do care and do things legal and by code.

It doesn't really matter. We're all gonna die anyway.

So Lyn, are you not buying TCMs assertion that, if done correctly, fracking is at most, minimally destructive to the environment?

Chernobyl was minimally destructive to the environment.

Hiroshima was minimally destructive to the environment.

The eruption of Mount Tambora in 1816 was minimally destructive to the environment.

So if you want to say that collectively, fracking is minimally destructive to the environment, that's fine with me.

The biggest problem I see with your argument is you, like the ignorant media, keep referencing everything to fracking when the problems you are siting are from a whole differnt part of oil production byproducts (production water) that are present regardless of whether a well was fracked or not.

Also, your three references are way out of context, relevance and proportion as well.

If you want to debate fracking and whatnot Vs the rest of the oil production process I am happy to play along but if you just want to ignorantly complain without learning the facts then I have little more to say here.

You say fracking pollutes yet even the #1 top dog environazis at the EPA admit they can't find a direct link or evidence between the two. Simply put the bad stuff they are finding in the spills is not the same stuff that fracking puts down the well.

Clean potable water, guar gum (jello mix), sand, surfactants (soap) and trace amounts of biocide do not turn into indestructible inorganic salts and radioactive material.

Yes, the problem is me.

Nothing you can say will un-convince me that fracking is a not good thing.

Earthquake swarms don't "just happen".

Groundwater pollution can be excused by agencies controlled by politicians.

Look at big pharma and the prohibition placed on price negotiation for government health programs.

If we were desperate for oil/gas, which we are not, then maybe some justification could be made for fracking.

But, we flaring millions of dollars worth of gas today because there's no place to put it and big oil wants their money now.

Fracking water is injected into those wells that cause the earthquakes.

Widespread fracking is a recent thing. So are the earthquakes.

And what about all the other industrial wastewater that gets put down those wells?

That doesn't count? It's benign? What exactly?

They pump 20 million gallons of industrial waste down a well and that's not a problem but if they pump 20 million gallons a production water down a well it's not okay?

What about those disposal wells that cause earthquakes in places that don't have any fracking or oil wells? What's their cause then?

Or those that are in oil producing regions that never used fracking but still produce a large volume of oil well production water? What then? Where do they fit in your picture? Just ignore them because they are no affiliation with fracking related work? Or what about places like where I live that have zero earthquakes and loads of fracking? How do we fit in? No earthquake problems here so we don't count either?

Come on Lyn! We gotta know where you stand on this! You can't be all wishy-washy on the Who's, What's, Whys's and Where's of this stuff!

Insert next off tangent near totally irrelevant reply here if you would please. ( ------------).

An interesting read for those who are curious about the actual numbers behind the water usage Vs production returns from oil and gas wells across the US.

#1 product of oil and gas wells is water. 3:1 - 10+:1 is standard operating business.

BS.

You produce a foreign news piece as "proof" you're right????

The caption under the photograph reads,

"A line of trucks carrying water to Natural gas rigs make their way across the sprawling network of two lane roads between small towns to make almost constant deliveries to continue the hydraulic fracturing process used to gather natural gas in Monroeton, Pennsylvania,..."

REUTERS/BRETT CARLSEN

OK, injection wells cause earthquakes and pollute ground water.

You are free to have your opinions. So am I.

I see. You need to filter where your information comes from first before it's of any relevance so more than likely you never read a single word past the first picture.

Never mind. I'm done. I recognize a Zealot/troll when I see one.

You win by default of willful blind deaf ignorance. I have no countermeasure to defeat that.

Whoah!!

You seem to have read a lot more into my post than was there. I am just trying to understand what exactly your position is.

Please reread my first post and tell me if I have it mostly right or not.

"Minimally destructive" is not a definable quantity.

A broken leg may be minimally destructive to some. Amputation of a limb may be minimally destructive.

I own property (and mineral rights) in four different states. I'd like to maintain that property in as pristine a condition as it is today for my children and their children to enjoy.

Mining upstream of some of that property has already compromised the water quality of a year-round creek/stream that runs through one tract of that land, and maybe the ground water under it also.

