Fracking

[TeyshaBlue]

Odd how Mother Jones () can't be bothered to link the actual study. Of course that doesn't matter to moon bats like boutons who thinks what he's told to think.

[boutons_deux]

more proof that injecting fluid into earth causes earthquakes

SoCal geothermal power production causes earthquakes, study says

The geothermal power plants at Southern California’s Salton Sea don’t just produce electricity, they also trigger thousands of temblors not far from one of the West Coast’s most dangerous earthquake faults, a study says.

A study published online Thursday in the journal Science found that as production rose at the Imperial County geothermal field, so did the number of earthquakes. From 1981 through 2012, more than 10,000 earthquakes above magnitude 1.75 were recorded in the area.
“That group of earthquakes …. is connected to the production,” said Emily Brodsky, a UC Santa Cruz geophysicist and the paper’s lead author.

The largest quake during the three-decade study period was magnitude 5.1; the vast majority of quakes were small. But they are occurring about 12 miles from the southern end of the San Andreas fault, which seismologists predict will eventually rock the Southland with a devastating temblor.

Could the little earthquakes in the geothermal field trigger something bigger on the San Andreas?

“The big question at this point is what is the probability of jumping that gap and actually starting to interact with the San Andreas?” Brodsky said. “We don’t know the answer to that question.”

“It is plausible. Is it a certainty? No,” she added.

Geothermal power production started in the Salton Sea field in 1982 and includes one of the largest and hottest geothermal wells in the world. Plants extract super-heated water from thousands of feet beneath the earth’s surface and use it to produce steam that drives turbines to generate electricity. The remaining brine is then injected back into the ground.

It’s been known for decades that injecting fluids into the earth can lead to seismic activity. Previous studies have linked earthquakes to geothermal production.


http://touch.latimes.com/#section/17.../p2p-76635813/

[boutons_deux]

lol simpleton. You have no idea what that study said. Lol RSS fellator.

TB all-knowing defender of fracking at all costs. It's perfectly harmless, everywhere.

[TeyshaBlue]

lol moonbat straw man

Pathetic...which is what we expect from you.

[boutons_deux]

Injection Wells Spawn Powerful Earthquakes


Such man-made earthquakes are not rare at all, and some come quickly after injection of wastewater, as in quiescent Youngstown, Ohio, which endured a magnitude 4.0quake after wastewater injection started at a nearby disposal well. The shaking has not recurred since pumping stopped.


That such wastewater injection triggers quakes comes as no surprise. Evidence for them began in the 1960s, when the weapon–making Rocky Mountain Arsenal near Denver attempted to dispose of hazardous chemicals by pumping the liquid underground. During four years of such disposal, the pumping triggered 16 earthquakes, even after the injection stopped.

And the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) deliberately triggered quakes in the Rangely oil field in northwestern Colorado to determine what types of underground pressures might set off temblors.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...SA_DD_20130712

[TeyshaBlue]

lol Spawn. If by spawn the author means there's a correlation, then ok. But, the facts are far from established in this study.

"Study co-author Geoffrey Abers of Columbia University said that "there's something important about getting unexpectedly large earthquakes out of small systems that we have discovered here, " adding that "the risk of humans inducing large earthquakes from even small injection activities is probably higher" than had been believed.
An increase in seismic events has been noted across the US "midcontinent"
But seismologist Austin Holland of the Oklahoma Geological Survey said while the study showed a potential link between the earthquake and wastewater injection, "it is still the opinion of those at the Oklahoma Geological Survey that these earthquakes could be naturally occurring"."

[boutons_deux]

"Oklahoma Geological Survey"

there's an unbiased source NOT in BigOil's pocket, sorta like TX Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, or the Texas State Board of Education.

[TeyshaBlue]

lol simpleton

That came from your link, moron.

[boutons_deux]

Ninety Percent of Pennsylvanians Want Fracking Companies to Reveal Toxic Chemicals

Pennsylvanians want to put a moratorium on fracking.

And it’s not just a few thousand, but a majority of the state’s residents.

Pennsylvania lies in the heart of the Marcellus Shale, possibly the most productive shale for gas in the country.

A joint University of Michigan/Muhlenberg College study reveals that only 49 percent of Pennsylvanians support shale gas extraction and 58 percent of all Pennsylvanians want the state to order “time out” until the health and environmental effects of fracking can be fully analyzed. That same study revealed that 60 percent of Pennsylvanians believe fracking poses a major risk to ground water resources, only 28 percent disagree; 12 percent have no opinion.

Pe ions with more than 100,000 signatures requesting a moratorium were delivered to Gov. Tom Corbett in April. As is typical for the man who willingly accepted more than $1.8 million in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry, it didn’t matter.

