Marcellus shale drilling

“The newest environmental issue is drilling the Marcellus shale in NY, PA, and WV. Natural gas deposits are contained in the Marcellus Formation. Drilling process goes straight down to the Marcellus, then laterally into the shale. They use massive amounts of water to fracture the shale to extract the gas.

The first sign of trouble came with the Pennsylvania DEP issued orders in the past few days to water treatment plants not to accept water from drilling companies because of higher than normal amounts of solids in the Monongahela River.

The big unanswered question is what will the drilling companies do with the waste water, and we now have a likely answer.

The other end of the controversy is that the drilling companies are fast talking land owners to give up their mineral rights for relatively little in return. There is a very large amount of disturbance of the surface for drilling operations, so people are finding their property is getting raped and they get little in the way of compensation.

Never a dull moment!”

“Surprise.”

“

”

“looks like the containment system is working”

“yikes.

Isn't that lovely.”

“Cool! Swimming hole!!”

“And the land was laid waste, and a great rejoicing was heard.”

“I watched a lot of that going on in Texas the last couple of years with the Barnet Shale. It's great for the economy. But the gas drillers are really heavy-handed about pressuring people into deals quickly without telling them what's really up. Lot's of trees get cut down for new wells & pipelines. Everyone in the area will have to deal with an explosion of water truck traffic. The waste water is trucked to wells drilled specifically for the purpose of receiving the waste water. Hope you don't have one of these near your quiet country home. Semi-trucks come and go 24/7.”

“My neighbor threw the trail off his property so he could do one of these: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QefLQKLb5co”

“Ford and GM are opening up this morning and maybe they'll need some of that nat gas soon?”

“As bad as it is, it is not as destructive as mountaintop removal coal mining.”

“true dat. heck, even wind turbines cut out hunks of hillsides and mountain tops. I don't know how destructive those gas wells are to teh subsurface, but judging by the pictures above their operations look well contained.”

“The biggest worry over fracking is contamination of ground water. In rural areas that is particularly problematic if it happens. I don't know how they could avoid it given the nature of drilling and pumping water down to the Marcellus shale. Hopefully they have ways of sealing the drill holes off from the aquifers.”

“anyone notice the trash floating in the hole?...how ironic, they have actually polluted their pollution hole”

“Here's an interesting article on that.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081115/ap_on_bi_ge/gas_drilling;_ylt=AmsOT.S1zlcemUIdkb8aKDGs0NUE

With only enough to supply US needs for 14 years, it, like ANWR, does not seems a viable, long-term solution to the energy problem. It has to be renewables from here on out.”

“Report: Oil Sands Tailing Ponds Leaking Some 11M Liters per Day
9 December 2008

Oil sands tailing ponds are leaking more than 11 million liters of contaminated tailings water per day—more than four billion liters (1,056 billion gallons US) per year—into the groundwater in Canada, according to a report derived from industry data by Environmental Defence.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/12/report-oil-sand.html”

“I've been hearing that the environmental degradation with that sort of mining was pretty severe.

I also heard oil had to be trading at $60/bbl for them to continue to operate....   So why are they still in production?”

“Jeeze, and they're concerned we're going to steal their water?”

“I'm sure Obamy will fix it.”

“I like that water I can burn in a Coleman lantern, oh yeah.”