The truth about fracking? An oilfield engineer seeks to reassure you

http://m.dailyinterlake.com/opinion/article_9b1b6c6a-48f9-11e3-b50f-0019bb2963f4.html?mode=jqm

by Zaab • 13 years ago

36 37 13 years ago

$Preview of The truth about fracking? An oilfield engineer seeks to reassure you$ m.dailyinterlake.com

In the narrative concerning hydraulic fracturing, there seem to be two dominant points of view: those who unequivocally oppose it, and those who actually understand it.

I work in oil & gas data, so I'm surrounded by a bias from people that both benefit from fracking, and also have intimate working knowledge of the process. In my limited experience, I have found the above statement to be true.

I always love to hear informed arguments against fracking, I just seem to hear fewer of them than those in support of it.

Thanks for the share, good read.

Gravityloss• 13 years ago

Yes, I guess it could be problematic to find disinterested experts in any hot new business area, since most experts are getting their paycheck from it.

I have no deep knowledge about the issue and I hope that someone can point me wrong.

bradleysmith2• 13 years ago

exactly right. The only people that intimately know the workings of reservoirs, and know the risks and pitfalls of the fracking and production process from field experience are almost always directly benefiting from increased oil production won by fracking. I'm sure there are some environmental professionals that have been around the oil patch long enough to know what's what, and I'd love to hear their take.

I am unabashedly on the fence on the matter. It is one of those things that the consequences are far more irreversible if one party is correct, and I always try to bear that in mind.

astrodust• 13 years ago

"We pump an enormous volume of chemicals of a proprietary composition into the ground mixed with water, a commodity already in short supply, but don't worry, it's totally safe. We just said so."

Engineers, for all their successes, have a long history of getting things very, very wrong. Pumping unknown gunk into the ground at a depth that's theoretically too deep to ever return is a hypothesis, and one that we are now testing apparently. The consequences could be catastrophic.

zendere• 13 years ago

Looks like a paid-for article to exonerate fracking.

It mentions only at one point the 'fracking fluids', and in order to present then as if they are harmless, it says:

1. "gelling agents (used in ice cream)" 2. "friction reducers (used in cosmetics)" 3. "acid to anti-bacterial agents (used in disinfectants)" (note the trick to exonerate "acid" by attaching the anti-bacterial agents, so it then mentions 'used in disinfectants' as if those contain acids as well...)

If I were to make my own fracking fluid, do I mix together my disinfectant, my ice-cream and my mascara?

Just another shameful article, probably paid-for, by the fracking industry.

mantas• 13 years ago

Got anything else than name-calling?

jasonlotito2• 13 years ago

It's coming from an account as old as the comment. Downvote and move on.

lasermike026• 13 years ago

Then companies that frac will not mind publishing the chemicals used in frac'ing. Oh yeah, they don't want to do that.

icegreentea2• 13 years ago

Well, here it is: http://fracfocus.org/chemical-use/what-chemicals-are-used

The chemicals used. Right there. Mine you, they don't tell you the percent compositions - I think that's fair. You can be fairly sane limits when you combine with the claim that fracking liquid is 98% water.

If you think they're lying... well... better tell the 21+ states that have mandatory disclosure laws.

jasonlotito2• 13 years ago

http://www.halliburton.com/public/projects/pubsdata/Hydrauli...

crunchcaptain• 13 years ago

What about the "evaporation ponds" & (often missing) liners?

What about methane contamination to drinking water wells?

steve192• 13 years ago

I don't know about the first, but the methane contamination is pure FUD. Those claims in gasland have been debunked:

http://energyindepth.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Debunkin...

mikeyouse• 13 years ago

I'm extremely skeptical of your source...

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Energy_in_Depth

melling• 13 years ago

I was on vacation last year and I was talking to an older gentlemen who was involved in the oil&gas industry. I brought up fracking and he openly said that the chemicals used are pretty bad. I never bothered to do any research afterwards but I'm still curious if it is real problem. 20 years from now will we have created another expensive or deadly problem that we will need to fix? Personally, what I like to see is an article with real data, and not use words like a little, most, or a lot.

