Your view on shale gas exploration ?

[niothor]

I'm not against exploration, but let's wait and see what will happen in Poland with the actual extraction,
evaluate the risks to the environment, then maybe try it in Romania in less populated areas.
If Russian gas will become too scarce, then if the risks are low enough, allow extraction.

The first exploration for the following shale gas extraction is as close as half a kilometer to a village.
Also most of the wells will be in medium populate areas , and in areas where there villagers already face water shortage in mid summer.

I am against fracking and I would love to see a natural alternative like in the oil case being found here too

There are at least a thousand fracking style natural gas wells in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex.  Right in the middle of the city.  They have been there, most of them for at least five years.  So we should have some actual, real live information on a subject like this.

I'm not from the us , my only source of information are articles that might contain false information :

Yesterday, the Dallas City Council passed a tough new gas drilling ordinance - a big victory for Dallas residents, and for the rest of the country fighting the fracking boom.

 Industry is calling the new ordinance ‘a de facto ban against drilling in Dallas.’ The city will now require that oil and gas wells cannot be sited within 1,500 feet of homes, schools, churches, hospitals, parks, and other 'protected uses'.

Think we should keep that shit in the ground, with technology these days we should be able to generate enough energy from solar, wind and tidal power.

You can't replace gas with solar energy in fertilizer plants , glass, plastics and many more.

But you could place those energy-intensive industries right next to a nuclear power plant.

Shutting down gas powered power plants and then again use extra energy to replace ammonia production with hydrogen electrolysis....

How many nuclear power plants we might need?

Adding to those numbers replacing gas heating with electricity and we might run into uranium supply problems.

I'm thinking more of a way to replace gas extraction with some kind of gas production from .. algae?

[tvbcof]

Think we should keep that shit in the ground, with technology these days we should be able to generate enough energy from solar, wind and tidal power.

You can't replace gas with solar energy in fertilizer plants , glass, plastics and many more.

But you could place those energy-intensive industries right next to a nuclear power plant.

Because when they melt down the workforce need to commute from the safe zone in expensive buses and work in funny looking suites?

[Spendulus]

I'm not against exploration, but let's wait and see what will happen in Poland with the actual extraction,
evaluate the risks to the environment, then maybe try it in Romania in less populated areas.
If Russian gas will become too scarce, then if the risks are low enough, allow extraction.

The first exploration for the following shale gas extraction is as close as half a kilometer to a village.
Also most of the wells will be in medium populate areas , and in areas where there villagers already face water shortage in mid summer.

I am against fracking and I would love to see a natural alternative like in the oil case being found here too

There are at least a thousand fracking style natural gas wells in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex.  Right in the middle of the city.  They have been there, most of them for at least five years.  So we should have some actual, real live information on a subject like this.

I'm not from the us , my only source of information are articles that might contain false information :

Yesterday, the Dallas City Council passed a tough new gas drilling ordinance - a big victory for Dallas residents, and for the rest of the country fighting the fracking boom.

 Industry is calling the new ordinance ‘a de facto ban against drilling in Dallas.’ The city will now require that oil and gas wells cannot be sited within 1,500 feet of homes, schools, churches, hospitals, parks, and other 'protected uses'.

Think we should keep that shit in the ground, with technology these days we should be able to generate enough energy from solar, wind and tidal power.

You can't replace gas with solar energy in fertilizer plants , glass, plastics and many more.

But you could place those energy-intensive industries right next to a nuclear power plant.

Shutting down gas powered power plants and then again use extra energy to replace ammonia production with hydrogen electrolysis....

How many nuclear power plants we might need?

Adding to those numbers replacing gas heating with electricity and we might run into uranium supply problems.

I'm thinking more of a way to replace gas extraction with some kind of gas production from .. algae?

No.

I guess that's the short answer.  If you want I can elaborate.

Regarding this...

I'm not from the us , my only source of information are articles that might contain false information :

Yesterday, the Dallas City Council passed a tough new gas drilling ordinance - a big victory for Dallas residents, and for the rest of the country fighting the fracking boom.

 Industry is calling the new ordinance ‘a de facto ban against drilling in Dallas.’ The city will now require that oil and gas wells cannot be sited within 1,500 feet of homes, schools, churches, hospitals, parks, and other 'protected uses'.

[/i]

I don't see that as any big deal.  Basically drilling is an industrial operation, and my earlier comment was exactly that - that it was being done all over, right in the middle of the city and the suburbs.  Normally, one would think there would be some level of separation between industry and housing, whether by zoning or whatever.

But this is way different than the original post, which talked about dangers and worries and the water table and whether fracking should be anywhere close to a city.

[shogdite]

We've polluted our planet enough, seems a bit backward digging up that dirty black stuff.

Why not stick a load of solar panels across the Sahara desert?

[Tzupy]

We've polluted our planet enough, seems a bit backward digging up that dirty black stuff.

Why not stick a load of solar panels across the Sahara desert?

Because they would be stolen / destroyed?

[tvbcof]

We've polluted our planet enough, seems a bit backward digging up that dirty black stuff.

Why not stick a load of solar panels across the Sahara desert?

Don't worry.  The rapture is going to happen pretty soon so it won't matter.  Only Godless heathens (and Communists) worry about changes in the makeup atmosphere.

[equipoise]

This is the Bulgarian anti shale gas facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ecobg/. We share the same underground natural water reservoirs in some of the Bulgarian and Romanian shale gas exploration regions. Those water reservoirs are used in plant-growing, farming and drinking. With shale gas the question is not if but when the pollution will come - and more of the times it's coming right away after the exploration had started.

