Tag: Fracking

Texas: Are You Fracking Kidding Me?

I have found a few articles in the last couple of days that leads me to believe that Texans elect the most batcrap crazies in the state.

All the uproar about fracking and the damage it could possibly do has been all over the tube for a couple of years…..we have minor earthquakes, rotten water and pollution…..the big debate is what to do about fracking….is it really worth the dangers it could impose?

It appears that Texas has found a way to settle the debate……..

Texas moved Monday to ban its own cities from imposing prohibitions on hydraulic fracturing and other potentially environmentally harmful oil and natural gas drilling activities within their boundaries – a major victory for industry groups and top conservatives who have decried rampant local “overregulation.”

The bill last month overwhelmingly cleared the House, which  Republicans control by a 2-to-1 margin, and passed the GOP-dominated Senate almost as easily Monday – sending it to Gov. Greg Abbott, who is expected to sign it into law.

More from CBS Houston

To all my readers and followers from Texas…..I apologize if it appears I am picking on Texas…..but I still cannot get over all the BATCRAP  CRAZY stuff you guys are doing…….

Hopefully you can find a cure for the condition……..if you do please4 pass it on….I live in Mississippi and we are pretty much trying to out batcrap crazy Texas……

What The Frack Is Going On?

Since the “drill baby drill” people have passed on to the new wave of “exploration”….fracking…..there has been many reports that tell of a disaster in the making and just as many people coming out of the woodwork to defend this type of oil search……we all have heard the stories about the methane leaks, the pollution problems, and now it is earthquakes…….

Earthquakes in Oklahoma are up more than a hundredfold in recent years, and a new study spies a pretty clear link between the shaking and the fracking that has given the state’s economy a huge boost. Researchers took a close look at four specific sites where wastewater from oil and gas extraction was injected into the ground and found that the process could be linked to swarms of quakes in areas up to 20 miles away from the sites, reports the BBC. The four wells examined have been pumping four million barrels of water a month to a depth of around two miles underground. At one site linked to the wells, a small town called Jones, there have been more 2,500 earthquakes greater than magnitude 3.0 since 2008—a fifth of the total in the central and western US during that period.

“It really is unprecedented to have this many earthquakes over a broad region like this,” a study co-author tells Scientific American, explaining that wastewater injection can cause quakes by sending out waves of fluid pressure, causing faults miles away to slip. “Most big sequences of earthquakes that we see are either a main shock and a lot of aftershocks or it might be right at the middle of a volcano in a volcanic system or geothermal system. So you might see little swarms but nothing really this distributed and this persistent,” he says. (In Texas, several small towns troubled by quakes are considering banning fracking.)

The truly sad part of this tale is that few seem to care about the consequences of this type of extraction…….this is until something goes horribly wrong and then……..predictably it will be all Obama’s fault.

A Great Fracking Story!

By now we all have heard the oil boom going on in North and South Dakota….that is has created many, many jobs and the economy is well past the recession in these areas……most of this windfall oil boom comes from oil sands and that means FRACKING!

Is this really the feel good story for the economy that the media and oil companies want?  I mean so far it has been fairly incident free….or has it?

(Newser) – Oil spills usually make for big news—except in North Dakota, where officials have kept mum about hundreds of leaks involving thousands of barrels of oil, Grist reports. About 750 “oil field incidents” have occurred there since January of last year, according to records obtained by the AP, and one massive 20,600-barrel spill was hushed up for nearly two weeks in September. “That’s news to us,” said the head of a pro-environment group in North Dakota. “The public should really know about these”

Like other oil-producing states, North Dakota isn’t legally obliged to tell people about oil spills. But the state produces millions of barrels a day and approved some 2,500 miles of new pipelines last year, so spills may be an increasing risk to farmland and water. Now exposed, state officials are contemplating a website that will inform the public of at least some spills. But a wheat farmer said he also wants to see oil companies and regulators held accountable: “Right now, you don’t know if there is a spill unless you find it yourself,” he said.

Oh boy…..yes we have a problem today….just no one wants the rest of the country to know just how bad it is…….just Fracking great, right?  It seems the more transparent the technique becomes the more problems we see……Fracking is NOT the answer, my friends!

You Are Fracking Kidding Me?

We hear so much these days about the oil extraction technique, Fracking, is a common term…….Depending on what news outlet you are a fan of…..we NEVER get both sides of the controversy at the same time….instead we get one side or the other and NO one actually works off the same data to make their points….instead they pay some think tank to come up with a position that supports whichever side you fall down on……

To make an informed decision on whether to support or oppose the issue we need info…..

(Newser) – For as big a role as fracking plays in US energy production, the national conversation about it is sadly lacking, writes Gretchen Goldman at LiveScience. For that, blame the companies involved in the hunt for natural gas—along with inept government agencies, writes Goldman, an environmental engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists. Companies have “fended off citizens with silence,” she writes. “They say little about the technological practices they use, including information about the chemicals they inject into the earth and the wastewater that comes back.”

Meanwhile, state and federal agencies “have been asleep at the switch,” unable to keep up with industry advances and proper regulations. All this is not to say that fracking is evil—some communities might be perfectly willing to accept higher risks for the payoff. But the point is that the entire debate needs to get better so people can make informed choices, writes Goldman. “Science is like a trusty flashlight in these contentious debates,” she writes. “Let’s let it illuminate our path, no matter which road we take.” Click for her full column, or for a “toolkit” of information for citizens from the UCS.

To me it sounds like a great way to separate the oil from the sand……but it also sounds like there are more problems with the system that solutions for our oil consumption.  Until we have a meeting of both sides and hear both sides using the same data…there is NO way that an informed opinioon can be made….all we are doing is regurgitating talking points and slogans…..not the truth.

Just Fracking Great!

I do not normally write on the environment much for it is one of those issues that little info goes a long way…..few people want to face the fact that our environment is in trouble…..which is okay with me for I will be long dead by the time it all goes to crap and will not effect me at all…

There has been a running debate on the use of fracking to expel low quality oil from sand…..some say it will save the Us and others say that it will be our salvation….salvation from what they are not so clear but it will save us…..from ourselves I am guessing…….there are lots of sources of contention over the practice so I thought I would add one more……

(Newser) – Add this to ongoing debate about the merits and potential dangers of fracking: A Duke study uncovered high levels of radioactivity in water and sediment downstream from a fracking treatment plant in Pennsylvania, reports LiveScience. The researchers discovered the unexpected levels of radium in a creek near the Josephine Brine Treatment Facility. While radium is a naturally occurring radioactive metal, levels were 200 times higher than those found upstream of the plant, reports USA Today.

“We were surprised by the magnitude of radioactivity,” says a co-author of the study published in Environmental Science & Technology. He called for more such sites to be investigated. Wastewater treatment plants can remove most of the radioactivity but not all, say the researchers, who traced the water in their study back to the state’s large Marcellus Shale Formation. (Click to read about a Department of Energy study from earlier this year that found no dangers to drinking water near fracking sites. The fracking boom, meanwhile, is helping the US overtake Russia as the world’s largest energy producer.)

No matter what you think…I just do not see the advantage of injecting high pressure fluid into the earth’s crust and not expect some sort of natural reaction to the practice……we will eventually see just how good or bad the system is in the near future…….thoughts?