Is Fracking OK or Not?

Confirmed: Oklahoma Earthquakes Caused By Fracking
The USGS says bluntly, “Earthquake activity has sharply increased since 2009 in the central and eastern United States. The increase has been linked to industrial operations that dispose of wastewater by injecting it into deep wells.”
Link Confirmed: Oklahoma Earthquakes Caused By Fracking

 

what do the majority of concerned scientists say?

 

Fracking is fine. Just keep in Oklahoma. Send the fuel to Cali. We need it.

 

Under the Surface: Fracking, Fortunes, and the Fate of the Marcellus Shale
by Tom Wilber
.
Read this book for starters.

 

Not all concerned scientists are 'unionized', but one could see

Toward an Evidence-Based Fracking Debate (2013) | Union of Concerned Scientists

I link this recognizing it's a few years old, and kindly ignore the funding plea down the page. If you are inclined to contribute to this organization, you don't need my help to find out how.

I really don't think there is a scientific consensus on fracking. Perhaps what I mean is that there should not be, as so many matter remain unresolved.

It has been ramped up, in a wholly 'human nature' way, because it is profitable in a world where 'externalities' are not monetized. The good news is that, if we collect enough good data, a basis for consensus will be attained.

Please realize that scientific consensus ought to mean 'where most of the evidence points' as opposed to 'how most (group members) feel'. Hope that is not a subtle distinction.

 

The article points to the USGS saying 'linked', and OGS saying 'likely triggered by'. I don't read either as being the same as 'caused by', so the headline is misleading.

My understanding is that earthquakes are the sudden release of pent-up tectonic energy. The energy buildup and storage is natural, not related to human activity. And it is going to be released someday, somehow, regardless of our actions or presence. What is happening is that human activity is changing the event timing and sizes by triggering early release of this energy.

Natural release is sometimes very destructive. It seems to me that breaking infrequent large releases into multiple smaller releases is most likely a benefit for the overall human community, as it reduces the total damage to our structures and population. But by changing the timing, and shifting future events forward to today, the victim population is changed without their consent. And while God / Mother Nature cannot be forced to pay civil damages, other linked parties can. But is this the right thing to do, if total damages to the community over time are being reduced?

Of course, we also need more research to make sure that these human triggered events are not displacing less destructive energy release mechanisms, such as the quiet and slow episodic slip events that were recently discovered here under Puget Sound. With these, we have what is essentially a massive earthquake about every 14 months. But instead of happening in just 30-60 seconds, it is spread out evenly over several weeks, causing no noticeable damage and escaping notice from old fashioned seismographs.

 

Changing one big energy release into several small ones. An earthquake palliative proposed by Gene Shoemaker. Famous geologist of Earth and Moon (a Selenologist then). Idea was to drill down alongside the San Andreas fault and inject some lube. I think it was never done.

Seems like you'd only want to lube a fault where not much strain had accumulated, and Oklahoma may be so. In this way among others, fracking seems poised to teach lots of interesting things. I mean, since we are going to be doing it anyway...

 

OK had 909 Earthquakes last year .......
That's about 900 more than they would have had, had they not Frakked the Bejesus out of OK!

I believe CBS had a really good report on the problem. It was on a couple months ago!

 

It is correct that Oklahoma earthquakes have increased dramatically along with fracking, including some large enough to cause real economic damage.

People in that state have every right to undertake legal action against the industry. Hope they get a fair hearing. Only in response to the post just above did I look at the earthquake situation there. It is very dramatic.

Besides that, it occurs to me that the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles together are where most of US' helium is extracted (from natural gas fields) and also stored. Most of the world's helium. This is not just for dirigibles and balloons. A non-replaceable resource for some aspects of medicine and scientific research.

If helium is being majorly lost because of fracking, those earthquakes, or anything related, then a much wider legal scope could be addressed. This is pretty much all the helium that anybody has on earth. Seriously, somebody ought to look into the matter.

 

A 2015 paper was published in Science about fracking (water injection actually) and Oklahoma earthquakes. I emailed the corresponding author with my 'helium question'. If I get any reply that isn't secret, I'll let you know.

Not that I'd get any secrets. I mean, the guy got a cold-call email from somebody in China. I do know other geologists though, (one might be reading this ), so I think it can be advanced at least to the stage of wacky idea or not.

 

when 60 minutes did the special on tracking in new york/pennsylvania, and the homeowners showed ho you could set the drinking water on fire, did the epa investigate?

