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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Dec 16, 2011 - 05:02pm PT
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Yes, the Marcellus is a unique animal in many respects.
In most basins disposing of saltw#ter that is produced along with oil and gas in the normal production process is separated at the tank battery. Nothing fancy there. It is collected and hauled to either commercial disposal wells, or onsite disposal wells, all of which are tightly regulated by state regs. Those wells are tested every year for casing integrity via a mechanical integrity test (MIT) where you set a plug above the injection zone and then pressure up the casing to check for leaks. If the pressure doesn't hold, it means you have a casing leak.
The disposal zones vary, but all are deep and full of saltw#ter. The fresh water table is shallow and easily mapped.
The big disposal zone in the midcontinent is the cambro ordovician Arbuckle/Ellenburger group, a massive limestone that is both very porous and very permeable. It is also very thick, so it is nigh impossible to pressure it up from injection.
Old frac load water is injected along with the saltw#ter, and trust me, the saltw#ter is way more nasty than the frac water when you are talking about those shale gas fracs.
It is a really easy way to get rid of that water. The Marcellus, from my reading, is unfortunate geologically. There is no good deep zone to put the salt water or frac waste water into. This has lead to all kinds of crazy things like recyling and treating.
Saltw#ter disposal isn't that big of a deal in most areas, and the same goes with spent frac water. The well flows that frac water back and then becomes a gas well, ya know.
As for the shitty comments like Republicans like this. Yeah, they like it because they don't give a crap about the environment if you are a Limbaugh head. I am a democrat with a very deep and cynical distrust of the Right Wing in this country. The Right has moved so far to the right that they are no longer in the visible spectrum. Most of you don't know me, but I have spent as much of my life as possible outside, and am really rabid about ANWR. Because I have BEEN there. Four times. I spent a whole summer in there walking across it and back alone. I have crossed the coastal plain 8 times or something now. Incredible place.
And my hometown gets its water from a huge spring from the Arbuckle Limestone, about ten miles from some of the biggest Arbuckle disposal wells in that part of the state. Great water. Now that water supply is in great danger because the suburbs of Oklahoma City have been buying up water rights in the aquifer and are going to pump it and send it to OKC. Hey, it is great water, but when you lower the water table, all of those great springs are gonna go dry. Then we will have to drill our own wells back home. It all has to do with withdrawal and recharge rate, and I am not a hydrologist.
So yeah, I drink the water like a fish. My parents still live there along with half of my friends. It is only an hour away. It is beautiful hilly and forested country.
We just haven't had the problems that the hysteria spouts. Mainly because the hysteria is 90% bullsh#t, and the 10% that isn't bullshit is so poorly understood. I just want to toss up my hands and shake my head.
Remember the BP Macondo blowout? After about a week the main description of how the blowout occurred became pretty widely known in the industry. BP was insanely negligent IMO and many others. BP is not liked in the industry.
Well, there were all of these experts on the news channels. They were all bright guys from Universities and stuff, but it was obvious that most didn't have much of a practical background. I saw a long lecture on the web with a guy from some university describing the horrors of frac jobs.
They mispronounce words and pull things out of their ass.
So I am sitting there watching this blowout play for weeks and pulling my hair out at the insane garbage I was hearing. That well should have NEVER blown out. It was already drilled and was being plugged before moving the drilling rig off and putting a production platform in. Which might take years.
Look. Pretty much any petroleum geologist will tell you that we need to get off of oil from just a strategic and economic reason. Plenty believe in climate change. It isn't like you get fired over it.
Most of our electricity comes from coal. Even in Texas. Coal is a cheaper and more efficient fuel, but it is nasty stuff. Meanwhile we swim in so much natural gas that the price is where it was in the nineties.
Switch to natural gas. Then switch to something cleaner. Biofuels and all of that is bullsh#t. You are still burning something and tossing carbon into the atmosphere.
Look. People cry wolf. No way would an entire company do this. The big independents all have huge environmental compliance departments just to avoid screwups.
