I stumbled upon this thread by sheer accident. Coincidentally on one of my favorite sites to visit.
Let me start by being open. I worked on a frac crew for five years. Supervised for three of that.
Im not going to try to hit every single argument in the thread but I have to say that many people are sadly misinformed.
The statement that nearly all frac fluid is 98% is actually a true statement. On a typical water frac the harshest chemical additive we may carry is what is called a "biocide". An absolutely essential additive that prevents bacterial growth in rock formations. Now, this biocide is many times weaker than bleach in its undiluted form. You, those who seem to hate fracing, actually do more to pollute the water than a frac a crew does simply by washing your clothes, using bleach and chemicals to clean, even the drugs that are passed through your system and into your urine.
When we mix in this biocide it is typically mixed at a .5 gal PER THOUSAND gallons. That means for every 10,000 gallons of water pumped there is only 5 gallons of this mild chemical in the water. Do you realize that it is near impossible to even quantify that in a sample? And yes we run acid in our mixtures on most jobs.
How ever, on an average design we will run 2000 gallons of acid and then pump 700,000 gallons of water behind it. Do you realize that Dr. Pepper and Mt. Dew have more acid in it and is hundreds times for harmful than the acid content in frac fluid? Pull out a PH probe and give it a whirl sometime, you would be surprised.
It is absolute truth that the majority of what is pumped into the ground is just sand and water.
People say it contaminates the water supply. How ever these wells typically reach 15,000 to 20,000 feet deep into the ground. Your water table rarely goes deeper than maybe 1000-2000 ft. Were talking miles apart here. Now I wont say there isnt pollution involved. The fact is you people want cheap energy. You curse us for providing what you want and then turn around and complain about high fuel costs. If you only had any idea how much cheaper natural gas is just because of fracing. Five years ago it was 14$ per thousand cubic feet. Now its 2-3$. And you hate us for that....?
The fact is having been involved in the operations and dealing with the environmental regulations and our own policies we leave many places cleaner than when we showed up. These same people flush chemicals down the drain, poison themselves with cigarettes, and pollute their own sources. But we be damned if we provide you with what you want: cheap energy bills.
And before you rant against me accusing me of some kind of corporate mouthpeice... I'm a gamer like most of you, have been since I was 13. Ive been involved with this industry for eight years now. It really really saddens me to see people rail against what provides for my family and YOURS with information they gleamed off the news or agenda driven youtube videos.
Please please do your own research and draw your own informed opinions. So many these days hop on bandwagons and never discover what true knowledge is. The ignorance that surrounds this issue saddens me deeply.
Knowledge is power guys. We have gotten so far away from that fact. Watching an agenda driven movie is not knowledge. People have a way of taking rare occurrences and making them into daily events.
well since this got bumped might as well ask some relevant questions or points throughout the thread
my main question is where is a good source for actually good science on this stuff, because everyone spews off bullshit one way or the other and I know tl has some actual engineers and I'm pretty curious 1) 2% gives no fucking information and is misleading to almost be lying
I can look into it later but spouting "2%" or "nearly impossible to quantify" doesn't really give any meaningful information and extremely misleading. For example radon limits to prevent a 1/100 increase in cancer or so in US is 4 pCi/L which is ~70000 atoms of radon (4 *10^-12 pCI/L /(1.54*10^5 Ci/g radon-222 SA of radon) * 1/222 g/mol * 6.022*10^23 atom/mol). You're talking like 10^-17 g/L of radon. Almost fucking everything carcinogenic is measured in ppm or less (Eg love canal, one of US's bad examples of toxic substances, was causing problems with dioxin in parts per billion range).
very obviously carcinogenic elements/chemicals/whatever have a very large impact with a very tiny amount of material (in micro-nano gram range or less)
all that matters is if any of that 2% goes anywhere near water supply.
2) pH doesn't mean shit on health effects. soaps and lemon juices can be strong bases/acids.
3) shale gas is a short term bubble, in 2011 7.85 trillion ft^3 extracted for 34% of gas production in US (first number I could google; current rates 25 billion ft^3 a day which is ~9 trillion a year), there's an estimated 318-665 trillion ft^3 of recoverable shale gas. That's pretty much a 40-70 year plan at best, and probably the economic pricing will even back out in 20-30 years. The bubble is caused because fracking did make it so cheap http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#US_Department_of_Energy_estimates
On December 07 2012 11:47 ThermoNuke wrote: I stumbled upon this thread by sheer accident. Coincidentally on one of my favorite sites to visit.
Let me start by being open. I worked on a frac crew for five years. Supervised for three of that.
Im not going to try to hit every single argument in the thread but I have to say that many people are sadly misinformed.
