I Really Enjoyed Seeing This - Fracking Ban Fails in Loveland

[roberth]

http://coloradopeakpolitics.com/2014/06/25/fracking-ban-fails-loveland-just-says-no-to-frack-moratorium/

[Great-Kazoo]

The flower children are wilted over the loss. Once again, bad wording condemned a bill. The lawsuit boulder will be hit with may rattle al gore's solar windows.

[roberth]

I'm glad they are unhappy, they deserve it.

The state and country are already in poor economic condition and these thoughtless fools only want to make things worse. Don't they understand that higher fuel costs impact them too, or maybe they're all living on Uncle Sugar's dime so they don't care.

This nation was built on coal and oil, to date no other energy sources are as practical, reliable, efficient, and cost effective, maybe nuclear but St Vrain is closed.

[Rucker61]

I'm glad they are unhappy, they deserve it.

The state and country are already in poor economic condition and these thoughtless fools only want to make things worse. Don't they understand that higher fuel costs impact them too,

They smugly drive Priuses.

[Robb]

Enlighten me!

Would you guys care to share any info on fracking you may have? I have not researched it one bit. It's become the same as drugs or abortion, love it or hate it and I know nothing other than the slick commercials on tv.

Are the chemicals they use safe if they hit the water table? And how about the earthquakes, just rumors? Any ties there - or nobody knows yet?

On another note, I find it kind of amazing we use this technology to extract the last molecules of oil, which in some cases we sell, the US is an oil exporter, while we import from many places including the middle east. We sell ours to buy theirs, one the surface it makes no sense to me, anyway now I'm rambling...

[merl]

The chemicals don't hit the water table. They only do if they make a mistake and then the oil is leaking into the water table. Mistakes happen with normal wells too.

Earthquakes, you can get them injecting plain water into faults so sure it can induce them. Solution, don't inject into faults. The magnitude 2-3 stuff that is normally seen is not noticeable without equipment anyway. There is a disposal well near Greeley that is temporarily shut down right now while the quakes are being looked at.

Primarily scare tactics by greenies.

(We do not export oil. Gas on the other hand...)

[Ronin13]

What Merl said... Fracking is relatively safe- and most operations actually leave the area better off than when it was surveyed for the operation as most oil and gas companies actually do care about the environment. As for the opposition to hydraulic fracturing (aka "fracking"), most of their claims are baseless and false. Fracking is actually only a very small part of the oil and gas drilling process, it lasts only a few days.

Glad that Loveland shut these hippies down, I'm so sick of their opposition to something that they have no business even getting involved in. Most land used for drilling is private land that the owner leases to the company and they pay very well. Most of the private land is owned by farmers, and the lease profits are what keep farmers alive during low-yield years.

[Robb]

Good to know. Thanks for the responses.

[Great-Kazoo]

Enlighten me!

Would you guys care to share any info on fracking you may have? I have not researched it one bit. It's become the same as drugs or abortion, love it or hate it and I know nothing other than the slick commercials on tv.

Are the chemicals they use safe if they hit the water table? And how about the earthquakes, just rumors? Any ties there - or nobody knows yet?

On another note, I find it kind of amazing we use this technology to extract the last molecules of oil, which in some cases we sell, the US is an oil exporter, while we import from many places including the middle east. We sell ours to buy theirs, one the surface it makes no sense to me, anyway now I'm rambling...

For us its how the anti-frak groups try putting ban ballots out there. Some successful, others not. The use of vague language such as until determined to be safe scientifically.

For every pro you can find a con to that result. Professor Emeritus X says, Fracking will never be safe, SO until Professor X changes his / her mind the ban is not lifted. Yet Professor Y says NONSENSE it's safe, back and forth to court till one or the other runs out of money. Which we all know rarely happens, along with the time frame to get before the first judge.

[SamuraiCO]

The strides made by Fracking is threatening the left's attempt to move the US off of fossil fuels to "alternative" energies. They were OK with us importing our oil and gas because resources were become scarse and prices are effected by world events in the middle east. It did get us to make moves for more fuel efficient vehicles that pollute less. Good in the fact my truck has more horse power and better fuel economy compared to my dad's old Chevy Scottsdale. Bad that is less gas tax collected ( a problem to itself).

Fracking would allow the US to be energy independent and not force all of us into hybrid or pure electrical cars. That is bad for the greenies. They were so close to putting a stake into the gas engine that they will do anything to stop fracking.

Inflation in fuel and subsequently food prices is not widely reported. Neither are part of inflation measurements. How convenient.

As a side note no greenie ever shows what mines look like world wide that are needed to extract rare earth elements that go into lithium battery and turbine productions. They also never show you what the factories look like that produce the raw elements and finished products. Most of those are in China who also uses coal for their power.

If I had land with gas/oil under it I would not hesitate to let them frack on it and live on it.

[Ronin13]

If I had land with gas/oil under it I would not hesitate to let them frack on it and live on it.
You'd make a pretty penny doing so as well...

[hurley842002]

You'd make a pretty penny doing so as well...

Yup, there are a few privately owned properties around Longmont that have operations in their back yard, I'd love to be in their shoes!

