Hydraulic Fracturing Criticism Emerging
Posted by HCN on Thursday, September 12, 2013
Provided is a review of salient concerns of hydraulic fracturing, a process for extracting natural gas, also known by the names 'fracking' and 'fracing'.
Confirmed: Fracking practices to blame for Ohio earthquakes
Charles Q. Choi LiveScience
Wastewater from the controversial practice of fracking appears to be linked to all the earthquakes in a town in Ohio that had no known past quakes, research now reveals.
The practice of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, involves injecting water, sand and other materials under high pressures into a well to fracture rock. This opens up fissures that help oil and natural gas flow out more freely. This process generates wastewater that is often pumped underground as well, in order to get rid of it.
One of the most profitable areas for fracking lies over the geological formation known as the Marcellus Shale, which reaches deep underground from Ohio and West Virginia northeast into Pennsylvania and southern New York...
Youngstown quakes
Before January 2011, Youngstown, Ohio, which is located on the Marcellus Shale, had never experienced an earthquake, at least not since researchers began observations in 1776. However, in December 2010, the Northstar 1 injection well came online to pump wastewater from fracking projects in Pennsylvania into storage deep underground. In the year that followed, seismometers in and around Youngstown recorded 109 earthquakes, the strongest registering a magnitude-3.9 earthquake on Dec. 31, 2011. The well was shut down after the quake.
Scientists have known for decades that fracking and wastewater injection can trigger earthquakes. For instance, it appears linked with Oklahoma's strongest recorded quake in 2011, as well as a rash of more than 180 minor tremors in Texas between Oct. 30, 2008, and May 31, 2009.
The new investigation of the Youngstown earthquakes, detailed in the July issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters, reveals that their onset, end and even temporary dips in activity were apparently all tied to activity at the Northstar 1 well.
Full story and source: http://www.nbcnews.com/science/fracking-practices-blame-ohio-earthquakes-8C11073601
Sep. 4, 2013 at 3:54 PM ET
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Hydraulic fracturing experts discuss problems associated with process
The hydraulic fracturing debate made its way to Lubbock last week, with City Council District 1 representative Victor Hernandez raising concerns about leasing mineral rights to companies to ultimately use the land for the resource-extraction process.
Posted: March 12, 2012 - 12:22pm | Updated: March 13, 2012 - 12:26am
By TOMMY MAGELSSEN
AVALANCHE-JOURNAL
The hydraulic fracturing debate made its way to Lubbock last week, with City Council District 1 representative Victor Hernandez raising concerns about leasing mineral rights to companies to ultimately use the land for the resource-extraction process.
Hydraulic fracturing — commonly known as fracing or fracking — is the process of creating and expanding a fracture thousands of feet below the Earth’s surface to extract natural gas, oil and other substances.
The process uses water, generally mixed with a variety of proppants — used to keep the fracture open — and other chemicals to fracture the rock and extract resources.
“I’m really hesitant about using water for anything other than to sustain life, and fracking operations doesn’t meet that criteria in my book,” said Hernandez, the only council member who voted against the contract the March 6 meeting...
Ford, a Lubbock native and rancher, said he has no problem with fracking going on in West Texas.
He said the potential revenue oil and natural gas bring in, in comparison with its water consumption, dwarfs that of irrigation.
“But you can’t eat oil and gas, you can eat maize and wheat and corn, but we have this dilemma there that the water provides a lot of revenue for fracking and not as much in irrigation,” Ford said.
Links from fracking to contaminated water is also unfounded, Ford and Soliman reported.
The fracking process generally occurs between 6,000 and 12,000 feet below the Earth’s surface, Ford said, well beyond groundwater.
Both Soliman and Ford said contamination generally occurs, in isolated incidents, because of shoddy case construction at the top of the well.
“Potential environmental concerns on fracking up in the Panhandle, per se, would be spills from trucks bringing in the fracking material, just spills, surface spills or what we call the surface casing which goes about 100 feet below the drinking water aquifer and the cementing, so that’s all the shallow stuff,” Ford said. “That’s where the potential is for any contamination for drinking or even irrigation groundwater.”...
Soliman said fracturing is an extremely expensive process, the result of many hours of research.
Companies do not just poke holes in the ground; they want to get economic results, he said.
