Hydrofracking and Drinking Water Contamination?

[w1z4rd]

Shale Gas: Game Changer or Potential Problem?

The abundant, cleaner-burning fossil fuel known as shale gas has been hailed as a bridge fuel that’ll allow the transition from coal to a renewable-fueled future. Not only that, drilling for shale gas has propped up economies in some of the country’s down-and-out regions.

But its pursuit has led some to cry foul, thanks to the process by which the stuff is extracted — horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (which cracks the rock through high-pressure injections of a mix of water, sand, and chemicals). Homeowners living near hydrofracturing sites have complained of contaminated drinking-water wells. The plight of these folks was dramatically captured in the Oscar-nominated documentary Gasland as flowing tap water touched by a lit cigarette lighter burst into a blue flame. An investigative series by the New York Times examined the potential for serious pollution to streams, rivers, and lakes from the improper disposal of chemical-laden fracking fluids and the wastewater (a k a “produced water”).

But gas industry reps have largely dismissed these concerns with claims that:

The methane in homeowners’ wells is nothing more than naturally-occurring methane that has been there for centuries and is unrelated to drilling activities; and
The idea that fracking fluids injected at roughly 1,000-2,000 meters below the surface would migrate up into shallow groundwater aquifers makes no geologic sense.
Duke Researchers Dig Into the Issues

Into this fray stepped a team of Duke researchers led by Nicholas School postdoc Stephen Osborn. The scientists collected and analyzed water samples from 68 private groundwater wells (some near active drilling sites, some not) across five counties in northeastern Pennsylvania and New York. The results [pdf], which the scientists have been sitting on for months awaiting publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, have now been made public and they’re already stirring controversy. (See examples here and here. One critique went so far as to accuse the authors of having “known anti-gas special interests.” Knowing these guys, I found that to be in the clutching-for-straws category.)

The good news? The researchers found no evidence of contamination from chemicals contained in fracking fluids and produced water.

The bad news? The “results show evidence for methane contamination of shallow drinking-water systems in at least three areas of the region and suggest important environmental risks accompanying shale-gas exploration worldwide.”

OK, so they found methane in well water, industry experts may say, but how do you know if it has anything to do with our drilling operations?

That’s a fair question, and Osborn and colleagues have two lines of evidence.

1. The spatial distribution of the contamination.

The authors found lots more methane contamination in wells near fracking sites than in wells far from the sites. They report:

“Methane concentrations were detected generally in 51 of 60 drinking-water wells (85%) across the region, regardless of gas industry operations, but concentrations were substantially higher closer to natural-gas wells. Methane concentrations were 17-times higher on average … in shallow wells from active drilling and extraction areas than in wells from nonactive areas.”

The fact that methane spikes in the vicinity of shale gas wells implies, but does not prove, that the mining activity is causing the increased methane levels.

Read the rest at:
http://www.greatenergychallengeblog.com/blog/2011/05/10/dukefrackingstudy/
National Geographic article with a bit of authority behind it. Posting this for copa

 

[stricken]

if people knew half the crap that occurred in common foodstuffs and water, they would probably puke everywhere and then collapse.

 

[copacetic]

Gasland is excellent.

It seems they may have a point about the methane in the water possibly (not sure yet), but that is really neither here nor there considering the other (major and horrifying) damage it does to the environment and communities in the area.

You have to wonder why executives from the fracking companies steadfastly refuse to drink water proffered by people laying the complaints, and then in the same breath look the same people straight in the eye and tell them it's totally safe.

Anyway.

****ing *******s.

See sig.

 

[BCO]

For the first time, a scientific study has linked natural gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing with a pattern of drinking water contamination so severe that some faucets can be lit on fire.

The peer-reviewed study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, stands to shape the contentious debate over whether drilling is safe and begins to fill an information gap that has made it difficult for lawmakers and the public to understand the risks.

The research was conducted by four scientists at Duke University. They found that levels of flammable methane gas in drinking water wells increased to dangerous levels when those water supplies were close to natural gas wells. They also found that the type of gas detected at high levels in the water was the same type of gas that energy companies were extracting from thousands of feet underground, strongly implying that the gas may be seeping underground through natural or manmade faults and fractures, or coming from cracks in the well structure itself.

“Our results show evidence for methane contamination of shallow drinking water systems in at least three areas of the region and suggest important environmental risks accompanying shale gas exploration worldwide,” the article states.

http://truth-out.org/scientific-study-links-flammable-drinking-water-fracking/1305042000