Grim News on the Oil Front!

DrkAngel

1 GW
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Were you around during the oil crisis of the 1970's ??
Same old story..."Oil reserves to run out within 20yrs"... ==prices skyrocket in panic :x
..but , hey wait a minute ?...that was 40 yrs ago and yet we still have "only" 20 years of oil left ??? :roll: :roll:

dont you think the title of the publication might give you a clue as to the motivation behind the article ??
 
Hillhater said:
Were you around during the oil crisis of the 1970's ??
Same old story..."Oil reserves to run out within 20yrs"... ==prices skyrocket in panic :x
..but , hey wait a minute ?...that was 40 yrs ago and yet we still have "only" 20 years of oil left ??? :roll: :roll:

dont you think the title of the publication might give you a clue as to the motivation behind the article ??

Yeah, run of oil, run out of water, run out of landfill space, die from acid rain, die from a new ice age, die from global ... well you get the picture. Just sayin'
 
Hillhater said:
Were you around during the oil crisis of the 1970's ??
Same old story..."Oil reserves to run out within 20yrs"... ==prices skyrocket in panic :x
..but , hey wait a minute ?...that was 40 yrs ago and yet we still have "only" 20 years of oil left ??? :roll: :roll:

dont you think the title of the publication might give you a clue as to the motivation behind the article ??
Apparently you weren't around in the 70's. There was no shortage of oil! The oil producing countries banded together and set a selling price, rather than letting a free market economy set the price. The price of oil skyrocketed from $3/barrel to $30/barrel. Not due to any shortage, due solely to the cooperative collusion of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Shortages occurred because countries and people resisted, mightily, being forced to pay "exorbitant" oil prices. Oil exports dropped, then shortages occurred, people cried "we need gas", but OPEC held firm! And sales soon returned to previous levels ... at ten times the profit!

The only shortages were because importers resisted importing expensive oil.

Best estimates for world oil resources, by reputable sources, rate all oil consumed at, 30 to 47 years, at present rate of consumption. ... However, oil usage is increasing steadily.

And yes ... these estimates include "proven reserves" as well as all "probable" new discoveries.
 
No, there never has been a shortage of oil, and possibly never will be in the (our) foreseeable future.
But there have been, and will be again, these reports that suggest we are all doomed by the near collapse of oil availability.
As i said you have to look behind the headlines to see who is likely to benefit from the side effect of these reports.
 
Of course, there will be oil available, for decades ... if you are willing to pay "through the nose" for it.
Then, from your veins ... then, from your arteries ...
 
most people here never have to sacrifice for the oil we get. it is the guys in the army and marines getting killed and maimed so we can have access to the oil in the persian gulf. just the fear the oil would have to come around the horn, rather than the suez canal was enuff to push the brent price (the real wortld price, not the WTI which is an invention of the futures makrets) over $103 the other day.

imagine if the keystone pipeline is blocked from entering the US, and instead the oil sands crude goes west to BC and then to china.

but there is now a new focus on oil shale fracs, and using the source rock as the oil production basis in the US.

like i said, peak conventional production was jan 2006. biofuels, natural gas liquids and oil sands production have kept us floating along, but political and economic forces in north africa now could infect the shia in saudi arabia and the emirates who deeply resent the ruling sunni saudi princes. the planners and talking heads here think they would never cut off production and lose the income from the sales if they come to power. i would not bet on it.
 
Time for the regularly scheduled spring panicmongering. All part of the regularly scheduled spring crude price increases. The big money guys know how to get the annual bubble going by now. Then they know how to get in and out in time, and leave joe retiree holding oil futures bought too high when it pops.
 
i will guarantee that joe sixpack does not buy oil futures. even though it would be the best way to offset the risk of the 4 ton pickup they keep chromed and shiny.

oil production in this country will increase again this year after last year did for the first time on 23 years, because of the new source of oil from fraccing the bakken.

but the excess oil from the canadian oil sands and north dakota are all overloading the storage at cushing, oklahoma where the futures contracts for oil are set. the current price for brent is about 102, and for WTI is about 87, the $15 spread is at something close to an all time record.

enbridge yesterday opened a new pipeline from canada carrying heavy crude to cushing, and thereby crushing the price of crude in this country, especially the inter mountain region in wyoming and colorado where refineries are able to make products and sell it cheap and still be able to make a few bucks on a barrel of oil. so that is the benefit of not having enuff pipeline capacity from cushing to the gulf, an anachronism of the history of oil because oil in this country had always flowed north from the gulf, not south from north dakota and canada.

transcanada is going to extend the new keystone pipeline to the gulf from canada unless the route is blocked by our state department. if that happens then they will build a bigger pipeline to BC and ship all the oil to china. has nothing to do with the imaginary manipulators of the price of oil. just a real business decision, to supply the market with oil and try to profit from it.

if you wanna save on fuel, convert to CNG now and take advantage of the super cheap prices for natural gas. currently about 75 to 90 cents a gallon. remember when gas was that cheap?
 
