Fracking Technology Has Been Used Safely for Years

Advances mean even more energy without a significant threat to groundwater

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Here is a test for the Frackers: If fracking is so safe, drink the water.

I will support fracking in about 50 years when it really is safer. When we have transitioned to solar, wind and tidal power. When we have reversed the rise of greenhouse gases enough. Methane is cleaner than coal or oil but it is still a fossil fuel. Abundant natural gas will slow the transition to sustainable fuels.

Based on BP off the coast of the US Southeast, Chevron in South America, Exxon Mobil in NIgeria, and Fukishima in Japan, do we really want to risk the food and water supply in PA, NJ and NY? If you think natural gas is precious, think about water for crops, for livestock, for the population of the Northeast. Let the frackers live where they frack, drink the water, eat the crops and livestock. Be the guinea pigs you are asking others to be.

Art Vatsky of NJ 10:35PM January 13, 2013

It to bad people look to progressives for truth when they are the ones who are lying to all of us ...If people would just take the time to look into history just a little it would do them wonders on why and how we got here...they have been fraking for 65 years...it has followed technolodgy..and here we still have Idots that think it has destroyed all the drinking water...65 years...and you still think govenemnt needs to be involved ,,,I ask why ??...what is it that a progressive wants to stop?...its american ideralism...they cant stand us to be WE THE PEOPLE...we with the POWER over them...well...who has the power?...are you affraid of our goverment ?...you should be ...cause they arent america n as you think...any BODY But Obama...2012

Randy of OR 1:49AM January 06, 2012

Lie #1 fracturing technology has been deployed in the United States for nearly 65 years

For water wells yes, this involved throwing a couple of sticks of TNT down the well. Later on for vertical wells it was used. But slick-water horizontal hydrofracturing is a recent development and has only been used for a couple of years

Lie #2 the EPA has publicly stated that fracturing does not pose a significant threat to groundwater...

That statement was taken from The 2004 study examining the environmental and safety implications from fracking coal bed methane reserves. not shale gas extraction. Totally different processes and studies

Lie #3 We're still talking about the deployment of water, sand, pressure, and small percentages of additives.

I like how he just negates the hazdous chemicals pumped down the well. JUST DO THE MATH to see the amounts of chemicals used!

In horizontal slick-water hydrofrackng the process uses about 6 million gallons of water and materials pumped into the well-bore for each frack job so even at 1/2 percent of a chemical still amounts to 30000 gallons of hazardous chemicals being pumped into the well (based on a volume/volume ratio) and that is per frack job, the well can be fracked multiple times!

There is a significant amount of, as he put it "additives" such as biocides pumped into the well to inhibit bacterial growth Formaldehyde and gluteraldehyded as examples . Not to mention corrosion inhibitors, hydrochloric acid, viscosity modifiers and other industry proprietary compounds which are exempt from regulations. These are pumped at high pressures to break the shale to allow the methane to be released. These chemicals under pressure react with each other as well as the compounds in the shale and rock to form other compounds such as cholornated aromatic compounds. Also this process extracts other chemicals from the shale and rock and makes compounds which were once locked in the rock and shale soluble and able to travel with any water in and around the shale.

To where who knows? No long-term geological studies have been conducted on the potential migration of these chemicals

David Meiser of PA 10:40PM November 29, 2011

Mr Kalic - You write "any industry that can be proved to be causing leukemia, asthma, arsenic and barium poisoning, poisoned water, and the other ills asserted buy opponents would have been shut down long ago." That's simply not true. After you have read Dr. Devra Davis' book "The Secret History of the War on Cancer," you will understand that American history is replete with examples of industries that sicken their workers and the public at large, but because they generate jobs and are generally run by powerful people who buy government influence, these industries (mostly oil and gas, petrochemicals and of course tobacco) get away with poisoning people and the environment time and time again. They generate a "science of doubt" to hide the truth.

Read the book if you have the courage of your convictions. The gas industry is not doing anything new to sell itself. It is using tried and proven methods of bamboozling the public, and causing untold suffering such as the cancer my late wife just endured, in order to enrich a few. I would not want to be living in the skin of those who would willingly and knowingly sicken others for private gain. Six months ago my wife was the picture of health, running our farm dairy business. Now she's dead. The gas industry is surely going to condemn many more people to such an awful end to their life as she had to suffer.

The term “responsible oil and natural gas exploration” should be understood as a chimera (you know what a "chimera" is? Look it up) when it is used in the context of endorsing the extreme form of fossil fuel extraction known as high volume slickwater fracturing of long laterals into tight shale deposits. In light of ample and mounting evidence that unconventional drilling is fraught with environmental and public health perils, the notion that there can be any kind of “responsible drilling” of this kind is a foolish fantasy. It enables an industry to operate that should be halted until we have conducted a comprehensive, long-term study of the environmental and public health risks. There is not any such long-term study. Nor is there any scientific consensus that this type of gas extraction cannot cause irreparable environmental harm - from above or from below. We allow this drilling in direct contradiction to the Precautionary Principle.

Stephen Cleghorn of PA 4:49PM November 29, 2011

Unfortunately, the preceding comment is like many others from the wacko left and others influenced by the left who don't bother to verify what they are told...long on assertions of various ill effects and woefully short of evidence.

First, natural gas prices in the US have come down sharply in the last several years to roughly $4tcf.

Second, any industry that can be proved to be causing leukemia, asthma, arsenic and barium poisoning, poisoned water, and the other ills asserted buy opponents would have been shut down long ago.

There may be instances involving poor well drilling, casing and sealing that have caused discrete problems, and there are laws and regulations in place to address them. These are no reason to tar an entire industry, or the fracking technology.

We don't ban deer hunting because a few hunters are careless and shoot someone else. We don't ban automobiles because a few knuckleheads get drunk, drive and kill someone else. We don't ban chainsaws because some idiots whack their own legs. We don't ban cell phones because some people talk and text while driving and cause vehicle crashes.

B Kalik of WV 12:31PM November 29, 2011

"Just take a look at Pennsylvania: The number of wells drilled in 2010 was 30 percent less than the number in 2005. But even with this decrease in activity, Pennsylvania today is producing roughly 12 times the volume of natural gas per day that it did back then."

If this is true, why haven't the gas prices in PA gone down? Why do the people in Dimock (where Cabott was proven to culpurt for 14 families to lose their clean water) 3 years later still suffer with no safe water coming out of their taps? Leukemia rates rising in drilling areas and children living near drilling suffering with asthma, arsenic and barium poising? All these issues are real, have started when fracking began in their areas and weren't there before. It would be a much better solution if the energy being produced was coming without the negative impacts being recorded where drilling is occurring but the truth of the matter is "IT IS NOT BEING DONE RIGHT" and those of us living near drilling are suffering like the rest of the country will once there is no clean water or air left for any of us. Notice how most of the ones in favor are working for the industry. I also believe they are the only people benefiting from the process!

Bridget Sciortino of PA 10:55AM November 29, 2011

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