Fracking

[Ross]

I was asked about starting  a thread about fracking so here we go.

This should get the ball rolling.

Democracy for America

Last month we challenged T. Boone Pickens to prove his claim that fracking is safe by disclosing the chemicals he used while "personally fracking over 3,000" wells.

He still hasn't disclosed what chemicals are used, but his spokesman responded, "Boone has publicly supported the disclosure of chemicals used in fracking operations."

Well, if that's the case, why doesn't he just tell us what chemicals he uses?

Fracking is a risky process to extract oil and gas that uses hundreds of proprietary chemicals and has been reported to release radioactive elements. Thanks to Dick Cheney's Halliburton loophole, oil companies are largely unregulated and don't even have to disclose the hundreds of chemicals they use to frack.

T. Boone and the oil companies claim fracking is safe, but for the millions of Americans who rely on drinking water that could be contaminated with fracking chemicals, their claim isn't enough. We need proof.

Add your name now and tell T. Boone that he needs to back up his claim and disclose the chemicals.
http://www.democracyforamerica.com/activities/520?akid=1045.1774740.2hkPwW&rd=1&t=2

Clearly T. Boone Pickens is more concerned about his bottom line than keeping America's drinking water safe. He'll say anything to convince the public and Congress that fracking is harmless. Call T. Boone's bluff.


Thanks for everything you do.

- Kaili

Kaili Lambe, Political Campaign Manager
Democracy for America

[Ross]

We are lookig for pros and cons.

[redcliffsw]

Doesn't seem to be anything too hazardous about fracking.

Video

[2guns]

I'm not interested in starting a thread on fracking

[Catwoman]

LOL...It's Ross's American right to change his mind...Go, Ross!! 

[Warph]

The Fracking Song:

A clusterfrack of Fracking:

[sixdogsmom]

FYI ya'll, I asked Ross to start this thread since it seemed to me to be a good topic of discussion. We have already seen a couple of good vids, and had a lot of personal slamming for Ross. I apologise Ross, that is not what I expected to happen on this thread. I thought the forum community might share info on what they thought fracking was exactly, and what are the pros and cons. Again, I am sorry Ross, I should have known better.  BTW folks those were a couple of interesting vids!

[Ross]

FYI ya'll, I asked Ross to start this thread since it seemed to me to be a good topic of discussion. We have already seen a couple of good vids, and had a lot of personal slamming for Ross. I apologise Ross, that is not what I expected to happen on this thread. I thought the forum community might share info on what they thought fracking was exactly, and what are the pros and cons. Again, I am sorry Ross, I should have known better.  BTW folks those were a couple of interesting vids!

I am very happy to have started this thread for you.
And I am not the least bit offended by the remarks.
Thanks for sticking up for me.
There is something to be learned here.

[Warph]

Good post Ross and Six.  A little something everyone should know about "Fracking":

Fracking Up Our Water Supply
By Laurie Fendrich

http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/fracking-up-our-water-supply/32719

Anybody reading this post ever seen Gasland, Josh Fox's movie about a kind of drilling called high-volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF)—frequently shortened to "fracking"? Hydraulic fracking produces what energy giants like Halliburton will tell you is the answer to all our energy problems—clean natural gas.  Gasland tells a different story. Watching it requires a strong stomach.

Burning natural gas may be cleaner than burning coal, but the back-story to getting it is filthy. Consuming billions of gallons of clean water that's then mixed together with toxic chemicals, (the energy companies, citing the need to protect company secrets, won't release the full list of the chemicals they use; how do benzine and toluene sound, for starters?), hydrofracking requires drilling through deep aquifers in order to retrieve natural gas that's trapped inside the shale lying even deeper below. Right now, there are fracking drill sites all over such states as Colorado, Wyoming, and Pennsylvania, with stories of the brutal pollution of rivers, lakes, and streams only now beginning to surface. A battle is raging in upstate New York between those who see a buck to be made, and want drilling to start yesterday, and those who suspect that any bucks to be made will go to a select few and everybody else will be stuck with a mess.

A byproduct of fracking—aside from huge industrial drilling sites rising up smack in the middle of what previously were pristine rural areas, hundreds of huge trucks rumbling along country roads, maintained by county taxpayers, 24 hours a day, toxic air pollution near the drilling sites, and general air pollution caused by all those rumbling trucks—is a staggering problem that simply has no solution: Fracking produces billions of gallons of wastewater with no means of disposing of it that anyone, anywhere, can say is safe.

Even more frightening is the possibility that fracking will contaminate not merely a few luckless individual homeowners' water (this has already happened, in hundreds of cases), but of rendering whole aquifers useless. The risk isn't confined to people living in faraway places. Pittsburgh banned hydrofracking within its city limits after the water in the Monongahela River became too polluted to drink. New York City's water supply—which currently is so clean it needs no filtration—comes directly from the Catskills—an upstate mountain region that sits solidly on part of the Marcellus Shale, with its vast reserve of natural gas. One big fracking accident—no, one minor accident—and the drinking water for 9 million people will be imperiled.

It's taken a while for The New York Times to catch up with the hydrofracking controversy, but today they did. Whether today's article proves to be a game-changer on the issue, I don't know. All I know is that energy companies are on the warpath, and that they lie. Hydrofracking for natural gas imperils what will soon become the most sought-after resource in the 21st century: Water.

Note: I blogged on this issue back in November. Nothing I have read since then has changed my opinion on the matter:
http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/theres-gold-in-them-thar-marcellus-shales/28905

[Janet Harrington]

My husband is an oil field pumper. I asked him how fracking is done. He says that there is a huge pump that is used. A huge hose is put into the hole. Then sand, a little salt, and a little bit of some kind of chemical is used to blast into the hole. At least, that's what I got out of the answer to my question. He didn't know what kind of chemical is used.