The oil industry is the second biggest money maker in the world, second only to Insurance. Do you really believe the oil industry would allow a story that was detrimental to it's interests? We have LOTS & LOTS of undiscovered oil but it serves their purposes and pocketbooks to scare us that we're about to run out. "Don't believe the hype, it's a sequel, as an equal can I get this through to you?"-Public Enemy :twisted:
 
I had a gas station in the early 70's and the gas was 39.9 a gal {in Canada}. The company said jack it up to 42.9 and all business stopped because the station down the road was still at 39.9. One day the company saleman stopped in and when i told him about it, he just laughed and said some day they will be paying $4-5 a gallon.
They knew what was coming in 1972 when he said that.
 
So if the oil from North Dakota and Canada goes to the GULF. Where does it go from there? Out to international waters and turn around and sold back to us? Like in the 70's again?
The whole oil business is just a bunch of lies.
OPEC was happy at $3 a barrel till the Oil companies caused the shortages so they could raise prices and the Saudi and others said why not us too.
It's been a scam from the first shortage in the 70's and will continue till we stop sucking on the gas pipe!
Dan
 
but there is now a new focus on oil shale fracs, and using the source rock as the oil production basis in the US.
if you wanna save on fuel, convert to CNG now and take advantage of the super cheap prices for natural gas. currently about 75 to 90 cents a gallon. remember when gas was that cheap?

I don't think we'll see these cheap natural gas prices for much longer... The fracking tech has bloated reserve estimates short-term but I keep reading reports about fracked wells with high initial flow rates that drop off quickly... Like 85% of expected reserves gone in less than ten years.

Lotta negative reports showing up about polluted drinking water wells as well...

The drillers say stuff like:
http://www.greenmuze.com/climate/energy/2562-ugly-reality-of-fracking.html
As an expert in hydraulic fracturing, I can honestly say that the bad publicity "fracking" is getting is unbelievable. There is absolutely no chromium used in any of the chemicals we pump and the chemicals that are pumped are harmless. Basic ingredients in a hydraulic fluid is a guar (same stuff in shampoo to give viscosity), a pH adjuster (a weak acid such as vinegar or a dilute bleach solution), and either boron or zirconium (both non toxic elements). Hydrocarbons can also be used for fracturing especially in the Cardium formation as Judy pointed out but these fluids don't even come close to water tables. What's happening with gas leaching into drinking water is from poor cement jobs around the casing and nothing to do with fracturing.
written by Dave , November 14, 2010

But they also publish stuff like:
http://www.clintoncountypa.com/CC Natural Gas Task Force/Articles/9.9.10 - Marcellus Fracing.PDF
Since most of the mystery and controversy surround the special-purpose additives and chemicals, let’s use EQT’s disclosure for their “Halliburton” recipe (found at http://www.eqt.com/production/compositions.aspx) as an example and explore a little further.
According to EQT’s website the following components make up a typical hydrofracturing recipe and serve the described purpose:
1. Water (4,127,000 gallons per well or 95.5297%) - Creates fracture network in shale and carries sand into the formation;
2. Sand proppant (182,446 gallons per well or 4.2232%) - Enables fractures to remain open and allow gas to escape into the wellbore;
3. Friction Reducer (4,127 gallons per well or 0.0955%) - Reduces friction between fluid and casing;
4. Antimicrobial Agent (2,137 gallons per well 0.0495%) - Eliminates bacteria in the water that can produce corrosive byproducts;
5. Hydrochloric Acid (2,503 gallons per well 0.0579%) Dissolves cement and minerals in the perforations;
6. Scale Inhibitor (1,142 gallons per well or 0.0264%) - Prevents scaling in pipe;
7. Gelling Agent (720 gallons per well or 0.0167%) - Creates viscosity to ensure sand is transported into the fractures;
8. Oxidizing Breaker (31 gallons per well or 0.0007%) - Adds viscosity to the fluid;
9. Enzyme Breaker (15 gallons per well or 0.0004%) - Reduces viscosity of the fluid.

and this report:
http://www.greenmuze.com/climate/energy/2562-ugly-reality-of-fracking.html
Oil and gas companies like EnCana, Imperial Oil, Suncor, ConocoPhilips, ExxonMobil, etc., generally don’t do the hydraulic fracturing themselves, but instead hire specialty services to do it. Each of the big players in the multi-billion-dollar fracking industry – Halliburton, Calfrac Well Services, Schlumberger, BJ Services (all of which operate in Western Canada) – has its own recipe for fracking fluids, of which they are fiercely protective. The precise nature and concentrations of the chemicals in these “proprietary fluids” are not even fully known to government regulatory agencies.

By examining drillers’ patent applications and government worker health and safety records, some environmentalists and regulators in the US have been able to piece together a list of some of the fracking fluid ingredients. These include potentially toxic substances such as diesel fuel (which contains benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene, xylene, and napththalene), 2-butoxyethanol, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, methanol, formaldehyde, ethylene, glycol, glycol ethers, hydrocholoric acid, and sodium hydroxide.

Gotta admit I haven't paid too much attention to the fracking yet... not a local issue for me but hard to miss the reports in the medias... The closest "action" to me is the Marcellus Shale Play. Little bit in Quebec too, but Marcellus is huge... on paper. Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio, New York...

Anyway, I picked on little Clinton County in PA. Population only 40,000 and only 900 sq.miles.

