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Its a fracking mess (Score:5, Funny)
in Battlestar Galactica lingo :-D
Re:Its a frakking mess (Score:5, Funny)
You're correct if you mean the original Battlestar Galactica (1978).
However, the word was shortened from frack to frak in Battlestar Galactica (2004) and Capria (2010), so the new correct "-ing" form is frakking.
The more you know!
Re:Its a frakking mess (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Its a fracking mess (Score:5, Funny)
Fracking is only dirty if it's done right.
frak fracking! (Score:2)
Re:Its a fracking mess (Score:2)
Re:Its a fracking mess (Score:3)
Lots of misinformation (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:5, Insightful)
It's amazing the number of things that are safe if you completely ignore the chance of human error.
I don't mean to be sarcastic to you specifically but one of the things that sets of all sorts of alarms for me is that the gas companies never talk about what CAN go wrong. It's always nothing WILL go wrong. Honestly, if there were going around talking about how "yes, there are some potential problems but this is how we deal with them" I would have far more faith in the process. Instead we get "it's 100% safe all the time LALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU".
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:4, Insightful)
For airlines and construction companies in most developed countries, there are all sorts of legislation, procedures, reviews, etc. in order to make things safer, including decreasing the threat of human error. These processes correlates well with the low number of accidents or disasters that are observed in the airlines and construction companies. One of the major differencies between airlines and construction companies, and gas companies, is that airlines and construction companies deal with well-understood and established technology and science. Since fracking and the consequences of it is not well-understood, especially in the light of possibly related occurences (air-pollution, groundwater contamination, earthquakes, etc.), a highly conservative approach together with independent and extensive scientific investigation seems like the better option. Finding solid scientific facts that can help determine when fracking is harmless and when it is not seems like the better, safer and ultimately more economic (in terms of environment, human life, damaged buildings, etc.) option.
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:4, Interesting)
The recent uproar is caused by the lack of regulation in the US, the Bush Jr. government helped the oil companies by scrapping existing environmental responsibilities and some of the companies used this new freedom at the expense of the local population.
Human activity always comes with an associated risk, even in a regulated market. But the things that happened because of recent US fracking would be unlikely in a better regulated market like the North Sea.
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:3, Interesting)
Kind of this.
I'm sure fracking can actually be done in a completely safe way, with well-controlled risks and some aggressive mitigration strategies. But since "we can't stand in the way of business!" has for some reason become a pseudoreligion, apparently this means we should absolutely turn a blind eye to very serious environmental impact concerns - especially as they relate to things like the sustainability of aquifers and drinking water reservoirs (which is what prompted the whole thing with GasLand in the first place). Solutions like "let's just truck in bottled water" are not solutions at all.
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously? The North Sea, split between famously cooperative countries like Britain, Holland, Germany, Norway, is better regulated than the interior of the USA?
You guys are in serious trouble.
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:3)
"better regulated market like the North Sea"
Seriously? The North Sea, split between famously cooperative countries like Britain, Holland, Germany, Norway, is better regulated than the interior of the USA?
You guys are in serious trouble.
Yes, we are.
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:3)
Actually, one of the reasons the EU and the North Sea are such heavily regulated territories is because of the famously uncooperative nations you'll find there. They do an enormous amount of bitching, whining, political wheeling and dealing, vetoing, debating and in-fighting before getting to any kind of agreement, and I dare say that's a better model than the Gung-ho, can-do approach US entities take to things at times.
There are some solid reasons why the Gulf of Mexico oil spill happened in the Gulf of Mexico. BP, not exactly a stakeholder in the area, could get away with lax safety precautions exactly because of the lack of regulation or enforcement thereof, and this caused a wee boo-boo.
I'd say dissent has historically been a more constructive change agent than cooperation on quite a few occasions. Galileo comes to mind as a famous dissenter, and we all know what Zee Germans got done when they decided to start cooperating on a grand scale. Not that they are the only ones, so I do apologize to the Germans for using that example. It's a dead horse, but everyone knows the example. No offense.
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, in both Airlines and construction companies the % chances of most risks are VERY well known and deviations from those statistics will cause investigations. And, if the investigations come up with anything, a new procedure or policy will be created and implemented, via either the WCB or FAA.
The problem with the oil industry is that they "assume" nothing will go wrong and then do everything in their power to hide any side-effects when something does (so all we hear about are the really big screw-ups).
