OT: Fracking banned in NY State

[PQJ]

In before the lock.

I'm glad this place protects my right to be anonymous, nonsensical and totally irrelevant.

[William]

Y'all know the rules. Keep er in check and all will be well.







William

[OtayBW]

Originally Posted by 1centaur

Much/most of the fracking fluids are pumped into strata far below the water table. The problem is not inherently the fluids but the quality of the casing around the pipes taking it down there. Cheap casing can leak fluids at higher levels near the water table. Cutting corners to save money is a bigger problem than fracking, per se. Appropriate standards, carefully checked, would be a better tactic for anti-fracking activists than trying to stop it altogether.

Statistically, there are thousands of fracking sites around the country and not thousands of anecdotes of burning taps. Anecdotes are fun but policy is a whole 'nother thing.

All energy has externalities, and how much they cost depends on the assumptions one feels like making. Lots of cost inputs, lots of future implications, and implications of implications, and assumed values of implications squared. Having agenda-free people decide on which costs, implications and values are important would be quite a trick.

First of all, I have no dog in this fight, but I do know a little bit about the process. If anything, I am left of center politically, and farther left than that environmentally.

That said, fracking fluids per se, are not toxic as mentioned above. These are mostly aqueous gel suspensions made from gums or starches, commonly cross-linked with boron (B) to improve the shear stability and viscosity of the fluids for better flow and suspension characteritics of the proppants. However, it is the additives such as biocides, corrosion inhibitors that re of concern.

A second concern is degradation or breaching of cemented well casings which could potentially release any fluid – whether toxic or benign – to groundwater. Again, this was mentioned above.

The third issue is potential for seismic affects, which although suggested by a lot of anecdotal evidence, has not been proven to date as far as I know. We've all heard about methane out of the kitchen faucet, and don't doubt that that has occured. I don't have the answer to that, but I would say that correlation does not imply causation. Not yet anyway...

Personally, I think the technology is available make safe handling of all this material possible. Are there potential risks? Of course, but on balance, I’m not so sure that hydraulic fracking is any more of a ‘boogeyman’ than many other industrial processes and products that we take for granted.

I do think there is a lot of emotion behind all this which is not always fueled by information.

[gdw]

This could be a pretty good discussion if we refrain from bringing politics into it. Please leave McConnell, Landrieu, Buffet, etc out of it and stick to fracking.

[OtayBW]

Originally Posted by gdw

this could be a pretty good discussion if we refrain from bringing politics into it. Please leave mcconnell, landrieu, buffet, etc out of it and stick to fracking.

+1000.

[pbarry]

Originally Posted by 1centaur

Much/most of the fracking fluids are pumped into strata far below the water table. The problem is not inherently the fluids but the quality of the casing around the pipes taking it down there. Cheap casing can leak fluids at higher levels near the water table. Cutting corners to save money is a bigger problem than fracking, per se. Appropriate standards, carefully checked, would be a better tactic for anti-fracking activists than trying to stop it altogether.

Statistically, there are thousands of fracking sites around the country and not thousands of anecdotes of burning taps. Anecdotes are fun but policy is a whole 'nother thing.

All energy has externalities, and how much they cost depends on the assumptions one feels like making. Lots of cost inputs, lots of future implications, and implications of implications, and assumed values of implications squared. Having agenda-free people decide on which costs, implications and values are important would be quite a trick.

Agreed. In some states, there are regulations on the books that are not actively enforced, Colorado being one of them. There was a fairly big flare fire 10 miles east of my house, (and I could see it every night), that was going for 3 weeks. Casing and capture technology could be better enforced, and probably improved, from my armchair quarterback chair.

Kirk007 has some good points. It's all about the money, and transparency from the oil cos is lacking.

I work in a horizontally related industry, and am close to many rigs along the northern front range. The oil and gas cos seem to do whatever is required to comply with local regs. If they made them tougher, they'd go there. That said, enforcement may be a problem as the boom has come on quickly and I doubt local/state/federal nspectors have been added [proportionally] as quickly as drilling sites have multiplied.

Water quality, if affected, is in areas where a water utility is pumping and treating ground water, or, in a rural district whose populace is using well water. The Colorado Front Range mostly consumes first-use water that has come from snow and rainfall from the mountains. The issues with contamination vary widely depending on location.