County seat is a small city of 9000 souls named "Lock Haven" watt I find attractive for some strange reason... :mrgreen:

Their gov provided an explanation about watt fracking is all about as the frackers have come to town:
http://www.clintoncountypa.com/CC N... - Understanding the Marcellus Shale Play.PDF
Some snips:
8/26/10 Understanding the Marcellus Shale Play
Welcome to the new “GasFacts: Understanding the Marcellus Shale Play” column. The Marcellus Shale is a rock formation 5,000-8,000 feet below surface of roughly 70% of Clinton County. Overall, the Marcellus Shale Play covers 95,000 square miles in portions of Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio, and New York and is estimated to contain up to 489 trillion cubic feet of natural gas making the Marcellus the largest natural gas field in the continental United States and one of the largest fields in the world (Engelder, 2009).

After leasing, a variety of permits for erosion and sedimentation, water impoundments, drilling, etc… are required to drill a Marcellus Well. All natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania is regulated by the Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Law. All Pennsylvania drilling activity requires a permit, which is issued by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). The number of Marcellus drilling permits issued in the state as of August 20, 2010 topped 1,977, only eight fewer than all of 2009. Clinton County is on a slightly higher permit pace than 2009 with 34 permits being issued so far in 2010, or just seven fewer than all of 2009.

Once all the appropriate permits have been secured, well pad construction begins. Well pads are about five acres in size or about the size of 2½ to 3½ football fields. A well pad generally serves a drilling block of 500 to 1,000 acres. The predominant practice in Pennsylvania has been for energy companies to drill more than one well per pad, which greatly reduces the footprint of drilling operations. Reports from the field indicate the current practice of energy companies is to drill four to 10 wells per pad. Early rough estimates for Clinton County are for 464-580 well pads containing 2,782-4,636 wells.

After construction of the well pad, a drilling rig will move in. The modern drilling rig is very large and very powerful. A single drilling rig can take 50-65 tractor trailers to move and will stand well over 100 feet tall. Most Marcellus Shale wells are drilled down vertically 5,000 to 8,000 feet and then horizontally between 3,000 to 5,000 feet on average. To drill vertically then horizontally, the drilling rigs use a special bit to gradually turn the drilling pipe over about 1,000 vertical feet. Currently in Pennsylvania there are 89 drilling rigs operating, up more than 71% from the same time last year. One drilling rig will drill between 8-12 wells per year. At the peak in June and July, Clinton County had three rigs operating. So far this year 827 Marcellus wells have been drilled in Pennsylvania, up more than 14% over all of 2009. Bradford County has the most wells drilled in 2010 with 225. Clinton County has 17 wells drilled so far in 2010, up more than 41% from last year.

After drilling, the energy companies will use a process called hydraulic fracturing or fracking to stimulate natural gas production. Fracking involves the use of 3-6 million gallons of water and roughly five groups of chemicals are used to fracture the shale and release the natural gas. Water withdrawals in much of Pennsylvania are permitted by the Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC). During the well stimulation phase people generally notice a large increase in truck traffic hauling equipment, water, sand, and chemicals. Convoys of more than 35+ trucks have been reported on several local roads. Fracking generally takes just a few days per well. Immediately following fracking, the first signs of a successful well appear with a natural gas fire called a flare. A flare is normal and is used to determine the initial daily flow of a well and to provide for the safety of the production crew while the well is brought on-line.

After fracking roughly 25% of the water used will come out of the well in what is called flow-back water. Over the life of the well perhaps 40-50% of the water used in fracking will come back out of the well in the form of flow-back or production water. Much of the current debate about fracking stems from the treatment/disposal of flow-back and production water and the level of risk for ground water. To help find where the facts are about fracking, the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is currently undertaking a study to review unconventional shale fracking practices and the current fracking exemptions in the Safe Drinking Water Act.

In order to bring natural gas to a home from the well, significant production infrastructure needs to be constructed. Natural gas infrastructure construction includes pipelines, compressor stations, natural gas storage areas, and in southwestern PA, processing facilities to remove other valuable energy sources including oil, heavy gasoline, propane, butane, ethane and more.

Sounds like if all goes well the frackers expect up to 580 well pads serving an average of eight wells each that will cover about 435,000 acres, or 680 square miles...

Of the Clinton County area of 900 square miles total about 8% is farmland and about 70% is forested. Less than 1% water. Almost half of the whole County is given over to National Forests and State Parks...

So I'm not clear on where the frackers will be putting all their wells? Are my American cousins OK with wells and pipelines etc in their national forests?

They seem to be OK with coal mines... or maybe not:
http://www.esri.com/news/arcnews/fall08articles/using-gis.html
Abandoned coal mines cover hundreds of thousands of acres throughout the eastern United States. As such, having accurate maps of them is important to keep those involved in their cleanup spatially informed. In Pennsylvania, a regional nonprofit abandoned mine reclamation group is promoting the use of a state-of-the-art GIS mapping tool to assist in the reclamation of mined-out land. The tool, created by the Eastern Pennsylvania Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation (EPCAMR), has proved successful in maximizing the limited funds available for restoring this blighted land to its approximate premined state.

