Groundwater Contamination May End the Gas-Fracking Boom
scientificamerican.com
scientificamerican.com
Fracking will end when the oil/gas is gone. In its wake it will leave behind the mess the energy and chemical industries have left all over the country: polluted, barely usable land in economically devastated regions (which is what happens after the oil is gone and the companies leave) that must be cleaned up at enormous public expense: http://www.epa.gov/superfund.[1]
Every story is some form of the same thing (plug: http://cleanupdepue.org). Company moves into little town. Residents rejoice in the new jobs. Company leaves when the land is polluted and used up. Property values plummet, and the town is left with no jobs and no ability to sell their houses and move out. The western midwest is in the first part of that story right now, hopefully they'll be smart enough and not have to see what the second part looks like 30-50 years from now.
[1] Incidentally, I think one of the great weaknesses of our country is that Congress sits in D.C., a city that is insulated from pretty much every substantial problem present in the rest of the country. In this particular context, it's a city that has never seen much industrialization and which has historically been surrounded by low-intensity agriculture in every direction (now: vast swaths of suburbia). I think we'd see a different attention to environmental issues if we relocated Congress to say the industrial New Jersey/Delaware/Pennsylvania coast...
What are left of the mills are pretty much rusty wastelands but I don't think quite as much pollution (at least in the ground) as we will see from fracking.
I'm not inherently against the idea of increased natural gas production, including fracking, but the lack of effort put forth by the industry to recognize and mitigate the risks involved has completely turned me off the practice.
Yup.
Environmental protection is an accounting problem. Convert those externalities into line items on a company's profit & loss statement, voila, no more exploitation.
For something so profitable there's a lot of people losing a lot of money.
eg. http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2013/08/21/analysis-how-fracking...
It's inaccurate to group together hydraulic fracturing and traditional oil drilling in terms of environmental damage. The regulations and safety procedures for oil are leaps and bounds beyond those of hydraulic fracturing.
My girlfriend is in charge for assessing the environmental impacts of the Keystone XL pipeline, and she recently spent two weeks rerouting KXL because she and her team discovered beetles in the proposed pipeline corridor.
No it isn't, fracking is a technique that is used to increase the output of a 'traditional oil well' and actually, oil/gas drilling has been ruining surface water for a long time, too. In the past it tended to happen to people who owned the surface as well as the minerals, and who were often happy to take an additional check for their trouble (or not), to go along with their mineral check, and have some bottled water delivered, or hook up to a community water district (yay, they can afford it now). It is easier to get over the loss of a water well when you're making five or six figures a month in O&G royalties. Fracking isn't new either. The only thing new is fracking for shale gas, which is usually deeper/higher pressure, and I guess probably needs better well casings and cement. The problem being that many of these wells are only barely economical or a gamble, to start with (thanks Aubrey McClendon).
>discovered beetles in the proposed pipeline corridor.
Yeah, every now and then an EPA guy scores a win for team EPA. I'd bet that it is the exception, not the rule.
But that paints a misleading picture. The EPA goes for the beetles because the Endangered Species Act is one of the few laws with bright-line rules that hasn't been watered down over the last 30-40 years. That makes it a good tactical hammer. They've got a limited budget, and they need to hit things like this that are a slam-dunk in court instead of broader issues that could get mired for years in debates between expert witnesses and thousands of reports being thrown back and forth.
(Don't do this.)
Hell, the crews drilling CSG don't even have basic understanding of well control theory (or enough instrumentation on the rig to detect problems) - hence the occasional uncontrolled blowouts, mitigated only by the fact that these CSG wells are slimhole vs conventional.
I'd much rather live next to a fracked conventional oil & gas well which has been cased & cemented according to the design of certified petroleum engineers, pressure-tested with all the results lodged properly with government authorities to depths far exceeding any of the local aquifers - than a dodgy CSG well cemented by amateurs who work to rough guidelines "appropriate for the area", who write more documentation on their invoicing than on any actual data collection...
