Posts Tagged "hydraulic fracturing"

Fracking, Contaminated Water, People are Suing! 2

Fracking, Contaminated Water, People are Suing!

Posted by on Jun 5, 2012 in alternative energy, childrens health, conserve, contaminants, fracking, Hydraulic Fracturing, Live Green, Womens Health

Fracking, Contaminated Water, People are Suing!

What would you do if your water that was once healthy, and drinkable, suddenly turns into a toxic health hazard? Well call the lawyers and sue! Yeah, that will help, right? It may help put more focus on the problem, but will it solve anything? Are they going to suddenly stop the hydraulic fracturing process? I think not, whatever these law suits costs big oil, it most certainly won’t stop them.

Let’s go over it again; Hydraulic Fracturing is the process to harvest natural gas from the Earth. The process involves injecting a water/sand/and?? who knows what else into a very deep hole in the ground. During this process, the Earth’s core is literally filled up with holes, letting this toxic soup spew into the cracks. Where does the toxic water go? Well, some soaks into the ground where it will contaminate the soil. some will also end up in the water supply.

There is currently no way of knowing what all is in fracking water, so there is no way to decontaminate it. Water filters will help, but there are many unknowns contained in fracking water.

Law suits will draw more attention to the problem, but it may not solve a thing. The people bringing the suit may get a big payoff, and that might help them some, but by now, not only is their water contaminated, but the people may even be ill from exposure. So the cash they get, may just cover some of the medical bills that will no doubt begin to pile up, if they haven’t already.

Kudos to the plaintiffs, I sincerely do hope they get something. Shame on “Big Oil” for destroying our drinking water, our land, our food supply, and our families.

Want to jump on the law suit band wagon? Well here is the official settlement site.

Thanks to The Watchers for bringing this to our attention.

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What a Fracking Waste 0

What a Fracking Waste

Posted by on Jan 5, 2012 in fracking, Hydraulic Fracturing, Live Green

Amy Sancetta/AP With the skyline of Youngstown, Ohio, in the distance, a brine injection well owned by Northstar Disposal Services LLC is seen in Youngstown on Jan. 4. The company has halted operations at the well, which disposes of brine used in gas and oil drilling, after a series of small earthquakes hit the Youngstown area.

 

January 5, 2012

Small earthquakes in Ohio and Arkansas associated with hydraulic fracturing for natural gas have taken many people by surprise. Gas industry executives say there’s no hard evidence that their activities are causing these quakes. But some scientists say it’s certainly possible; in fact, people have been causing quakes for years.

In the 1960s, geologists realized that gold mines in South Africa had created small earthquakes. Caverns dug into the earth thousands of feet below the surface collapsed. The “pancake” effect caused quakes — in one case a magnitude-5.2 temblor.

Since then, scientists have found that even pumping water away from underground mines (to keep them from flooding) changes the dynamics of stress in rock formations enough to trigger a quake.

Some rock is saturated with water — the water occupies pores between rock particles. This creates what’s called “pore pressure” and keeps the formation in a sort of equilibrium. If you suck the water out, particles tend to collapse in on themselves: the rock compresses. Add water, and you push particles apart. So moving water around underground can affect the stresses on those formations.

Creating Quakes

Now let’s say there’s a fault in the earth. If the water content around the fault is changed, the fault might slip. If the water gets into the fault itself, it can lubricate the fault and trigger a quake.

Hydraulic fracturing pumps a lot of water underground, where it’s used to crack the rock and liberate gas. This may cause tiny quakes, but fracking goes on for a day or two, and the quakes are small.

One way to avoid creating earthquakes is not to inject fracking wastewater into waste wells, but to recycle it instead. The state of Pennsylvania tried that, but they found that wastewater treatment plants couldn’t get all of the toxic material out of fracking water, and the “cleaned up” water returned to rivers wasn’t clean enough. So well operators in the state decided to ship wastewater to Ohio, where it has been going down into wells.

Read the rest here

 

 

 

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Fracking up everything

Posted by on Dec 28, 2011 in alternative energy, fracking, Hydraulic Fracturing, Live Green

Today, I was looking around online for some more great fracking information to pass on to you, my loyal readers. Wow! There is a lot of news popping up all over. Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and even Canada, are all suffering the bad side effects caused by raping the Earth for her treasures.

Jessica Ernst, “We were used as test tubes”  a post over on Life Essential-Water. Jessica is from Canada, and believe it or not, they are running neck and neck with the USA and hydraulic fracturing wells. I really do not understand how the engineers and other planners of this destruction figure that breaking apart the inner shell of our Mother Earth will not cause any kind of damage. Earthquakes, accidental spills of fracking fluid, intentional dumping of the used fracking fluids, contaminating water and land, killing fish and wild life, and yes, even humans.