As recently as 30 years ago, coal mining companies weren't required to clean up and restore the land they excavated. Streams ran orange, green, and white with heavy metals leached from nearby mines. Strip pits with sheer cliffs were a hazard, causing many people to fall to their deaths. Pennsylvania was left with more than 200,000 acres of mine-scarred land and 5,000 miles of polluted streams. As the impact of surface mining became evident in the mid-1970s, Congress passed the Surface Mine Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) in 1977. SMCRA attached a per-ton fee to all extracted coal to create an interest-accruing federal reclamation fund. The fund is maintained by the United States Department of the Interior Office of Surface Mining (OSM) and is dispersed to states and Native American tribes that still face problems caused by coal mines abandoned before 1977.

Because Pennsylvania leads most states in the amount of reclamation that needs to be done, in 2006, Congress authorized an increase in Pennsylvania's reclamation allotment to $1.4 billion over the next 15 years. With so many abandoned mines still awaiting reclamation in Pennsylvania, EPCAMR sought a way to more efficiently pinpoint the areas in need of remediation. Although the new allotment will significantly increase the work that can be done, $1.4 billion still needs to go a long way.

Clinton County actually got off lucky in this regard. In surface coal mining the county ranks about eighteenth in the State... Clinton never had much coal to begin with compared to its neighbouring counties...

But it did have some mines once in its northern part. In the Northern Half many streams are polluted with Acid Mine Drainage.

The Southern half is primarily farmland in the valleys and forested in the ridges. Nutrient Pollution and sedimentation are the principal concerns there.

And Clinton County is in a watershed. Most of its streams feed into the West Branch of the Susquehanna River... on its way to Chesapeake Bay.

The West Susquehanna as it flows through Lock Haven serves a drainage area of about 3,300 sq.miles so a lot of the water in Clinton County actually flows from neighbouring counties and the north, where the mines are.

Right now the West Susquehanna is flowing past Lock Haven at about 2000 cu.ft/sec... about 1,292 million gallons of water a day.

If the frackers get their 4,636 wells and each well uses 4.5 million gallons in the fracking process that'd be "only" about 21,000 millions of gallons over the useful life of the wells. Does sound like a bit of a drop in the old bucket...

Maybe half buried a mile underground and the other 10,000-11,000 million gallons back to the surface as "flow-back" requiring treatment...

The frackers insist the flow-back can be treated but so far their track record hasn't been good:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110103/ap_on_he_me/us_gas_drilling_frackwater_4
By DAVID B. CARUSO, Associated Press David B. Caruso, Associated Press – Mon Jan 3, 2:48 pm ET

The natural gas boom gripping parts of the U.S. 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.

Not in Pennsylvania, one of the states at the center of the gas rush.

There, 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 allowing waterways to serve as the primary disposal place for the 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 allowed any existing operations to 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, according to state records. That is enough to cover a square mile with more than 8 1/2 inches of brine.

Researchers are still trying to figure out whether Pennsylvania's river discharges, at their current levels, are dangerous to humans or wildlife. Several studies are under way, some under the auspices of the Environmental Protection Agency.

State officials, energy companies and the operators of treatment plants insist that with the right safeguards in place, the practice poses little or no risk to the environment or to the hundreds of thousands of people who rely on those rivers for drinking water.

But an Associated Press review found that Pennsylvania's efforts to minimize, control and track wastewater discharges from the Marcellus Shale have sometimes failed.

For example:

• Of the roughly 6 million barrels of well liquids produced in a 12-month period examined by The AP, the state couldn't account for the disposal method for 1.28 million barrels, about a fifth of the total, because of a weakness in its reporting system and incomplete filings by some energy companies.

• Some public water utilities that sit downstream from big gas wastewater treatment plants have struggled to stay under the federal maximum for contaminants known as trihalomethanes, which can cause cancer if swallowed over a long period.

• Regulations that should have kept drilling wastewater out of the important Delaware River Basin, the water supply for 15 million people in four states, were circumvented for many months.

In 2009 and part of 2010, energy company Cabot Oil & Gas trucked more than 44,000 barrels of well wastewater to a treatment facility in Hatfield Township, a Philadelphia suburb. Those liquids ultimately were discharged into a creek that provides drinking water to 17 municipalities with more than 300,000 residents. Cabot acknowledged it should not have happened.

People in those communities had been told repeatedly that the watershed was free of gas waste.

"This is an outrage," said Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, an environmental group. "This is indicative of the lack of adequate oversight."

The situation in Pennsylvania is being watched carefully by regulators in other states, some of which have begun allowing some river discharges. New York also sits over the Marcellus Shale, but Gov. David Paterson has slapped a moratorium on high-volume fracking while environmental regulations are drafted.

Industry representatives insist that the wastewater from fracking has not caused serious harm anywhere in Pennsylvania, in part because it is safely diluted in the state's big rivers. But most of the largest drillers say they are taking action and abolishing river discharges anyway.

Cabot, which produced nearly 370,000 barrels of waste in the period examined by the AP, said that since the spring it has been reusing 100 percent of its well water in new drilling operations, rather than trucking it to treatment plants.

