Tag: oil and gas

And by “you,” I mean Sarah Palin, which I suppose shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that hasn’t been living in a cave since John McCain made his shark-jumping choice for vice president in 2008.

Extreme deep water drilling is not the preferred choice to meet our country’s energy needs, but your protests and lawsuits and lies about onshore and shallow water drilling have locked up safer areas. It’s catching up with you. The tragic, unprecedented deep water Gulf oil spill proves it.

Sarah? Sarah, let’s sit down for a minute. Pull up a seat. I’ve got some fresh banana bread I just made. Do you prefer milk or coffee?

So let’s chat. Look, I know that you’ve got an agenda, and that you don’t like environmentalists. But you’re really going off the deep end here. Maybe no one bothered to tell you this, so I’ll let you in on a little secret: oil companies want to drill in deep water because it’s a way to gain access to a shitload of oil. Full stop. I mean, I’m sure we’d be happily drilling in ANWR too, since there’s a nice untapped oil field up there. But that’s kind of the point; what any oil company that does exploration wants is to gain access to a field that ideally hasn’t been drilled before. Which means there’s a lot of oil there for the taking, and the reservoir is still nice and pressurized, and you’re not having to wrack your brain to figure out how to squeeze a little more oil out of rocks.

If ANWR had been opened for drilling, this disaster still could have happened, and easily. Why? Because there’s a lot of oil on the continental shelf, and the farther you go out and the deeper you drill, the more likely you are to hit something your competitors haven’t really tapped in to yet. And I think my point is handily proven by the underwater oil volcano – we’re talking a flow of over 20 million barrels in about 40 days, from a single well. That’s fairly significant. No oil company in its right mind would leave that kind of potential alone, ANWR or no ANWR.

Let’s just consider estimated reserves, shall we?

The USGS did an assessment of ANWR in 2002. If you look at the whole enchilada of land – national land, native lands, and the nearby shallow offshore area – the mean estimate for reserves they came up with was 10.6 billion barrels of oil and 61.4 trillion cubic feet of gas. Let’s be generous and say the mean they came up with is right, and eventually that amount of reserves could be proved.

The latest reserves estimate of the Gulf of Mexico I could find on the MMS site was from 2006; the reserve numbers may well be the same today, or possibly larger due to continued exploration. But just with the 2006 numbers, the estimated reserves were:
Proved: 5.22 billion barrels of oil, 16.9 trillion cubic feet of gas (this left after those fields had already produced 15.1 billion barrels of oil and 166.8 trillion cubic feet of gas)
Unproved: 4.44 billion barrels of oil, 8.3 trillion cubic feet of gas
Not available for lease yet: 1.32 billion barrels of oil, 7.7 trillion cubic feet of gas

Looking at those numbers, ANWR is certainly impressive if you count all available land; it may have close to as much oil as the Gulf of Mexico, and a lot more natural gas. (Though considering how ridiculously cheap natural gas is these days, one has to wonder about the benefits to the companies of producing even more of it.) But more importantly, if you think the oil companies would drop their ~10 billion barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico so they could have ~10 billion barrels of oil in Alaska instead, I’d like to know what color the sky is on your planet. This is not an either/or situation. I guarantee you that if “safer” (which is very, very debatable) places for drilling like ANWR were opened up tomorrow, there would still be rigs in the Gulf of Mexico unless deepwater drilling was subsequently banned. These are oil companies. They go where the oil is. It’s what they do.

Please see also: If You Give a Mouse a Cookie (a cautionary tale)

There are a lot of people to blame for this disaster: BP for its gross negligence, the government for its lack of regulation, the general American public for its unceasing demand for cheap petroleum products. But hippies on bicycles? Get a grip, Sarah. Have some more banana bread.

Representative Young, you are a moron.

“This is not an environmental disaster, and I will say that again and again because it is a natural phenomena. Oil has seeped into this ocean for centuries, will continue to do it. During World War II there was over 10 million barrels of oil spilt from ships, and no natural catastrophe. … We will lose some birds, we will lose some fixed sealife, but overall it will recover.”

A Rush Limbaugh-style moron, which is not a distinction many people are able to sink low enough to achieve. So hats off to you, I suppose, in an uncomfortable, “my what a spectacular train wreck that is” sort of why.

Of course, I’m not quite sure if it’s actual stupidity that’s making these men say such asinine things (and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re being parroted by others now) or just flat out intellectual dishonesty.