Construction is probably the highest risk of the bunch to human life, but anyone working has some basic idea of what that risk is and whether it is worth doing it and what equipment can be used to reduce that risk. What are the risk factors for frakking? What percentage chance does each one have? What body will be responsible to ensure the risk levels staff at acceptable levels? Who will be monitoring surface and water conditions before, during, and after to ensure no permanent damage is done? Who is going to pay for damage that could occur years after the process is done?
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with the oil industry is that they "assume" nothing will go wrong
Oh come now. You are saying they assume nothing will go wrong? If for absolutely no other reason, they would want to make every assurance that nothing does go wrong or their product is lost and massive investments go to waste.
Do you think they invest hundreds of millions on a new rig and just say "well I think this is going to work, but if something happens it's ok, we don't mind bankrupting ourselves".
Your stereotypical lalalacoprationsarecompletelyevillalalal is lacking a little substance here.
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:5, Informative)
I agree... As an employee of the oil and gas industry, I can tell you that not only do we comply with general construction codes, we also comply with a series of codes specifically for the oil and gas industry. For example, I work on the storage tanks which are governed by 2 major API codes (which mostly reference ASME codes) and dozens of recommended practices. That is just the start too, there are additionally company specific standards which go well above and beyond those codes. I agree the oil and gas industry didn't have the best historical record, but we have learned a lot since then and spend most of our time trying to prevent the decades old stuff from getting worse. Anything put in today I feel very comfortable with.
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:4, Informative)
I agree the oil and gas industry didn't have the best historical record, but we have learned a lot since then and spend most of our time trying to prevent the decades old stuff from getting worse.
If the industry has learned a lot, it has only been in the past couple of years. I quote from that most reliable of sources, Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill] regarding the Deepwater Horizon spill from 2010:
In January 2011 the White House oil spill commission released its final report on the causes of the oil spill. They blamed BP and its partners for making a series of cost-cutting decisions and the lack of a system to ensure well safety. They also concluded that the spill was not an isolated incident caused by "rogue industry or government officials", but that "The root causes are systemic and, absent significant reform in both industry practices and government policies, might well recur".
That doesn't sound like an industry trying to learn from and improve upon its troubled past. It's more like business-as-usual: cut corners, ignore best practices, and hope you don't get caught. All businesses do it, but when the petroleum industry screws up everyone and everything suffers.
I'm not saying that you yourself are a bad person, you may be doing the best job you can, but the people you work for aren't honorable.
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:3)
I'm not saying that you yourself are a bad person, you may be doing the best job you can, but the people you work for aren't honorable.
That's quite a generalization as you don't know what company I work for. Some companies are shadier than others. Just because there is one Enron in an industry doesn't make everyone evil. Everyone I know in the industry is concerned with safety first and foremost. Our company philosophy is "Spill not one drop" and "Safety First". Surely we've had disasters in the past and will have them in the future, but we are doing things better now that we have in the past.
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:2)
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:5, Insightful)
At the start of every airplane flight the attendants stand at the front and talk about exactly what can go wrong as what your response should be.
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:2)
People don't listen to the basic stuff. What makes you think they'd listen to an hour-long presentation about hypothetical danger IF the plane happens to go down and IF you survive the landing and IF you are trying to float safely in eel-infested waters?
Like everything else, you tell people about the most likely risks and people who really want to know more will do their research beforehand or ask a member of the flight crew. (Carefully, of course, so you don't get arrested for being a potential terrorist rather than an exceptionally nervous flyer.)
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:5, Insightful)
Every time there has been an airline crash or construction accident, the companies involved have been forced to talk about what can go wrong. The gas drilling companies are not being held to the same standard for one reason only: at this point we do not even know when they have screwed up.
There has been enough fracking done by now that even if the risk is much less than an airline crash, there are bound to have been some screw-ups. The public just does not know when or where, and has not a clue about what went wrong. The argument that fracking is safe is the black box fallacy that since you cannot know when something has gone wrong within the black box, you have to have faith that everything in there always works just perfectly.
Faith is the stuff of churches. It has no place in science, technology, or engineering. And definitely no place in decisions made by corporations.
