The Fracking Process

Here's a nice, short video that gives a simple description of the fracking process.

Deceptive Environmental Report

A few prominent House liberals today released a report alleging that "thousands" of gallons of carcinogenic waste has been injected into wells throughout America. Their report is deceptive.

Type II deep water injection wells are the safest way to depose of fracking fluid (99.56% of which is just plain water.) These wells are rigorously regulated for safety, and they are completely safe. They are constructed in such a way that any possible contamination is disposed of without harm to any individual, plant, or natural formation, including groundwater. All accidents that have been associated with fracking are because the water was not injected into these wells, where the water was just stored in above-ground containment vessels or left in a retention pond, which would contaminate groundwater.


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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/17/fracking-report-carcinogens-water-wells_n_850159.html?ncid=txtlnkushuff00000003

French Lean Toward Ban . . .

From an article Prof. O'Donnell pointed us toward, it looks as though France may well ban fracking.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/business/energy-environment/11shale.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

The French cite security concerns, but on top of that there's the fact that the French are known for a general antipathy toward fossil fuels. The proposed ban would not stop the French from importing oil or natural gas recovered by fracking, but would only ban fracking in France itself, which has an unknown amount of frackable oil, perhaps as much as 10 billion recoverable barrels.

Interview Opportunity

Tomorrow, Wednesday May 11th, we will have an opportunity to meet with and interview Tom Stewart, Executive Vice-President of the Ohio Oil and Gas Association. (www.ooga.org)

Its not 100% official yet, but it is provisionally scheduled for 5:00 tomorrow afternoon. If that time works for you, let me know and we can arrainge a carpool downtown. Also, we can meet before or after that to review the research that has already been collected.

Methane Contamination from Fracking

I just ran across an interesting study that might be relevant to Mitchell's section. The study was done by a team from Duke University and was just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Unfortunately, it found potentially dangerous concentrations of methane in water-wells near fracking sites. However, the good news is that there was no evidence of any leaked fracking fluid, and the study's conclusions urge caution but are hardly damning. They call for "greater stewardship, data, and - possibly - regulation . . . to ensure the sustainable future of shale-gas extraction and to improve public confidence in its use."

Here's the abstract:

OUTLINE

Here is a brief, general division of labor for the final project. As discussed, we are going to break down the assignment into three broad parts. The first will try to answer the question. "What is Fracking?"

Secondly, Mitchell will look into the safety and environmental concerns of the process. Is it safe?

Finally, I will look at Fracking in the political realm, trying to answer, "Is it good public policy?"

Initial Outline for First Section

Here is a (very) rough outline that I came up with when I started to think about what questions I wanted to address in my section. 

• Description of the process
• How is fracking done?
• What technologies are used?
• What technologies are on the horizon?
• In what situations is fracking necessary? Why?
• History of fracking
• Potential Supplies
• What does fracking unlock?
• What are the locations and sizes of the plays in the US?
• What effect will these supplies have on the possibility of American energy independence?
• What will be the economic effects of exploiting these supplies?

Let me know if you can think of anything else I should look at or if there is anything in the outline that you think I should leave out. I know that the last 2 bullet points especially could overlap with Blaise's section, but I wasn't sure if he was focusing solely on Ohio or not and I think it's important to address those issues somewhere in the paper.