4ad• 13 years ago

Very very poor and biased article that resorts to appeal by authority fallacy.

I have no idea if fracking is bad for the environment or not. I really want to know, but the internet is full of crap like this. I haven't found any good scientific articles about the subject, only very poorly written FUD (on both sides). Admittedly, I haven't searched too much; probably all the info is there, but you have to dive really deep into garbage to find it.

bestdayever• 13 years ago

Hydraulic fracturing is not contaminating drinking water. These fractures are being created about 6,000 feet below the surface. That’s four Empire State Buildings stacked on top of each other between the aquifer and the hydraulic fracture. If anything is going to risk the integrity of the drinking water, point the figure at the construction of the well, the steel and concrete barrier that is built to isolate that aquifer from a flowing well.

Don't the companies doing the fracking usually build these barriers? How is it not their fault if they don't hold.

Zaab3• 13 years ago

From drilling to producing there maybe many companies working on the well. Land is usually owned by big oil producers (Shell,Exxon,BP, etc) while the drilling, casing (protects the ground water), and hydraulic fracturing jobs may all be done by separate service companies.

All in all, yes these barriers should hold and safety factors are taken into consideration. But when the service company doing the casing job recommends job A that will surely hold but the land holding company wants job B which is cheaper and might fail, who's at fault when it fails?

lowmagnet• 13 years ago

Land is often leased from average citizens or land holding companies. Rights to minerals are leased from whomever owns them. At least that's how it works in Arkansas.

AsymetricCom• 13 years ago

I guess the engineer is saying we should address coconut trees because of falling coconuts, but the physical and geological effects of fracking don't matter because they're below the ground.

Considering the logical breadth and wiseness of the statement, I think the logical conclusion is to grant this engineer his own fleet of fracking equipment and a company to run it. Because then he'd make money and money is more money than no money. Everyone likes money but nobody likes a coconut to the head.

Drill on!

minikites• 13 years ago

This whole article seems to have a biased agenda, but this is an important point regardless:

---------

If you think that because you ride your bike to work, grow your own organic vegetables, and have a wind farm in your back yard, you don’t have a need for all this ill-gotten shale oil and gas, think again. Let’s start with that reusable “BPA free” water bottle full of mountain spring water sitting on your desk. I probably don’t have to mention that the bottle itself is made of plastic. Plastic is a product of hydrocarbons. Your water bottle is not made of unicorn tears; it came to you from the oil and gas industry.

---------

I live in rural New York and I see quite a few anti-fracking bumper stickers on cars. I feel like that essentially says, "oil is okay, as long as the consequences affect other people".

For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_issues_in_the_Ni...

Amadou3• 13 years ago

I live in rural New York and I see quite a few anti-fracking bumper stickers on cars. I feel like that essentially says, "oil is okay, as long as the consequences affect other people".

I think that is a disingenuous characterization, not unlike saying that the Occupy protesters are hypocrites for using iphones. In both cases the people protesting live in a society where their access to other forms of technology are restricted by the inertia of the market. That very restriction is a major part of what they are protesting.

Zaab3• 13 years ago

Further evidence the methane found in well waters is not caused by fracking. The methane found is biomethane produced from decomposition of animals.

http://www.ogj.com/articles/print/volume-109/issue-49/explor...

amalag• 13 years ago

Injecting hazardous unknown chemicals (trade secrets) into the ground at high pressure, what could go wrong?

icegreentea2• 13 years ago

I don't really like spamming, but I think this is fairly important. http://fracfocus.org/chemical-use/what-chemicals-are-used

skue• 13 years ago

I believe the author is earnest, but she is looking at things as an engineer, and from a very black-and-white mindset.

It’s not that hydraulic fracturing is new, it’s that it’s being used in new rocks, which means it’s being used in new places.