The Marcellus problem is not directly related to the frac process. It is indirect. No place to put the water. One of my clients is big into acquisitions. They won't touch anything in the Marcellus.
I wish that I could give a two week lecture and field trip to you guys.
Clean groundwater is huge. All that is happening is that the EPA is going to jump down throats over something that is not a problem in the rest of the country.
It seems all I do is answer frac questions anymore. Geez. Didn't anyone notice that Obama opened up the offshore Beafort and Chukchi Seas for leasing and exploration? The Beaufort federal leases start three miles off the north coast of Alaska. That would be three miles off the coast of ANWR, where it is covered with moving ice 9 months or so out of the year. Nobody seemed to notice that.
I see how easily people are manipulated from watching and listening to news coverage of this and the Macondo blowout. All of the talking heads were lost with their heads up their ass on the BP blowout. It was a very simple thing on that blowout. Everyone in the industry knew what happened. All of the "experts" on TV kept getting it wrong.
It made me sick to my stomach. All of this safe deepwater drilling was ruined because BP cut a couple of critical corners and made a few huge engineering errors. That blowout should have never happened. The well had been drilled and cased for production. Worse, it was oil. Oil is heavy and flows with less pressure than gas. I hadn't seen an oil blowout in the U.S. in ages.
So you can get the Marcellus straightened out or go remove hillsides and burn coal til the end of time.
Also, the next time you fill up your tank, squirt a gallon of gas over your head. The nasty end of oil and gas is the exhaust pipe. It isn't totally snow white on the land Exploration end, but in the sceme of things, it isn't much. Problems with fracs are very rare. I know how they can go wrong, and it usually means that you lost your well or you had a surface spill. The idea that it is plumes of poison migrating to the surface through blasted rock is not how the problems happen.
I have no axe to grind. I am not even in the unconventional reservoir business. I do work with horizontal wells in conventional oil and gas reservoirs, though.
For something nasty, go look at a gas station with leaky underground tanks. Or a dry cleaner. Or an air force base that has been dumping its solvents down the drain for the past fifty years. I get to hear an earful over that. My wife is a big honcho at the state DEQ. I have a bunch of friends up there. We talk about this all of the time.
Those wells will be depleted and plugged in twenty years. You won't even be able to see where they were except bulldozed roads through timber and pipeline right of ways. Those mountain tops don't grow back.
Coal is nasty stuff. You won't find a petroleum geologist on the planet who likes coal. It is the most carbon intensive fuel of all. Natural gas is the least. Still bad enough for the atmosphere though.
This is like an argument between a coca farmer in Peru and a drug addict in Los Angeles.
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Dec 16, 2011 - 05:11pm PT
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People have been living next to frac'd wells for 60 years.
This stuff is all new.
I will get to the EPA report in a day or so. I am busy pillaging the earth for you guys right now.
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Dec 16, 2011 - 07:38pm PT
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Most of the guys I went to school with are groundwater guys. I know a bunch of other guys who do nothing but Superfund work, including my wife.
I have been listening to my wife and her buds for twenty years. She used to run the state's end of all of Superfund. So I get to hear about some super nasty stuff. Dealing with the Corps and the EPA. The EPA does things that just don't make sense sometimes. Literally, not politically.
Hydrology is similar to petroleum geology. Permeability and fluid flow in porous media. We just deal with super high pressures and a lot of petrophysics. I could teach you the petroleum end in a year. You seem a smart guy. We deal with millidarcies, though. Those shales have nanodarcies of permeability, hence the big fracs.
I get called in to work difficult clastic and carbonate stratigraphy. I do cross sections and reservoir characterization over a hundred miles long every day. It is a lot of fun, but very difficult.
People just don't understand how oil or gas gets into the groundwater. Sometimes it is totally natural. Those are really obvious spots, though. Super shallow oil and gas. That EPA study was in a very shallow gas field where there were gas zones in the fresh water. I can show you oil at 70 feet. Totally natural. Weird stuff. That EPA study was in the Wind River basin. Man. Ground water flow in mountain basins is super active.
