Fracking - where is it headed ?

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

I agree that regulating would be better than banning but it's a tough sell to people that have witnessed so much failure.
Industry, after industry, from coal mines and oil companies, to food producers and financial institutions, were supposed to be regulated only to find half were on an honor system, and the other half were watched over by industry insiders.
Then when they get caught, or worse fuck up big time, it's oh sorry here's .00001% of the extra profit we made by destroying your corner of the world for the foreseeable future.

To really regulate these potentially disastrous operations takes tough independent watchers who know exactly what's going on in these "proprietary" processes, and that takes money. Nobody wants to pay for it.

Understandable. I understand that anecdotal accounts are extremely powerful, big industry has a horrible track record with this kind of stuff, and there is a strong case of "I support this but not in my backyard" but what are the alternatives?

On a side note, I feel fracking is more of a scape goat for the entire extraction process.

Originally Posted by Ibby

+ hey lets work on RENEWABLE and SUSTAINABLE energy CMON

It's a nice little bumper sticker but currently doesn't hold up to reality. And just so you are aware, there is currently a shit ton of work on renewable and sustainable energy. I mean, A LOT. There are many extremely intelligent people working on various creative ideas.

The problem is that they are so far from being economically feasible, or entirely impractical all together, that no one is willing to invest. In the midwest you will see wind farms but these provide very little additional energy and there are many issues quickly arising with them. Solar isn't much better. Geothermal energy requires fracking and is much riskier in certain aspects. Nuclear, which I personally support in many cases, has very little political support. There are other ideas I won't go into but they currently more unrealistic than any of the standard ideas.

That leaves what? Eventually, I am confident that certain forms of renewable energy will eventually arise that will eliminate our reliance on fossil fuels. But, that time will not come for many more decades. That leaves us in an intermediary period where there is no good solution to our global energy needs. All the cheap, easily accessible oil is gone or under control of authoritarian or unstable regimes. Clean renewable sources are not even close to mature enough to power a national grid. That leaves dirty unconventional oil whose extraction is risky and mistakes can cause local economic devastation. This is far from ideal but it is the reality.

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

Obviously, internal sources of natural gas are very important to the US economy.
And as you say, fracking can be an efficient way to obtain it... IF
... it is done in the right (environmentally safe) way.
But even in your current posting, this tiny word creeps in to many paragraphs.

That tiny word is inevitable. But, it is also currently present in any other form of energy extraction or production. Not to very overly pessimistic, but we need to choose our poison.

EPA has shown that the chemicals can make their way into other passages (such as abandoned wells) and back up towards the surface.

I'm not denying that it hasn't happened but in what cases? The point is that many fracking situations involve situations where there really is zero chance of the residual chemicals reaching the surface (assuming the well is properly sealed). If that wasn't true, there currently would not be any research in CO2 sequestration and there currently is a lot. I am guessing that situation occurred in a situation where the shale gas was very close to surface, which is not usual.

Remember, shale gas and oil extraction situations can occur in many different situations. Banning the entire process due to problems from one type of situation doesn't make sense.

Again for me, IF the industry were to put forth a feasible way to recover most of the fracking chemicals once the fissuring-operation is completed, it would be much more politically acceptable. But I personally can't imagine how that would be done. Likewise, and closer to impossible, would be how to rehabilitate a contaminated ground water or drinking water source.

Fracking will never recover all the fluid but I'm sure the industry is doing everything they can to recover as much as possible. It wouldn't make sense for them to just leave it there and spend additional money to create more.

Although, this argument doesn't make too much sense since gas shale is looked into for CO2 sequestration. I don't know much about it so I am not going to make any definitive statements but if that is true, then residual frack chemicals shouldn't make it the surface anyways...

There is work to convert CO2 into calcite but that may be a completely different issue.

More distantly, natural gas is still putting CO2 into the atmosphere, and as such has the same political problems as the fabled "clean coal".

Of course, but what are the alternatives? There is currently no way to completely eliminate CO2 emissions so it makes perfect sense to work on ways to reduce them.

Some of the clean up problems are due to the companies and
industries that caused the situation have gone out of business

Yes, even though it isn't ideal or even close to perfect, regulating the companies while in business is the best solution in my opinion.


The reality is, all the products we want and depend on are produced using environmentally hazardous methods. Unless nanotechnology suddenly takes off, there is no way to avoid this. So instead of cutting off our nose to smite our face, there needs to be innovation in regulations that works with companies to being as environmentally friendly as possible without becoming economically unsustainable. There are many problems that arise with that but I guess that is why there is never any simple solutions....