High-volume hydraulic horizontal fracturing, better known as fracking, requires per well three to nine million gallons of fresh water, about 10,000 tons of silica sand, and about 100,000 gallons of a lubricant mixture that the drilling companies won’t reveal the contents. However, a U.S. House of Representatives study suggests that of about 750 chemicals that could be used in that solution—every well and every company uses a different mixture—about 650 are toxic or known carcinogens. That mixture is forced into the earth, past the aquifers that provide drinking water, and then is brought up and placed into plastic-liner storage bins, where it is eventually loaded into trucks that travel throughout Pennsylvania, occasionally leaking onto the roads, and usually into Ohio, where millions of gallons of the fluids are forced back into the earth. Scientific evidence now links those deep injection wells to earthquakes. Scientists have also shown health and environmental effects from fracking, and that methane, an explosive greenhouse gas extracted from the earth, has added to the problems of climate change.

http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/c...oxic-chemicals

[boutons_deux]

Former Mobil VP Warns of Fracking and Climate Change

Now what's happened is that the prospect of finding more of those conventional reservoirs, particularly on land and in the places that have been heavily explored like the US and Europe and the Middle East just is very, very small. And the companies have pretty much acknowledged that. All of them talk about the need to go to either non-conventional shale or tight sand drilling or to go into deeper and deeper waters or to go into really hostile Arctic regions and possibly Antarctic regions.

Methane release: fracking the planet's future

So when you talked about "the race for what's left," that's what's going on. Both the horizontal drilling and fracturing have been around for a long time. The industry will tell you this over and over again - they've been around for 60 years, things like that. That is correct. What's different is the volume of fracking fluids and the volume of flow-back that occurs in these wells. It is 50 to 100 times more than what was used in the conventional wells.

The other [difference] is that the rock above the target zone is not necessarily impervious the way it was in the conventional wells. And to me that last point is at least as big as the volume. The industry will tell you that the mile or two between the zone that's being fracked is not going to let anything come up.

But there are already cases where the methane gas has made it up into the aquifers and atmosphere. Sometimes through old well bores, sometimes through natural fissures in the rock. What we don't know is just how much gas is going to come up over time. It's a point most people haven't gotten. It's not just what's happening today. We're opening up channels for the gas to creep up to the surface and into the atmosphere. And methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas in the short term - less than 100 years - than carbon dioxide.

LA: I think the main question is how fast can these movements educate enough people about the dangers of fracking and its impact on global warming. It will take masses of people demanding action from politicians to offset the huge amount of money that the industry is using to influence lawmakers, a world-scale version of those standing-room-only town meetings. Something has to wake up the general public. It will either be education from the environmental movements or some kind of climate disaster that no one can ignore.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/1...climate-change

[boutons_deux]

Emissions From North Dakota Flaring Equivalent To One Million Cars Per Year



A new report released today by the investor group Ceres found that the unconventional oil boom in North Dakota has led to a dramatic increase in the amount of natural gas that is intentionally burned off, or flared, carrying major economic and environmental consequences. In 2012 alone, flaring resulted in the loss of approximately $1 billion in fuel and greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to adding nearly one million cars to the road.

According to Ceres, nearly 30 percent of North Dakota gas is currently being flared each month as a byproduct of oil production — double the volume of just two years ago. This is due to the fact that at current market rates, oil is approximately 30 times more valuable than natural gas. Therefore, as companies rush to extract oil from the Bakken shale field and cash in on the high price of crude, they have little economic incentive to invest in the infrastructure necessary to capture the gas that bubbles up alongside the oil. So the gas is treated as waste and burned.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/201...cars-per-year/

EPA must fine these mofos.

[boutons_deux]

transcript not available yet

Pa. Landowners Feel Cheated By Royalty Payments From Fracking

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=206728504

Chesapeake is a bag company, among others.

PA judges say "royalty" not defined so BigGas can deduct fees from the royalties for damn near anything, leaving the landowners with $0 or no checks at all.

[scroteface]

yeah we stopped getting that good money a long time ago. just thugs being thugs tbh, the worst part is the waste thats going on that should last forever they're short sighted and only care about themselves here and now.

[boutons_deux]

Obvious how this movie ends.

The Na'vi gonna lose.

[CosmicCowboy]

Natural gas prices crash, rpyalty payments drop. What a surprise. There is a huge glut of natural gas in the US right now.

[boutons_deux]

Natural gas prices crash, rpyalty payments drop. What a surprise. There is a huge glut of natural gas in the US right now.

and the hope is that LNG exports, corporations exporting America's limited, natural resources, will push the price up to around $6+.

fracking everywhere willy nilly has proved to be extremely stupid corporate behavior. Many more wells, and gas than pipelines to deliver the gas, so they waste the gas they don't let escape as flares. ing brilliant gas cowboys.

[boutons_deux]

Internal EPA report highlights disputes over fracking and well water

WASHINGTON — One year ago, the Environmental Protection Agency finished testing drinking water in Dimock, Pa., after years of complaints by residents who suspected that nearby natural gas production had fouled their wells. The EPA said that for nearly all the 64 homes whose wells it sampled, the water was safe to drink.


Yet as the regulator moved to close its investigation, the staff at the mid-Atlantic EPA office in Philadelphia, which had been sampling the Dimock water, argued for continuing the assessment


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,4847442.story

EPA field officials know fracking is screwing up water, but EPA HQ and lobbyists shut them down.