The most common oilfield pollution is saltw#ter in the groundwater. You can't clean that up. The groundwater is trashed. A surface saltw#ter spill is awful as well. Chlorides get into the clay minerals and nothing will grow for decades.
Being greedy is where you cross a moral line for money. I am pretty comfortable with frac jobs. I am just not so sure about the Marcellus. So many chances for error trucking all of that water around. Not to mention the million pounds of sand.
One thing about oil and gas companies. They have little muscle politically. The de facto national energy policy has been cheap oil at any cost since Reagan. That puts companies into bankruptcy. The domestic industry can't compete with Saudi Arabia when it comes to setting oil prices. Sure we benefit when prices are high. We also bleed when they dump oil and prices crater. You can take every private oil company in the world, add them up and they are a flea on the ass of the nationalized companies in the big exporting countries.
I can't stand those Exxon commercials where the nice guy comes on and sweet talks shale gas. It is just propaganda, true or not. Exxon is a micro player in the shale gas plays. It is dominated by the big domestic companies. You can't go make a dump like they do in Nigeria or some place.
I desperately would like the world to move beyond hydrocarbons. People bitch and moan, but they still buy SUV's and big trucks that they don't need. We burn oil like it is water.
edit: Why do you think we have our fingers up the nose of every country in the middle east? Why do we have all of these Nimitz class aircraft carriers hanging out down there? It ain't because we like sand.
That end of it is kind of like blood diamonds. Nobody gives it a thought when they fill up their tank. They just want it cheap.
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Dec 16, 2011 - 09:18pm PT
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No. The real one was K. 3% KCl water is a pretty common frac fluid. Benzene was from the old days. Benzene is a common component of crude oil or gas condensate. I just need to go through the report and finish it up. I know one thing. They don't know how to read a cement bond log. This field has been drilled in since the fifties, and in the fifties, groundwater issues weren't as strict as they are today.
They frac'd a shallow zone and it got into one of the wellbores drilled back in the fifties with poor surface casing, it seems. The field is incredibly shallow, and the fresh water very deep.
The EPA had to really scour the earth to find that one. Those are called "Black Swans."
I have been saying this over and over again. A wellbore is the conduit to groundwater, not some mysterious fracturing of 10,000 feet of overlying rock.
Southern Oklahoma has a big field called the Allen District. It has fresh water down to about 100 feet. There is a gas zone at 300 feet, and oil at 500 feet to about 2200. These are all shallow. Anything under 1000 is super shallow. There may be a hundred wells in a square mile. There are waterfloods with old uncased wellbores. I can't believe it, but they haven't had contamination. Fracs aren't that useful at such shallow depths. You really have to overpressure the formation for it to work.
This is totally unlike 99.9% of modern production. Mainly because shallow zones have low pressure and poor reserves.
Where things get really trashed is if you waterflood a zone like that with old, poorly cased wellbores. You really pressure up a waterflood, and it can migrate into an old wellbore and straight up into the groundwater. There are huge areas of chloride contamination in the groundwater from old waterfloods, but they all involve old wells. It just isn't done that way now. It happened in the old days, though, and there a fair number of big chloride contaminated fresh water aquifers. It is almost all historic.
To get a waterflood permit these days, you have to re-enter every old wellbore and fill them with cement. You also install monitoring wells if you are smart. The OCC won't permit a waterflood in those instances. A permit takes ages, and is gone over by hydrologists and petroleum engineers working for the state. They know how to spot a bad idea.
The EPA case is totally unlike the shale gas fracs. Those are at great depth and have multiple surface casing strings that cover way more than the fresh water table.
The Powder River basin saw a coalbed methane boom about ten years ago. They drilled into those massive Fort Union coals and produced gas. The interesting thing was that it was up in the fresh water table. The coals weren't even that far downdip from the strip mines.