 

I have a cousin who is some kind of science guy for the oil industry. He runs his own business where he basically looks at geology information and says "I think there's oil here!" Surely there's more to it than that but it's how I understand his job. I asked him about fracking a few years ago and he gave a pretty long winded explanation of what it is and his views on it. These are the takeaways I got from it. First was fracking has been around a long time (since the 1940's, off the top of my head). The new thing that's happening is instead of going straight down, pumping in fluid of some sort, then compressing it to fracture the rock, they can now drill horizontally. So they drill down, turn the drill then go horizontally for a long ways, I believe he said a mile (maybe 2?) but that might have been the total drill length so if you go down 1,000 feet you can only go horizontally 4,000 feet, I forget. So now you can be under an aquifer and frack what you couldn't get to with a vertical drill. It also means you can extra oil from a shale deposit in areas of the country that aren't used to seeing oil exploration. If they were only doing it in Wyoming nobody would have heard about fracking. He explained it that an aquifer basically exists because it is sitting on top of impermeable rock. The oil is below that rock, the water is above it. so they are coming in from under that rock, fracturing what's below it and extracting the oil. Since there is 1,000+ feet of impermeable rock between what was fractured and the water, there is very little risk to the aquifer from the act of fracking. His concern about fracking is the risk of spilling the fluid at or near ground level, or during transport (his same concern about the oil, carrying things on truck does have higher risk than rail or pipeline).

So I have another friend who is a doctor of geology and teaches at some university (I don't want to name names). You can't take the guy anywhere without him talking about this rock formation or that feature, and picking up rocks to point out "interesting" tidbits. So I asked him about fracking and specifically earthquakes. That basically set him off on a rant about stupid media and stupid people talking about things they don't know about. At the end of it he was explaining that fracking itself does cause tiny earthquakes that are inconsequential. The bigger issue is the disposal of the wastewater. Used to be you just dump that into a waterway and call it a day (clearly a bad thing). In the 80's the EPA changed it so you dispose of that waste water by drilling a deep hole and filling it with the waste water, called a brine disposal well. According to him, that is what is causing the larger earthquakes people are feeling and causing damage. So ultimately he blames it on the EPA, apparently when they proposed this change geologists, including him, told them they'll be causing earthquakes but the EPA decided that was something they could accept over the risk of groundwater contamination. It was his view then, and he clearly still holds it today, that the brine disposal wells should be stopped and a better solution figured out.

 

unfortunately, government agencies are not immune to congressional pressure, but they're better than no agencies.

 

Consensus is not science. It is politics. And, in my opinion, poor politics. I prefer consent/dissent. Consensus is for pussys.

 

Agreed! The obvious is using evaporation ponds and harvesting the residue for minerals.

Bob Wilson

 

I'm fully in support of Frakking on Battle Star Galactica.

 

Regulation is very uneven throughout the globe on fracking. Current texas governor is trying to roll back local regulation. Any use of any enerergy is going to have environmental implications. Even solar panels offten go on large buildings that destroy habitats and use chemicals to produce that often are not disposed of in environmentally friendly ways. Wind turbines have bird strikes, though much lower than can killings of birds some are built without proper siting.

In context fracked natural gas can be safe and low environmental impact. It often will reduce worse impact from mining and burning coal, being a net positive for the environment. There are many places with poor regulations, and even places with good regulations have bad actors that may violate the letter or the spirit of the regulatory body.

Grading on a curve, I would give mountain top removal of coal a F, and fracked natural gas in the US a C+. We can do better with fracking regulation, but often those fighting to make it tighter like the status quo which is worse than fracking. Scotland with good fracking regulations would likely reduce pollution versus the status quo, but they instead to say no, and keep more pollutiong methods going.

 

Yes. What I remember on the followup was that a lot of wells in the area had enough methane coming up prior to any fracking to light on fire. So while there was no question of methane coming out of the well with the water, the claim that it was now due to "fracking" was not as clearcut as the media "implied" with the big fireworks.

 

An issue I see with this understanding is that it is overlooking the fact that fracking is increasing the pressure that the geological strata are under. The point of the process is to break up the rock layers to free the fossil fuel trapped within, and it isn't a guarantee that all the energy going break those rocks up ends up there.

What is different about a brine well than the fuel well, that would cause earthquakes? Is the brine in the well being pressurized?