This story out of Michigan is just a sample of how far big oil will go to get what they want.

(Reuters) – Late in the summer of 2010, hundreds of farmers in northern Michigan were fuming.

All had signed leases with local brokers permitting drillers to tap natural gas and oil beneath their land. All were demanding thousands of dollars in bonuses they had been promised in exchange. But none knew for certain whom to go after.

That’s because the company rejecting their leases hadn’t signed them to begin with. In fact, the company issuing the rejections wasn’t much of a business at all. It was a shell company – a paper-only firm with no real operations – called Northern Michigan Exploration LLC.

One jilted land owner, Eric Boyer-Lashuay, called to complain to the broker who had handled his lease. Northern, he recalls saying, is “a shell company … a blank door with no one behind it.”

Today, he puts it this way: “It was all a fake, all a scam.”

Northern has voided hundreds of land deals, and was indeed a facade – a shell company created so that one of America’s largest energy companies could conceal its role in the leasing spree, a Reuters investigation has found. Oklahoma-based Chesapeake Energy Corp. (CHK.N), the nation’s second-largest gas driller, was behind the entire operation.

Read the complete story here

Just north of the Jersey shore, a truck carrying drilling mud had an accident the possibly contaminated a local creek. The full report is here. Make sure you watch the video. 

And let us not forget the EPA. They are supposed to protect the environment, right? Well I would like to know just how this helps at all:

EPA report: Pavillion water samples improperly tested
By JEREMY FUGLEBERG Star-Tribune energy reporter | Posted: Tuesday, December 27, 2011

From the moment the Pavillion water samples were bottled by testers with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the clock began to tick.

The testers zipped the bottles tightly in clear plastic bags, surrounded them with ice in two small coolers, and shipped them overnight to the agency’s laboratory in Golden, Colo., for analysis.

There, the samples waited as the deadline neared for them to be accurately tested. By the time the samples were tested, the EPA-mandated hold times had come and gone.

“Maintenance of the laboratory floor” caused the hold, according to the EPA’s lab data report on the April 2011 samples.

The overdue analysis of those samples was part of the data that underpinned the EPA’s eventual conclusions, released in a draft report in early December. The agency’s key conclusion: Natural gas wells in the area, most developed using hydraulic fracturing, might have harmed groundwater.

The report was quickly slammed by the oil and gas industry but trumpeted by environmental groups. Yet the EPA’s own data — including details not mentioned in the draft report — indicates the agency’s conclusions are partially based on improperly analyzed samples from six private drinking-water wells and two EPA-drilled deep monitoring wells in Pavillion.

The EPA also found contamination in pure water control samples, didn’t purge the test wells properly before gathering samples and didn’t mention in its report whether it tested water carried by a truck used in well drilling, say officials with the Wyoming Water Development Commission who, because of their expertise on water wells, reviewed the EPA’s publicly available information.

I am going to end this post with a video. This does a really good job of explaining the whole fracking process and what it does to the environment.

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Natural Gas, Drilling and Killing 1

Natural Gas, Drilling and Killing

Posted by on Dec 27, 2011 in fracking, Hydraulic Fracturing, Live Green

While surfing around today looking for some more information on natural gas drilling and the adverse effects it has on the environment, I found this article on Conservationreport.com. The first thing that caught my attention were the dates. Between 2005 and 2009. Since it is now the end of 2011, I wonder how many more millions of gallons have been dumped so carelessly.

NATURAL GAS: Drilling companies injected over 30-million gallons of diesel underground to extract natural gas

Posted on

 

Between 2005 and 2009, oil and gas service companies injected more than 30 million gallons of diesel fuel or hydraulic fracturing fluids containing diesel fuel in wells in 19 states, according to an investigation released by House Energy and Commerce Committee Democrats.

— Politico

Image of frackwater via Keith Srakocic/Associated Press. Frackwater is a byproduct produced from natural gas drilling activities.

Image of protest sign via ltmayers on Flickr.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The fossil-fuel industry doesn’t make or produce coal, natural gas, petroleum, or any other type of fossil fuel. The industry merely extracts materials that have been made by natural   processes within the Earth.

However, the fossil-fuel industry reaps huge profits by polluting the human environment and natural landscapes. Although, the fossil-fuel industry has a well-documented history of making profits at the expense of the environment and human health, the industry has received billions in subsidies from governments and taxpayers. The entire process is deplorable and immoral. More via the Dallas Morning News (emphasis added):

Drilling companies violated federal law by injecting 16 million gallons of diesel fuel underground in Texas to extract natural gas, senior House Democrats said Monday.

