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The Five Myths About Fracking

bobwtfomg said:
Sorry I haven't got the reference to hand and I may be wrong, but does methane fall out? I thought it actually reacted with oxygen very slowly in the atmosphere turning to CO2 and water vapour.
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I suppose macdoc didn't mean any actual chemical process by using "falls out" but a comparison of paces.

bobwtfomg said:
btw at least one study has concluded gas produced by fracking "likely emits more greenhouse gas pollution into the atmosphere during its life cycle than does coal" http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2011/04/fracking-leaks-may-make-gas-dirtier-coal
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Didn't you notice that the article lacks any kind of figure. It's just an article that mixes words -including many adjectives- with "Cornell" to get an authoritative effect. I'm not saying it's wrong, but you have means to sort it out. A little fermi + rule of thumb can be of assistance (should I discuss with some boisterous poster why what follows is an oversimplification and has parts to complete or precise?):

Natural gas roughly produces the same energy than coal but liberating a half of the carbon dioxide. Hence, to match the greenhouse effect of coal you have to leak a volume of methane that equals the other half of carbon dioxide. Since methane is some 100 times more strong a greenhouse gas than coal -always in fermi + rule of thumb mode- you need to burn natural gas and leak 0.5% of its volume to match the effect of coal. This is in the short term. As methane has a net life of some 10 years -the figure has been revised up- you may use a 25 to match the effect in a century, that is, 2% of natural gas volume leaked consistently during a century in a levelled energy context.

The question is, how much natural gas is actually leaked? If you research the origin of the methane pool in the atmosphere you'll found that as a whole coal mining is more of a major source than hydraulic fracturing at current levels and technologies.
 
'Is today the day?' Texans live in fear of fracking quakes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ak6vd7L-PWM


Published on Dec 9, 2013

Texas has been hit by 18 earthquakes in the last month alone. Scientists are linking the tremors to Fracking, the relatively new process of extracting shale gas from the ground. And while the earth is literally shaking under the feet of nervous locals, energy corporations and the government are unshaken in their decision to keep on drilling. As RT's Gayane Chichakyan reports.
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Clayton Moore said:
Published on Dec 9, 2013
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The worst quake was 3.6 , that is, some 20 GJ, what equals the explosion of the full content of 6 or 7 SUV tanks. I don't know if the epicentre was in a region where they're using fracking, but the depth was 4 km so it might have some relation with that activity.

I fail to see something out of the ordinary, and certainly, how this is something to be worried about -always speaking of earthquakes-.
 
Clayton Moore said:
'Is today the day?' Texans live in fear of fracking quakes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ak6vd7L-PWM


Published on Dec 9, 2013
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Yeah, we're terrified. No, wait, that's the wrong "t" word... what I meant was "totally unconcerned".

I'm not gonna watch some content-free YouTube hyperbole from a factless activist or ambulance chaser. If you've got evidence these quakes are related to or even anywhere near hydraulically fractured wells or operations, show us.

Eighteen anything in Texas is hard to get worked up about. It's a BIG place, even if you just consider the Gulf Coast where ordinary geological processes and subsidence from unstimulated groundwater extraction make the ground move without any help from hydraulic fracture stimulation operations. At this very moment I'm sitting in view of an area with faults active enough to noticeably shift city streets... but it's a long way (dozens of miles) to any fracture-stimulated well, hydraulic or otherwise (most petroleum reservoirs in the region don't need hydraulic fracture stimulation, but I'm not sure they didn't use nitro back in the OldenDays to break through formation damage).

If you wanna be afraid, go ahead and do that. If you wanna scare sensible folk, you're gonna need a better story.
 
Clayton Moore said:
'Is today the day?' Texans live in fear of fracking quakes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ak6vd7L-PWM
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We have Russia Today (a YouTube based news organization) reporting stories about Texas earthquakes and people who believe that fracking causes them. When the people who know about fracking tell the locals that the earthquakes are not related the locals still believe their own stories :eye-poppi.

There is the bad spin placed on the knowledge that fracking "regularly triggers small earthquakes" - these are so small that people do not feel them. These are not the earthquakes that the locals are feeling.

The news report is basically fear-mongering for impact.
The science is that fracking does cause many earthquakes too small to be felt, a few earthquakes that can be felt and none that are of a damaging magnitude.
IMO it could be possible to produce a damaging earthquake in special circumstances, e.g. through disposal of large amounts wastewater close to an existing, under stress fault.
 
Quote:
... but that brings us back to the issue of wellbore integrity rather than risks peculiar to hydraulic fracture stimulations.
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Indeed it does. The danger is that an executive culture in which points are scored for cutting costs while responsibility is clouded by sub-contracting (and sub-sub-contracting) is unlikely to get such things right. As an example, the guy in charge of BP's Gulf drilling when that unfortunate incident occurred built his reputation on getting things done cheap.
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Execution or lack thereof of responsible safety standard is indeed the issue as it was a contributory factor in Fukishima.

and yes "pace" is correct Alec.....tis a sprinter but no staying power....CO2 plods on.
 