The wells were small, but you could drill them in five hours with an air rig. The big boys stayed out of it. Not enough reserves for them to turn their spotlight on it.
Maybe someone here can enlighten us, but I am not sure what became of that. A lot of the water was being used in farming, but coal has some nasty stuff in it, like mercury in some places. So just letting it go on the surface is probably not a good idea. Drinking it in the first place sounds kind of spooky to me.
Want to hear a really good groundwater case? A fairly common one now?
I live on the Garber/Wellington aquifer. The water isn't that great. It has high arsenic and other nasties in it. So the city blends the good wells with lake water to bring everything down to EPA limits. It is a huge aquifer, though, and very important economically.
About five miles south of my house there is a big area that is heavily contaminated with nitrates from agriculture fertilizer. It is OK to drink if you aren't pregnant. The word got out around fifteen years ago not to drink the water if you are pregnant. I am pretty sure that they tied in to the Norman water system and don't use much well water in that area.
I need to finish the EPA report. I am about halfway through it but am trying to work if you would quit calling me a liar. That is the problem with getting into a bitch session on this place.
I have enough of a groundwater background that I spent some time during the last price bust on test wells for a landfill. I got a lot of help from my friends at the state DEQ. I didn't like it. I don't think the permit passed.
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Dec 16, 2011 - 09:31pm PT
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That overlying sal-tw#t-er is presumably in a relatively permeable unit, no? That sal-tw#t-er is more dense than the underlying petroleum, no? And it is separated by the confining layer/trap, no? Connect the two via an unintended fracture through the impermeable layer and the sal-tw#t-er will flow down while the petroleum flows up, no?
I don't know if those fractures penetrate the cap rock... and I don't think the oil companies/hydrofrac'ers do either. I'm not saying it is currently an issue, I'm saying it may be an issue... one I seriously doubt oil companies spend much time contemplating... other than what will happen if brine enters their reservoir, in which case they shut it down and walk away... out of site, out of mind. But the buoyancy forces persist...
No. The overlying rocks are interbedded shale, sandstone, and limestone formations. They all have names, and I know most of them. You need to understand that at these pressures many of the rocks have a plastic quality. If you put some fractures up into a saltw#ter zone, you better pray that it doesn't connect to the shale target. If it does, you will get a saltw#ter well. Besides, those zones also produce in areas and they take their own frac just to increase perm and produce.
I'm not sure where you are going with buoyancy. Water is heavier than both oil and gas. That is the main way oil and gas accumulations trap. They float on water and migrate towards the surface until they hit a barrier and stop, creating the accumulation.
The tar sands in Canada are just a huge oil field that has eroded and all of the volatiles have escaped. That stuff is pretty nasty. About as bad as coal, but you can't put coal in your gas tank.
edit: I see where you are going at with buoyancy. See above. All oil and gas basins have hydrocarbon traps. It is a miracle that the stuff has so few surface seeps. Just go get a book on petroleum geology at the used bookstore. The migration and trapping of hydrocarbons is extremely well understood. That is what we do. Look for those traps where oil and gas were prevented from migrating higher.
Most shales are very clay rich, and that stuff is a really good trap and seal. The Devonian source rock shales don't really frac well unless there is a high silica content. I was amazed at how much silica is in those shales.
Then you have a thousand feet of evaporites sealing most of the basins around here. The best hydrocarbon basins have evaporite seals. Salt or anhydrite.
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Dec 23, 2011 - 04:11pm PT
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Wes,
Sorry. I shouldn't have said that liar bit. I know you aren't accusing me of that. I just get pooped about going through petroleum engineering 101 over and over again.
When I tell people that I am a petroleum geologist, I have to go over the frac thing all the time, and it gets tiresome.
I didn't have time to finish the EPA report. Hopefully I will have some time to finish it and then get back rather than letting this thread die.
A short answer to one of your questions about frac'ing zones with offsetting wells having insufficient surface casing, it is not common, but it is done. The shale gas monster fracs are nothing at all like this.
