dagblog - Comments for "Fracking, Drilling OK in Theory"

In Why Not Frack? in March

artappraiser — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 23:44:43 +0000

In reply to Fracking, Drilling OK in Theory

In Why Not Frack?
in March 8, 2012 New York Review of Books
Bill McKibben reviews:

The End of Country
by Seamus McGraw
Random House, 245 pp., $26.00

Under the Surface: Fracking, Fortunes, and the Fate of the Marcellus Shale
by Tom Wilber
Cornell University Press, 272 pp., $27.95 (to be published in May 2012)

Gasland
a documentary film by Josh Fox
Docurama, DVD, $29.95

article @

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/08/why-not-frack/

Tighten fracking regulations,

Donal — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 01:25:00 +0000

In reply to Fracking, Drilling OK in Theory

Tighten fracking regulations, scientists urge US officials

An influential group of scientists has urged US officials to step up their policing of shale gas operations and to consider stronger regulations to reduce environmental and health risks at the facilities. The scientists called on regulators to revisit, and in many cases beef up, their guidelines to avoid surface spills at shale gas works, and to ensure the safe storage and disposal of toxic fluids used in controversial hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, operations. Though some US states have updated historic oil and gas regulations to encompass fracking and shale gas work more generally, many lag behind and lack enough qualified people to enforce regulations properly, the researchers said. Writing in a major report released yesterday, the scientists found "little or no evidence" to support claims that fracking had contaminated aquifers, but recommended that states do more to prevent accidents, such as spillages, underground leaks and gas explosions.

Got me thinking that it took

artappraiser — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 21:36:50 +0000

In reply to So the argument that frackers

Got me thinking that it took a dust bowl to get North American farmers to start behaving for their own good

So the argument that frackers

Michael Maiello — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 21:30:29 +0000

In reply to Fracking, Drilling OK in Theory

So the argument that frackers always use is that their underground activity takes place at an extreme distance from underground aquifers. This has always seemed a reasonable argument to me. But, the dangers of underground drilling in any form has never been so much what happens underground as it is what happens at the surface.

If the problem is that they cut corners at the surface, spilling chemicals, releasing extracted gasses or spilling oil, then they can't be allowed to end the argument with "but it's nowhere near the groundwater!" These guys have had forever to get their above ground ops squared away and they haven't done it.