Reality Check said:
IMO it could be possible to produce a damaging earthquake in special circumstances, e.g. through disposal of large amounts wastewater close to an existing, under stress fault.
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I don't think any "damaging" quakes are known to have been caused by water injection operations, but there have been a few "special circumstances" where noticeable quakes are pretty reliably attributed to water injection (large volumes over many years at moderate, non-fracturing rates and pressures, to maintain reservoir pressure AKA "waterflooding", not small volumes over a couple hours at high rates and pressures as for hydraulic fracture stimulation).

I'm not certain of my status to name a specific project of which I'm aware, but it's hardly secret; it's been mentioned on sensible lay TV documentaries some years back (not the recent crackpot fodder driving this thread). The general area is certainly widely known; what I'd call the Los Angeles basin. My memory is stale about the precise geomechanical conclusions and whether there was even solid consensus favoring one of several plausible mechanisms (e.g. lubrication of the fault plane faces facilitating movement under the pre-existing tectonic stress vs. increased tectonic stress imposed by dynamic pressure gradients, rock compressibility, and compaction).

None of that has anything to do with hydraulic fracture stimulation, though.
 
Orphia Nay said:
Sorry, I meant people worrying needlessly about adding prescribed amounts of fluoride to water supplies.

I was trying to make the point that kitchen chemicals could be harmless when diluted in large amounts of water.
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well what amounts do they use exactly? what combination of those chemicals are they using exactly? etc etc.
 
ddt said:
Call me gullible for clicking on that link and actually listening to over 20 minutes of that guy, Ian R. Crane. Thus far I've heard him make vague claims that (1) the media attention about fracking in the UK is on the Lancashire and Sussex regions but the oil industry is really interested in the Yorkshire region; (2) on or about April 19th something "interesting" happens (Waco, Tim McVeigh, Columbine, BP oil spill); (3) there were nefarious plots to hide the truth about the BP oil spill. But I haven't heard anything about the merits and/or dangers of fracking. RationalWiki describes Ian Crane as a CT-er.

Did I miss some message in your smileys?
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The hilarious part is the fact that he failed to mention that the OKC bombers explicitly picked the date of April 19 and the Murrah building specifically BECAUSE of the Waco incident (the Murrah building was where they believed the files regarding Waco were stored, for the location bit). If I remember correctly, those are the only two incidents mentioned that actually happened on April 19.

Also, if I remember correctly, there was an execution that occurred the same day (same exact day... same year) as the OKC bombing that has been tied to it somehow, but I'm not going to bother looking up the details. I'm not sure it was even relevant.
 
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http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/12/0...fracking-laws-greenhouse-gas-regulations-alec
Documents Reveal ALEC's Looming Attacks on Clean Energy, Fracking Laws, Greenhouse Gas Regulations
Comment on this StoryEmail this story

The Guardian has released another must-read piece about the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), this time laying bare its anti-environmental agenda for 2014.

The paper obtained ALEC's 2013 Annual Meeting Policy Report, which revealed that ALEC — dubbed a "corporate bill mill" for the statehouses by the Center for Media and Democracy — plans more attacks on clean energy laws, an onslaught of regulations pertaining to hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") and waging war against Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) greenhouse gas regulations.

"Over the coming year, [ALEC] will promote legislation with goals ranging from penalising individual homeowners and weakening state clean energy regulations, to blocking the Environmental Protection Agency, which is Barack Obama's main channel for climate action," explained The Guardian. "Details of ALEC's strategy to block clean energy development at every stage, from the individual rooftop to the White House, are revealed as the group gathers for its policy summit in Washington this week."
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Fracking is an environmental catastrophe.
 
Fracking like any other technology is only a boon if carried out with all precautions and there in lies the rub.

Yes it reduces reliance on coal.

Yes few wells.

Execution is the key and what I've seen in PA as far as sloppy goes makes me shudder.
Given the money to be made....shoddy should not be in the mix and it is.

The rush to "beat the legislation" has not helped nor bans like in Dallas.

The industry can wring it's hands all it wants but it has not convinced people and then there are the sour gas incidents in Canada.
 
...and we've come full circle again.

There's noting there to suggest hydraulic fracture stimulation is relevant to the incidents in question. Ordinary wellbore integrity and freshwater zone isolation considerations would adequately explain the alleged incidents. Straightforward geomechanical considerations argue against stimulation operation contributions.

It's not at all unreasonable to insist on oversight and standards for wellbore integrity and isolation, where the real risk lies. Unrealistic wailing about stimulations actually impedes that goal. Credibility lost to such vocal and recognizable technical incompetence could be brought to bear on issues that might really matter.
 
DavidS said:
...and we've come full circle again.

There's noting there to suggest hydraulic fracture stimulation is relevant to the incidents in question. Ordinary wellbore integrity and freshwater zone isolation considerations would adequately explain the alleged incidents. Straightforward geomechanical considerations argue against stimulation operation contributions.

It's not at all unreasonable to insist on oversight and standards for wellbore integrity and isolation, where the real risk lies. Unrealistic wailing about stimulations actually impedes that goal. Credibility lost to such vocal and recognizable technical incompetence could be brought to bear on issues that might really matter.
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So you're saying that the fracking neighbors complaining about water pollution are imagining it?
 
The true idiocy of fracking is that its profiteers and worse, legislators and regulatory bodies, don't see the Earth and life on Earth as a precious miracle to be protected from injury.
 
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