There’s been a big fracking accident in PA. Thousands of gallons of chemical soup running all over open ground and straight to the nearest waterway.
Drill baby, drill!
http://www.wnep.com/wnep-brad-leroy-gas-drillingemergency20110420,0,1884646.story
Sigh!! Yes, the saga continues! Very depressing!
Best regards, Dave S.
“No adverse effects on the Towanda Creek…”
In the mean time this fish kill on a Class A stream was barely reported, I guess becuse it had NOTHING to do with fracking.
BTW - A shout out and congratulations to Washington, DC for hitting the $5 a gallon price for gas a full month before Memorial Day!! At this rate, you may be lucky enought to hit $6!!
Drill baby drill!!!
Not sure how gas prices in DC are even tangentially related to a fracking spill in PA, but thanks for playing. 
For what it’s worth, I’ve not seen fracking for natural gas have any impact whatsoever on gas prices, either nationally, or locally in the areas where the stuff is drilled. Whether they drill or not, gas prices continue to climb (in fact, they’re climbing while the fracking is still going on). And if they WERE somehow related, I’d be happy to pay $5-6/gal for gasoline to keep the fracking out of my area.
Dave,
It is depressing…I can only hope that a few isolated incidents like this will be all it takes for the people and their elected officials to make a stand.
Yup, that’s exactly what they are, a few isolated incidents!
Maybe we should sensationalize non incidents and see how the numbers stack-up in comparison. And after that examine the actual versus the suspected impact. But hey, those numbers may confuse the rhetoric.
And while correlations between gas drilling and the price of gasoline may be a bit far fetched, the analogy between doing nothing, as in regards to oil exploration and the cost of fuel and doing something couldn’t be any clearer; just look at the stability in the price of natural gas in the last year.
Drill baby drill is what I told my elected officials in PA. Maybe I’ll get myself a car that burns natural gas and let the windmill gang pay $6 a gallon for gasoline! 
Would a ghost car burn supernatural gas?
Sorry, I’ll try to behave now.
Ed
Okay, Bamboozle. I hope they trash your trout streams first with their isolated incidents. Your drinking water too. And your local municipality’s water supply.
Funny, for how isolated they are, I seem them getting dismissed as ‘isolated’ all over the region.
It hasn’t happened yet, despite how hard the opposition is praying it does.
These are not isolated incidents–many go undetected by the general public and the media. It seems the only people in favor of frack drilling are the ones that own land and are making money off of it. I live in an area where there is a lot of gas drilling. Periodically, I ask anyone if they know of a person that has a job or even a person that knows of a person that has a job with a local company and the answer is always no. It’s not providing jobs or gas locally. I’ve also read that much of this fracked gas is being sold to China–imagine that. Our PA governor was elected by people that got rich off of fracking and he’s now indebted to them. Why do you think he refuses to tax them. We better wake up in this state and country. This is my last post on the subject because I can’t win and you can’t win, only money and greed wins.
The United States selling something to China–imagine that!
I was working on a Frac Crew for Haliburton back in the mid 70’s in Wyoming. Apparently both are bad things to mention.
My point is that this has been going on for a lot longer than most folks think. When done properly, there is a cement plug on the outside of the well casing at each transition from one formation to the next. When these plugs are either defective or located in the wrong place, oil and/or gas can get into the adjacent formation. To locate these, calculations must be made to determine the amount of fluid necessary to push the concrete to that point. The most effective way is to simply cement the whole casing and “shoot” or perforate the casing and cement together at the proper depth for the desired formation.
Once the casing is ready and the cement has cured, a gelatinous fluid made by mixing water with the mineral natrona or trona is pumped down the well under high pressure. The pumping continues until there is a sudden decrease in pressure indicating the formation has fractured. While still pumping, a mixture of fine sand to fine gravel is pumped into the well and into the formation to prop the cracks open allowing oil and gas to flow back to the well easier. Once the proper amount if sand has been pumped, it is followed by clean fluid and finally water to clean out the inside of the casing. At this point, the well is ready for production at much higher rates than would have been possible without fracking the formation.
Virtually every oil or gas well drilled since 1970, maybe a bit earlier, has been fracked. Without fracking, your natural gas, propane, and any other hydrocarbon product would be significantly more expensive. It is used for oil wells as well as gas wells. Most gas wells have some oil production to them as well even if gas is the predominant product from that well. Fracking improves oil production as well as gas production.
Fracking never damaged any of my favorite fishing areas in Wyoming. While there are incidents where I am sure that methods other than “best practice” have caused issues, the fact of the matter is that there is a lot more of this that has been done than 'most anyone would have a clue of. It is a safe procedure when done properly and saves you a ton of money. Rather than insist the practice be stopped, insist it is done properly.
Green is the new RED
Well I’d rather not have it done at all in my area, as it’s been proven over the past several years that the companies doing this here have no interest at all in anything but the quick dollar. Anyone who cares to read the news can find environmental regs violations every week, and at least one big fiasco like this one every month. A few months ago, they found out that raw, untreated fluid was being dumped straight from trucks into local waterways that provide drinking water downstream. It’s gotten so bad in some areas that the treatment plants are unable to accept any more fluid because they simply can’t handle material that is so polluted.
I hope that our environmental regs will eventually make it too prohibitively expensive for these companies to do this in PA.
If it were done responsibly consistently, without these accidents every week, I might feel differently, but as it stands, I am not willing to trade clean water for a minor, temporary economic boost to a very few people (namely only landowners of well sites, and tangentially, retailers of food, lodging, and other goods to the out of state workers).
Well said lastchance. Thanks!
Anyone see last night’s CSI (the one in Vegas)? Interesting that this is now being written into our television shows. Food for thought…
Kelly.
KBProctor…Nicely put.
I grew up in North Central PA, and have family there now. Is it a change of life there now? You bet! Not sure who others are talking to, but there is quite a bit of employment going on up there. The folks don’t care for the huge amount of truck traffic. And they are concerned that regulation needs to provide oversight to protect resources as much as possible. But otherwise, they are welcoming the drilling.
It’s industry that the region needs horribly. It doesn’t even have to employ all of the regions folks to do the majority of the drilling. The hotels and motels are packed 24/7, the mini-marts, restaraunts, laundrymats, campgrounds, pizza places, gas stations, garages, welding shops, electrical supply, and a number of drilling supply shops that are new in just the past few months…etc, etc…are booming!
Nobody up there is saying “I’d rather pay $5 a gallon for gas”. They are saying “WHEN gas goes to $5, at least I’ll have the money to pay it!”
Not to mention that this is not a temporary thing. Unless you are talking 12 -20 years as temporary. That is a generation of school-aged children for families. That gow up in a good regional economy…vs a depressed area.
Today is Earth Day and Nikolai Lenin’s, [Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov], birthday. Just a coincident I guess.
Happy Earth Day everyone!!!
I celebrated earth day today…by getting reeady for tomorrow mornings opening day of Spring Gobbler 