Sure, that may be considered "minimally destructive", unless you own the land.

They aren't making any more land and we don't need the oil.

Actually, it's quite easily defined.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines minimal

Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines destruction

In terms of your leg, a broken leg is moderate but recoverable destruction whereas amputation is not.

Minimal destruction would be orthoscopic surgery that leaves you with a few small scars.

As for your "Compromised water quality" what exactly is compromising it and in what amount when compared to its original native baseline levels?

Without defined parameters and quantitative references to actual specific definable tangible items there is no real data to go by to support your opinion and make it a verifiable fact of reality.

And you know how we love to tear apart people whose views and opinions are not based on tangible, definable let alone confirmable factual reality here!

Sorry; image didn't work. (Diving judges giving scores of 9.5, 9, and 10.)

water and soil contamination is the gift that lasts forever.

You think so? Took some pictures of what is left of an old oil field 1/2 mile from my house last weekend, before the tree loggers bring trees down all over it. Now this field ran several decades, as it stated out with a central power house and was converted to self powered jacks some time later. The power house puts it in the 40's at latest, and the jacks are typical of the models around in the 60's and 70's. This field was run in the pre-regulation era, and every site had the ubiquitous water pit, where the separated brine was dumped for holding/evaporation. (there is a pipe with a manual valve right out of the lower side of the holding tank plumbed into the pit) The field directly behind my house was the same, but never made it out of the central power house era. There are 3 big pits I know of back there. Add to that the old style tanks in both fields (actually the same field - just different operators). They were redwood and built like a barrel with iron staves around them to hold them together. Every one of them that are remaining has a nice thick coating of black goo all over the outside. The oil leaked through and sealed them when it thickened.

So that sets the scene - oil and water separation is at best a 90/10% effort, as it depended on specific gravity difference and the brine ejection was controlled manually with a well trained eye. All these pits are still full of black goo. You NEVER want to step into one. The tanks that are elevated have a nice black soil underneath them. Now several things have occurred to me:

1.These fields are definitely over the aquifer our town has it's water well sunk into. In fact, the water well is in the middle of another part of the field and has old wells all around it. We've never had a pollution problem with the drinking water. No-one here has ever noticed an increased cancer rate or birth defect rate as in towns near to PTFE producers, or as in the Love Canal area.

2. While taking the pix, I was annoyed at each pump jack to find a good sized tree growing right up along side the jack head and obscuring the view. Now if you've ever observed an oil well head, first thing you notice is the packing definitely leaks - a lot. Even new wells have this problem. I've found them leaking badly, ejecting a stream, and had to hunt down the well tender to go and fix the packing gland. There is usually a brown colored area for about 18" from the well head in a circular pattern. After the pit, this is the second worst polluted area on an old oil well site. Seeing that the trees grow very well in this soil, I conclude that apparently plants don't seem to have a problem with this spillage.

3. Similar things could be said about the area around the tanks. Several of them have trees growing up against them. The old roads are less agreeable with trees than the polluted site areas, fortunately, as that is how we can still find them in the forests.

Not that I think we should dump oil and brine on the ground, but it doesn't seem to be as serious a problem as some would have us believe. I am more concerned with what general industry has done to the soil and water - that does seem to be forever.

Oh, by the way, I could go into the start of a valley behind us about 1/2 mile, and take pictures of water coming from an abandoned well, where the casing, if it even had any surface casing, has failed after many decades, and allowed the aquifer to enter it. There is an oily patina on the small swamp it produces. This grows green even in deep winter, and the turkeys and deer tend to winter there. Never heard of any problems with these animals either.

You believe what you want.

"Unlike spilled oil, which starts to break down in soil, these spilled brines consist of inorganic chemicals, metals and salts that are resistant to biodegradation," said Nancy Lauer, a Ph.D. student of Vengosh's who was lead author of the study. "They don't go away; they stay. This has created a legacy of radioactivity at spill sites."

A list of the exact inorganic salts and radioactive elements and their quantities would be greatly helpful so that anyone here who has a background in chemistry and physics can give you the exact methods and timelines of their breakdowns into other substances.