The statement that nearly all frac fluid is 98% is actually a true statement. On a typical water frac the harshest chemical additive we may carry is what is called a "biocide". An absolutely essential additive that prevents bacterial growth in rock formations. Now, this biocide is many times weaker than bleach in its undiluted form. You, those who seem to hate fracing, actually do more to pollute the water than a frac a crew does simply by washing your clothes, using bleach and chemicals to clean, even the drugs that are passed through your system and into your urine.
When we mix in this biocide it is typically mixed at a .5 gal PER THOUSAND gallons. That means for every 10,000 gallons of water pumped there is only 5 gallons of this mild chemical in the water. Do you realize that it is near impossible to even quantify that in a sample? And yes we run acid in our mixtures on most jobs.
How ever, on an average design we will run 2000 gallons of acid and then pump 700,000 gallons of water behind it. Do you realize that Dr. Pepper and Mt. Dew have more acid in it and is hundreds times for harmful than the acid content in frac fluid? Pull out a PH probe and give it a whirl sometime, you would be surprised.
It is absolute truth that the majority of what is pumped into the ground is just sand and water.
People say it contaminates the water supply. How ever these wells typically reach 15,000 to 20,000 feet deep into the ground. Your water table rarely goes deeper than maybe 1000-2000 ft. Were talking miles apart here. Now I wont say there isnt pollution involved. The fact is you people want cheap energy. You curse us for providing what you want and then turn around and complain about high fuel costs. If you only had any idea how much cheaper natural gas is just because of fracing. Five years ago it was 14$ per thousand cubic feet. Now its 2-3$. And you hate us for that....?
The fact is having been involved in the operations and dealing with the environmental regulations and our own policies we leave many places cleaner than when we showed up. These same people flush chemicals down the drain, poison themselves with cigarettes, and pollute their own sources. But we be damned if we provide you with what you want: cheap energy bills.
And before you rant against me accusing me of some kind of corporate mouthpeice... I'm a gamer like most of you, have been since I was 13. Ive been involved with this industry for eight years now. It really really saddens me to see people rail against what provides for my family and YOURS with information they gleamed off the news or agenda driven youtube videos.
Please please do your own research and draw your own informed opinions. So many these days hop on bandwagons and never discover what true knowledge is. The ignorance that surrounds this issue saddens me deeply.
Knowledge is power guys. We have gotten so far away from that fact. Watching an agenda driven movie is not knowledge. People have a way of taking rare occurrences and making them into daily events.
Just stumbled upon this reply accidentally, so I figured I'd throw in a comment... This post is filled with "bro-science". Saying things like "yo listen, we only put like 5/10,000 parts of X chemical in our water, so it's really weak, like pretty much weaker than when you wash your clothes, don't worry about it!" isn't very legit. The whole post sort of reads that way. Bro-science claim upon bro-science claim.
Now about fracking... I don't have it now, but I recall something recently published in Nature by a group of environmental scientists who studied fracking and found cautionary results. They argued that while fracking isn't doing anything immediately destructive, it may likely cause very unwanted effects down the line, especially with regard to greenhouse gas emission, etc.
So if you parade around like it's totally good and nothing is concerning about it, then you're being just as dishonest or perhaps genuinely ignorant as the ones saying it's pure evil
People in this thread don't seem to understand basic chemistry.
98% water 2% other stuff doesn't tell us anything. Different chemical compounds have different toxicity levels - something can have a 0.05% concentration and be lethal while something else won't be. Also, the concentration doesn't really matter when you're dealing with such huge volumes of liquid. There are going to be hundreds of tons of these chemicals (some of which are not even fully understood) in the average fracking operation.
If fracking were well-regulated and the industry had proven itself to be capable of safe operation, this wouldn't really be a problem. Groundwater contamination, air pollution, depletion of freshwater supplies, and radioactivity concerns are all really big issues with regards to fracking. The wikipedia article on it has some good sources for a lot of these things:
What's really scary is the impact of high radioactivity levels due to fracking. This article states that in 2012 there were 1325 radiation alerts in dumps in PA (up almost 3 times the number in 2008) and that at least 1000 of those alerts were set off by waste from oil and gas fracking operations. It's pretty clear that the industry doesn't care about the environmental or public impacts of their operations.
On December 07 2012 23:58 bonifaceviii wrote: A newly registered account stumbles upon a 7-month-old fracking thread "by accident"? J'accuse, sir!
PS: Gasland sucks
Actually, ThermoNuke's profile was created on Tuesday, 8th of February 2011. Date of the post is December 07 2012. It's not really "newly registered account".
EPT