[Ronin13]

Yup, there are a few privately owned properties around Longmont that have operations in their back yard, I'd love to be in their shoes!
I have a buddy that worked a site near Rangely a few years back, the property owner decided after they were done (post-royalties) to take a 1 year leave from his work and travel he made that much, and still had enough to bolster his retirement account. Yeah, I'd love to be in their shoes too, and his property value went up after they left because the grounds they used got re-sodded and restored to look better than they did before the surveyors arrived.

[Irving]

Enlighten me!

Would you guys care to share any info on fracking you may have? I have not researched it one bit. It's become the same as drugs or abortion, love it or hate it and I know nothing other than the slick commercials on tv.

Are the chemicals they use safe if they hit the water table? And how about the earthquakes, just rumors? Any ties there - or nobody knows yet?

On another note, I find it kind of amazing we use this technology to extract the last molecules of oil, which in some cases we sell, the US is an oil exporter, while we import from many places including the middle east. We sell ours to buy theirs, one the surface it makes no sense to me, anyway now I'm rambling...

Imagine a 20 story hotel. The roof is the surface of the Earth. The water table (which covers pretty much the entire surface of the planet) takes up floors 17-20. The oil is located in the basement. The oil well is the size of a drinking straw. A hole is drilled through the roof, through the water table, through all the floors, to the oil. In the basement of the hotel, is a restaurant, and one regular sized booth is the target area to where the well is drilled.

[SIDE NOTE ABOUT SHALE] Shale is porous, but it is not permeable. If you imagine a sponge, a sponge is both porous (lots of holes) and permeable (the holes connect with each other), so if you fill a sponge with water, it is easy to get the water out by squeezing the sponge. Shale is more like a pomegranate, lots of little chambers full of oil, but they don't connect with each other. So if you stuck a syringe into a pomegranate, you could empty one chamber, and that is it. [END NOTE]

With hydraulic fracturing, they run hydraulic fluid down into the well and use that pressure to fracture the area as much as they can, to break all the individual chambers apart to access more fluid. Now remember the booth example. When fracturing, the drillers would be lucky to get a fracture long enough to touch the ceiling of the roof of the room that booth is located in; 17 floors below the bottom of the water table. To say that fractures let oil into water is not accurate. Remember that the substance we are dealing with between the fractured areas and the water table is solid rock. Remember when the oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico ruptured, and the complaint was that the extra pressure was making things difficult? Well when dealing with solid rock, those levels of pressure are reached only about 100 feet below the surface. So, again, with 17 floors worth of solid rock between the highest fracture and the bottom of the water table, no oil is getting to the water table.

As most oil wells need to punch through the water table, if you get a crack in your well, there is a risk to exposing oil into the water table. For scale, a crack in the well may be a pin hole in a drinking straw, running through 3 floors of hotel filled with water. Oil CAN get into the water table through a broken well, but the difference in the amount of oil per the amount of water is likely in favor of the water. There are real risks with hydraulic fluid and oil contamination, but they are not generally risks in the same manner as anti-oil/anti-fracking people present. Media and TV ads would have one believe that oil deposits and water tables are right next to each other, and oil companies are blasting oil chambers apart, right into the water table. I think the real issue is what is done with the hydraulic fluid once it is pumped back out of the well, as it generally stored somewhere, but where?

I'm not an internet expert at all. This was the way the situation was explained to me in general terms, using the hotel analogy and a drinking straw as a reference for scale. My college roommate was a Geophysicist. Now that we're all grown up, he gets paid a lot of money to know what he is talking about when it comes to oil. Geophysicists are the guys that locate the oil by the way, using seismic trucks.

That's the way I understand it anyway.

[hurley842002]

I had a general idea, but your explanation makes it even easier to understand. Thanks for sharing Irving.

[bryjcom]

I live next to a manager that works for an oil company. He was saying that they are drilling 20-25k feet below the surface.

They also case the walls of the hole with steel liner and concrete to protect the ground water

[Irving]

I have a buddy that worked a site near Rangely a few years back, the property owner decided after they were done (post-royalties) to take a 1 year leave from his work and travel he made that much, and still had enough to bolster his retirement account. Yeah, I'd love to be in their shoes too, and his property value went up after they left because the grounds they used got re-sodded and restored to look better than they did before the surveyors arrived.

Post royalties on a healthy well, you can take the rest of your life off, even if you were only 1 year-old. Depending on the amount of land you have, you can easily take a year off just for the lease amount. I know of one that just signed a lease for $1,000 an acre.

[Bailey Guns]

Great explanation, Irving. Hadn't heard it put like that before.

[Bailey Guns]

(We do not export oil. Gas on the other hand...)

We do export some oil. Even though exporting crude has been banned in the US since the 70s, there are some exceptions that allow oil to be exported. It's frequently exported to Canada and a lot is exported out of AK. But most is exported after it's been refined into gasoline and other products.

[roberth]

Thank you Irving, now I have a better understanding of fracking.

[Great-Kazoo]

Thank you Irving, now I have a better understanding of fracking.

Progressives and Gore support a ban, I'm for it. didn't need no steeken explanation.

[roberth]

Progressives and Gore support a ban, I'm for it. didn't need no steeken explanation.

LOL

I was for fracking before I knew what it was for that exact reason.

[Bailey Guns]

That's about the only thing liberals are good for. If they're for/against something, even if I know nothing about the subject, that's a pretty good indicator of where I want to stand on the issue.