Feds Pave Way for Fracking Industry to Perpetrate Biggest Land Grab in U.S. History -

[WNYcabinplannin]

Here in western NY, particularly the finger lakes region where my cabin is, fracking is highly unpopular. I have neighbors on both sides. I see both pros and cons, particularly these:
Pro- get off foreign oil, NG/LP cleaner than coal, domestic job boost, and NYS needs the $$.
Cons: massive amount of fresh water needed. Non disclosure of brine ingredients (I get it, multiple companies/ trade secrets?) but if they want us to trust it's safe we got to know what IT IS!?!.
Biggest no from me is this: a permanent ban on the pocket above NYC. Rest of the state is fair game. If it's too risky for NYC, it's too risky for the rest of us!
Engineer from Suburban Propane (my LP for cabin) said they shouldn't do "hydraulic fracking" bc there's actually a GLUT right now.
Ok my $.02 from NY tonight.

[Mrs. Len]

Very disturbing on every level, can't imagine how awful it is for that poor guy! Old growth trees...unreal?! We are in the foothills of the Olympic Mountains, so at least aren't facing that type of scenario. Imminent Domain has been used illegally for a long time.

[rreidnauer]

I was just watching a story on Oklahoma PBS of a city using eminent domain to acquire homes that were in risk of going into forecloser and displacing the families living in them. Then the city would set up a new mortgage so the families could afford to stay.

Maybe for the good, maybe not, but one thing that is for sure, it is an abuse of the premise of eminent domain. It goes on for MANY things. Not just the 'evil' gas drillers.

[DanBlue]

Hello WNYcabinplannin..There is NO WAY IN HELL anyone with a vested interest ANYWHERE NEAR NYC wants this drilling...because folks know it's dangerous and it causes earthquakes/sink holes, etc...These real-estate guys and the city of New York are way to savvy to allow it......it's just bad stuff..kinda like land fills...we want them, we need them, just not in my back yard right??

[DanBlue]

I was just watching a story on Oklahoma PBS of a city using eminent domain to acquire homes that were in risk of going into forecloser and displacing the families living in them. Then the city would set up a new mortgage so the families could afford to stay.

Maybe for the good, maybe not, but one thing that is for sure, it is an abuse of the premise of eminent domain. It goes on for MANY things. Not just the 'evil' gas drillers.

The gas drillers aren't evil folks..The reason I want a hand made log cabin I've built myself speaks to the same reason that I want a natural, wooded environment with clean water....I don't want gas being drilled anywhere near my wooded land..I don't want sections of our beautiful landscape destroyed so gas lines can be run..it defeats the purpose of why I'm building in the woods..

I'm an end user of land fills, but I wouldn't want my land close to a land fill...I wouldn't want the trash trucks cutting a road through my land to drive the trash through...So that's why I've bought my land 70 miles north of where the marcellus shale formation...I'm simply mitigating my risk of being bothered...I desire an ecosystem as natural as it might have been 200 years ago...that is what I personally am attempting....What would Theodore Roosevelt say? You all should watch the National Geographic series "The National Parks" produced by Ken Burns....

[rocklock]

There is NO WAY IN HELL anyone with a vested interest ANYWHERE NEAR NYC wants this drilling...because folks know it's dangerous and it causes earthquakes/sink holes,...

OK, I have avoided this topic until now. My brother-in-law has been fracking for at least 20 years. He just retired. I talked to him. His response about the dangers of fracking stuff is BS. He said that they pump cement into the hole that is some times 3 to 5 miles under ground, then pump pressurized water to put hair line cracks in the cement, then reduce the pressure to draw the gas or oil out. Horizontal drilling has changed drilling. Now drilling rigs must be able to bend steel pipes. My nephew is currently the master on one of these new rigs. They are very powerful and not cheap. But one rig can drill many wells in all different directions.

Fracking is not dangerous. Fracking will not cause earth plates to move (earth quakes) nor sink holes. Its high pressure cement with hairline cracks in it.

[slamasha]

http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/e...045.1.abstract
http://energyblog.nationalgeographic...d-earthquakes/

There are many scientific studies that link fracking with earthquake activity. Also, water contamination could be an issue. Industry would give out grants to justify it's all OK (and employees would believe so), but independent researches show it's not that harmless.

My nephew is a Chemical Engineer and he worked for ExxonMobil for a while, he believes fracking could be dangerous.
/2 cents/

[rreidnauer]

Earthquakes can and do happen from fracking. However, it's areas already prone to them, and typically they tend to be very mild, or even unnoticed. But it's easy for the media to say "an earthquake happened where fracing activity is going on" but fail to include the fact that everyone probably slept through it because it was so minor.

I too don't buy the fracing induced water contamination arguement. Gas drilling is many, many times below any aquifer, and as Rockock has already pointed out, the well is sealed to allow the strata to be fractured under (incredibly) high pressure. If it were not, fracing fluid would be ejected out the top of a well. (explosively)

Rocklock said they use water, which is true, but it isn't just water. There are chemicals used to help break bonds in the strata layers and to help convey sand particles that are also pumped in to hold the fractures open. Not to be unexpected, they can be bad. I once asked a rep for the industry, why they don't reuse the fracing fluid, and the answer was the chemical composition changes after reacting with the strata. But there is no argument that there IS water contamination happening from fracing fluid. The thing is, it's not the well that is doing it. It's the tanker drivers on a late night run, dumping it somewhere they aren't suppose to, to save a buck or an hour. Given a little time to work it's way down to the water table, and bango, you got all the proof one needs to say fracing wells contaminated my water.

Sinkhole argument I believe is BS. Fracing doesn't create any giant voids. We're talking minute fractures the size of a grain of sand.

I can see an oil guy thinking gas drilling being a bad thing. Look, the public is always going to fear what it doesn't understand. And it doesn't take much to get a few myths rolling, especially with today's media, which is more concerned with ratings than fact. (Trivia: when the shopping cart was first invented by Sylvan Goldman in 1937, the public was afraid/apprehensive to use them. It's just human nature to fear the unknown)

[Drummerboy]

http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/e...045.1.abstract
http://energyblog.nationalgeographic...d-earthquakes/

There are many scientific studies that link fracking with earthquake activity. Also, water contamination could be an issue. Industry would give out grants to justify it's all OK (and employees would believe so), but independent researches show it's not that harmless.

My nephew is a Chemical Engineer and he worked for ExxonMobil for a while, he believes fracking could be dangerous.
/2 cents/

Last week read an article that scientists underestimated the risk of earth quakes, example Oklahoma had 2 earthquakes a year before fracking, last year had 435 mol

[rreidnauer]

And "earthquake" being a very generalized word for something catastrophic to imperceptible, of those 435 quakes, how many were strong enough to even be felt?

There could be the arguement made that fracing could be helping to avoid a catastrophic earthquake by triggering smaller ones and releasing built up stress.