Fracking Impacts Could Be 'Excessive,' Federal Advisory Panel Warns

WASHINGTON -- A federal advisory panel is warning that "serious environmental consequences" could result from the gas drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing if steps aren't taken to reduce its impacts.

The seven-member committee said in a report released Thursday that progress by the federal government and the oil and gas industry on 20 recommendations it issued in August has been less than it hoped. It said if actions were not taken to avoid "excessive environmental impacts," a public outcry could delay or stop the gas drilling boom.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu asked the panel in May for advice on ways to improve hydraulic fracturing's safety and environmental soundness.

It recommended reducing air pollution and eliminating diesel fuel and disclosing all other chemicals pumped underground to fracture rock and access natural gas.

Comments

[KsAPigButt]

07:47 PM on 11/18/2011

Did you guys see that youtube video of the guy holding a lit match close to the water coming out of his kitchen faucet?

I don't know about you guys, but I don't want to drink flammable gases.

[thundermummy]

01:44 PM on 11/13/2011

Goodbye Bradford County, PA. You were beautiful once.

[watoos013]

08:48 AM on 11/13/2011

They are fracking on our Municipal land, next to our reservoir. They drilled a hole and we lost water to one of our artisan wells. When they encased the well hole the water came back. Methane gas is also leaking from the well hole. We stopped them from fracking it for a while but Chaney gave them their rights in 2005 so they can do what they want. They are proceeding. They can frac within 200 feet of your house on your property if you don't own the gas rights.

[rodjard]

10:23 AM on 11/12/2011

Under the area where I live in Indiana there are at least three
different levels of old honeycombed coal mine works. 180 ft,
240 ft, 310 ft.
You never know when you might have a 6 ft high cliff that wasn't there
from mine subsidence of 100 yr old mine works.
When these mines were in opperation there was a constant effort to
keep them free of methane gas which constantly emenated from the coal.
These are now full of methane and or water from being closed and
dormant for so long.
Now we are faced with what also might be the impact of fracking.

[lambdin1]

09:59 AM on 11/12/2011

Common sense! We spent money to come up with what many many people have already said or proved analogously. Of course there is too much money involved for us to heed the warning. Things will remain status quo.

[iam99]

04:40 AM on 11/12/2011

It is similar to the dispersants used in the Gulf of Mexico; nobody can just put millions of gallons of toxic chemicals in our environment without it having a disastrous effect on life, nature, which we are all a part of. Why poison home?
There is an English company which does use a non-toxic fluid for fracking; mostly water, some sand and a small amount of non-toxic lubricant, perhaps like a silicon oil or PTFE based product. I will try to relocate the information.

[sachazg]

12:53 AM on 11/12/2011

Fracking is like adding poison to your water. Clean natural gas... my A$$!

[iam99]

05:00 AM on 11/12/2011

Here is a company in the UK that uses a non-toxic water-based fracking solution.
Go to their website to get the story:

Cuadrilla Resources

[MsGypsy]

10:39 PM on 11/11/2011

So what about "serious environmental consequences", "excessive environmental impact" from GEOTHERMAL ENERGY PRODUCTION? Same problems, same consequences - so why don't we hear about THAT BIG GREEN PROBLEM?

[quillsinister]

03:25 AM on 11/12/2011

Source?

[Frank LaFerriere]

10:19 AM on 11/12/2011

You apparently have no idea what geothermal energy production involves. Basically for home use, pipes are laid about ten feet under ground, below the frost levels and are filled with H2O and antifreeze. These pipes pick up the natural geothermal energy, transports it through these pipes into the houses heating/water system. This is also the same sort of construction for geothermal energy plants. There is no serious environmental consequences when using geothermal energy compared to fracking, oil production, natural gas production or coal productions. Geothermal energy is clean, renewable energy that does NOT pollute like these other energy sources.

[spkman]

02:59 PM on 11/11/2011

"As it turns out, however, that proof may not be so elusive. A new study published in the May 9 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) shows that methane levels in water wells near shale-gas hydrofracking sites are 17 times higher than they are in wells that are far from shale-gas operations. The peer-reviewed paper is the first independent scientific confirmation of something advocates, environmentalists and homeowners have passionately argued, and that the gas industry has vociferously denied. "We found a clear relationship between how near someone's drinking water was to a gas well and the concentration of methane in the water," says Robert Jackson, the director of Duke University's Center on Global Change and a co-author of the PNAS study."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2070533,00.html#ixzz1dQdfqHmN

[bbrecht]

03:26 PM on 11/11/2011

Thanks for posting!