“If you are going to seek any kind of independence form foreign sources of oil, … you’ve got to produce that shale (from fracking natural gas). It’s going to be produced sooner or later, frankly.”
Full story and source: http://lubbockonline.com/local-news/2012-03-12/hydraulic-fracturing-experts-discuss-problems-associated-process#.UjHUQX-fjCY
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"Although the controversy with fracking, and shale gas, is new, the technology is quite old. It was first developed by well engineers after the Second World War - it helped to get to more hydrocarbons out from some reservoirs, even using the vertical wells that companies drilled at the time. What has changed over the last decade is that new drilling technology allows long horizontal wells to be drilled, for miles along the rock layer. That and the fact that energy prices have shot through the roof.
Horizontal wells mean that long lengths of the reservoir can be bought into production - so massively increasing the volume and rates of gas or oil that can be gotten out through fracking. And the fact that hydrocarbon prices have rocketed - and that gas has come to be seen, by some, as an attractive 'bridge fuel' in the transition to green energy - has meant that shale gas extraction has boomed of late.
That's particularly true in the US. Large areas of the country are underlain by thick shale deposits, including the Texas Barnett shale formation, and the Marcellus Shales stretching under New York, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. An outbreak of shale gas fever has pockmarked swathes of these areas with thousands of wells - and boosted shale gas production from 0.4 trillion cubic feet in 2000, to nearly 5 trillion cubic feet, just 9 years later.
But whilst gas companies have eyed plentiful new resources, which have ballooned to 860 trillion cubic feet in the US - and over 6,000 trillion cubic feet worldwide - many living near to hydraulic fracking wells have simultaneously watched their water quality plummet. The number of environmental problems for locals has multiplied worryingly, pushing the United States' EPA into conducting a thorough review of the whole industry.
Problems reported include flaming tap-water, due to methane contamination; leaks of fracking fluids into water-wells and aquifers; chemically-contaminated waste water spills into rivers; and even earthquakes. Fracking operations also use vast quantities of water - so worries about the drawing down of scarce water resources have been expressed in place like Texas.
These local problems are magnified by more global concerns - shale gas has been marketed as a relatively clean fuel, because the CO2 emissions from burning it are so much lower, than for fossil fuels like coal and petroleum. Many gas companies have put forward shale gas a clean 'bridge fuel', to help ease the move to a wind- and sun-powered future.
The problem is that gas is leaky - and shale gas may be doubly so. That matters because shale gas is mainly methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
From the time the well is drilled, methane is leaking into nearby rocks, and escaping to the surface; not all of it is captured at the well head. And gas pipes, taking the shale gas from wellhead to homes, are notoriously prone to escapes. That may put the carbon footprint of shale gas on a par with dirty coal.
Finally there are concerns over whether the whole 'shale gas revolution' has been blown out of proportion - with the gas industry exaggerating the potential to attract investors. Many wells fail to produce anything, and even the best wells show a dramatic decline after a year, requiring more and more wells to be drilled. Because shale gas is more expensive than conventional gas to produce, a collapse in gas prices could eventually prick the shale gas boom."
Source:
Hydraulic fracturing and shale gas
By Martin Leggett Email author - Sat, 16 Jul 2011 13:50:00 GMT
http://www.earthtimes.org/encyclopaedia/environmental-issues/hydraulic-fracturing-shale-gas/
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Upcoming event:
2013-09-24 Fractured Communities: Hydraulic Fracturing & Law in New York – Albany, NY
September 24, 2013 (Tue) 11:00 am
Albany Law School
80 New Scotland Ave, Albany, NY 12208
Experts in fracking, land use and the law will convene for “Fractured Communities: Hydraulic Fracturing and the Law in New York State” at Albany Law School on Sept. 24, 2013.
...“Fractured Communities: Hydraulic Fracturing and the Law in New York State” is free and open to the public. The event is organized by Albany Law Review and co-sponsored by the law school’s Government Law Center. For more information, contact (518) 445-3208 or ncrou@albanylaw.edu.
Full story, source, and further details: http://marcellusdrilling.com/2013/09/2013-09-24-fractured-communities-hydraulic-fracturing-law-in-new-york-albany-ny/
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Tags: hydraulic fracturing fracking fracing ny shale natural gas