Earlier, someone mentioned seismic events. These have mostly occurred in areas when "injection wells" were established to get dispose of fracking fluid. It's not a normal occurrence from drilling activity. At least one oil co operating in CA has begun treating the recovered FF to a point that it can be used for irrigation. The volume of water needed to drill a well is another issue entirely, especially in locales like southern California.

No dog in this hunt, but I think better enforcement of [my] state's current regs would go a long way to making this process cleaner.

[Schmed]

Originally Posted by zennmotion

I don't see humor, I see snark. Your comment is an ad hominem, your point is inaccurate (large group? how many do you know? how many people are dying of dysentery and legionnaires disease in the US?) and irrelevant to any argument about fracking- so I'll just discount it as an intellectually lazy way to debate. ....

Thank you for discounting my argument and assuming it's my lazy form of debate.

I do have to make the point, that you may have (lazily?) misread my comment. People are not dying of waterborne diseases because we have chlorine in our tap water that kill these microorganisms. Chlorine is extremely toxic, yet it's added to tap water. The tie-in to fracking, is that "toxic" chemicals are everywhere. The fact that "anti freeze" is in fracking fluid, does not mean that it'll contaminate ground water. Water is toxic if you drink 10 gallons of it.

[shovelhd]

Windmills require drums of oil to operate. Solar cell manufacturing uses gobs of toxic waste. But I digress.

[TMB]

.........

[djg21]

Originally Posted by malcolm

Not to be pedant but propylene glycol is not antifreeze it's used it plastic polymers and a common food additive.

Ethylene glycol is antifreeze and is toxic. I think most ethylene glycol marketed as antifreeze now has been altered to no longer be sweet, thus animals are much less likely to drink it.

interestingly, the treatment for ethylene glycol poisoning is an IV drip of ethanol, i.e., grain alcohol. I grew up in the household of a Vet and saw the treatments fairly often. The alcohol stops the ethylene glycol from being metabolized into more toxic compounds.

[pbarry]

Originally Posted by TMB

And in this thread i see much of that which caused me to leave this place in the first instance.

Unbelievable.

Judgement so fast?? What bothers you in this discussion? Asking because it's been civil, and good points made on both sides of the argument. I'm interested in your perspective since you were here well before me.. Cheers

[saf-t]

Originally Posted by Kirk007

And they get exactly what they pay for, which is usually the answer and risk assessment they want. I've sliced and diced many an expert on the witness stand trying to weasle their way out of a bullsh*t analysis.

The problem with fracking is the same as any other technical solution that can be made safe; safety requires money, many humans are greedy, and humans make errors.

Did you know Methane is one of the most potent GHGs in existence - its also one of the gases flared off of well heads and burned into the atmosphere.

Why?

Because industry will only put on capture technology if there's a legal gun to their head.

Why?

Because it costs money and lowers return on investment and profit.

Don't they care if they are causing the eventual destruction of the planet?

Not a wit.

Why?

They won't be around and its someone else's problem.

But doesn't government protect us from these latent risks?

NO.

Why not, isn't that one of the roles of government? To protect the commons?

Why yes, but do you think we have a principled unbiased goverrnment that considers and understands science and then balances risks of harm with social needs?

We don't have that??

Ask Mitch McConnell, he'll tell you that he's not a scientist but he's sure that climate change doesn't exist. He'll tell you that a big pipeline that's going to create a few short term jobs while posing a long term risk of toxic leaks to our streams and groundwater aquifers is a great deal, because his good friend Lisa Murkowski assures him that pipelines are safe and never leak.

Why would he say that?

He's paid to say it.

By who?

The oil and gas industry.

That just not right!

No, it's not.

This. Times eleventy.

And for the workers who are actually doing the fracking, there's this and this

[firerescuefin]

Originally Posted by TMB

And in this thread i see much of that which caused me to leave this place in the first instance.

Unbelievable.

Not trolling you, but didn't you swear this place off and ask for the mods to delete your account about a year ago?

This thread was predictably volatile. I knew where it was going when JohnM initially posted it....and I suspect John knew as well (given other posts I've read of his about similar issues....and that's not slighting John). I actually was encouraged that it stayed on track as much as it has.

Getting worked up about this thread is a little bit of a Tempest in a Teacup.

[gasman]

The discussion has stayed reasonably civil though lively.Let's work to keep it civil.

Thanks

[joosttx]

This maybe a moot point since the oil prices have dropped. I read it becomes unprofitable when oil is lower than $80.