Everything you ever needed to know about fracking;
Anti-fracking claims may be twists on reality – for example, that a legislative loophole makes fracking exempt from the America’s Safe Drinking Water Act, when really this federal legislation never regulated fracking because it is a state concern. Then there’s the completely absurd, such as the idea that frac operators are allowed to and regularly do inject frac fluids directly into underground water supplies.
We decided to set the record straight by using facts, not playing on emotion like many of the frac-tivists do. It’s important because unconventional oil and gas constitute an increasingly pivotal part of the world’s energy scene. In the United States, where shale gas abounds but imported energy rules the day, this is especially true.
h/t Adrian
Fracking is simply such a non-issue. It happens thousands of times a year in Alberta with no perceivable effect. No bad drinking water and no earthquakes. It is simply more Luddite propaganda.
No doubt mistakes are made and some claims are valid. There is a regulatory process to deal with legitimate claims.
The bigger issue is groups with agendas who seize on every incident that makes the news then twist and cherry pick facts to further their agenda. This problem goes way beyond fracking.
Fraccing….Hmmmm, out in Alta, Montana, N D., and Sask…many OLD water wells (pre 1950) have has gas and VOC’s…that volatile orgainic compounds…..please read as gas liquids, in them.
I know of ranchers, farmers, and others, who have made use of them and are now shut down due to regs, excepting free enterprise USA (pending Obama revisions), still have access and free use of. These areas and districts have NEVER seen fraccing.
Welcome to reality, mother nature, as in Turner Valley, Alta, has always found natural venting and displacement models.
If we, as a society wish to return to horse, buggy, small gardens, subsistance existance…so be it. My thoughts are that that the concrete and cubicle dwellers will be the first to perish. Not the Rural folk.
Mother Earth does have a plan…evolve or die..
Your choice..till then, I like a standard of living, warm surroundings, and a level of comfort.
Until then, People against everything should be quiet, it is inovation, progress, and risk that has brought a nation to the standards of present existence and stature, nor envy,greed, ludditeism.
That someone would claim companies are deliberately injecting harmful chemicals or materials into drinking water isn’t just absurd but evil.
Without any exaggeration, fracking is the means to save us. Save us, that is, from a major decline in standard of living. It will preserve our opulent and enjoyable lifestyle, complete with the benefits of superb and improving diet, healthcare, comfort, travel and all sundry luxuries we all take for granted.
airplane wings cut the sky to pieces as they fly, we should ban airplanes!!!!!
Without any exaggeration, fracking is the means to save us
Yes, fracking works, but that statement is an exaggeration. Wells that require fracking have a much shorter life than those which don’t need fracking. The more fracking required the shorter the lifespan. The fields that need fracking to produce have been known for decades. They weren’t developed till now because there were less expensive ways to get adequate gas supplies. Talk with any petroleum engineer.
In my line of business in the area that I live – the epicenter of the commercialization of frack – red deer – I talk to lots of clients and others who work and consult around the globe on how to Frack. Literally just yesterday I talked to one just back from Houston where he supervised a frack well in the old spindletop area that went from nil production to 1400 bbls per day. Meanwhile fracking has devastated the price of NG – now below 2.50. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that north America could be self sufficient in energy by 2030 according to insiders in texas.
And thus the AGW and enviro lobby is apoplectic.
And north of 60, the cost of frack is plummeting at the amse time that methods are yielding ever higher results. If the technology ever gets sophisticated enough to work on the eastern slopes of the Rockies in Colorado (not if but when – as soon as next year according to some that I talk to) its game over for the middle east.
If you have to pay a well driller to drill to depths where pockets of natural gas are commonly found just to find water shouldn’t you just consider living somewhere that’s more hospitable? In case you didn’t notice, this isn’t the Sudan. Just asking.
Enviro retards are like children with ADD. Bouncing from one issue to the next with minimal knowledge of what they complain about and an absolute conviction of what they’re doing is somehow correct.
I say throw them all in the nut house and turn the heat off.
Is there even one environmentalist who is both knowledgeable and honest? Seems they are either totally ignorant or they twist the truth into knots.