So when Limbaugh says something like:

Oil is as much a part of nature as water is. … If we didn’t do anything, it would recover.

I’m forced to spend a lot of time wondering if he was actually just born that way, of it he really had to put a lot of time and effort in to becoming that absolutely dishonest.

Oil seeps are, indeed, natural. There are even natural oil seeps in the Gulf of Mexico. But you know, arsenic naturally occurs in food, too, but you wouldn’t want a large arsenic spill to occur on your hamburger. The natural oil seeps (per that source) come to an average of 140,000 tons per year, which is around a million barrels of oil. In a year. Spread out through the entire Gulf of Mexico.

If you go with this handy yet incredibly depressing ticker from PBS, we’re up to around 21 million barrels already as our best case scenario, in a bit over 40 days. The poison is in the dose, you know. And let’s be clear – we would not be getting this sort of oil flow if it weren’t for human activities, and as has become increasingly clear, gross human negligence.

What makes me the angriest is really the high-handed assumption that anything we do is no big deal, because mommy Earth will clean it up for us eventually. The absolute disregard for suffering is just breathtaking. The environment might eventually regain its equilibrium after a major spill, though I think you could just as easily argue that it will likely reach a new, different equilibrium instead. But here’s the thing. The Earth, the environment, are inanimate entities. They do not give two shits about living things, our incredibly short (on a geological time scale) lives, or any pain or suffering we might feel. It’s up to us to care. And considering that collectively we are the cause of that suffering, we damn well should care.

It must be quite easy to not care, to dismiss that suffering and try to squirm around the scary word “disaster” if you make millions of dollars a year being a professional douchebag on the radio, or live quite well as a politician far, far away from the place where the lives of animals both human and non-human are being destroyed.

I’ve changed my mind about the moron thing. It’s far worse than that.

You, sir, are a monster.

What BP and the lie of deregulation has wrought.

I am unspeakably angry and upset; worse, I feel helpless all over again. When a single senator can block even the simplest step toward legislating responsibility, what hope is there that the truly necessary measures can be taken?

Regulate and enforce. This has to stop. I wish there was more I could do, but I’m going to start by writing some letters.

Maybe some of you are tired of seeing this picture already.

You know what? Tough shit.

You should tattoo this picture on the inside of your eyelids. This image should haunt your dreams. Every time you fill up your gas tank, you should think about this. Every time you hear some moronic politician of any stripe utter the meaningless phrase “reduce our dependency on foreign oil,” this picture should be what you think about.

I don’t make it a secret that I earn my living from the oil industry, and have done so for the past five years. I also don’t normally make it a giant talking point. It’s quite likely that when I get out of grad school in a couple of years with a Masters’ in geology under my belt, I will return to the industry that set me on this academic course and work as a petroleum geologist.

But that doesn’t mean I have to support everything that my industry does, or the absolutely stupid attitude that this country has toward oil and natural gas.

And it is stupid. Very, very stupid. Unless you’re a believer in abiotic oil¹, you have to come to grips with the realization that oil is an extremely limited natural resource. When it’s gone, it’s gone. And unless you’re pandering, lying, or completely ignorant of how the oil business works, you have to understand that drilling more does nothing to diminish America’s oft-cited dependency on “foreign” oil. We’re not a country where oil drilling and production is nationalized. When oil is sucked out of formations in America, it doesn’t go into a giant barrel marked “For Americans only.” While we are a net importer we do export oil. Mostly it’s Alaska and West Coast oil going to countries around the Pacific Rim; but the point is, oil produced in America does not automatically belong to us, the American people. And further, increasing the supply of oil is at best only a temporary solution; it does not decrease the demand, and oil – as I’ve said before – is a limited natural resource.

When I hear any of the slogans – “Drill, baby, drill” or “Drill here, drill now” being the worst offenders – frankly, it makes me want to vomit². It’s short-sighted, it’s irresponsible, and it displays the sort of willful ignorance and dishonesty that has plagued our country since before the Exxon Valdez disaster. If we’re truly worried about the fact that we import massive amounts of oil, that we are gobbling up a limited resource as quickly as it can be drawn from the ground, the solution is not to drill and speed the depletion. The solution is to reduce the demand, period.

So I bet you’re wondering now why on Earth I’m working for an oil company, and why I’m considering a career as a petroleum geologist, since I’m apparently so anti-oil.