Source: I worked with an oil & gas service company 2006-2008...
Yes, there are practical and security obstacles to governance via permanent telepresence, but there are many upsides as well. Aside from the enourmous cost and disruption to existing practices, is there anything that makes it completely unfeasible? I imagine many representatives would much rather live in their home state than move to DC or constantly commute.
Much of the infrastructure is already in place. The federal courts and the DOJ are already distributed. The SEC, EPA, etc, already have field offices in major cities across the country. Work could be pushed down from HQ into those field offices, giving them greater autonomy and moving jobs from DC to other parts of the country.
1) How common was this in PA before fracking started?
2) Are these wells unusable?
3) Is the situation getting better or worse?
4) Is the gas linked to the fracking (the only interesting question that was mentioned in the article, and the answer is "we don't know")
5) What about other places fracking is occurring? It's not like we're going to stop fracking everywhere: this is a maturing technology. It'll be used all over the planet. What's happening elsewhere?
6) Any other studies being done?
7) What's the measured impact on health in the area?
8) Let's not even start on corrleation and causation -- but it needs to be mentioned, and it's the reason all these other questions are germane.
I'm not trying to be an apologist. These are just sincere questions of import when reading about fracking news. They're germane to any reporting on the matter, and they weren't included. If "more details to come" means more random pieces of trivia that we are then supposed to knit up into our own version of a drama, filled in by whatever personal biases we have, then this isn't very useful from a scientific standpoint.
10. Were the wells sampled chosen for proximity to drill sites? Did the sampling methodology allow for the possibility that methane levels can spike without a nearby well?
11. Was there any relationship between levels and the length of time the well has been operating? Depth of well?
I'd add that the SA headline isn't exactly a dispassionate summary of the article.
Now if we were talking about an article that's discussing philosophy, religion, or other subjects within the humanities, there's a much higher chance the HN community will totally misinterpret and butcher the crap out of that, sure.
As an interesting aside, coal is none too healthy either. There's a town in PA that's been burning for something like 50 years:
The gas company's have this data. Before any activity in my area (near the PA border in Ohio) someone came and tested my well water for contaminates. I have the report somewhere but it was basically just mineral etc. Drilling hasn't really picked up yet but I will find out if it changes or not. Then again who knows if you can trust the reports when the gas companies are funding them.
[1] http://realclearscience.com/blog/2013/06/theres-methane-in-y...
Methane is a pretty inert molecule. It's only a hazard in really high concentrations where it acts as an asphyxiant. I don't know of any metabolic toxicity (but maybe there is).
Obviously, this study needs to be repeated many more times and more regulations need to be put on fracking, but the technology is getting better already.
http://www.businessinsider.com/there-are-many-scary-chemical...
They lied.
They claimed there would be no contamination to the groundwater. Now we see there is. What chemical is next? We don't know.
EDIT: also, since many of the chemicals are liquids and they are injected into an aquifer that feeds wells, the only thing we really need to know is: are any of the chemicals lighter than water. Even if they are not, once the water is pumped out, the remaining liquids will certainly be next.
Side-note: Before today I didn't realize how lax the laws on natural gas companies are. The New York Times has a great graphic on the subject.
"The natural gas industry has exemptions or exclusions from key parts of at least 7 of the 15 major federal environmental laws designed to protect air and water from radioactive and hazardous chemicals. Below are the seven laws listed in the order they were passed."
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/03/us/20110303-na...
Venting methane from well water is less a problem than Joe Mulroy's farts at a beer-soused Friday night card game. Either will produce a flare if a match is put to them.
2013: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/06/19/1221635110.full...
2011: http://biology.duke.edu/jackson/pnas2011.html
I bring this up not to be pedantic, but to point out that the OP comes off as that this is new conclusive evidence...it is not. Opponents of fracking would argue that there are several other studies showing similar data, and they'd argue that politics/industry has shelved other planned studies. In other words, it's not just amount or existence of evidence that comes into play in this debate.