[boutons_deux]

can't find the NPR/TPR link, but TX has de-paved 83 miles of road, tore up the blacktop replace with gravel, owned by taxpayers, destroyed by fracking traffic and reduced the speed limit from 70 to 30 mph. BigGas doesn't pay for its destruction.

[Halberto]

Emissions From North Dakota Flaring Equivalent To One Million Cars Per Year



A new report released today by the investor group Ceres found that the unconventional oil boom in North Dakota has led to a dramatic increase in the amount of natural gas that is intentionally burned off, or flared, carrying major economic and environmental consequences. In 2012 alone, flaring resulted in the loss of approximately $1 billion in fuel and greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to adding nearly one million cars to the road.

According to Ceres, nearly 30 percent of North Dakota gas is currently being flared each month as a byproduct of oil production — double the volume of just two years ago. This is due to the fact that at current market rates, oil is approximately 30 times more valuable than natural gas. Therefore, as companies rush to extract oil from the Bakken shale field and cash in on the high price of crude, they have little economic incentive to invest in the infrastructure necessary to capture the gas that bubbles up alongside the oil. So the gas is treated as waste and burned.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/201...cars-per-year/

EPA must fine these mofos.

Your naive point of view is exposed again.

Have you ever been on an oil rig at night, or ever at all?

The derrick lights the sky up much more than the PULSING flame of UNUSABLE gas being burned off. You think these rig hands work in the dark? Oh, and it's only burned off while the rig is in the drilling phase. Once it's completed the gas is captured and sold.



Something tells me your brain will ignore this truth, like a liberal version of Fox News.

[boutons_deux]

Your naive point of view is exposed again.

Have you ever been on an oil rig at night, or ever at all?

The derrick lights the sky up much more than the PULSING flame of UNUSABLE gas being burned off. You think these rig hands work in the dark? Oh, and it's only burned off while the rig is in the drilling phase. Once it's completed the gas is captured and sold.

Something tells me your brain will ignore this truth, like a liberal version of Fox News.

you're the ignorant version of halberto

the article claims 30% of the gas is flared, do you dispute that?

something like 50% of the gas wells have been shut since 2011

there's not nearly enough pipelines to get the gas to market

and the price has collapsed so the producers are keeping the gas in the ground until prices rise

etc, etc, etc.

[Halberto]

I don't know why I bother with you. You're the avante of the politcal forum

[Halberto]

For those that care to listen to my in-the-field knowledge, if the flares were big enough to light the sky up, or emit enough light pollution comparable to a street lamp, it would be worth their time and money to find a means to transport it. Something about their figures don't add up.... bad math for an agenda. This picture proves it.

Our wells are spaced out much farther than these bakken wells, and also have a high OGR (oil to gas ratio). We built pipelines for the gas.

This guy found an article he likes and refuses to listen to any other arguments.

[Th'Pusher]

For those that care to listen to my in-the-field knowledge, if the flares were big enough to light the sky up, or emit enough light pollution comparable to a street lamp, it would be worth their time and money to find a means to transport it. Something about their figures don't add up.... bad math for an agenda. This picture proves it.

Our wells are spaced out much farther than these bakken wells, and also have a high OGR (oil to gas ratio). We built pipelines for the gas.

This guy found an article he likes and refuses to listen to any other arguments.

So why aren't we seeing these same light clusters in the Gulf of Mexico where oil rigs are abundant? Rig clusters not tight enough?

[Halberto]

So why aren't we seeing these same light clusters in the Gulf of Mexico where oil rigs are abundant? Rig clusters not tight enough?

Offshore activity is an area where I'm not very knowledgeable, but I assume the activity is pretty limited in comparison to onshore. I don't know much about light pollution either, but I'd say that's a fair assessment.

[boutons_deux]

The economics of flaring

Two economic factors explain why oil producers sometimes flare associated gas rather than using it or selling it.
One is the high cost of bringing the gas to market. No company would drill a gas well without pipeline access, but oil wells are a different matter. Although an oil well can produce a considerable amount of associated gas, it still cons utes a relatively small share of the total value of the energy produced. It is often worth drilling for the oil alone even if the gas is wasted. In the past, much of the world’s flaring went on in remote locations with limited access to gas pipelines, especially Siberia and the Niger Delta. North Dakota has now joined that group of productive but remote oil fields without adequate access to gas pipelines.

The other factor that enters into the decision to flare is the current low price of gas, brought about by the fracking revolution. Whether it is worth hooking up to the pipeline network over any given distance depends, in turn, on how much the gas is worth. Recently gas prices in the United States have been bumping along near record lows. As a recent report from OIlPrice.com puts it, “Natural gas is no longer a good business to be in; there are too many players, too many wells and no ready demand sources to soak up the surplus.” If things have gotten to the point where it isn’t even worth sinking a gas well, it is easy to see how far from economical it can be to market the associated gas from an oil well.

- See more at: http://www.economonitor.com/dolaneco....NMbyzF2f.dpuf