[getoffmedz]

02:54 PM on 11/11/2011

BEWARE! The fracking t#0!!$

Reads like they are well-paid.

lol

[rodjard]

02:03 PM on 11/11/2011

This is what you get when you allow corporate greed and polititions
rule policy.
All these studies ought to have been done before any fracking, fracking.
This ought to be a forewarning of future endeavors left without propper
regulation.
I fear for our total destruction if we don't take this seriously enough
and allow money to rule the day.

[paddlerchick]

09:51 AM on 11/12/2011

Agreed and the tremendous amount of money being put into advertising that implies that not only is natural gas safe, but that it is downright green cloud the issues to the uninformed.

[nanimal]

12:21 PM on 11/11/2011

Fracking should be ended immediately. We don't have enough water to allow these companies to poison it all.

[WESmith]

07:58 PM on 11/11/2011

Fracking has been going on for more than 80 years. The best fracture fluid is made with water a food additive called hydroxyethylcellulose, crosslinker (available in drug stores) and sand. Hydroxyethylcellulose is also what is used in K-Y Jelly (along with propylene glycol(antifreeze)). I wouldn't suggest putting sand in K-Y Jelly though.

[whatdayouthink]

09:30 PM on 11/11/2011

fracking might have been going on for more than 80 years, but HORIZONTAL fracking is only less than 10 years old. The fracture fluid is exempt from the Clean Water Act, and companies DO NOT have to disclose what toxic chemicals are used. There are at least
29 highly toxic chemicals used to break up the shale. It is not safe by any measure.

[nanimal]

01:02 PM on 11/12/2011

I don't think the companies are revealing their little cocktail but it is NOT harmless.

[WESmith]

08:05 PM on 11/11/2011

The easiest thing to do is to quit using petroleum products. I have cut my use down as low as I can and I am saving money. If there wasn't such a large demand from us for petroleum products, these companies would go out of business. The bad news is that there are 14,000 small businesses that deal in petroleum products.

[Nora M]

08:15 PM on 11/11/2011

You are correct. It is amazing how many products are made from petroleum. I try to make our lives plastic, chemical (and advertising) free. It is better for the earth and better for our bodies. Besides, it really is no big deal. You don't have to be an absolute purist about it to be pretty darn good.

[TexasTreader]

11:05 AM on 11/11/2011

OMG!!! Actors are talking! Stop the presses until they tell us what we should do! *eye roll*

[maxom]

11:34 AM on 11/11/2011

Actors??...Oh...you mean the ones in the White House???...LOL

[TexasTreader]

11:36 AM on 11/11/2011

Those, too.

[droog1]

01:00 PM on 11/11/2011

I've often watched Mark Ruffalo in movies and thought, "I wonder what his views are on hydraulic fracturing..."

[PureEnergy]

02:33 PM on 11/11/2011

Most people know him as Mark Ruffalo, but his real name is Mark Rison.

[EarlSJ]

10:38 AM on 11/11/2011

Obama is too obsessed with cutting the deficit and killing foreign adversaries with drones to pay attention to the serious environmental issues facing us. Neither the Keystone XL pipeline nor the practice of fracking should be allowed. If they are, I can only think we're doomed!

[LadyPi]

10:06 AM on 11/11/2011

Why didn't they mention quakes?

[WESmith]

07:44 PM on 11/11/2011

The US Government use to fracture gas wells in Colorado using nuclear devices. There were no indications of earthquakes using this method of fracturing. That had seismographs set up.
I worked for a company that monitored fracturing jobs in Colorado. If we were more than 600 ft away from the fracture job, we had a hard time detecting it. Surprisingly, we could detect someone 2000 ft away hitting a hammer union with a hand hammer. Also, in Colorado, the fracture jobs were normally two miles underground. I don't know about the ones in Pennsylvania shale. This may be different. I do know that these fractures are smaller than many cracks I see in sidewalks. Also, most of the fractures are millions of years old and the fracture job just widens the crack by 1/8th of an inch and sand is used to keep the fracture open. Within an hour everything is usually back to the way it has been for millions of years as to pressures, etc. I wouldn't worry about earthquakes. We should concentrate on surface casing and cement jobs. That is the only place there could be leaks. If the leaks were caused by the fracture jobs, the gas companies might as well save their money and not fracture. They will never make a profit. Neither will We The People who probably own the natural gas. Gas companies actually don't drill wells, fracture wells or even own the gas they are producing.