One funny thing. Even before Drake's famous first oil well, there were some places, I think in New Jersey, where the Marcellus outcrops, and it was common to drill super shallow wells, less than 100 feet, to provide gas for heating.
Gas isn't a very good shallow target. With gas, reservoir pressure equates to more reserves. At a shallow depth the reserves for gas are small. This area has gas at very shallow depth.
Believe it or not, there have been more fracs in oil wells than gas wells. Permeability is usually related to pore throat diameter, and methane can produce naturally in lots of low perm reservoir rocks. The relative permeability of thick old oil is less. So oil reservoirs are more affected by low permeability.
These shales also have vast areas where the thermal maturity window is in the less cooked oil window. Oil molecules are just too small to make it through almost all shale pore throats. The obvious exception is the Bakken in North Dakota. It is a different animal.
Again, typically the sedimentary section is 90% shale anyway. The gas and oil shales are very specific zones. They are very specific. These shales are the organic rich source shales. They may be only a couple of hundred feet thick, but they have sourced trillions of cubic feet of gas and billions of barrels of oil. You can't target just any shale. It is almost all Devonian source rocks in Paleozoic basins.
And the EPA did have to scour to find that specific field. It is very unusual in the fact that there are very shallow gas zones that lie within the deep fresh water table. This is really uncommon, but not unheard of. This is in no way close to the geology in the shale gas frac areas. Those zones are deep.
I will try to get back on this. I certainly didn't intend for it to die without answering you. I am just soooo busy.
I do have an email circulated through a lot of the geoscience community about the EPA study outlining the nuts and bolts. Since it came from the oil and gas sector, I haven't posted it. There is propaganda from both sides on controversial issues. The guy who wrote the response is quite the stud, but I want to go over the EPA report several times.
I'm not dimissing the EPA report at all. I am just saying that from a geology standpoint, it is unusual.
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Dec 29, 2011 - 08:48pm PT
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A mine is a hole in the ground with a big pile of rocks next to it. Unfortunately, those rocks are from very deep and have not been through the weathering process. So they get chemically weathered and spit out all kinds of stuff.
I have nothing against mining, but that mountain top removal looks totally insane. It isn't like they are gonna haul all of that rock up and rebuild the mountain, correct?
I had knee surgery yesterday morning so my judgement is a little off for the next few days.
As for the new Pavillion data, you knew a response was coming. EPA certainly could have done a better job, but it doesn't mean that if they resample that they won't find the same things. You have to watch anyone who has a dog in the hunt.
It will get sorted out, but their deep wells were within the shallowest gas zones. I know that much. There is a problem with blowouts in the deeper stock wells. Typically livestock water can have higher chlorides than a human source by quite a bit. As you go deeper you get out of the fresh water and it is all saltw#ter from there on down other than a few kind of exotic locations.
It doesn't take much to blow out a well that isn't keeping the hole filled with heavy drilling mud. I know of quite a few areas with that problem. It usually means that the accumulation has unusually high pressure.
Finding stuff in the gas zones isn't that strange. If they find it in the shallow low chloride human use aquifer, it is a big deal. Still, that field is not in any way the normal type of field. So shallow and stock quality water at that depth.
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GuapoVino
Trad climber
All Up In Here
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Dec 29, 2011 - 11:27pm PT
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Base,
Can I ask you a question semi-on-topic? What do you think about the concept of peak oil?
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AP
Trad climber
Calgary
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Dec 30, 2011 - 01:51pm PT
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Peak oil, not a concept, but likely reality. It seems to have arrived sometime in the last 6 or 7 years. One factor that bears thinking about is how good we are at exploiting and accelerating production in existing fields due to horizontal drilling and waterflooding. Once these fields start to go they will crater very quickly.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Dec 30, 2011 - 02:03pm PT
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Thanks, Wes and BASE, for an informative discussion. As Wes knows, my daughter's best friend in college is a graduate student in hydrology, and I've used some of her input in my work on attempting to measure marginal costs and benefits in carbon emission regulation. What I always find intersting is discussion among people particularly versed in different disciplines, but examining the same phenomena.