Without any reference to any real substances and there relevant quantities your whole argument is moot given that without any quantization values to compare spill levels to naturally occurring levels has no meaning.

At the moment, your whole argument is like saying someone was speeding and deserves a ticket or to have their vehicle impounded because they were going faster than another vehicle without giving any reference to the posted speed limit or the speed of the reference vehicle.

I imagine such analysis of the brine water is available, if one chooses to ask the authors.

A list of the exact chemicals and their quantities used in fracking is where?

The nature, scope and exact locations of the earthquakes, fractures and ground water intrusion caused by injection wells might bolster your contention that fracking has no effect on the environment.

You missed the separated water pits I mentioned? That is brine with a good side of oil. As a former well logger, I do know that radioactive minerals are not near as prevalent in oil producing sands as shales, as that was the first way we knew what formation we were looking at, but they still had a discernible radioactive profile on my gamma ray tool. Chemical wise - I can't think of a better brew pot than petroleum mixed in with what ever was in the sea millions of years ago, plus the minerals and ores washed into the sea sands by erosion. Same general source as the chemicals in the produced brine from shale. Now the original frack water, much of which is collected during the fracking process, there are some non-natural chemicals in that, and our oils wells here, didn't get that - they were done in the good old kaboom days - nitroglycerin does a swell job of fracturing rock formations.

Note that this post originally concerned ethane emissions. You need to walk into an oil producing valley around here sometime on a foggy morning. If you like sweet crude - it smells great. Some, however, nearly puke from the smell. You can be in a car with the windows shut and if you have someone not from oil field country, they soon complain about the weird odor as you pass through these areas. The reason? The storage tanks for produced oil ALL are vented to atmosphere, as are the brine storage tanks, which they have to use these days. They have had to extend the vent pipe a few feet higher in recent years to lower ignition chances, but they still vent to the atmosphere. Now I know there is a gas separator in the incoming pipe before the storage tank, but again we have a questionable efficiency rating. I have stood beside these tank batteries and watched the gasses shooting from them on a chilly morning, when the moisture in them condenses so you can see the stream. Otherwise, you just need to be quiet to hear the gas flow - it is definitely audible. I have to believe that that may be the primary source of your ethane emissions and could be corrected.

Okay - enough. I don't speak for tcmtech, but for myself, and I say let's end this here. When you start driving that electric car that gets a recharge from electricity generated by hydro/nuclear/solar/wind power and run your AC 11 months of the year off that bank of solar cells on your roof, because you choose to live in the hottest area of the USA, then you can complain about the oil fields and/or gas fields. Otherwise, thank oil and gas companies for the reasonable cost of gasoline and electricity that you are demanding (actively or passively).

I don't know about how you feel, but living in the icebox of this part of the mid-Atlantic states at a high point in the flow from Canada across the Great Lakes, I am pretty darn happy with my gas bills for heating my house, thanks to fracked, horizontally drilled, multiple borehole gas wells. The bills are much less than 10 years ago. And, my drinking water seems to be just fine too. Oh, my car costs a bit less to run these days too.

Here is a nice picture of where we have come from - they don't do this anymore.

Now, now. Play nicely.

I am playing nicely! You should see some of the past idiots I tore up on other forums over the years.

And yes I consider his stance on the subject idiocy being he clearly shows an active willingness to continue to wallow in his own intentional ignorance and misunderstandings rather than learn the basic facts and relationships of what it is he claims to so passionately hate to the full concepts and events he equates it with.

His stance is something I just don't get. It's just not how my mind works. I can't hate something without knowing the full cycle and process of how it comes to be and to what actions relate to which reactions that I will use to justify my stance. Apparently I was born without the capacity to harbor blind zealous misplaced rage for things I don't have any solid understanding of.

Especially so when it's a subject that has such a vast amounts of information relating to every aspect and act of it and everything related to its existance.

For me 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 = 21 is how I work. I can't say that 1 + 6 = 21 or 3 = 21 simply because they are part of the overall sequence and ignore the other components because they simply don't fit my agenda and irrationally biased belief system against the end resultant and how things have to add up to get that exact ending resultant value.

Who me?