EPA theorizes fracking-pollution link*CHEYENNE, Wyo*
*dec 9 2011*
...The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced for the first time that fracking — a controversial method of improving the productivity of oil and gas wells — may be to blame for causing groundwater pollution...
...The EPA found that compounds likely associated with fracking chemicals had been detected in the groundwater beneath Pavillion, a small community in central Wyoming where residents say their well water reeks of chemicals. Health officials last year advised them not to drink their water after the EPA found low levels hydrocarbons in their wells...
...The EPA announcement could add to the controversy over fracking, which has played a large role in opening up many gas reserves, including the Marcellus Shale in the eastern U.S. in recent years...
...Wyoming last year became one of the first states to require oil and gas companies to publicly disclose the chemicals used in fracking. Colorado regulators are considering doing the same...
...The issue has been highly contentious in New York, where some upstate residents and politicians argue that the gas industry will bring desperately needed jobs while others demand a ban on fracking to protect water supplies. New York regulators haven't issued permits for gas drilling with high-volume hydraulic fracturing in the Marcellus Shale since they began an extensive environmental review in 2008. In Pennsylvania, where thousands of gas wells have been drilled and fracked over the past three years, some residents say their water wells have been contaminated with methane and drilling fluids...
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jVjSCLUeua_nbBiWJ3GZBfrD8Xrw?docId=0f23e155503d4990b0a0c787f6b3bc69***Entire Article^^^
Fracking Has Formerly Stable Ohio City Aquiver Over Quakes*Dec 15 2011*
*Youngstown, Ohio*
...Earthquakes weren’t recorded around Youngstown until D&L Energy Inc. began injecting wastewater from drilling into a 9,300-foot disposal well in December 2010. From March through Nov. 25, there were nine in an area of about 4.5 square miles west of the shaft, according to the state-coordinated Ohio Seismic Network...
...Now, with temblors in states including Ohio, Arkansas and Texas that researchers say may have been caused by wastewater wells, residents also have to worry about their houses falling apart...
!Ben Lupo, president and chief executive of D&L Energy, said in a telephone interview that he doesn’t think his well is causing them and that “if these things weren’t safe, we would not put them in.” The well wasn’t operating during the Nov. 25 earthquake because it was the day after Thanksgiving, he said!
!!!he's misleading, READ THE OK REPORT!!!
http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=221413.0...About 7 million barrels of wastewater from drilling have been injected annually into Ohio wells since 1985...
...New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio and parts of Kentucky and Tennessee sit atop the Marcellus and Utica shale formations and the states have been wrestling with how to regulate drilling and fracking to tap natural gas as deep as 12,000 feet below the earth’s surface. Governor John Kasich has said the practice “could change Ohio,” and has even proposed having his state, Indiana, Michigan and Pennsylvania run their vehicle fleets on compressed natural gas...
...Energy companies. including Chesapeake Energy Corp. and Halliburton Co., are benefiting from fracking, which Kasich has said also can be a boost for producers such as U.S. Steel Corp. that supply tubes and products needed for production...
...Businesses that handle waste fluid also may benefit, according to Michael Roomberg, a New York-based analyst for Ladenburg Thalmann. Stephen Trauber, global head of energy investment banking at Citigroup Inc., predicts industry takeovers will increase as demand for water-management expertise rises...
...You certainly don’t want have an injection well that’s coincident with earthquakes, and then five months from now we get a 5.5 magnitude quake that knocks down a couple buildings...
...The state required D&L Energy to conduct a test using radioactive material to trace whether the fluid being injected in the well is going only to the areas allowed by its permit...
...The Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission did stop well disposal in August after a swarm of earthquakes. There were about 1,250 quakes recorded through July after two injection wells started operating last year...
...After the wells were shut down, there were only four earthquakes recorded in the area from July through October, down from an average of four a day...
...A 2010 study on a swarm of earthquakes in 2008 and 2009 near injection wells in the Dallas-Fort Worth area by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and Southern Methodist University concluded that the quakes “may be the result of fluid injection...
A 1990 U.S. Geological Survey report found that “injection of fluid into deep wells has triggered documented earthquakes” in Colorado, Texas, New York, New Mexico, Nebraska and Ohio. It highlighted more than 70 quakes in July 1987 in Ashtabula, Ohio, about a kilometer from the bottom of a hazardous-waste disposal well in operation only a year. There had been no other known earthquakes within 30 kilometers since 1857...
...There have been fewer reports of earthquakes connected with fracking, though the Oklahoma Geological Survey concluded in an August report that it might have induced 43 temblors near Elmore City during 24 hours in January. Cuadrilla Resources Ltd., a U.K.-based explorer, also suspended fracking near Blackpool, England, in June based on a concern it may have triggered a quake...
...During the first three quarters of 2011, nearly 53 percent of the 368.3 million gallons injected into Ohio’s wells came from out of state, according to data provided by the Natural Resources Department. The number of new permits for injection wells increased to 24 from 10 last year and five in 2009, records show.
"Well, anytime now, there could be an earthquake in Youngstown”
!!!There are plans to have five more disposal wells operating near Youngstown Ohio next year!!!
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12-15/fracking-has-formerly-stable-ohio-city-aquiver-over-quakes.html***Entire Article^^^