When I compare your discussions with the more simplistic and either alarmist or nihlist approaches of so many others on this topic, it makes me appreciate all the more the thought you two put into a discussion that, as wes would say, is only on the taco stand.
Thanks, guys!
John
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Dec 30, 2011 - 02:13pm PT
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Peak oil is just a catchy phrase for a simple topic:
When will the world's production rate peak and then start to decline?
Most of us think it has already happened.
You just look back at Hubbert's work on U.S. oil production. Everyone thought that we were finding plenty of new fields and would have excess production capacity for decades into the future. He nailed it within a few years.
It is more complicated with worldwide production capacity, given that remaining reserves in the largest and most important fields are state secrets. The biggest fields in Saudi Arabia have been on enhanced recovery for some time.
It is only important if you figure in production capacity vs. demand. Oil is like air. You can't invent new reserves. You can change demand very easily. Carter took us from 20+ million bbls/day of consumption down to 15+ in only a few years during the seventies oil shock. All it takes is a little fine tuning of bad habits to cut demand.
So you see that the equation can be managed on the demand end. We should have been keeping it up since Carter, but oil prices collapsed and we have enjoyed incredibly cheap gasoline until the past few years.
We just waste it. Hell, why not go buy an SUV? Everyone likes to point fingers at oil companies, but nobody likes to look in the mirror.
I can rant on this for days. We go spend our money on stupid wars in oil producing areas instead of building light rail and other wise infrastructure investments for the inevetible future of high energy prices.
Face it. We are stupid.
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Dec 30, 2011 - 02:32pm PT
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Since I am laying on the sofa gulping pain meds from my knee surgery I will go a little further.
We have had a very well defined national energy policy since Reagan: cheap oil at any cost.
I never can see how so many oil people are parrot talking conservatives. When oil prices went to ten bucks a bbl under Reagan, it was bloodshed in the industry. Total collapse. You couldn't get a job unless your daddy owned an oil company.
Now prices are rising as expected, to my long hoped for dream of 100 bucks a bbl. The only pain in the ass is that a well may cost 4 million bucks for the same recovery as a well that cost 500 grand twenty years ago.
Oil companies have zero control over price. It has always been that way. The big exporting nations control the majority of reserves, and all the Saudis had to do in the eighties was open the spigot. Took down the Soviet Union. Took down much of our domestic industry along with it.
Natural gas is plentiful. It sells for what it did twenty years ago. All of those shale gas plays haven't come close to being fully developed. Natural gas has the lowest carbon footprint of any fossil fuel, it is cheap as hell. We should have been converting to natural gas as a transportation fuel a long time ago. It is in our strategic interest as well as the health of the planet. Switch trucking over to nat gas now.
The only problem is that you have to refill more often with natural gas, so it is less convenient. It can be a bridge fuel to clean technology and a much more efficient transportation infrastructure.
Save oil for making things out of. Hell, morphiene is made out of oil now.
Use it for those certain circumstances where you need the incredible energy density of a cup of oil. Airplanes and the like.
Iran looks like it has passed its production peak. There are massive gas fields in the middle east with no market. A truly massive one is in Iran. So they are doing the smart thing: Convert to natural gas as a transportation fuel and sell the oil for the country's income.
By trashing Iraq, the country who kept Iran busy as an enemy, we now have a pro iran government in Iraq. Iraq was always vastly underexplored. More than any other Arab country. So Iran just de facto more than doubled its oil reserves and is the big powerhouse in the middle east.
Happily, when they run out in the next couple of decades, they have no industry to take over and will go back to camels.
People are only going to conserve energy when it gets really expensive. Trust me. No matter how good people we think we are, we are not altruists.