"Cabot wants to ensure that everything we are doing is environmentally sound," said spokesman George Stark. "It makes environmental sense and economic sense to do it."

All 10 of the biggest drillers in the state say they have either eliminated river discharges in the past few months, or reduced them to a small fraction of what they were a year ago. Together, those companies accounted for 80 percent of the wastewater produced in the state.

The biggest driller, Atlas Resources, which produced nearly 2.3 million barrels of wastewater in the review period, said it is now recycling all water produced by wells in their first 30 days of operation, when the flowback is heaviest. The rest is still sent to treatment plants, but "our ultimate goal is to have zero surface discharge of any of the water," said spokesman Jeff Kupfer.

How much wastewater is still being discharged into rivers is unclear. Records verifying industry claims of a major drop-off will not be available until midwinter.

Natural gas drilling has taken off in several states in recent years because of fracking and horizontal drilling, techniques that allow the unlocking of more methane than ever before.

Fracking involves injecting millions of gallons of water mixed with chemicals and sand deep into the rock, shattering the shale and releasing the gas trapped inside. When the gas comes to the surface, some of the water comes back, too, along with underground brine that exists naturally.

It can be several times saltier than sea water and tainted with fracking chemicals, some of which can be carcinogenic if swallowed at high enough levels over time.

The water is also often laden with barium, which is found in underground ore deposits and can cause high blood pressure, and radium, a naturally occurring radioactive substance.

In other places where fracking has ignited a gas bonanza, like the Barnett Shale field in Texas, the Haynesville Shale in Louisiana, and deposits in West Virginia, New Mexico and Oklahoma, the dominant disposal method for drilling wastewater is to send it back down into the ground via injection wells.

In some arid states, wastewater is also treated in evaporation pits. Water is essentially baked off by the sun, leaving a salty sludge that is disposed of in wells or landfills.

Operators of the treatment plants handling the bulk of the Pennsylvania waste say they can remove most of the toxic substances without much trouble, including radium and barium, before putting the water back into rivers.

"In some respects, its better than what's already in the river," said Al Lander, president of Tunnelton Liquids, a treatment plant that discharges water into western Pennsylvania's Conemaugh River.

The one thing that can't be removed easily, except at great expense, he said, is the dissolved solids and chlorides that make the fluids so salty.

Those substances usually don't pose a risk to humans in low levels, said Paul Ziemkiewicz, director of the West Virginia Water Research Institute at West Virginia, but large amounts can give drinking water a foul taste, leave a film on dishes and give people diarrhea. Those problems have been reported from time to time in some places.

Those salts can also trigger other problems.

The municipal authority that provides drinking water to Beaver Falls, 27 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, began flunking tests for trihalomethanes regularly last year, around the time that a facility 18 miles upstream, Advanced Waste Services, became Pennsylvania's dominant gas wastewater treatment plant.

Trihalomethanes are not found in drilling wastewater, but there can be a link. The wastewater often contains bromide, which reacts with the chlorine used to purify drinking water. That creates trihalomethanes.

The EPA says people who drink water with elevated levels of trihalomethanes for many years have an increased risk of cancer and could also develop liver, kidney or central nervous system problems.

Pennsylvania's multitude of acid-leaching, abandoned coal mines and other industrial sources are also a major source of the high salt levels that lead to the problem.

Beaver Falls plant manager Jim Riggio said he doesn't know what is keeping his system off-kilter, but a chemical analysis suggested it was linked to the hundreds of thousands of barrels of partially treated gas well brine that now flow past his intakes every year.

"It all goes back to frackwater," he said.


Folks in PA are pretty sensitive about their water. Of the total population of PA (12.7mil) about 2.5 million get their water from private, individual supplies, which are unregulated by state and federal government agencies. Most of their private water supplies are wells fed by ground water. And just because a water supply is pumped from underground, whether from a deep or a shallow well, there are no guarantees that the water from that well is safe and pollutant free.

There are about a million individual water supplies, and about 20,000 new wells are drilled each year. Every well, if not sited or constructed properly, provides a potential pathway for contaminants to enter groundwater. In addition, the water itself could be contaminated from any of a number of sources, both above and below ground.

About half of the water wells that have been tested have at least one water-quality problem. These range from aesthetic, such as staining or unpleasant taste, often related to secondary pollutants from the bedrock carrying the ground water, to legitimate health concerns arising from high levels of primary pollutants, including bacteria, nitrate, sulfate, or trace metals such as arsenic, lead, and zinc. These primary contaminates can derive from nearby mining, agricultural, and manufacturing activities, as well as malfunctioning septic systems, and in central PA valleys, trash- and garbage-filled sinkholes.


Kinda ironic for the folks in Lock Haven and Clinton County that with all this mining going on around them they also had a US Superfund pollution problem right in their own front yard:
http://www.epa.gov/reg3hscd/npl/PAD003058047.htm
When the site was first placed on the NPL the eight-acre Drake Chemical site Lock Haven, Clinton County, Pennsylvania, operated as a chemical plant from the 1960s to 1981, manufacturing chemical ingredients for pesticides and other compounds. Six major buildings, including former offices, production facilities, and a wastewater treatment building were located there. There were approximately 60 process tanks and reactors inside and surrounding the process buildings. Outside the buildings were approximately 10 large tanks that were used for bulk storage of acids, bases, and fuel oils. Also located on-site were two lined wastewater treatment lagoons, and two unlined lagoons. Chemical sludge and contaminated soils had been filled in all of the open area on the site.

