(via energybulletin.net)
US Natural Gas Drilling Boom Linked to Pollution and Social Strife
Jim Wickens, The Ecologist
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCyHS7fKmXI[/youtube]
Worth watching the video as it contains different information to the article. The video includes commentary from Lou Allstadt, former Senior Vice President at Mobil, and Prof. Tony Ingraffea, Professor of Engineering at Cornell University.- SO, energybulletin.net
The gas stored in the Marcellus Shale formation is the subject of desperate drilling to secure US domestic energy supplies. But the process involved – hydraulic fracturing – is the focus of a bitter dispute over environmental damage and community rights
It is a timeless patchwork of small dairy farms and endless hills, emblazoned with the blood-red tints of an autumnal Pennsylvania forest. Set against this sleepy backdrop, however, the constant convoys of water trucks rumbling along the deserted country roads suggest something profound is taking place. This is ‘fracking’ country, the latest frontier in America’s desperate search for fossil fuels.
Pioneered by companies such as Halliburton, high-volume horizontal slickwater fracturing – otherwise known as hydraulic fracturing, or simply fracking – involves the drilling of horizontal wells that are then injected with large volumes of water, sand and chemicals at high pressure to open up rock fractures and help propel rock-trapped gas back to the surface. For landowners, those in the gas industry and governments of cash-strapped US states that find themselves sitting on the gas-rich lines of the Marcellus Shale rock formation, this new technique has opened up lucrative opportunities and created a rush unseen for decades. Vast reserves of previously untappable natural gas, perhaps in excess of 50 trillion cubic feet of gas, can now be extracted on US soil, and the arguments used by advocates of fracking seem impressive.
‘It’s almost divine intervention. Right at the time oil prices are skyrocketing, we’re struggling with the economy, we’re concerned about global warming, and national security threats remain intense, we wake up and we’ve got this abundance of natural gas around us,’ said Aubrey McClendon in 2008, CEO of Chesapeake Energy Corporation, one of the leading gas companies drilling today.
Fracking is currently taking America by storm. In Pennsylvania alone, government estimates predict that 3,000-4,000 new wells will be drilled each year for the next 30 years. And America is not alone: test sites have already been set up over gas-holding shale formations in Poland, France, England and Germany. So where is the catch, and what can these European countries expect? The Ecologist visited Pennsylvania to find out…
(December 2010)