I am somewhat negative about fracking. It might be perfectly okay most of the time, but we need a technology that will show us when a crash has happened, and we do not have that. While we are waiting for that, perhaps we could require drilling companies to put most of the profits of a well into escrow for maybe 10 years as a hedge against possible damage claims. That would shift the cost/benefit ratios used in making decisions about drilling in such a way that the black box risks would probably be reduced. And it would encourage those companies to invest in monitoring technologies that would peer into the black box. That would allow them to identify the risks more clearly, but also allow independent monitoring of what they are doing.
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:2)
offtopic (Score:3)
How about the new pseudoscience of high-pressure asphalt in pipelines engineered for naturally-liquid petroleum? I think they're doing their seat-of-someone-else's-pants engineering in the Kalamazoo Watershed.
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:2)
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:2)
The potential consequences of a plane crash are a few hundred lives lost and a hundred or two million in damage. Blame is usually easy to assign, the problems are mostly well understood.
Fracking isn't well understood, it is hard to pin problems on it and the potential damage is immense. On top of all that the money spent developing fracking would be better used to develop safer forms of energy.
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:2)
It's amazing the number of things that are safe if you completely ignore the chance of human error.
Yes, things like operating heavy machinery, driving, surgery, dentistry, engineering, and cooking. You speak of "what CAN go wrong", so explain in detail exactly what can go wrong and how you know that is something that can go wrong. Most people never talk about what can go wrong. When was the last time you explained to someone how they could get three different kinds of food poisoning while on the way to a restaurant.
Your post an appeal to fear and consequence. You are not being sarcastic, you are being stupid.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:2)
If the Gas utility company can not gain access to your property than they can and will bring you to court. I know, we got a letter from the gas company a few years ago. It stated that they have not been able to access our gas meter and that if we did not respond within 30 days, we would be taken to court and forced to let them on our premises. We were unaware of this and when I called the gas company the lady on the phone informed me they were unable to gain access to read the meter for two years and have been estimating our bills. It seemed odd as the electric company has regularly come to our property to read the meters monthly. She finally admitted there was a note that vicious dogs were on the property and that many meter readers will intentionally skip those properties. Long story short, they corrected the vicious dogs note and the time we were available to grant them access and the problem was solved. Turns out they overestimated our gas usage by $200 and credited our account. A month later they installed a new gas meter with a wireless transmitter which permanently did away with the necessity to show up at a specific time and avoid our vicious dogs (who are in fact docile but do bark at strangers - like all dogs do).
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:2)
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:2)
Slightly offtopic, but the gas meter in my new house is in the basement. Does that mean that anyone can enter the house free of criminal or civil liability for trespassing?
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll put it this way. It is about as safe as flying in an airplane, which is also fundamentally "unsafe". Yet there is no inherent reason why it must be *so* unsafe that it shouldn't be done.
Are there risks? Of course. Including risks of catastrophic and spectacular failure, especially if people are negligent. But there's no reason it can't be done safely and usually it is done safely. "Gasland" is like the airplane-disaster-movie version of gas exploration and production. It correctly identifies that there are genuine risks to the technique, but it terribly and misleadingly exaggerates them. And because most people don't have two clues how gas exploration, groundwater, or subsurface geology generally works, the Hollywood version is enough to make them worry unreasonably.
I mean "risks clearly outweigh the benefits"? Seriously? That's the one that is winning in this poll? Yet the risk from groundwater contamination from ordinary gas station spills, tanker spills, septic fields, agricultural waste, improper industrial surface water use and disposal, etc., must be 100x the risks from hydraulic fracturing, which usually occurs kilometres below the surface, at depths where nobody draws groundwater anyway. Improve the standards and oversight and nail any company that deviates from them? Absolutely. But people have blown this all out of proportion.
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:2)
And yet here we are, consuming energy. Ready to blame everyone if we don't get our energy, get it in a manner not befitting out values, or have get it at a price that we don't agree with.
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:5, Informative)
Where is the "LIKE" button?
Make posts that are insightful, interesting or both.
Watch karma go to Excellent.
Stop posting for a couple of days.
Receive five moderation points. The "+1 Underrated" is somewhat analogous to "LIKE".
Arguably, "+1 Insightful" and "+1 Interesting" should never be used for this purpose, but people are always going to be biased, and much more likely to mod up an insightful or interesting post they actually like.
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh be quiet. Such rationality isn't allowed here. This is Slashdot, in a fracking discussion!