In 1982, EPA removed 1,700 exposed drums and drained and neutralized tanks. The site was secured by an 8-foot fence, and warning signs were posted. The agency excavated the soil in the leachate run off area and directed the run off into a sewer line in 1986. The lagoon where the leachate drained from was excavated and the soil was treated on site. The buildings and other structures were demolished and removed to an off-site hazardous waste facility in 1988. The contaminated soil was excavated and treated in an on-site incinerator. Over 295,000 tons of soil was processed through the incinerator with an average of 27.5 tons per hour. Processed soil has been backfilled on site. Compost was mixed into the upper layer of processed soil and grass was planted. Following completion in the spring of 1999, the incinerator was removed. The groundwater remediation began in the summer of 1999 and the entire treatment system was constructed and began operating in the fall of 2000. The treatment system continues to operate. The second Five Year Review was issued in in September 2008.

And of course the Superfund doesn't pay for some of the other costs like related health problems:
"Drake Chemical Workers' Health Registiy: Coping with Community Tension over Toxic Exposures"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1405140/pdf/amjph00206-0019.pdf


Anywhooo... I hope I'm wrong but if history is anything to go by the frackers will get their drilling permits and they will drill their wells and build their pipelines and refineries and extract their profits over the next five-ten years max., then it will blow up in everybuddies faces, and the real costs of fracking will be paid for by generations to come. The frackers will have to raise their prices just to pay for the fines and penalties, unless they can just declare bankrupcy and leave town, like Drake Chemical did...
Lock
 
rather than hope, why not actually study the practices you are trying to condemn in a backwards manner.

the clap trap you dragged in after the original quote from dave doesn't mean squat, and you know it.

you should read what the driller guy dave said in your first quote. what he said is true and encapsulates this entire hysteria that is being used to create hysteria among an illiterate public like you. the case in colorado which was reversed on appeal actually showed the the radioactive isotopes in the gas in the farmer's well proved that the gas was coming from a different formation altogether, separated vertically by a long distance. bad casing job, not fraccing.

you do not have to just hope, or imagine there is some secret cabal of rich oil interests secretly hiding your oil from you until they can charge you more for it. you can study the business, read about petroleum geology, understand what petroleum frontiers have been exploited already and which might still be out there. try to understand sedimentary and petroleum geology, it is not as hard as EE or SS physics and you should be able to overcome your ignorance in a few months of real diligence. or you will otherwise lead a life of ignorance and be vulnerable to the hysteria created by the cable news networks. i devoted a year to reading up on it at the colorado school of mines library initially in '95 and still study it today and read what is currently happening in the business, and it has made me capable of seeing how much garbage is spewed out in the name of news. plus it allows me to invest in the new opportunities to produce oil being developed so that i can live an independent life now.

you don't have to see which way the wind blows if you can drive a CNG honda civic, which gets 40mpg on 60 cent/g equivalent CNG. period.
 
One hell of a post Lock, but you didn't need to repeat it 3 times to get your point over ! :lol:

If you have not already seen it, you should watch the documentary /movie... "Gasland" .. by Josh Fox.
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/gasland/
Very disturbing !
 
@Lock

As a Pennsylvanianite I appreciate the informative post you put together. I can say that the mining industry has affected well water in a few of my friends areas, and I can easily see this doing the same. And from the firsthand stories I've heard, is beginning to happen now. Anyway, thanks.
 
Oooops... sorry about the triple post. Not sure how that happened.

And yah, too verbose to the point of "clap trap" maybe but Executive Summery:

I quoted a breakdown of the additives used in the fracking process as published by EQT:
http://www.eqt.com/production/compositions.aspx

From their site:
EQT is one of Appalachia’s largest exploration and production companies, developing and implementing innovative drilling technology to effectively and efficiently tap into unconventional reservoirs, such as shale, tight sands, and coalbed methane.


More details from Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection:
http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/deputate/minres/oilgas/FractListing.pdf

...Hydrochloric Acid, Methanol, Ethylene Glycol, Propylene Glycol, "Proprietary Components", Propargyl Alcohol... I imagine the Citric Acid just keeps the well sites smelling lemony fresh... :D


I also quoted from a document prepared by the Public Education sub-committee of the Clinton County Natural Gas Task Force that explains the fracking process and provides some numbers about the process and the scale of development planned for Clinton County:
http://www.clintoncountypa.com/CC%20Natural%20Gas%20Task%20Force/Articles/8.26.10%20-%20Understanding%20the%20Marcellus%20Shale%20Play.PDF


Then the report last month from Associated Press writer Dave Caruso:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110103/ap_on_he_me/us_gas_drilling_frackwater_4

I tend to accept the point that the depths they are fracking are 5000-8000 down, so pretty far removed from the aquifiers that PA folks drink from. A really deep water well in PA would be only 400 ft. Most are much less than 200ft. And their wells are fed from ground level seepage (rain), not from great depths. And the concentrations of additives are tiny too.

