The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

[OakesCS]

whether intentional or not it certainly has its inaccurate parts.

fracking,” which uses about 4.5 million gallons of water — about 1,300 tank trucks full — to initially stimulate a well and get it flowing, has raised concerns about the disposal of toxic drilling waste...

this is a bit of trap. yeah, a lot of water is used but most of it does not come back. In this case the article is trying to paint a picture of a larger disposal problem than there is. The trap part is that when the previous point is made, then they complain about "well, where does the water go? Oh, you don't know... Well, then it must go into aquifers." Ludicrous logic.

maybe the folks against fracking in Ohio should take a look at:
http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/OhioGeologicalSurvey/tabid/7908/Default.aspx
most of the waste going into these wells has nothing to do with natural gas or oil. It's stuff like acids and solvents from industrial manufacturing plants. Of course, injection of that stuff has been going on since before folks didn't like the idea of their rivers catching on fire so it's accepted.

The entire discussion of polling is also ludicrous.

a 43-to-16 percent margin that fracking would damage the environment.

how many of those people have any knowledge of geology?

The bit about the bad cement job on page 2 is also out of the bad science playbook combined with the old bait and switch. First of all, before some folks think I'm biased: 1. the well referred to in that part of the story was drilled to a shallow sandstone reservoir - not a deep shale gas reservoir and 2. it wasn't a frack job that was the problem - the problem was a bad cement job in a naturally fractured formation.

The Ohio DNR report on the well in question is here:
http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/Portals/11/bainbridge/report.pdf
note the drilling company took responsibility immediately. Of course, they were sued anyway.

the complaint is here.
http://www.tddlaw.com/documents/Complaint.pdf
settlement was recent.

Buried natural gas pipelines also develop leaks and the gas sometimes accumulates in buildings and sometimes produces bad results. Read about them here:
http://www.naturalgaswatch.org/?p=732
note this is hardly a pro-shale gas site yet blown up bus yards and homes from leaking compressor stations and pipelines doesnt get a lot of air time. The local NSTAR plant (Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA - hardly a shale gas capital) constantly stinks of thiophane/mercaptan yet the local lefties aren't up in arms about the obvious leakage problem in their own backyard.