On a more serious note, this is exactly right. There is no consensus, but there are a lot of pundits willing to say anything that hasn't been disproven yet, and that applies to both sides of the debate. Bottom line is that we really don't know enough about what's going to decide anything, but most indicators are that the process itself is safe, and the vast majority of environmental damage can be traced to stupid behavior already known to be bad (and usually illegal), like dumping wastewater into rivers.
What's missing at this point, besides a consensus, is regulation. This "hydraulic fracturing with directional drilling" is a new technology, and legislation hasn't caught up with it yet. Many of those known-bad practices aren't banned (in a fracking context), so they persist. Legislators and regulators don't want to make any rules regarding fracking, because it's political suicide. If the rules ban only known-bad practices, they'll be criticized for being too lax; Ban fracking outright, and run the risk of being too strict when a consensus is reached.
Personally, I'd be fine with fracking happening close to me. Since I live near the Marcellus shale formation, it's probably coming soon. I do hope some more thorough studies will be done first, and some sane first-step regulation, but that would require sanity from politicians.
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:3)
In Australia where they are banned it seems the majority of people talking about it still assume the worst stuff out of "Gasland" is a certainty. It isn't helped by there being a coal seam gas "goldrush" in progress and a lot of idiots wandering around on people's land not shutting gates etc. In at least one state it's looking like illegal practices could be used anyway by those that have almost bought outright the party running a state government. Either way there's a lot of anger about fracking even if it's not happening at all or even if just water is being used, and it's likely to get worse here especially if somebody breaks the rules and makes a mess.
The last thing we want is interest groups continuing to consider the entire practice as irredeemable evil - deep geothermal power uses fracking between boreholes and if environmental groups become poisoned against geothermal it will have no political support even when it is viable.
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:5, Insightful)
barring the sort of human error which always ends up causing problems.
So, basically, fracking is a lot like Communism; great in theory, horrible in practice?
Since humans will never be removed from the equation, then said human error must be taken into consideration. Even if the reports concerning the link between fracking and geological instability [msn.com] are still being reviewed, prudence would still dictate that we stop until we know for sure what the effects might be.
Well, unless you stand to profit, of course. Then it's full speed ahead, damn the consequences...
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:4, Interesting)
The same can be said of global warming - even if the reports and studies are being reviewed, prudence dictates that we should take every measure we can to ensure that we are not the cause of climate change. Erring on the side of caution is all well and good until someone powerful stands to lose money.
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:2)
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:2)
Even taking Gasland with a grain of salt, there was plenty of iffy things going on (dumping, payout coverups, multiple people reporting problems only after the fracking began, etc). That said, I've never watched a documentary without assuming bias, since they are basically an extended opinion piece, and I didn't take the oil company responses at face value, either (that is like asking the tobacco companies about the safety of tobacco).
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:2)
I'm not qualified to discuss things like earthquakes as a result of fracking.
But I spent some time in a previous life analyzing (oil well) wireline logs specifically for the purpose of predicting how high the fracture "wings" would extend. It comes down to trying to compute relative in-place x, y and z stresses and rock tensile strengths. The magnitude of the stresses are far greater than the tensile strengths, but the stresses are all compressive.
In an ideal world, the z stress will be the weakest of the three. That will cause the cracks to be horizontal, spreading out like a circular fan around the wellbore. If beds are horizontal (the most common case) that will keep the fractures in the bed of interest and keep them from crossing into adjacent beds.
It's also very rare. In general, the overburden (weight of the formation above you) is the *strongest* stress. This means that nearly always the cracks you create form a "fan" or "wing" shaped crack, oriented *vertically*. If you're lucky the barrier formations that isolate the pay (hydrocarbon bearing) formations (from other formations, including aquifers) are strong enough to stop the cracks. Such formations *are* stronger than pay formations, but because of the difference in magnitude of forces, the stresses play a bigger role.
The cracks travel up much more then they travel down -- stresses increase with depth, so the forces keeping the cracks closed are less as the crack propogates up. If you don't use enough pressure when you frack, you won't get the full benefit of the frack job -- the cracks won't propogate far enough. Not a safety concern. If you use too much pressure, the cracks will want to propogate upwards, and that's where the aquifers are.
The data I saw (mostly California wells) seemed to show very weak barriers to upward fracture growth. That was over ten years ago, but although drilling technology has changed some since then, physics hasn't.
Of course it will go wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Of course it will go wrong (Score:2)
The best we can hope for is some proper regulation and oversight over the petroleum companies.