Only engineers and historians care whether fracking was first invented six decades ago or two decades ago. Either way, if it's suddenly being on new types of rocks, with new orientations of wells (horizontal), and in places it's never been done before, and on a exponentially greater scale -- then it absolutely feels like "a new, experimental technique that hasn’t been tested, isn’t regulated, and is being tried for the first time in your backyard."

It is not a drilling technique... Hydraulic fracturing doesn’t take place until well after the well has been drilled, cased, and cemented. It is a completion technique, to stimulate the production of the well. This is not splitting hairs, it’s a big difference; get the facts right

In the public's mind it is splitting hairs. If the technology for fracking didn't exist, there wouldn't be all these new horizontal drilling rigs in people's backyards. Of course there's a technical distinction between the two which is important to the engineers who work in the field, but when a reporter or community complains about fracking they are complaining about the drilling, fracking, byproduct, and consequences that all arise when a well is created to take advantage of fracking.

We are not just pumping massive amounts of harmful chemicals into the earth. Fracturing fluid is generally made up of 98 percent water. The other 2 percent is chemicals ranging anywhere from acid to anti-bacterial agents (used in disinfectants), to gelling agents (used in ice cream), to friction reducers (used in cosmetics), to surfactants (used in laundry detergents).... We are pumping very small amounts of them thousands of feet below the surface and then recovering most of them when the well is flowed back.

First, if you introduce enough toxic chemicals into an aquifer to contaminate the water, no one cares whether those toxic chemicals were initially introduced as a 2% solution, 20% solution, or 0.02% solution. Second, I'm pretty sure it's not the fracking chemicals that are coming out of people's plumbing and burning spectacularly when they hold a match to the faucet, it's the extracted gas. And if fracking is causing gas and flowback from the shale to be introduced into the aquifer then that's a huge problem, regardless of the other chemicals involved.

Hydraulic fracturing is not contaminating drinking water. These fractures are being created about 6,000 feet below the surface.... If anything is going to risk the integrity of the drinking water, point the figure at the construction of the well, the steel and concrete barrier that is built to isolate that aquifer from a flowing well.
I fully realize that this does not exonerate the oil and gas industry, but hydraulic fracturing is the one getting all the blame for no reason, and by people who clearly need to take a physics class.

And this is the author's main point. She's not denying that the oil and gas industry is contaminating drinking water and destroying communities. She's just arguing that it's the well-builders who are screwing up, not the folks pumping in the contaminants and extracting the gas.

I'm sure the this distinction is very important to the author. She is an engineer who has done hydraulic fracturing for the world's largest oilfield service company for 10 years. She probably believes the technology is great.

But if hydraulic fracturing brings new wells to town, those wells fail, and the flowback from that fracking process ends up in the drinking water and destroys communities then no one cares about which engineer is to blame within the oilfield company. It's still the oilfield company's fault.

Edit: Tweaked some of the terms I may have been using inaccurately.

jgalt212• 13 years ago

Fracking definitely has negative externalities, but it's better than sending our money to the Middle East or Russia.

philwelch2• 13 years ago

Doing new and clever things to harvest fossil fuels is a waste of innovation.

angersock• 13 years ago

Yeah, they should totally be killing it in the B2B2C2GOV market, mining data for advertisers.

philwelch2• 13 years ago

No, they should be figuring out how to conserve energy, extract it from sustainable resources, or at the very least developing high density urban real estate.

danpalmer• 13 years ago

I am also a scientist, with an engineering degree from Montana Tech University, and have worked for the world’s largest oilfield service company for 10 years. My business is hydraulic fracturing.

My friend with a Geology degree recently gave a talk about why Fracking is a really bad idea, I think I'll trust a geologist before an engineer on this one.

That said, the article is a nice alternative to the large amounts of anti-fracking propaganda, the argument needs to be a bit more balanced.

The truth about fracking? An oilfield engineer seeks to reassure you

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