re <videos on environmental safety protocols for horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing by Chesapeake>
youtube.com
youtube.com
It would be more instructive, to show videos of actual drill sites. I like to see how it's done in the field, preferably at a randomly selected site, with the crew not aware they are being filmed. Those videos are computer animations, put together by the PR department, showing a perfectly clean site (apparently, nothing is ever spilled), under ideal conditions.
A few questions:
1. About all that cementing they describe, to isolate gas from groundwater: is that always done, or just some of the time? And the pressure-testing of the cement jobs: is this mandated, done very time for every cementing? Who is responsible for checking? Any penalties for cutting corners?
2. About the Blow Out Preventer: what is its internal construction? Redundancy? Truly fail-safe?
3. About all the fluid that comes back out of the well: where, exactly, does it go? Who checks to make sure none of it gets dumped or spilled, or ends up in the nearest river?
4. About the drilling mud, described as "a non-hazardous mixture": since the recipe for mud isn't publicly disclosed, how do we know it is non-toxic? Just trust them on this?
5. About the explosive and fluid fracturing: Is it always completely contained within the gas-bearing layers? How controlled and predictable is this process? What keeps the fracture area from extending, and propagating along natural fracture lines?
6. About radon and radium, which the video said nothing about: How much is released? How much hydrocarbon gas is released? Benzene? Carbon disulfide? Other carcinogens? Is there adequate testing, to even answer these questions?
7. About the containment pond: Why didn't they show it?
These questions need to be taken seriously and answered, or else the natgas industry is going to have their own "Macondo Event". The current go-go boom-town drill-baby-drill culture will create public distrust. A political/regulatory backlash is already beginning.
I like to alternate reading the Wall Street Journal and Al Jazeera, and I believe things they both say happened (everything else I'm sceptical about, which means I'm sceptical about almost everything). Here's the "Al Jazeera viewpoint" on fracking:
hilarious Frack Pit Love Song youtube.com
What the Frack is Going On? (socialist tree-huggers love to sing about their Convictions) youtube.com
Frac Rap (with dancing white girls) youtube.com
more bad rap youtube.com
blowout at Chesapeake drill site youtube.com
a real site, showing reality is much messier than computer animations, and also showing the containment pond: youtube.com
What's in the smoke being released? youtube.com
oil fire, in the yard of oil field services company USA Trucking, several miles west of Williston, North Dakota youtube.com
What's in the water in this gusher? youtube.com
4 frac tanks spilling water youtube.com
"flames shooting from faucets" youtube.com
fracking hell youtube.com
JS@Fair&BalancesLikeFox&AlJazeera.edu |