So yeah, "Peak Oil" is plain as day. Nobody seems to care if they can fill their tank tomorrow. We are incapable of thinking past the two year congressional election cycle. This country can no longer think ahead. Politics is that f*#ked up.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Dec 30, 2011 - 03:02pm PT
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Look, I don't doubt that your knowledge on the actual practice of hydrofracing surpasses everyone else's here. I'm also aware that, to the best of your knowledge, hydrofracers take every necessary precaution to prevent any contamination... but we are both aware that people cut corners and accidents happen (BP via Halliburton).
Yeah, it's like saying most congressmen are good god fearing people so reports of gay GOP congressmen tapping their feet in men's restrooms are likely BS!
Cause somehow or another, the pollution somehow associated with fracking is hitting people's water and we've heard enough from intelligent industry turning out to be untrue that nobody is buying the "Don't worry, we're careful and know what we're doing" assurances. I'm sure the folks at Fukushima were total experts and had lots of money and expertise behind them
Fracking is here to stay cause of peak oil, which is MAJOR. Yes demand can be cut for short time but don't forget that China has trillions in surplus and wants to develop and india is in line behind them not to mention the rest of the third world would prefer to move up to second world
Sad to say, but the same forces will demand we drill ANWAR. The only question is whether it takes $7 a gallon gas or $13 a gallon.
Peace
Karl
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Dec 30, 2011 - 03:09pm PT
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Oil companies have zero control over price. It has always been that way. The big exporting nations control the majority of reserves, and all the Saudis had to do in the eighties was open the spigot. Took down the Soviet Union. Took down much of our domestic industry along with it.
Now the Saudis are no longer capable of increasing their production but war seems to be the way we control oil prices, or at least what currency it is sold with
Peace
Karl
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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Dec 30, 2011 - 03:16pm PT
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Fracking is here to stay cause of peak oil, which is MAJOR. Yes demand can be cut for short time but don't forget that China has trillions in surplus and wants to develop and india is in line behind them not to mention the rest of the third world would prefer to move up to second world.... Sad to say, but the same forces will demand we drill ANWAR. The only question is whether it takes $7 a gallon gas or $13 a gallon.
And at $25 a gallon, tar sand territory far and wide is going look mighty appealing.
Ain't "wising up" a trip?
.....
Ain't aging a trip?
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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Dec 30, 2011 - 03:18pm PT
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Wes, did you also think the documentary, Gasland, was b.s.?
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Patrick Sawyer
climber
Originally California now Ireland
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Dec 30, 2011 - 07:32pm PT
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I am new to this subject/issue, but I just received a check from an energy company that is apparently fracking on some WVA land that my brothers and I have. Of course, I banked the check, but this is now a cause of concern. It's the only land I own in this world. I try to keep up with environmental issues, but being a full-time carer for my partner is a... full-time job. I always figured that if the sh#t hits the fan, there is always the WVA land (my late mother's farm) to get back to. But this fracking has made me think twice.
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Dec 30, 2011 - 07:53pm PT
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Your land is fine. There might be a wellhead on it, though.
Oh man. You start talking energy and Baba just goes off. The Saudis still have excess production capacity. They can dump a few million bbls per day onto the market and kill prices.
They try to keep prices as high as possible without causing economies to start tanking. Good economies mean more demand. They aren't stupid.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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Dec 30, 2011 - 08:00pm PT
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You start talking energy and Baba just goes off.
Hahaha.
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Patrick Sawyer
climber
Originally California now Ireland
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Dec 30, 2011 - 08:05pm PT
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BASE104, no they are drilling from the side (land), there are no well heads, so I am informed, on our land, and yes, the check (cheque here in Ireland) came in handy, and we get 18% of what they find. Am I now a capitalist?
I tell my partner (perhaps wife - she is a widow, I am a bachelor - in Stateline/Tahoe this Spring) Jennie that if worse comes to worse, there is always West Virginia (and Seneca Rocks and New River Gorge), to live in (though we both love being by the sea), and the cat will have to learn how to stay away from snakes (copperheads, rattlers and such). BTW, she does NOT climb (Jennie that is, Boots can climb, trees at least), sigh.
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