OFFSHORE...FRACKING: FAR MORE COMMON THAN PREVIOUSLY KNOWN AP FOIA request shows oil companies use toxic method off California coast Varushka Franceschi – >> "Hundreds of pages of federal documents released by the U.S. government to the Associated Press this week show that the controversial and toxic practice of hydraulic fracturing has moved offshore to an extent far greater than previously known. The documents, obtained by the AP through a Freedom of Information Act request, show that the EPA has permitted fracking in the Pacific Ocean at least 12 times since the late 1990s, and has recently approved a new project in "the vast oil fields in the Santa Barbara Channel," which is also the site of a major 1969 spill of over 3 million gallons of crude oil into the ocean. "While debate has raged over fracking on land, prompting efforts to ban or severely restrict it," AP writes, "offshore fracking has occurred with little attention in sensitive coastal waters where for decades new oil leases have been prohibited." FRACKING—the process of pumping hundreds of thousands of gallons of salt water, sand and toxic chemicals into shale and sand formations—is most commonly referred to as a process of natural gas extraction and has come under fire from a growing anti-fracking movement for its well documented water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Mechanics - Fracturing in rocks at depth tends to be suppressed by the confining pressure, due to the load caused by the overlying rock strata and the cementation of the formation. This is particularly so in the case of "tensile" fractures, which require the walls of the fracture to move apart, working against this confining pressure. Hydraulic fracturing occurs when the effective stress is overcome sufficiently by an increase in the pressure of fluids within the rock, such that the minimum principal stress becomes tensile and exceeds the tensile strength of the material. Fractures formed in this way will in the main be oriented in the plane perpendicular to the minimum principal stress and for this reason induced hydraulic fractures in well bores are sometimes used to determine the orientation of stresses. In natural examples, such as dikes or vein-filled fractures, the orientations can be used to infer past states of stress. In ocean wells, the same technique is used to stimulate oil flow. The process is the same and just as TOXIC—WITH MOST OF THE CHEMICALS USED STILL UNKNOWN TO THE PUBLIC DUE TO "TRADE SECRET" PROTECTIONS. https://commondreams.org/headline/2013/08/03
Posted on: Tue, 06 Aug 2013 01:56:06 +0000
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