But the brief on fracking from Clinton County pointed out that maybe 1/2 of the millions of gallons is burped back up and needs to be treated. They talk about re-use for other wells too watt can't be a bad thing.

But Caruso summarizes a number of "unfortunate events" that have happened already... and these are still early daze...

I tried to use the coal mining industry as an example of watt can go wrong with "resource extraction". These coal mining states have been spending huge amounts of money to fix problems that were created decades ago. They've been re-mining old mine sites to seal them off with caulkings... Part of the problem is that the industry is so old and was so unregulated years ago they first have to just find where these old mines are.

The tech is pretty cool. Thermal and electromagnetic imaging from helicopters that can "see" the acid plumes leaching out of old mine sites up to 1000 feet underground:
Acid-generating mine.jpg

But watt if there's a "problem" down the road with fracking, and the problem is 5000 deep instead of near the surface?

Cause PA folks rely on water wells so much they have a pretty active water well drilling industry. Nice to see those companies re-purposing themselves with Gov incentives to drill geothermal holes... It's an energy tech I feel a lot more comfortable about.

One more example of extraction gone wrong... a little closer to home as it involves batteries... the lead-acid sort that nobuddy around here talks about anymore but the gassers still use in the millions...

Say hello to Ira:
ira-rennert.jpg


Ira's a pretty sharp guy... done well for himself. With a net worth of over $6.5 billion he only ranks 144th on the Forbes list of the worlds billionaires, but still, not too shabby.

Ira holds the controlling interest in The Renco Group, Inc.
http://www.rencogroup.net/index.php

Renco is a pretty outstanding outfit... "environmentally aware" too:
Environmental Responsibility

A Commitment To Nature

As the owners of some of the world's largest mining, metals and manufacturing companies, The Renco Group has a vested stake in operating in an environmentally responsible manner. In fact, since 1990 Renco Group portfolio companies have spent in excess of $700 million on environmental improvement projects. For us, that sense of responsibility and the projects for which our companies devote capital goes far beyond complying with the mere letter of the law. It means constantly striving to achieve higher standards of environmental performance and developing innovative new technologies. It means developing recycling expertise in order to reduce the usage of scarce resources. It means taking lands that were mined by our companies or mined and abandoned by others and restoring them to a virtually natural state. It means maintaining an open dialogue with our neighbors in the communities in which our companies operate and being responsive to their needs and concerns. It means not just doing what is required, but doing what is right.

So yah, Renco is a holding company that owns a few other companies, like US Magnesium LLC (formerly known as MagCorp and ya can google them yourselves) but also the Doe Run Company:
http://www.doerun.com/

And they're a pretty caring, enviro-friendly bunch too:
Environmental Stewardship
Metal mining and processing provide the essential metals and minerals that make much of modern life possible. At Doe Run we are committed to maintaining safe air, land and water for our communities as we strive to meet or surpass regulatory standards regarding the environment. Doe Run has spent approximately $16 million annually on environmental management and improvement projects at its facilities during the past few years.We are actively engaged in environmental stewardship at all of our locations and facilities.

The "problem" is that they are in the lead business:
Who We Are
Based in St. Louis, The Doe Run Company is a privately held natural resources company and the largest integrated lead producer in the Western Hemisphere. Dedicated to environmentally responsible mineral and metal production, Doe Run operates the world's largest, single-site lead recycling facility, located in Missouri. The Doe Run Company and its subsidiaries deliver products and services necessary to provide power, protection and convenience. Doe Run has operations in Missouri, Washington and Arizona.

Company Backgrounder
The Doe Run Company, based in St. Louis, Missouri, is a natural resource company focused on metals mining, smelting, recycling and fabrication. Doe Run is the largest integrated lead producer in the Western Hemisphere and the third largest total lead producer in the world. Additionally, the company retrieves and recycles more than 150,000 tons of lead annually from manufactured products such as batteries and telephone cables. Doe Run produces zinc and copper, along with valuable by-products.

Doe Run is organized into four divisions in the United States and operates facilities in Missouri, Washington and Arizona.

Doe Run facilities feature advanced technology and produce a consistently pure product. Doe Run’s mills offer state-of-the-art automation to maximize the recovery of metals from ore, and its recycling facility is the most technologically advanced, environmentally sound and safest of its kind in the world.

Doe Run is the world's largest primary lead producer and the world's second-largest total lead producer. The company's product line includes chemical, copperized and caulking lead; a variety of lead-calcium alloys; and wrought strip. These products can be found in car batteries, computer screens and X-ray shields, among other products.

In their "2009 Sustainability Report" Doe Run reported:
After nearly 10 years of refinement, further review and monitoring in 2009 identified opportunities to create a program unequaled in the industry. These refinements were formally approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2010.

But when ya read the EPAs summary of their operations from last October it doesn't look so rosy:
http://www.epa.gov/compliance/resources/cases/civil/mm/doerun.html
(Washington, DC - October 08, 2010) Doe Run Resources Corp. of St. Louis, North America's largest lead producer, has agreed to spend approximately $65 million to correct violations of several environmental laws at 10 of its lead mining, milling and smelting facilities in southeast Missouri, the Justice Department, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources announced today. The settlement also requires the company to pay a $7 million civil penalty.