[Spendulus]

This is the Bulgarian anti shale gas facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ecobg/. We share the same underground natural water reservoirs in some of the Bulgarian and Romanian shale gas exploration regions. Those water reservoirs are used in plant-growing, farming and drinking. With shale gas the question is not if but when the pollution will come - and more of the times it's coming right away after the exploration had started.

Given that shale gas exploration is all over the Dallas Fort Worth area (check it out, look at Google Earth) don't  you think other people have studied this and have actual facts on it?

The general issue is that the fracking is done way, WAY deeper than underground water and the drilling is done with concrete sealed pipe systems.

Here's an article about the shale gas under Fort Worth.

http://geology.com/research/barnett-shale-gas.shtml

I think if your fears about water contamination were even in part accurate, we'd hear complaints about contamination from Ft. Worth??  I mean, there's like 5000 wells right in the middle of the populated areas of the city?

[equipoise]

It's a karst topography there with earth movements, deep crevices and faults - no way to keep the pollution contained.

[Balthazar]

It depends on technology. Anhydrous fracking is safe if everything is running according to technology. But this technology is relatively costly, so the most of wells are made using the water solutions as reagents.

P.S. Anhydrous fracking uses liquid propane or butane instead of water. It's now used in USA (Texas), China, Canada and there are plans to use it in Russia, Austria and India.

[equipoise]

Yes, it depends on the technology and the geological factors of the place. Wikipedia: "A challenge to preventing pollution is that shale gas extractions varies widely in this regard, even between different wells in the same project; the processes that reduce pollution sufficiently in one extraction may not be enough in another." The current hydraulic fracturing technology is not safe at all especially with this geology and they want to extract it with hydraulic fracturing.

[Spendulus]

Yes, it depends on the technology and the geological factors of the place. Wikipedia: "A challenge to preventing pollution is that shale gas extractions varies widely in this regard, even between different wells in the same project; the processes that reduce pollution sufficiently in one extraction may not be enough in another." The current hydraulic fracturing technology is not safe at all especially with this geology and they want to extract it with hydraulic fracturing.

Simple question, isn't this exactly the sort of thing that companies working in the field with a staff of PhD geologists would advise on?  They would say drill here, not there, based on stability of formations, etc.  I thought this was the only way it was done.

I suppose it is possible that political or money interests could actually attempt to frack in unsuitable areas.  Hard for me to believe, here in Texas this is highly regulated.  Here 'anti fracking' interests use lots of appeals to fear, outright false arguments and so forth.  In other words, they poorly understand science and engineering, and argue quite literally against the opinions of PdDs in the field with decades of experience.

[bitgold]

All fossil fuels are only temporary solutions.

Nuclear is the future. Fusion is the savior.

[equipoise]

...political or money interests could actually attempt to frack in unsuitable areas...

this

[Spendulus]

...political or money interests could actually attempt to frack in unsuitable areas...

this

I'd be the first to object to that if it happened around here.  I know sometimes things go wrong with those wells, any one that's worked out there can tell stories.  But that's way way different than putting a well down a mile in unstable ground.

[Spendulus]

...political or money interests could actually attempt to frack in unsuitable areas...

this

What I know is that there are extensive geologist reports done before any drilling, not just to determine where the oil deposits are, but obviously to avoid unstable areas.  These reports are engineering reports, not politically oriented things.

Maybe they should be made public?  Or if they didn't exist or someone refused to make them pubiic, that would be telling.

I couldn't say what the result of that would be, it might not support the anti-fracking lobby.  It might support some of their ideas but not others.  All I can tell  you is that in Texas - you know we have a long history of producing oil - this kind of thing such as "drilling without caring about the unstable ground formations" would not be tolerated.

To get an idea of the extent of the regulation, say if a roughneck working on a fracking job was told to mix concrete and pour it down the hole, (essential for protecting the underground water from contamination) but he didn't.  He signed the work log asserting he did do it, but lied. 

That's a criminal offense - jail time.

[equipoise]

^Isn't the hydraulic fracturing excluded from the Safe Drinking Water Act (http://water.epa.gov/type/groundwater/uic/class2/hydraulicfracturing/wells_hydroreg.cfm)? It seems they passed something similar here and there may be no ecological expertise needed for hydraulic fracturing. I was in Texas A&M and the taste of the water... I'm not sure if it's a pollution or just the natural taste of your drinking water, but it's definitely not to my taste.

Edit: I forgot to add about the smell of the drinking water there. Both the taste and the smell are hard to describe.

[bryant.coleman]

Right now, environmental damage due to shale gas extraction is getting more and more noticeable in regions such as Canada. The ground water has been made unusable in the regions where gas extraction is being made. Huge amounts of methane are being released in to the atmosphere, which contributes to the greenhouse effect, as well as to the local air pollution.

[shogdite]

We've polluted our planet enough, seems a bit backward digging up that dirty black stuff.

Why not stick a load of solar panels across the Sahara desert?

Don't worry.  The rapture is going to happen pretty soon so it won't matter.  Only Godless heathens (and Communists) worry about changes in the makeup atmosphere.

Phew, as a sowshalist I was beginning to get a bit scared. May the Koch brothers deliver us from evil.

[niothor]

One thing I forgot to add about the shale gas exploration in the case that started the thread...

I don't know the situation in Texas ...
-wiki only mentions 2 larger than 6 Richter scale earthquakes last century and I don't know how far they are from the wells-
but in the case of the Pungesti exploration , it is in a 100 km range from the most active earthquake center in my country which triggered 5 7+ Richter scale earthquakes last century.