In a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency , the lawmakers said the companies failed to obtain necessary permits when they used diesel fuel in their hydraulic fracturing mixtures. The fracturing process, which is widely used in North Texas’ Barnett Shale, has come under scrutiny as environmental groups and some residents allege it has contaminated drinking water supplies.

The congressional inquiry, which began in early 2010 when Democrats controlled the House, did not conclude that the use of diesel polluted any drinking-water sources. The Democrats said the firms they questioned couldn’t provide data on the proximity of drilling operations to underground sources of drinking water.

.       .       .

Nationwide, over 32 million gallons of diesel fuel or fluids containing diesel were injected underground, the lawmakers wrote. The drilling firms used 10.2 million gallons of “straight diesel fuel” and 21.8 million gallons of products containing at least 30 percent diesel, the letter states

The ugly truth of the natural gas boom via the post-gazette.com:

The natural gas boom gripping parts of the United States has a nasty byproduct: wastewater so salty, and so polluted with metals like barium and strontium, that most states require drillers to get rid of the stuff by injecting it down shafts thousands of feet deep.

But not in Pennsylvania, one of the states at the center of the gas rush. In Pennsylvania, the liquid that gushes from gas wells is only partially treated for substances that could be environmentally harmful, then dumped into rivers and streams from which communities get their drinking water.

In the two years since the frenzy of activity began in the vast underground rock formation known as the Marcellus Shale, Pennsylvania has been the only state letting its waterways serve as the primary disposal place for huge amounts of wastewater produced by a drilling technique called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. State regulators, initially caught flat-footed, tightened the rules this year for any new water treatment plants, but let existing operations continue discharging water into rivers.

At least 3.6 million barrels of the waste were sent to treatment plants that empty into rivers during the 12 months ending June 30, state records show. That’s enough to cover a square mile with more than 8 1/2 inches of brine.

Halliburton is among twelve companies that were cited in the House probe. Via Reuters:

The probe of diesel use in hydraulic fracturing, a practice that has allowed drillers to tap abundant shale gas, found that oil services firms such as Halliburton (HAL.N: Quote) and BJ Services, which was bought by Baker Hughes Inc (BHI.N: Quote), injected millions of gallons of fluids containing the fuel into wells between 2005 and 2009. A total of 12 companies were cited in the probe for using diesel without proper permits.

Critics say the chemicals used in the process, called “fracking,” can contaminate drinking water.

In 2003, the Environmental Protection Agency entered into a voluntary agreement with Halliburton, BJ Services and Schlumberger (SLB.N: Quote) to eliminate the use of diesel fuel in hydraulic fracturing fluids injected into coalbed methane wells.

In addition, a 2005 energy law exempted hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act, except when diesel is used.

Still, the probe found that no oil and gas service companies sought or were issued permits for the use of diesel fuel in fracking between 2005 and 2009.

Democrats who sponsored the probe in the House of Representatives urged the EPA to look into this matter.

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Fracking Earthquake Rumors

Posted by on Dec 14, 2011 in conserve, fracking, Hydraulic Fracturing, Live Green

Fracking and Earthquakes, is there really a connection, or are these just rumors? The information is out there and people are weighing in. Ohio is not usually known for earthquakes, but they sure are experiencing something. The Earth keeps shaking, sending messages that it is in deep pain. Fracturing deep within the core. AllGov.com reports the same.

Fracking Suspected in Rash of Earthquakes in Unlikely Places
Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Earthquakes in Oklahoma
Ohio is not exactly earthquake country, and yet the area near Youngstown has been struck nine times in eight months by seismic activity.
Critics of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, used to capture underground supplies of natural gas blame it for the shaking in such an unlikely area. The new, highly profitable fracking industry is largely unregulated.
Seismologists found most of the quakes’ epicenters coincided with the location of a 9,000-foot well near downtown Youngstown, into which went leftover liquids from fracking operations in Pennsylvania.  “As the wastewater was injected into the well under pressure, the thinking went, some of it might have migrated into deeper rock formations, unclamping ancient faults and allowing the rock to slip,” wrote Henry Fountain in The New York Times.
The Environmental Protection Agency, which is supposed to regulate oil- and gas-related disposal wells, has not set any seismic requirements for the wells.
In Arkansas, state officials became so alarmed by a swarm of more than 700 earthquakes that in July they shut down one disposal well, while the operators of three others shut down voluntarily. Since then there has been a significant decrease in earthquakes.

The evidence seems to point to hydraulic fracturing as a cause to these rumbles in Ohio. I think its Mother Earth crying out in pain.

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