Re:Of course it will go wrong (Score:2)
there's too much money available in getting to that shale, so it's likely inevitable that where it's possible fracking will eventually happen.
Well, public rejection of fracking is so widespread that politician will think twice before allowing it. I think you go a bit too far by suggesting anything lucrative always happens. Slavery is lucrative, for instance, but it does not happens in the US.
Who to trust (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know enough about it to make a decisions one way or the other, but I'm sure there are people who do. The problem seems to be identifying them. Here's a hint though, they're probably the ones with degrees in geology, chemistry, and physics--not businessmen, not shareholders.
Capitalism is woefully ill-equipped at dealing with external costs/risks. Fracturing could be very profitable, but it could also be very risky. When the people who stand to profit aren't the ones who'll suffer any consequences if it goes wrong (or if it's not possible to do "right") then you have a recipe for reckless behavior.
Re:Who to trust (Score:2)
Good point. The problem is that the person taking the risk doesn't necessarily have the same risk tolerance as everyone subjected to it.
But there's another issue of risk tolerance. Suppose the CEO of a fracking company has extended family living in the community, so he has both risk and reward. But suppose he's a whack-job psycho with a really high risk tolerance, whereas most people in the community would prefer to forgo fracking-related employment if it meant sparing their kids (for example) cancer.
Re:Who to trust (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Who to trust (Score:3, Insightful)
Your argument is false. Because another type of government is just as bad or worse, doesn't dismiss the argument that capitalism is ill-equipped at dealing with external costs.
And as far as "taking energy companies to court" goes, you sound a little too idealist about how the real world works. Trying to take on a multi-billion dollar (or euro for that matter) in court takes a lot of time and more importantly, money.
Re:Who to trust (Score:3)
Re:Who to trust (Score:3)
Right, what you are saying is that our current system isn't capitalism with a republican government. What we have now I believe is almost fascism. Where the companies own the government and the government doles our favors to companies by taking money from the taxpayers. Obama and Romney (and Santorum and Gingrich for that matter) are all on board with this system of government.
Re:Cigarette companies (Score:4, Informative)
"The people that know it have advanced degress" != "The people with advanced degrees know it"
Yes yes, I know... (Score:2)
I know you're not supposed to comment on the choices, but where's the choice that says I'm pretty sure it's NOT a good idea?
Fracking: Great way of getting energy or GREATEST way of getting energy?
Re:Yes yes, I know... (Score:2)
Re:Yes yes, I know... (Score:2)
I think it is meant for the "What the frack are you talking about?" or the "Oh?! I love fracking the ladies" segment.
Mod +1 for commenting on the choices (Score:2)
Since my mod points expired overnight and I can only give out fictitious ones I'll give you another +1 for such a nice illustration of the bias.
Re:Yes yes, I know... (Score:2)
It's phrased opposite the usual use of the words (benefits outweighing risks) but it's right there. The options are in order...
Re:Yes yes, I know... (Score:2)
I feel like that option was not there last time I looked at it, but I guess I just have to assume I can't read unless anyone knows otherwise.
Re:Yes yes, I know... (Score:2)
Completely 100% fine with fracking. (Score:2, Interesting)
As long as the energy companies agree to resettle anyone who wants to leave the affected area, and permanently truck in water to the people who don't want to leave. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the science or the methodology, but stop externalizing the costs to the government when it has to resource a muni water supply because the water is flammable.
Re:Completely 100% fine with fracking. (Score:5, Insightful)
Won't work. Once they've caused a disaster, they can simply declare bankruptcy. They would either have to put up the money into an escrow account in advance, or purchase insurance against such a possibility. (And greedy bastards that they are, the insurance companies can provide a very useful oversight role in such a role)
On the other hand, it strikes me as a fundamentally radical policy that we are willing to accept the possibility of long-term, effectively unfixable contamination of our underground water sources in exchange for a temporary fix to our energy needs.
"Fracking" in 1979 (Score:2)
In 1979, during the energy crisis, I was involved in a project to retrieve natural gas from shale oil using dynamite to separate the shale layers between two holes which were drilled about a mile apart. (No water was involved.) A fire was started in the shale oil in one of the holes, and air pumped in to keep it burning. The natural gas produced by the heat was driven towards the other hole where it was pumped to the surface. The natural gas was about 2% in the air pumped up. This was a closed system in that the holes were lined with pipe which was capped, and had access ports to perform the detonation and admit the air at one end, and the recovery of the gas-containing air at the other.