Part of it is financial, and I’m honest enough to admit that. My years in this industry have been the best of my working adult life. My company treats its people incredibly well, and I find the work very intellectually stimulating.

But more importantly, it is because I’m not anti-oil. I’m anti-stupidity and anti-irresponsibility. And those are the two qualities that have marked the handling of the industry and the public’s general reaction to it since… well, ever, I’d say.

I believe that it is possible for oil companies to drill in a responsible manner that limits the environmental impact to almost zero. I believe that risky projects shouldn’t be undertaken unless every possible precaution has been taken and the environmental impacts have been thoroughly studied and understood.

I believe that it is the government’s job to step in and make certain that happens with strict regulation, monitoring, and enforcement, because frankly I think it’s stupid to expect people to monitor themselves when they’re in a situation where all profit is private but risk is shared out with the public, willing or no.

I believe it was industry irresponsibility that caused the slow-motion disaster that continues to horrify me every day, and it was also government irresponsibility. And frankly, it was also the irresponsibility of each and every person in America that has bought into the lie that business and industry don’t need regulation.

But even more important – and I am going to put this in bold, because if you take nothing else away from this post, I want you to remember this – I believe that oil is an amazing and versatile natural resource that could be used to the general benefit of humanity and it is a crime that we are burning it.

Other posts to read:
An Open Letter To Anyone Who Ever Said “Drill, Baby, Drill”
The Power of a Photograph…

1 – Often referred to as “snake oil” or “horse shit” by most geologists I’ve ever encountered – and keep in mind that most of my geologists buddies are card-carrying members of AAPG.

2 – And not just because it’s often being said by Sarah Palin.

After a small discussion in my previous post about hydraulic fracturing, I decided to look in to the subject a little more deeply, since the commenter focused strongly on concerns related to horizontally drilled wells. Horizontal wells weren’t really mentioned in the articles I linked to, but horizontal drilling is becoming the common method for extracting gas from tight shales and will likely be used in the development of the Marcellus Shale. As such, it’s more than fair to look at the practice and see if there are issues unique to it, or problems that occur more commonly in horizontal rather than vertical wells.

One thing I’ve noticed so far in researching is that papers that could answer that concern are few and far between. Looking at both GeoRef and GeoScience World, many reference hits are to expanded abstracts from meetings, and most of those are related to the effects of horizontal drilling on reservoir development rather than environmental impact. The EPA is also unhelpful on the topic; as the practice of hydraulic fracturing has been excluded from the Safe Drinking Water Act, the EPA isn’t in a position to look in to the safety from an environmental standpoint. The one study they have done relates to coal bed methane. In their coal bed methane study, the EPA concludes:

Although potentially hazardous chemicals may be introduced into USDWs when fracturing fluids are injected into coal seams that lie within USDWs, the risk posed to USDWs by introduction of these chemicals is reduced significantly by groundwater production and injected fluid recovery, combined with the mitigating effects of dilution and dispersion, adsorption, and potentially biodegradation. Additionally, EPA has reached an agreement with the major service companies to voluntarily eliminate diesel fuel from hydraulic fracturing fluids that are injected directly into USDWs for coalbed methane production.

However, that said, the coal bed methane situation is arguably not quite the same, since most coal beds used in that study were fairly shallow, and many in direct “communication” with adjacent formations or aquifers. As a side geological note, coal layers can often act as barriers to fluid (such as hydrocarbons) flow from lower formations to upper formations, since they’re only really permeable via fractures. Also, the conclusions have been called in to question in 2004 by an EPA employee named Weston Wilson:

While EPA’s report concludes this practice poses little or no threat to underground sources of drinking water, based on the available science and literature, EPA’s conclusions are unsupportable. EPA has conducted limited research reaching the unsupported conclusion that this industry practice needs no further study at this time. EPA decisions were supported by a Peer Review Panel; however five of the seven members of this panel appear to have conflicts-of-interest and may benefit from EPA’s decision not to conduct further investigation or impose regulatory conditions.

An apparent conflict of interest is certainly something to look in to. I found one site that said Mr. Wilson’s concerns were considered valid enough to prompt further investigation, though I have no idea if that investigation occurred or what the conclusion turned out to be. So I think for now, we’ll skip the coal bed methane study.

The commenter made two points that I looked in to, which I’ve paraphrased here:

1) That the fractures made by hydraulic fracturing can extend further than intended, and in to different zones than are desired, possibly putting the aquifer at risk.

