US Energy Chief Doesn't Favor Ban on 'Fracking' for Gas

[phantom power]

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Friday he would not favor a ban on "fracking," a now-common drilling method that XTO Energy (XTO) and other natural-gas companies use to produce gas from hard shale-rock formations that have recently become a major source of natural gas.

Critics contend the practice can cause pollution, especially in drinking water. The industry rejects that charge.

"I think it can be done responsibly, and the and other agencies will be looking to ensure it's done safely and responsibly," Chu said. "If can be extracted in an environmentally safe way, then why would you want to ban it?"

Legislation in the House and Senate would require the EPA to regulate fracking under the Safe Water Drinking Act of 1974. It would also require disclosure to the public of the chemicals used in fracking fluid that is injected into the ground to help companies access natural gas.

ExxonMobil's merger agreement with XTO contains language allowing Exxon to terminate the $31 billion deal if lawmakers make fracking illegal or "commercially impracticable."

http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp?a_id=85864&hmpn=1

[bread_and_roses]

1. Please, please at least regulate under EPA

I am in a beautiful area likely to be "fracked" soon....I am in horror that we would even consider defacing our lovely landscape and polluting our precious water....

TELL ME STEVEN CHU WHEN HAVE NOT THE CORPS LIED AND LIED TO US ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL "SAFETY"???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Sorry about the screaming but I am in a state about this. Short term profit for landowners who can't think beyond their current dire straits and long-term destruction of our most precious resources. What a bargain.

[wtmusic]

2. At the very least

they need to disclose what chemicals they are using. This is insane.

[TxRider]

3. I don't see a problem with fracking, I haven't seen it cause issues.

It's been done since the 40's and was done all around where I grew up.

With hydraulics and explosives both.

The issue I have seen are explosive fracking killing old water wells with rusted out steel casings, it did this to mine and almost all those around me when they fracked one about two blocks away. No pollution, it just disturbed the 30-40 year old iron well pipe that was well past it's expiration date already anyway.

The real issues I have seen are from salt water disposal into old wells and cavities, especially in older well heads and casings that are leaky under pressure. I have seen it leak out and contaminate a water table for miles around.

I worked on water wells for about 7 years when I was younger, and could map the spread of brine in the water table on a map as it spread over the years for about 20-30 miles in an area around a specific very old oil field where I assume it was coming from. From the strongest point of solid brine salty as sea water right across the road from that oil field, to watching it creep miles per year up to 30 miles away by the time I left that job.

Strangely enough it didn't have any effect on the water tables above or below it at least that I know of. So people went to either deeper or shallower water wells as it spread. But the table it did ruin was the most common at around 120ft of depth. The alternative was 30ft, which was heavy in iron content, or ~500ft, which was a lot more expensive to reach.

When I left that job and area, there was talk of a class action suit, I informed many people where it was coming from and what was happening when their water well turned to brine and they had to spend thousands on a new well. I also kept track of who was most angered by it and talking about action and gave them each others names.

[kristopher]

4. Personal anecdotal experience is valuable, but...

It isn't a sound basis to evaluate the impact of either this technology as a whole or of this technology as it is currently being practiced.

The increase in the number of wells using this approach is nothing short of staggering. We need natural gas, but after 8 years of Bush I have to believe there is a great deal of potential for profit-driven, piss-poor practices to be plaguing the production priorities.
There were 452,000 producing wells as of 2007. Who is policing the technologies being used?

ETA: I don't support a ban, but I do support strict oversight.

[TxRider]

5. Yeah well...

You tend to get a little knowledge growing up down the road from the big fracking company.

As I understand it this is done through casing perforations thousands of feet below ground. Not a lot of possibility of pollution.

The anecdotal part is that it was fracking that well close to me that killed the water well, but when everyone's 30 year old well within a 1/2 mile radius old casing fails the same week, correlations tend to point to a cause, when newer wells and PVC wells didn't fail.