I was involved in developing a method to analyze the air to determine the yield, using mass spectrometry, and then measuring it. The project was abandoned when the energy crisis ended.
As to whether this was safer than the current method, it may be because it is a more closed/confined system. That said, the possible problems caused by the heat and/or the explosion have not been studied.
Again, lacking the option... (Score:4, Interesting)
I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble. Really, it's okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in.
I don't know enough, for and against, to make a reasonable decision. And I'm not in a position to effect change, even if I had an opinion. I think it's better for me to leave the debate to the real experts, instead of trying to prognosticate from my armchair. It's a crazy idea. It just might work.
Re:Again, lacking the option... (Score:2)
That's a commendable position, and it is premature for anyone to state they know what we ought to do in absence of the facts. Unfortunately, if everyone chooses to sit back and wait for the experts to figure it out, do you really feel confident that what emerges will be the product of the best scientific judgement? Or do you think those with vested interests on both sides of the issue will cherry pick results and promote only the message that benefits them? If nothing else, the public needs to be involved in trying to keep the process as honest as possible.
There is no such thing (Score:2)
Really, it's okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in.
Actually, it is not. We may never have complete knowledge of the world, and we definitely don't have adequate knowledge about many aspects of the world today. Yet life is happening right now, people are making decisions now. Some of these decisions can have drastic consequences either way they are decided and need to be made based on the limited information we have now.
If we allow fraking and it later turns out to be unsafe, millions of people may be without safe drinking water. If we disallow it, then gas prices will not be as low as they could be putting a minor drain on the economy, and preventing a small number of people from making a lot of money. Reserving judgment until there is evidence assumes that there is a default position to take until then.
The default position of gas companies is full speed ahead, until evidence proves it harmful.
The default position of environmentalists is do nothing until evidence proves it safe.
In between are risk/benifit analyses that, say, allow initial deployments with enough transparency to gauge the problems.
But all of the above are making a decision based on insufficient evidence. There is no such thing as not making a decision unless you can pause time.
Environment all (Score:2)
If there is a chance that this energy technology makes anyones drinking water undrinkable, especially to those who need it the most. People in rural areas who have no other source of easy drinking water. Then it must be stopped. Clean water > "cheaper" natural gas.
To say nothing of the chemicals that they won't disclose.
But we are talking about an industry which halves the tops off mountains to save costs.
Re:Environment all (Score:2)
Only with one of those hot Cylon babes... (Score:3)
Obligatory missing option.
"Safe" (Score:2)
Fracking? (Score:2)
Ooops (Score:2)
A major unreported news story in US (Score:3)
Water Utility View (Score:2)
If all we do is watch documentaries and read Wikipedia, this won't be much of a debate.
Nearly all raw water we get from wells and from surface flows (rivers, streams, etc) is dirty. We use energy to clean it up enough to be fit for human consumption.
That energy has to come from somewhere. The question with Fracking is whether the additional contamination it puts in to the water supply is too expensive to remove. It may be so expensive that the value of the gas we'd extract makes the process uneconomical. One thing we do need to consider is some way of linking these two activities so that whatever additional costs are incurred for water clean-up are paid for by the drilling operations.
To know that, we need better information. We need before and after comparison data. That data is just now emerging. I am hopeful that after all is accounted for, the costs will be favorable for Fracking.
My gut feeling? (Score:2)
I'm still recovering from too many deviled eggs on Easter Sunday.
If someone started fracking in my gut, I'm sure it would feel very bad.
A quake a day keeps the doctor away (Score:2)
buried under the rubble
Missing Option (Score:2)
I'm mostly concerned about... (Score:2)
The Cylons. They have a plan you know.
Re:Missing option (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing [wikipedia.org]
Used in oil and gas industry.....to create breaks in the formation down hole. To make extraction/flow of oil/gas better/easier.
I think its not just hydraulic but also using explosives...but not too sure.....or maybe they did a combination of fracking and explosives that led me to believe that they might be the same.
Fracking..can also cause breaks/fractures in areas unintended possibly allowing chemicals using in the process to seep into the water table.
Hence this pole.. IMHO.
Re:Missing option (Score:2)
Re:Frack or buy from Saudis or Venezuela? (Score:3)
Saudi Arabia is an well-established ally of the US, and Venezuela has shown no signs of hostility towards the US (other than thwarting a coup attempt that the CIA probably had their hands in).