I tend to think that subsurface, technically anything is possible; geophysics is a difficult field (certainly not one I’ve mastered) since the conditions are uncontrolled and it’s nigh impossible to know what the underground stress field is like precisely or what zones of weakness/minor faults may also exist. So is it possibly that a fracture created in a deep zone could “go rogue” (oh, I feel dirty just typing those words!) and go 4,000 feet up in to an aquifer? Possible, yes, but I would venture to say highly unlikely and would probably require an existing network of fractures/faults to do. The EPA coal bed methane study does actually say one thing of use about this matter, which holds true even if we’re not talking coal bed methane:

A hydraulic fracture will propagate perpendicularly to the minimum principal stress. In some shallow formations, the least principal stress is the overburden stress; thus, the hydraulic fracture will be horizontal. In deeper reservoirs, the least principal stress will likely be horizontal; thus, the hydraulic fracture will be vertical.

Basically, the generic stress you’d expect in a deep formation would cause the fractures to tend to propagate upward. However, the general stress field will change as you approach the surface, and there are going to be other stress factors that may redirect fractures along the way. Intervening formations with different properties and different zones of weakness also have an important effect. A basin is in no way homogeneous vertically – and often formations will change their properties over horizontal distance as well. The New York Department of Environmental Conservation SGEIS report is a little more specific:

ICF – citing PTTC, 2006 – concludes that: “In the Appalachian Basin, the stress state would be expected to lead to predominantly vertical fractures below about 2500 feet, with a tendency towards horizontal fractures at shallower depths.”

Depending on the depth of the aquifer, this conclusion makes the propagation of a vertical fracture in to it seem fairly unlikely.

At this point, the best that can be done is computer modeling, which has become increasingly sophisticated – though it can always be argued of course that we lack perfect knowledge of sub surface conditions. However, the fact of the matter is that it’s in the best interest of the people fracturing the formation to prevent such wild fracture propagation from happening. Going outside the intended zone tends to mean getting a lot of unintended fluid – normally salt water – which has to be separated and disposed of, not something that is cheap or convenient to do.

The New York Department of Environmental Conservation has a report that’s an overview of the historical and current practice of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing here. I think the authors of the report make a valid point by stating:

Not only is fracture growth outside of the target formation discouraged relative to the potential of reduced production by production of fluids from non-productive zones, creating fracture size outside of the productive interval is more expensive and less cost beneficial to the well’s economics.

The DEC SGEIS also quotes ICF again in noting:

• The developable shale formations are vertically separated from potential freshwater aquifers by at least 1,000 feet of sandstones and shales of
moderate to low permeability.
• The amount of time that fluids are pumped under pressure into the target formation is orders of magnitude less than the time that would be required for fluids to travel through 1,000 feet of low-permeability rock.
• The volume of fluid used to fracture a well could only fill a small percentage of the void space between the shale and the aquifer.
• Any flow of fracturing fluid toward an aquifer through open fractures or an unplugged wellbore would be reversed during flowback, with any residual fluid further flushed by flow from the aquifer to the production zone as pressures decline in the reservoir during production.

These factors point to groundwater contamination without wild fractures going a thousand or more feet farther than intended being highly unlikely as well.

At this point, the question of the threat that the fracturing practice has on the ground water becomes a cost/benefit analysis. It’s in the best economic interest of the company developing the well to model their fractures properly to ensure that they do not move out of the intended zone. But it’s also fair to argue that modeling is imperfect and that the most bizarre accidents can happen. Is that amount of risk worth the economic benefit?

2) Horizontal wells carry a greater risk of inducing harmful seismic activity which can cause an array of problems.

I’m actually already familiar with the concept of just plain old vertical wells inducing seismic activity; I doubt horizontal wells would be at all different. It’s certainly not a new concept. Most of the reading I’ve done on this subject relates to disposal wells; in particular there was a case in Colorado where a deep disposal well was lubricating nearby faults and causing them to reactivate. The seismic activity in these cases is generally pretty low level (0 to 3 on the Richter Scale) and mostly an argument for being careful where one puts one’s disposal wells – and for not overpressurizing them.