Policing is an issue, but more of an issue in other areas rather than fracking IMO. It's the rest of the process that has more dangerous possibilities for pollution etc. What they pump down the hole to push out gas and oil is a threat, and what they do with what they pump out and separate from the gas and oil.

There's nothing anecdotal about that, the pollution I saw was very real, and when you taste oily salt water from wells like that there's only one place it could be coming from, a salt water disposal well. Typically an old abandoned well they pump the waste brine down from a gas well to get rid of it, as many wells put out as much brine as they do gas.

This is also going to be more of a problem as oil prices rise, old wells are salvaged, and these techniques are used on 40 year old wells, and brine is pumped into wells that age to dispose of it. Commonly called a salt water disposal well, but what it is is simply an old well that has no oil or gas, and is convenient and cheap to pump the brine into, but could have a rusted out casing at aquifer depths allowing the brine to be pumped directly out into aquifers, which was the case where I was working.

I don't see Bush as having anything to do with it really. They were fracking wells before he was born, and will be after he's dead.

[kristopher]

6. There is a great deal of opportunity for groundwater contamination.

Do you understand the basic process and its potential interaction with the underground geography? Minerals present (including toxic ones) are sometimes dissolved by the mixture being injected. The pressure causes the fluids to migrate and groundwater contamination is a real possibility. The potential toxicity is why recovered liquids are required to be kept in holding pits.
http://www.propublica.org/special/hydraulic-fracturing-national

The Bush era saw a total lack of emphasis on policing policies designed to make the process safer. Things such as inadequate holding pits and unknown chemicals being in the injected mixture are well documented by environmental and news organizations.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Fracking

Think about it, there are 450,000 natural gas wells out there. If 30% of them are using fracking to recover gas (and I'm sure it's more), that's 135,000 wells with their holding pits and and untold amount of injection mixture to be kept in compliance with best environmental practices. Do you really think that was even on the Bush list of things to pay attention to?

[TxRider]

7. Yes

But the fracking is done at 5-6000 feet of depth is a long way to migrate through strata, the fractures do not run a mile from the casing and pressures are already very high at the depth. Around where I grew up they used high explosives followed by hydraulics to fracture in a well. Sometimes they would even plug the casing pull up a bit and do it again to perforate the casing and fracture strata.

And in my experience as I said pit's are not the issue and disappear once drilling is done and the well is producing.

After that the water and whatever else is in it is separated off in vessels, and trucked to a salt water disposal well and pumped into the ground supposedly into a depleted well cavity. Meaning pumped down into an old abandoned well that may or may not leak.

I understand a risk of contamination with fracking shallower wells like a coalbed methane well at 300-1000 feet or so in the same or close to a strata that could be used for drinking water, but that's a different issue than a 5-6000 foot shale well with a mile of stratas between it and a water table.

I'm thinking people are misunderstanding the issue, in that 90% or so of oil and gas well get perforated and fracked, and the real issue is much shallower coalbed methane wells and using the process for them. As well as disposal of the water pumped out of the well, which will be more than the gas, contaminated, likely saline, and can deplete aquifers.

I didn't see any different treatment by Bush than any other administration.

Should it be regulated better, you bet it should. All of it, oil, gas and especially coalbed methane wells.

The pits should be regulated, the trucks should be regulated, the disposal should be tightly tracked and regulated, and they shouldn't be able to just dump it in an old abandoned well.

[kristopher]

8. Well, at least we agree on the fact that more stringent oversight is required...

I'd recommend this video. It relies on some emotionalism, and makes a number of arguments based on biases against corporations, but it shows with total clarity that your vision of the technology is missing something.

I suspect that the recently initiated investigation into the process by the EPA is going to reveal some pretty bad practices.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/10/13-5

[TxRider]

9. I suspect

That your link is largely dealing with coalbed methane wells.

http://www.energyjustice.net/naturalgas/cbm/

Quite different than the shale wells around here, or oil and gas wells at deeper depths.

I wouldn't be against examining a ban on coalbed methane wells altogether, much less using deep well fracking methods in them.