How do high temperatures and pressures effect chemicals? A toxic chemical might detoxify or might take
on more toxic qualities, or a previously nontoxic chemical might turn
pernicious. Halliburton, up to a couple
of Empire State buildings into fracking along with other endeavors, is studying
that question but only insofar as heat and temperature might affect the
efficacy of its fracking fluids, not as to health risks. One may not be surprised.
By the way, what happens to the chemicals we have injected into the
earth over years and decades? No one knows.
As you know, the oil-and-gas industry is exempt from clean
air and water laws. Six times since 2000 in Colorado alone, the
Environmental Protection Agency has granted so-called "aquifer
exemptions' by which drillers are given permission to inject polluted
drilling wastewater into drinking-water aquifers. You read that right. EPA imagines that these deep aquifers will
never be needed for drinking. They are
too deep and too expensive to tap for water, but not too deep and expensive to
pollute. Forever.
Water
used in the United States by agriculture, industry, and people already exceeds
the amount of water we can get from the surface. We take the remainder from aquifers. And they are draining.
The industry celebrates natural gas as a 'bridge fuel'. As long as we're putting our energies into natural
gas we'll build the infrastructure to support it (well pads, storage
containers, pipelines, roads to and between well pads, trucks to and from all
of it), and what building infrastructure means is that we're making it a part
of our economy and withdrawing our energies from developing green energy.
One of the biggest problems with solar and wind is what to
do when the sun isn't out and the wind stops blowing--how do you 'hold' or
contain energy that was produced when the sun was out and the wind was
blowing? It is probably the biggest problem with those two sources of
energy (unless the real problem is that, with sustainable energy, the industry
might no longer receive the unholy profits it siphons from fossil fuels). Okay, storage is a problem. But is the problem insurmountable? I
would doubt that. Will it be solved or at least ameliorated while our
energies are, forgive me, balls-to-the-wall in pursuit of natural gas? Don't count on
it.
They call natural gas a bridge fuel while salivating over a veritable
sea of fuel beneath us, just waiting to be released to serve our addiction for
the next one hundred years. Honestly, does that sound like a bridge fuel to
you?
***
Past articles on fracking:
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Fracking But Should Be Afraid to Ask--An Overview
Fracking: Water Issues--Colorado-centric, But Applicable to All
Who the Frack's Really in Charge? (on regulation)
Water-Free Fracking--Why Not? (on LPG fracking)
Frack-Flavored Gas (on the trials of Garfield County, Colorado)
***
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
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