Subsidence is another matter that goes with the extraction of any fluid from a reservoir. With the reservoir losing pressure and volume with the removal of fluid, it can compact, which destroys reservoir permeability and causes subsidence. Subsidence also occurs and is a significant threat when aquifers are overused for drinking water. Basically, any time fluid is taken out of the ground and not replaced, there will be subsidence. From the US Department of Energy:

The most famous early instance was in Wilmington, California, where the oil production triggered a series of damaging earthquakes. In this instance the cause of the seismicity was traced to subsidence due to rapid extraction of oil without replacement of fluids. Once this was realized the oil extraction was balanced with water injection to mitigate the seismicity. Ever since then the oil and gas industry has adopted these practices to mitigate seismicity , but also mitigate damage to the oil wells in the producing field (wells would be sheared off in the subsurface as subsidence occurred).

The practice of reinjecting fluid isn’t exactly perfect – if nothing else there are cases where the replacement fluid can’t be returned to the right location and overpressurization can occur.

With the reading, I’ve done, I tend to agree with the DoE assessment:

Overall the impact of induced seismicity on the implementation of various different energy recovery and or disposal activities will depend on the risk associated with the activity and the cost-benefit ratio. All experience to date has shown that the risk, while not zero, has been either minimal or can be handled in a cost effective manner.

So once again, this comes to a question of cost/benefit analysis. Are the possible seismic dangers present worth the economic benefit? Are the means by which the concern about subsidence good enough at mitigating the problem? Since we live in a less than perfect world, it becomes a personal choice if the mitigation of the risk makes the development of the resource worth it. Though I think it is worth noting that in the DEC review of the pertinent geology that comes from their SGEIS, they state that in at least New York, the Marcellus and Utica shales underlie the areas of lowest seismic risk.

The DoE also makes a point of separating the induced seismicity associated with fluid injection and extraction from hydraulic fracturing:

Hydrofracturing is distinct from many types of induced seismicity because hydrofracturing is by definition only created when the forces applied create a type of fracture called a “tensile” fracture, creating a “driven” fracture… To our knowledge hydrofracturing to intentionally create permeability rarely creates unwanted induced seismicity large enough to be detected on the surface with very sensitive sensors, let alone be a hazard or annoyance.

I think the crux of this issue becomes the phrase “to our knowledge.” With what data and studies are available, it seems this is not something to be overly concerned about. However, I think a good argument can also be made in regards to needing more knowledge and more research. At this time, since the practice of hydraulic fracturing is in many ways proprietary and also exempt from government oversight, that makes the study of it in regards to environmental impacts difficult. I think that an NPR story on this topic sums it up nicely:

Critics of hydraulic fracturing suspect that the chemicals used in the process have somehow leaked into the groundwater supply. It has been difficult, however, to demonstrate a direct connection between these apparent instances of water pollution and the hydraulic fracturing procedures that have taken place nearby…It is also true, however, that state regulators have not been able to disprove a connection between hydraulic fracturing and water contamination.

At this time, it’s not something that could be directly proven or disproven. Off the top of my head, I think there are experiments that could be conducted that could tell us if:
a) Is there groundwater pollution associated with fracturing fluid?
b) Is this contamination associated with surface pollution or with the underground process?

For example, if you could add an inert “tracer” compound to fracturing fluid, you could then check if contaminated water had that tracer in it. As far as discerning between surface contamination and subsurface contamination, that might be more difficult. Though I imagine geologists who know far more about hydrology than I do may be able to determine the source just by looking at how quickly the contamination showed up. If you have contamination showing up in a reservoir two days after a nearby well has been fractured (and our mythical tracer compound shows it was from that well) then the next question is if a subsurface fracture could have possibly delivered fluid that quickly; if not, the more likely culprit is surface run off from an accident or inadequately observed safety practices.

Either way, this is all very pie in the sky. I’ll be interested to see more on this subject as more data is collected.

As a final note, the Department of Energy Induced seismicity primer is honestly a fascinating read in and of itself and I’d highly recommend it. I also recommend the New York Department of Environmental Conservation report that I linked to above as well, since it’s also a very good historical overview. The DEC also has a review of the pertinent geology that comes from their SGEIS that’s definitely worth a read. There is also a good description of the drilling process and equipment used from the SGEIS, which also includes a look at slickwater fracturing as used in the development of the Marcellus Shale.

Edit: An anonymous comment was left rather incongruously my post about Heene being sentenced. The commenter left a link for another bit of good reading on this topic, however: Impact Assessment of Natural Gas Production in the New York City Water Supply Watershed. The report covers quite a bit about the underlying fractures/faulting that was not in the other reports I read.