So they aren't our enemies. Even if you look at one of the most hostile oil producing countries, Iran, the only threatening move they've made towards the US is saying that if the US tries to invade Iran, their armed forces will shoot back.
Re:Frack or buy from Saudis or Venezuela? (Score:3)
Hugo Chavez hates the US (in part due to the aforementioned coup attempt), but he hasn't threatened the US in any way.
The Saudi government, on the other hand, are close allies of the US. You can find numerous photos of friendly discussions between Saudi kings and US presidents, and the US even sent in troops to protect Saudi Arabia from Iraq back in 1990.
Re:Frack or buy from Saudis or Venezuela? (Score:2)
Why should we support Chavez? And oh by the way, that "coup attempt" didn't exactly come out of nowhere. Chavez was a Castro wannabe. Still is, far as I can tell, but there's no more Soviet Union to back him up so he's for sale to the highest bidder.
And we make nice to the Saudis because we need their oil. But they support Islamic factions who would love to do us dirt.
So yeah, why should we support them instead of putting our own people to work?
Re:Frack or buy from Saudis or Venezuela? (Score:2)
How bad does it have to get before you're willing to admit he is not a friend of the US?
Re:Frack or buy from Saudis or Venezuela? (Score:2)
The Saudi government, on the other hand, are close allies of the US.
Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11, 2001, were Saudi citizens. With friends like these ...
Re:Frack or buy from Saudis or Venezuela? (Score:2)
Most terrorism in America is caused by Americans. I guess that means we shouldn't buy American, since that would also be supporting terrorism?
Re:Frack or buy from Saudis or Venezuela? (Score:2)
If we produce more oil either they produce less or the total world supply increases which will drive the price down. Either way, we benefit by denying our enemies a certain amount of income. The world will transition away from fossil fuel when the real price (not the artificially taxed price) becomes uneconomical compare to the alternatives. Until then, attempts to alter the market by taxation or subsidies are doomed to fail.
Re:Frack or buy from Saudis or Venezuela? (Score:2)
I've already heard rumblings about moving the nations 18 wheeler fleet to natural gas. Fedex is considering electric vehicles for its short haul trucks. I've also been running across news stories that young people in the USA aren't as interested in cars as the last generation was. The market already seems to be altering itself.
Re:Frack or buy from Saudis or Venezuela? (Score:2)
According to this article: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/02/28/surprising-facts-about-us-and-oil/ [dailyfinance.com],
the US produces 9.1 million barrels of oil per day, which accounts for around 46% of our consumption. 90,000 barrels in a month is barely a drop in the bucket.
And yeah, I saw that article about young people being less likely to buy cars. I think part of that is the price of cars, and part of it may be the environmental propaganda about how cars are tools of the devil. :)
Re:Frack or buy from Saudis or Venezuela? (Score:2)
Part of the reason for this was due to our infrastructure, which is not very good at moving oil from where we produce it (Western and midwestern states) to where we use most of it (The east coast.)
I wonder if cabotage has something to do with it too? AIUI if they move oil from one place in the USA to another by sea they have to use american ships (which are expensive) but if they move oil between the US and another country (in either direction) they don't.
Re:Frack or buy from Saudis or Venezuela? (Score:2)
When was that estimate made? If it was prior to 2008, it was not accounting for the potential yields from fracking.
Re:Haven't Seen the Benefits (Score:2)
The risk depends on the geology of the site. Just because it's a bad idea in some locations doesn't mean it's a bad practice everywhere.
Re:Haven't Seen the Benefits (Score:2)
Re:I work in the fracking industry. (Score:2)
Okay, I'll bite - but why PM when the answers could be provided publicly for the benefit of all?
What kind of groundwater pollution can fracking cause? How would it be cleaned up?
Re:I work in the fracking industry. (Score:2)
1) How much do you charge?
2) How effective is your process?
3) How do you plan to make the gas companies pay? (Or do you plan to stick it to the taxpayers?)
Re:I work in the fracking industry. (Score:2)
In addition to "Ihmhi's" questions:
1. To what scale can your company clean groundwater? If the fracking companies contaminate the water supply for an entire community - mid to large size - can your company clean their groundwater?
2. At what cost? And does this cost get factored into all of the equations for determining the cost of energy extracted by fracking?
Re:82% (Score:2)