Seven million... hehe... Ira bought apartments on Park Avenue worth over $15 million each for his two daughters... It's been estimated that his home in the Hamptons is the most valuable home in the United States.

The real horror story is Iras company in Peru... In 1997 he bought a gov-owned lead mine in
La Oroya with promises to clean up the town which by 2007 The Blacksmith Institute listed as one of the worlds Top Ten worst ecological disaster areas (Chernobyl made the list too):
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1661031_1661028_1661020,00.html
In La Oroya, a mining town in the Peruvian Andes, 99% of children have blood levels that exceed acceptable limits, thanks to an American-owned smelter that has been polluting the city since 1922. The average lead level, according to a 1999 survey, was triple the WHO limit. Even after active emissions from the smelter are reduced, the expended lead will remain in La Oroya's soil for centuries — and there's currently no plan to clean it up.

Well there WAS a plan, but by 2006 Ira was backpedaling saying they needed more time, and the Peruvian gov kept giving him extensions...

At last report, Ira is now suing Peru for $800 million plus liability for a pending U.S. lawsuit on behalf of 35 lead-poisoned Peruvian children:
http://www.ips-dc.org/articles/peru_trade_deal_unravels

Anyway, enough about Ira...

And back to how cheap natural gas is as an energy source. Yah, I know it's cheap coming out of the pipes these daze, I am just not convinced we are paying for the real costs...yet.

Lock
 
Seems like every year there is a whole lot of hoopla over running out of oil. I've heard this same story almost every year since I was a kid (33 now).

Seems like it's just market manipulation to me. I'm a fan of alternative energy, but with the media constantly playing chicken little all the time it's no wonder people aren't interested in changing. Combine that with governments and businesses who seem to have the goal of impeding any kind of change from the status quo through patent buyouts and legislation.
 

Shell, Brazil's Cosan form $12 billion ethanol unit

SAO PAULO, Brazil (AFP) – Anglo-Dutch energy giant Shell and Brazilian sugar-production group Cosan said Monday they were forming one of the biggest joint ethanol fuel ventures in the world, with an estimated market value of $12 billion.

The new entity, to be called Raizen, will employ around 40,000 people and produce over 2.2 billion liters (580 million gallons) of ethanol per year to Brazilian and international markets, the two companies said in a statement. Raizen should be launched in the first half of this year, they said.

"Due to the size of its operations, Raizen will help sugar cane ethanol, a sustainable, clean and renewable source of energy, to consolidate itself worldwide and strengthen Brazil's position in the international biofuels trading business," said the venture's chief executive, Vasco Dias.
Raizen will have 23 mills able to crush 62 million tonnes of sugar cane per year to produce the ethanol. The mills will also output four million tonnes of sugar per year.

The venture will distribute some of the ethanol in 4,500 Esso service stations across Brazil that Consan owns, and through participation in distribution depots for aviation fuel in 54 airports. The statement said the new company would have approximately $1.6 billion in cash inflow brought to the table by Shell. "We want to be even bigger," Dias said. "We want to be recognized globally for our excellence in the development, production and marketing of sustainable energy." Raizen plans to finance its plans by tapping the market, probably through issuing corporate bonds.

"We are in contact with the rating agencies to obtain an evaluation. Inherited debt for the company is $2.5 billion, but that is considered 'comfortable' given the $1.6 billion to be brought in by Shell," Raizen's vice president in charge of finances, Luis Rapparini, said, according to Energia Hoje, a specialized website on Brazil's energy sector.

Europe and Asia are the main targets for ethanol exports, through Shell's established network of outlets. The European Commission gave the green light last month for the new venture to be formed. In the United States, Raizen aims to bolster lobbying by Brazilian sugar-growing companies to reduce or eliminate an import tariff on ethanol designed to protect US ethanol producers.

Brazil is the second-biggest producer of ethanol in the world, after the United States, and the biggest exporter of the biofuel. It sustains a large domestic market using ethanol through the sales of cars whose engines can take either gasoline, ethanol or a mix of the two.

With Brazil's economy growing strongly, pressure is building to consolidate a fractured ethanol sector, forming corporations around sugar mills that are often family owned.

Cosan, a publicly traded company, is the world's biggest ethanol company. It was founded and is controlled by the family of a Brazilian billionaire, Rubens Ometta, whose net worth is put at $2.1 billion, according to Forbes magazine. The company bought the Esso outlets in Brazil from US oil giant ExxonMobil in 2008. They will be rebranded with the Shell logo over the next three years, according to Ometta, the news website Globo reported.

It said Raizen will be the fifth biggest company with its headquarters in Brazil.
 
Fracking is just plain EVIL. You see a fracking prospector on you land - kill him.
Already frackin in your area MOVE or die from this or that cancer.
 
"you don't have to see which way the wind blows if you can drive a CNG honda civic, which gets 40mpg on 60 cent/g equivalent CNG. period."

If you think it is hard to find a public charging station...try to find a source of CNG!!

http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/locator/stations/
 
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