I hadn’t actually heard about the proposed regulation to subject hydraulic fracturing to the Safe Drinking Water Act. I suppose I’ve been too inundated with the entire horrific healthcare mess to hear much of anything else. I don’t have any problems with Congresswoman DeGette’s proposal – and I’m not just saying that because I voted for her.

Hydraulic fracturing is something that’s actually been in use for quite some time in the United States – at this point, a little bit over fifty years. Obviously, length of use doesn’t necessarily say anything about a practice’s safety; there are plenty of industrial practices that have been in use for far longer that do not-nice things to the environment and to people. I mostly point this out because by now, the practice is ubiquitous in the industry. When I started working for my company* as a temp four years ago, some of the first reports I ever read detailed how formations were being fractured.

The basic one sentence explanation in the article is fair enough, but I’d like to go in to just a little more detail about the what and why. Most fluids that we’re interested in getting out of rocks (water, oil, natural gas) are locked in sedimentary rocks**. We’re used to thinking of rocks as very solid things; the fact of it is, many of them are surprisingly un-solid. There are two very significant properties to these sedimentary rocks that determines how hard it’s going to be to extract the fluid.

The first is porosity – just how much “air space” there is in a rock. (Picture here) These spaces in the rock are basically the gaps between the grains that have been cemented together to form the rock. The higher the porosity of the rock, the more of your fluid of interest it can contain.

The second important quality is permeability – just how interconnected are the spaces in the rock? For example, a rock could potentially be quite porous, but if each of the spaces in it are completely isolated, it would be impossible for fluid to flow through the rock.

Permeability is a nice quality for a reservoir rock to have. If you want to get fluid out of that rock and it’s nice and permeable, often all you really have to do is drill down into the rock and then let the pressure differential do the work for you. The fluid in the rock will be under a lot more pressure than what’s in the well, so the liquid will just move on its own. But if a rock’s not very permeable, that fluid flow doesn’t happen easily because there just aren’t many paths for the fluid to travel. Rocks like that are referred to as “tight.”

Enter hydraulic fracturing. At its most basic, you just pump a lot of water and sand down in to a formation, under high pressure. The water finds zones of weakness in the formation and fractures them further; the sand keeps the fractures open. The end result is the creation of a lot more paths through which fluid can move through the formation and in to your well. However, there’s also the addition of a lot of chemicals to the fracturing process, many of which are included to help keep the sand from clumping up and clogging the fractures that you’ve just made.

For the most part, I don’t see a lot of problems with the basic practice of hydraulic fracturing. (Not on the table for discussion at the moment: the basic practice of using fossil fuels.) It aides in production – sometimes making it possible to produce from formations that would otherwise not produce at all – and ups the amount of fluid recovery. Most of the time, oil and gas producing formations are far deeper than the water table and properly done fracturing shouldn’t intrude anywhere near it. That said, a lot of the time you’re drilling through an aquifer to get where you need to go, or more importantly, fluid spills can occur at the surface or nasty things may find a way to escape waste pits. Even if you’ve got the most environmentally conscious and careful drilling company in the world, accidents can happen and should not be ignored. It doesn’t take too many mistakes to harm an aquifer and potentially hurt all of the people who rely on it for their water.

In my rather inexpert opinion (and from the news articles I’ve read thus far) the main problem with fracturing doesn’t seem to be the process in the ground, but rather spills and waste collection at the surface. Thus, I don’t think banning hydraulic fracturing would necessarily solve the basic problem, which at this point appears to be surface safety, and would quite possibly have an adverse effect on the natural gas market***. If there’s real, substantiated concern (which there seems to be) over contamination of ground water, then the Safe Drinking Water Act no doubt has something to say about it. Though I am also forced to wonder if adding another layer of regulation will do much good if current safe practice requirements are not being properly enforced.

Side note: There’s quite the collection of links for groundwater contamination news stories at the site NoFracking.com. I used the site as a link mine to see what contamination complaints/news was out there rather than as an informational source.

* I am an intern at an oil company. My opinions are not in any way the opinions of my company.

** Some times you’ll get water out of an igneous/metamorphic rock because it’s seeped in to fractures from the surface, or from an underlaying sedimentary reservoir. We won’t worry about that here.

*** Your mileage on this may vary, depending on how worried you are about the price of natural gas versus the possibility of finding some extremely scary chemicals in your drinking water.