READ THIS! Attention President of LOGA: Your first claim is wrong. University of Texas (actual) scientists as opposed to petroleum engineers proved, using isotopic analysis, that hydraulic fracturing in the Barnett shale caused the pollution of the aquifers near drilling sites. The methane-ethane mixture in the drinking water was isotopically identical to that in the Barnett shale. It appears the drillers may have fractured into a fault that connected the Barnett shale to the aquifer over a mile above. In this case, the TX Railroad Commision which is responsible for proper regulation was demonstrably incompetent, since their measurements were shown to be off by a factor of nearly ten, as to the methane levels in the drinking water. As to your second fact, given that the Louisiana Legislative Auditor basically declared the Louisiana regulating agencies to be incompetent, and as pollution has been found around hydraulic fracturing operations in TX, PA, UT, and AR, I would not put a lot of faith in your claim here. As to your third claim, the PA government agency responsible for regulating the industry did find that hydraulic fracturing operations had contaminated several drinking wells and the drilling operators were sued in court, but the contamination was finally blamed on faulty well construction by the oil industry involved in the hydraulic fracturing operations. The records of these cases are easily available from the PA government website. I will agree with you that the web has gotten to be a minefield of inaccurate information, but that does not mean that you are correct. Your reference to the carbon dioxide regulation by the EPA, is irrelevant here. In fact, there is plenty of evidence that the current high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are due to human activity. The amount being put into the atmosphere by human activity is already about four times that due to all world wide volcanic activity. The main unknown here is the amount of carbon dioxide coming out of the ocean each year in comparison to that produced by humans. However, there is no doubt that the level of carbon dioxide has increased to nearly double what it was back in 1900. There is also no doubt as to the greenhouse effect. But in any case, this is not relevant to the discussion at hand. The main concern I have with current hydraulic fracturing operations is the exemption that you have from the clean water act as to toxicity of your waste from flow back. As the LA Legislative Auditor found, we do not have any effective regulation in LA, as for instance also became clear in the investigation of the BP Oil Spill. Now, the waste water from hydrofracking cannot be put back into the environment, so in a sense it is similar to high level radioactive waste produced by the nuclear energy program. Yet, the Nuclear Regulatory Agency has probably ten times the competence of the oil regulators, but the volume of toxic waste water being producer annually by hydrofracking is over one thousand times the volume of all radioactive waste produced in the entire history of the US nuclear energy program. As another comparison, the waste water produced nationally by hydrofracking is about ten times that produced nationally by all the metal mining operations in the US. But the toxic waste produced by metal mining is virtually all in remote areas, whereas you now want to hydrofrack virtually in everyones backyard. Anyone who thinks such ineffective regulation of such vast quantities of toxic waste will not lead to contamination of drinking water is living in a dream world. On top of everything else, economically the oil industry trumpets energy independence, yet now that gas is below five dollars a cubic foot you want to export it to drive the price back up, while meanwhile the price of gasoline at the pump is close to four dollars a gallon. People in Haynesville are wondering what happened to all the drilling activity. So you do not want to help America, you only want to enrich yourself at our expense. You get the oil and gas and we get the shaft. It is possible that further advances in technology would enable you to extract the oil and gas without endangering the environment. However, your current technology has proven too unreliable in TX and in PA, so if you had any real integrity you would go back to the drawing board and work on improving the technology. In the meantime, you cannot blame intelligent people for not wanting to risk their aquifers on your current technology. That would be foolish. Your real problem is that you have forgotten what real science is about. It is about finding the truth no matter where that leads. Your engineers obviously all have vested interests in finding what you want them to find. This was made perfectly clear in the case of the findings of the TX Railroad Commission as compared to the findings of the University of TX scientists. The same is the case with the EPA. For instance, as soon as President Obama supported hydraulic fracturing for gas, the EPA turned on a dime and declared several water wells uncontaminated that had previously been found to be contaminated, in PA. It is so sad to see how morally bankrupt people in charge have become. It used to be the case that most scientists and engineers would do an honest job. We are now in the situation where so few scientists will actually do an honest job that they are called whistleblowers when they do. Sincerely, Maurice J. Dupre Assoc. Prof. Math. Tulane University NOLA 70118
Posted on: Sun, 06 Jul 2014 03:30:20 +0000
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