Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Where is All of the US Shale Gas Located?

Since not much new happened today in the fracking/shale gas drilling world, I decided to share a link to maps of the major shale gas basins in the United States.

While the Marcellus shale deposit is currently the "big one", a look at the map indicates this is going to be a problem in several states and for many years to come.

Monday, July 25, 2011

Questionable Pro-Fracking Post

I just came across this site that says there are 80,000 fracked wells in Ohio with zero groundwater contamination.

Okay, I actually know about the number of fracked wells in Ohio because I came across numbers in the course of my research. I do not question the amount. It has been common practice to frack OIL wells in Ohio for, well, a few decades, now.

The part this other site's glowing report about the awesomeness and safety of fracking does not explain to the reader is, while some of the same hazardous chemicals are used in both oil well and gas well fracking, (by the way, they have been dumping this toxic stuff on roadways since the early 1980's to keep down dust in summer and in winter to thaw ice - want to take an educated guess at why cancer, autism, and asthma are on the rise since around that time?) some of the more explosive ones, known for causing ground to fracture are used only in natural gas drilling.

Also, saying there has been zero groundwater contamination is not completely true. Problems have just been poorly documented. Many of these wells broke through the water table when drilled, causing drinking water to become undrinkable.

So, in addition to potential problems in Ohio when natural gas drilling proceeds, the dumping of fracking brine into uncontained abandoned oil wells poses the threat of further contamination of drinking water from NG brine chemicals.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Help for Landowners Victimized by Gas Drilling

Something to balance the power between gas companies and the people affected by gas companies, at least a little bit of help for a few land-owners...

MIT is test-marketing a new software program to help loandowners make sure drilling proposals from companies are fair and safe.

Also available to provide information to landowners, The Landman Report Card.

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Fracking Article on Lawyers, Guns & Money

While this article on Lawyers, Guns & Money is not about Ohio, it is about the dangers of fracking. It describes the eathquakes that started in Arkansas when fracking started there. The earthquakes subsided when the drilling stopped. Ther article goes on to mention that further exploration of the cause would not be researched because, well, the gas companies have the power to stop it.

The part I found the most interesting - the comments at the end of the article. One poster went as far as to describe the issue behind the fracking controversy as being that people hate energy companies. Really, though, that seems like a very, very short-sighted stance.

The problem, at least for most people and environmental groups, has nothing to do with hating energy companies. It has to do with not wanting to see people die due to a company's greed and political leader's greed over not wanting to lose money and power by standing up against companies doing the wrong thing.  That is the bottom line, not hatred of the companies bringing us energy.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Fraccidents: Ohio and Nationwide

Fracking has a new claim to fame. A new word has been coined to classify the numerous accidents caused by the practice: fraccidents.

FrackAlert.org posts a map of the fraccidents, and Google Maps also offers one for viewing. So far, Ohio only gets to lay claim to one skull and crossbones symbol, and it is from 2008.

Monday, July 11, 2011

Controversies Involved in Natural Gas Drilling

I selected this article for Ohio, Frac, and the Environment because, while I feel the author is pro-fracking based on his link to an oil-well selling site, he did a nice job with the article and he presented his information objectively.

Author: Andrews Boaz

The modern era has seen most of the countries, desperately searching for the deposits of oil and natural gas. Indeed drilling for gas has taken an upper hand, ever since it was found that the natural gas was much superior to that of the crude oil. This is because of the reason that, when a comparison is made among all the fossil fuels, it is the natural gas that is found to releases less of the harmful gases that harm the atmosphere on combustion. This has made it a star among all the fuels present on earth.

Because of this environmental friendliness, natural gas has become a champion fuel as far as the modern world is concerned. Drilling for gas has since then picked up on a worldwide level, with most of the companies getting involved with explorations in the natural gas field. Currently it is a period of recession, that most of the people worldwide are undergoing and certainly most of them have lost jobs. In this modern world the usage of oil has become essential and the oil wells for sale has emerged as the leading and most lucrative business and details about Oil Wells for Sale and oil well companies for sale can be obtained here.

Thus the natural gas drilling companies with their new projects can very well provide employment to the people who are located near the natural gas fields and this opens this sector, with plenty of job opportunities. Drilling for gas has its own set of disadvantages, when it comes to the areas that are located near the natural gas fields. This is following several reports which suggest that, the drilling for gas has resulted in polluting the ground water in several places. The gas drilling companies nowadays drill the shale rocks, to release the gas deposits that have been locked within the rock crevices, for millions of years.

Subsequently when the natural gas company start drilling for gas within the shale rocks, they use a method called as fracting that is most commonly employed, whenever a horizontal drilling process takes place. During the process of fracting that is employed during the drilling for gas several chemicals are used to fasten the process and this result in polluting the water table present in that locality. It is this fracting process, that most of the environmentalists and also the local groups are against, since it can cause health hazards to the local residents. Thus though gas drilling has picked up steam in most parts of the world, there are some places where the environmental groups and natives do offer stiff resistance, that blocks the prospects for drilling for gas near impossible in such areas.

Hence it is totally up to the natural gas drilling companies, to win the confidence of the people as well as the environmental groups and negotiate with them to make drilling possible. Apart from this, the gas drilling companies have to be very transparent about the drilling processes and the methods that they really intend to employ for their operations. They should in turn use the safest methods that do not harm the environment. This would instill confidence and the support for the drilling projects from the local groups.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/environment-articles/controversies-involved-in-natural-gas-drilling-4028876.html
About the Author

In this modern world the usage of oil has become essential and the oil wells for sale has emerged as the leading and most lucrative business and details about Oil Wells for Sale and oil well companies for sale can be obtained here. Investors and purchasers need not go in search of Oil wells for Sale.