To the author's credit, at least he pulled back and didn't do the entire ranting, hand-waving ritual. I believe that job is being left for online commenters to complete :)
The funny thing is, without the overriding emotional narrative many people have, if you just explained what the study says using other terms, most folks would realize how tenuous and superficial the reporting is. Correlative research is great, but geesh, it's a tiny, almost minuscule part of actually accomplishing anything. Most of the time, it's a waste of time. Medical research, for instance, is full of correlative research that never amounted to a hill of beans.
Yes like smoking being linked with cancer. I'm glad we listened to the corporate funded libertarians on that one and didn't fall prey to the wishy washy lefty propaganda and emotive narratives about evil tobacco companies wanting to make money from killing people. What a ridiculous, politically motivated caricature that was.
I'd like to point out that the Heartland Institute and Cato still deny the link between passive smoking and cancer, so it's not like that kind of lobbying is all in the distant dark past. The very same people writing lies about tobacco are writing propaganda about fracking. They also think climate change is a giant marxist conspiracy.
Honestly, that's because the science is a joke.
It's arguably sufficient to cite the obnoxious nature of secondhand smoke to outlaw it in public places. If it's constitutional for governments to pass laws that keep people from blaring their car stereos at 3 AM, then it's constitutional to pass laws that keep people from polluting the air that other people have to breathe.
I guess my question would be: does it matter? If you read the article you'll see that out of the 118 homes that tested positive for methane, only 12 were above the threshold for immediate remediation.
However, if they sampled the water before it was treated, it doesn't tell you what the level of the treated water is. Even if the water is simply pumped into a holding reservoir, that can cause a lot of the methane to outgas from the water.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_issues_in_the_Nig...
In other words, what makes us special? Why are we okay with polluting other places but by golly we get mad when it happens in our own country?
Because we live here and not there?
I live in the northeast and I find it very interesting when someone has an anti-fracking bumper sticker on his or her car. It essentially says "oil is okay as long as there are no problems near me"
I guess it's semantics.
Its like what cigarette companies used to do- just constantly deny what's completely obvious.
There is an annoying combination of legal and commercial pressures that prevent the companies from going "actually it's more dangerous than we previously said" without it seeming like "it was a lie all along this is TERRIBLE".
The crucial take-away is that there is a bunch of additional geologic due diligence that the gas companies could be doing that would actually enable them to continue fracking. But the boom is driven in part by the utter dirt cheapness of it now and they're afraid of hopping off the wave.
No. It's completely positive. Methane has almost no pollution, and far less CO2 than any other large scale energy source.
The "contamination" is methane in water, which is harmless even if you drank it, and trivial to remove.
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[0] http://epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/ch4.html
He picked the ones that seemed most dangerous to him, and they are all harmless. (But I haven't checked if there are others.)
Don't forget these chemicals are injected deep underground, so unlike lighter-than-air methane they won't easily get to water.
(PS. It's not "dumping" if you are actively using them. Dumping is the waste you don't need, no need for inaccurate emotive language.)
A lot of the power infrastructure that handles peaks in demand (and averts rolling blackouts) uses natural gas. The question we need to be asking ourselves is which is the least bad alternative, because they're all bad.
http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/
This "new" evidence of contamination will not end it. People will be paid in quiet settlements, sell their houses at a fraction of what they paid for them, and move somewhere else. This will probably continue until the oil/bitumen/gas is gone.
http://energyindepth.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Debunkin...
http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2011/08/01/gasla...
Edit: Admittedly, these sources suck. Here's a NYTimes article that should hopefully be more palatable:
http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/02/24/24greenwire-groundtr...
"Government Relations" is a nice euphemism for propagandist.
In 50 years when the Midwest is a toxic wasteland, many of those responsible might be able to move to Dubai, but our children and grandchildren are going to have to somehow live in it.
https://1trickpony.cachefly.net/gas/pdf/Affirming_Gasland_Se...