I still want to recreate a 17th century New World settlement and populate it with environmentalists for a year. Once they have to grow their own food with only an oxen for ploughing, cut fire wood to heat the log cabin and hoist water from a well in a bucket they might understand why using fossil energy for heat, transport, farm equipment and electricity is called progress. It might not work, many of them seem to be thoroughly brainwashed.
And north of 60, the cost of frack is plummeting at the amse time that methods are yielding ever higher results.
Yeah, so what? Nothing I said disputed that. Addressing comments personally is childish grandstanding. To address me personally use my e-mail. n0rth_0f_60@yahoo.com
“Is there even one environmentalist who is both knowledgeable and honest?”
Yea, Al, look up Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace. He fits the bill.
North of 60
You respond with things that although are all true, don’t refute my statement.
The reason that fracking activity is soaring is we are running low on good targets that don’t need it. Talk with any petroleum engineer.
“Addressing comments personally is childish ”
He said, as he addressed a comment personally.
The bottom line is that many environmentalists want us to live like peasant farmers, or like those hippies in the communes. That was the entire basis of “Mother Earth News” — that by being educated, and being frugal, we wouldn’t need much (if any) products of the industrial world. And when they try to shut down every energy source, they want us all to live like… hippies.
He said, as he addressed a comment personally.
not true, I don’t address anyone personally, intelligent people understand that important difference.
Foothills Red
“……People against everything….”
That is such a good, accurate lable.
These imbiciles promote wind turbines….except in their sight or neighbourhood.
These are also the elements who denounce vacinations…misleading many including otherwise politicians.
Roberts Ehrlich the renowned eugenicist, peak oil, global cooling, population bomb author….once cited:
“Discovery of a source of cheap reliable energy would be like giving a machine gun to an idiot child.”
Those who oppose fracking actually oppose a new source of oil/gas.
Those who oppose the Keystone and Gateway pipelines only care in preventing distribution of Oil Sands energy and seek to shut the Oil Sands down.
It is not about the environment it is about global government…an impossibility as long as the US remains economically vital.
The useful idiots are victims as much as us….Gore/Suzuki/Mann/Hansen/Jones are the knowing enablers. In the US such entities as Lisa Jackson, Waxman, Boxer, Pelossi are deliberate conspirators.
The reason that fracking activity is soaring is we are running low on good targets that don’t need it.
yeah so? nobody disputes that. So why would anyone address that comment to me personally? That’s unnecessarily inflammatory and adds nothing to an adult discussion of issues.
The point I dispute is that it’s not going to ‘save us’. It’s merely delaying the inevitable. We should be using that delay to get safe small scale nuclear up and running in more than a couple dozen research reactors across Canada. Small [i.e.less than 10MW] distributed nuclear power is a long term solution, fracked gas is a stopgap solution.
Scar >
“It happens thousands of times a year in Alberta with no perceivable effect.”
I dunno, I live in Alberta, was even a “frac’er” many years ago in my early career, but people in Alberta seem much stupider than they were just 20 years ago. I’m simply amazed at the incompetence and lack of intelligence anywhere I go these days.
Maybe it’s all the immigration the last couple of decades? Whatever it’s become painful to deal with so many here lately. It’s like there’s something in the water to be sure, I stick to the bottled myself.
People like 60 that think they know everything are especially aggravating to those of us who do.
Energy is the main weapon we use against a very nasty life. The only practical forms of energy we have to win this war are Coal, Petroleum, and Natural Gas. All by the way are Mother Natures by products.
In all wars there must be some trade-offs. Do we dig up the ground to get the coal or do we sit in the dark. Do we clean up nature’s oil spill – oil sands – or do we park our cars and walk. Last and most certainly least, do we fracture gas wells– which compared to the other two is insignificant – or do we freeze.
This will come as a shock to the blogging world but unlike the Internet Fracturing gas wells is not new. It has been done on so many over the decades that if there were any significant problems they would be well documented. A movie from Booby Redford’s film fest does not count.
Fracturing gas well is a proven process with acceptable risks in our quest to live better and like all ventures there is a certain amount of waste. Just like we all make or maybe your poopy does not stink.
So on the beach head called civilization there are only two types, those who produce cheap reliable energy and those who use it to do whatever thing little thing it is they do.
