Posted on 08/17/2011 1:46:58 PM PDT by Graybeard58
So it turns out hydraulic fracturing — the natural-gas-extraction technique being used to good effect in Pennsylvania and elsewhere — might dirty up the air and maybe even the groundwater. Horrors! Surely this is the first time energy development has had deleterious environmental effects.
Sure — the first time, except for every other time.
The cold reality is that every energy-producing strategy, from wind and water to coal and nukes and even solar, does damage at some level. "Fracking," as hydraulic fracturing is known, seems to do less damage than most, and it's producing the cleanest-burning fossil fuel in staggering quantities.
Leading Democrats, whose party believes extremism in the name of environmentalism is no vice, keep repeating "Jobs! Jobs!" as if it were a mantra. Surely they know fracking operations created 13,000 jobs in Pennsylvania in 2010, according to the state's Department of Labor; other analysts put the figure much higher. An industry-funded analysis by Penn State University arrived at a "total employment impact" of 140,000 jobs.
The major concern about fracking is that the chemicals used to release gas from shale deep underground may migrate through cracks and find their way into wells used for drinking water. Air pollution is also a concern. But several years of fracking have yielded little evidence and no proof such fears are founded in reality, and in any event, the industry has improved the safety and efficiency of its operations since allegedly poisoning one well in West Virginia in 1987.
So what are reliable green Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Edward Markey, D-Mass., doing to promote this method of energy extraction? They want to sic the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on the industry. They've written a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, who never met an overregulation she didn't like, seeking to eliminate a 2005 exemption from the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Two points in the admittedly sketchy news coverage of this development tell the whole tale.
A Bloomberg News Service story noted environmental-advocacy groups want the EPA to "order companies such as Schlumberger Ltd. and Halliburton Co. to disclose the hydraulic fracturing chemicals used in U.S. oil and gas drilling." Nine paragraphs later in the same article, it is reported that "The EPA, as part of its national study, had requested and received information from nine oilfield services companies about the content of their fracking fluid." In other words, the advocates are demanding the EPA gather, by force of law if need be, information it already has in hand.
The Department of Energy formed a committee that found, according to The Wall Street Journal, that the industry "should be subject to tighter rules and more disclosure." Fair enough. But who served on the panel? As Ben German reported in The Hill newspaper Aug. 11, "Erik Milito of the American Petroleum Institute ... said there are some inaccuracies and mischaracterizations (in the report) ... 'Had we had an industry representative on this panel, we would have been able to avoid that.'" Seriously — the Energy Department didn't ask even one expert from the industry to serve on this panel? And it expects its findings to be credible?
There may be a case for more rigorous enforcement of fracking operations, but the Energy Department, the EPA and the environmental-advocacy community have utterly failed to make it. They have, however, put on a pretty entertaining circus.
Ping to a Republican-American Editorial.
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It’s time for the EPA to get fracked....
We must make the price of energy "skyrocket" to keep the peasants in their place.
And if that means manufacturing "science" to justify it, so be it.
‘It’s time for the EPA to get fracked....”
I know of a body opening where they can shove the explosive charge.
Hydraulic fracturing was first used more than 100 years ago in 1903, but the first commercial fracturing treatment was performed in 1949. By some accounts it took more than 40 years for geologists and engineers to perfect the process, but since then, the pay-off has been extraordinary. Its efficacy in bringing new life to old wells quickly made it an integral part of our nation’s energy strategy, and by 1988, it had been applied more than one million times. As technology improved, hydraulic fracturing’s applications did, as well. Now, fracturing is used not only to stimulate production in old wells, but to jump start the production process in unconventional formations and in unfavorable locations. Operators now fracture about 35,000 wells each year with no record of harm to groundwater.
http://www.energyindepth.org/in-depth/frac-in-depth/history-of-hf/
Especially since Republicans are running the show now...
Defund the bastards, make them as irrelevant as the man who follows elephants in the circus and scoops up sh##
What is going on I think is that EPA plan to regulate emissions from stationary power plants such as drilling rig engines and pump engines on pump trucks.
They won’t be satisfied until they get their grubby hands in everything and screw it all up or just plain kill it.
NO FRACK IN NY!
imho.
keeper
If you are marching in the parade behind the elepahnts, that guy is rather important.
NO GAS IN NY!
imho
So you choose freezing in the dark?? Okay, we'll mark you down...get back to us next spring on how that worked out for you!
Even the EPA itself admits this. But they will still try to outlaw/ban/price out of existence fracking.
“It’s time for the EPA to get fracked....”
With a crowbar.
I am a Pennsylvania resident, living in the heart of the Marcellus Shale, Williamsport (yes, Little League World Series).
Gas drilling has been great for our economy. The industry and state are working together to create regulations when the “unexpected” happens.
We have the best private-public cooperation in the nation (OK, maybe Texas beats us).
THE EPA BETTER BUTT OUT OF OUR PROSPERITY!!!!!
More than a decade ago I warned that the windmills installed along the Tehachapi and Altamont passes in California were killing off the raptors. Today, in the Tehachapi the killing zone has done its job and one sees no hawks, vultures, eagles, falcons or large birds. But my oh my how the Sierra Club loves the wind farms.
Why are they (EPA) still getting Paychecks??? Where is the Bonehead on this?? NO Time for Crying here!
For thousands of years Jews and other cultures have used fire to clean the environmental ills - because the best way to clean an oil spill at a plant or kitchen is to burn the oil in the first place.
But with carbon credits and the EPA, being clean is now being dirty...
simple ...there is more to life than $$$$$$$.
I haven’t frozen over yet! :)
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