> In an article for Forbes magazine, Dr. Michael Economides, a professor of engineering at the University of Houston, commented on the Gasland scene of "a man lighting his faucet water on fire and making the ridiculous claim that natural gas drilling is responsible for the incident. The clip, though attention-getting, is wildly inaccurate and irresponsible. To begin with, the vertical depth separation between drinking water aquifers and reservoir targets for gas production is several thousand feet of impermeable rock. Any interchange between the two, if it were possible, would have happened already in geologic time, measured in tens of millions of years, not in recent history."
Impermeable except for, you know, the several thousand foot long shafts that are drilled through that rock in the process of fraking.
It is true that drink wells are ~100 feet and these fracking wells are thousands of feet deep but I'm not sure that completely rules out the possibility of gas escaping a well and making it into drinking water.
Something from Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2011/10/17/shale-fra...
No it won't, even if the article showed there was harmful contamination, which it didn't.
The only thing of interest in the article is Scientific American is resorting to untrue link baiting titles.
If you don't permit fracking, then you away large sums of money to support the following regimes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_gas_fields
If you do, you may be literally sh1tting where you eat.
Additional information:
- hydrochloric acid: Concentrated hydrochloric acid (fuming hydrochloric acid) forms acidic mists. Both the mist and the solution have a corrosive effect on human tissue, with the potential to damage respiratory organs, eyes, skin, and intestines irreversibly. Upon mixing hydrochloric acid with common oxidizing chemicals, such as sodium hypochlorite (bleach, NaClO) or potassium permanganate (KMnO4), the toxic gas chlorine is produced.
- polyacrylamide: Concerns have been raised that polyacrylamide used in agriculture may contaminate food with the nerve toxin acrylamide.
- Ethylene glycol (the stuff in antifreeze): Ethylene glycol is moderately toxic with an oral LDLO = 786 mg/kg for humans.[8] The major danger is due to its sweet taste. Because of that, children and animals are more inclined to consume large quantities of it than of other poisons. Upon ingestion, ethylene glycol is oxidized to glycolic acid which is, in turn, oxidized to oxalic acid, which is toxic. It and its toxic byproducts first affect the central nervous system, then the heart, and finally the kidneys. Ingestion of sufficient amounts can be fatal if untreated.
- glutaraldehyde: As a strong disinfectant, glutaraldehyde is toxic and a strong irritant
- Isopropyl alcohol (I think this stuff is in aerosol deodorant and hairspray): Isopropyl alcohol and its metabolite, acetone, act as central nervous system (CNS) depressants. Symptoms of isopropyl alcohol poisoning include flushing, headache, dizziness, CNS depression, nausea, vomiting, anesthesia, and coma.
I am not familiar with all of those, but hydrochloric acid, ethylene glycol, and isopropyl alcohol will decompose to basic elements within days if not hours.
The are only dangerous if you actually ate the concentrated solution. Put them in the ground, and they'll be harmless within days - really, days - hours even for some of them.
I looked up the other two.
Polyacrylamide is used in water treatment. Yes, the water you drink, and it's used in soft contact lenses, and mixed into soil on farms. The concern is from the potential 0.05% contamination, and in the small amounts used, plus the dilution underground 0.05% is nothing.
Oh, and on top of that acrylamide decomposes rapidly in soil so there will be none left by the time it reaches the surface.
I looked up glutaraldehyde and it decomposes within 48 hours in the presence of oxygen, and 24 hours to a week without oxygen.
I guess I should thank you for posting this, because if this is the extent of the worrisome chemicals used then there is nothing to worry about - all them are completely harmless within days. For some reason I thought they were using dangerous chemicals, but I guess not.
Edit: source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proppants_and_fracking_fluids
They apparently don't just use water, like some people might expect they could, because it doesn't work. Many people are concerned about contamination from the fracking fluid, correctly or not.