In this epic battle if a few birds die, some trees get cut down, or worse nothing happens because someone fracs a gas well, these are the fortunes of war.
P.S. Let’s paraphrase if it was not for the people that work in the theses energy fields the rest of you would be peasants. So shut the hell up.
Have a nice day.
Environmentalism is a curse on the industrialized world. So much leisure time has been created that some people feel the need to control others instead of just enjoying themselves and being productive.
Their track record:
-Banning of DDT: Millions dead of malaria.
-Banning of CFC’s: costs in billions. No change and evidence suggests the ozone hole was always there.
-Replace incandescent bulbs with CFC’s: huge spike in the amount of mercury production which will result in an increase in landfills/groundwater. If they were more patient, LEDS are going to replace CFC’s anyway.
-Biofuels – cost of basic food goes through the roof, more people starving in the third world.
-Electric cars: have a larger manufactured environmental “footprint” and where do they think the power comes from – a plug?.
-Global warming: poverty for all except the self appointed world government at the UN.
These people that push these issues are ignorant, boorish and dangerous. They are the product of a leisure society and they do not have the intelligence to do something constructive for all.
Ford Prefect, well said.
Cross posted from Reader Tips:
The Airlie Centre meeting was the equivalent of the Wannsee Conference in January 1942.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/the-day-the-oil-sands-battle-went-global/article2310137/
The opposition against energy exploitation of any sort began with the DDT ban and has morphed into an all encompassing effort to destroy the western world economically and socially.
Knight 99;
I can assure you that the problem isn’t restricted to AB! It is appearing all over the World! Dumbing down makes everything so much easier.
I spoke with a trucking company that transports heavy loads and needs pilot trucks.They,starting in May,are transporting 32 wind generators that are manufactured in Germany,from Thunder Bay to Yellowknife NWT.Those 32 wind generators will take four hundred(400) heavy eguipment loads, plus pilot trucks,to transport those monstrosities to the North West Territories.The contract runs till August.The generator itself weighs 100 tons(200,000 pounds) and it is up in the air 200 feet.Maybe someone knows how much concrete is in the base to hold that puppy up and withstand the wind resistance of three 130 foot blades,plus tower in gale force winds.Winds that generate NO power as the blades MUST be feathered in such winds.
Spike 1
I have it from the lads in the ready mix concrete business, here-abouts, that each bird blender’s foundation consists of about 1000 tons of reinforced concrete. That’s a $hitload of cement to haul to Yellowknife.
Funny(queer) that…the enviros claim concern about energy use and yet steel and concrete manufacture is the most energy intensive industrial process.
George Will noted at the beginning of the year:
“Because progressivism exists to justify a few people bossing around most people and because progressives believe that only government’s energy should flow unimpeded, they crave energy scarcities as an excuse for rationing — by them — that produces ever-more-minute government supervision of Americans’ behavior.”
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/johnransom/2012/01/21/scientists_discover_gassy_liberal_pseudoscience
Bird blenders?
Why doesn’t the NWT build a dam on the Slave River and ship a poo load of power to Alberta? The Slave Rapids is one of the best undeveloped hydro sites in the world. It would be green and actually work unlike the bird blenders.
Scar
Didn’t you get the memo from the Sierra crowd….HYRO DAMS ARE NOT A RENEWABLE RESOURCE!
Their goal is to remove all power dams and to “let the rivers run free”…..picture a hairy legged hippie in a tutu…..
This is the crowd who have succeeded in restoring Californica’s productive central into a desert.
So are we all going to be subsistence farmers? We could only support about 6.5 billion less people than we do now. Any idea what the lefties plan to do with the surplus?
200′ windmills in Yellowknife? Which turd is in charge of that cluster-fornication? Ever been there in -40 below? I have and the wind don’t blow at -40 below. Newsflash: lubrication and machinery won’t work either unless they are warmed up and that takes power.
Besides knocking out birds from the sky they will no doubt catch a bush plane or three. And at the risk of sounding sane, just what is the cost to put up these monuments to greenies? You realize that the windmills aren’t made in Thunder Bay but unloaded from overseas ships. That project will cost a fortune.