N.D. oil industry leaders meet in Grand Forks, vow to defend ‘fracking’
December 9, 2011 at 12:49 pm in Grand Forks Herald
Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, said Friday in Grand Forks that “there has got to be an educational process” to reassure the public about the health and environmental safety of hydraulic fracturing as the process is employed here. Continue Reading
Fox in the henhouse. I’m sure this will be unbiased as all heck. I bet they would like to be in charge of regulating it too. Seems that’s the norm nowadays. More lobbyists please-need some legislature written to be passed by whoever we put in office. Geez this works slick.
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If fracking is so safe, require the oil companies to guarantee it: They must pay the FULL COST for any ecological problems created by fracking until the end of time. When they’re required to pay for potential damages, you’ll see them squirm. There’s NO TELLING what they’re destroying down there, or what the LONG TERM consequences will be.
The damage will be there long, long after the oil and the oil companies are gone. And, as usual, we all know the taxpayers will be required to pay the mega-billions to fix the mess left by Corporate America. Again.
Enjoy the ND budget surplus while it lasts…there’s changes coming.
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If fracking is so safe why don’t they release the chemicals they use in it–oh forgot, the Cheney administration made sure they don’t have to.
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Read the actual EPA report people. They drilled to a depth where you typically find hydrocarbons, and shockingly found what they were looking for. There was nothing found in the actual drinking water wells. Besides the fact that they DID NOT FIND ANYTHING IN THE DRINKING WATER, it is still a preliminary report for the depth they were at. This very well could be that the hydrocarbon molecules they found were occurring naturally. That’s why it’s called a preliminary report.
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Not enough testing has been done.
They’ve already discovered problems in Pennsylvania and recently in South Dakota with chemicals found in ground water. My concern is immediate and longterm damage to ground water,and aquafers that would carry pollutants distances well away from the fracking/drilling.
I’m all for energy self-suffiency….but you can’t drink oil!
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If anyone thinks that oil companies have the best interests of North Dakota in mind, I have news. Once all the oil is gone and the water and landscape is destroyed, the oil companies will leave us to clean up the mess. It’s important for us to ensure they operate in a manner that does not ruin the western part of our state. This is commonsense. Oil development will continue to have enormous negative effects, UNLESS we get into the act and set up reasonable regulations to keep development but save our natural resources. Any tax revenue shouldn’t be going back to the oil companies, but to the state coffers to help with all of the negative stuff that’s going on.
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If the EPA outlaws frakking, ND’s economy goes into the toilet. The Legislature is counting on that income decades into the future. If it dries up, ND goes back to being a poor, flyover state
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So you’re saying that N.D.’s whole economy is based on this oil thing, and on a doubtful method of extracting oil?
I think I’d rather roll the dice on something a bit more proven.
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“In 2005, the Bush/ Cheney Energy Bill exempted natural gas drilling from the Safe Drinking Water Act. It exempts companies from disclosing the chemicals used during hydraulic fracturing. Essentially, the provision took the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) off the job. It is now commonly referred to as the Halliburton Loophole.”
http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/whats-fracking
If they had to change the provisions of the Safe Drinking Water ACT to make it legal to do it, then why do you ignore the reality that it destroys the quality of the drinking water? Get real you republican lemings.
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Nice to know we live in a country that will allow a company to engage in practices (fracking) that could contaminate the earth soils and jeopardize the drinking water of hundreds of thousands, but a guy who smokes a joint in his home….effecting only him…… is a criminal.
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Yeah, when that happens, you can still buy bottled water! Of course, it’s going to be higher than the cost of gas…
They’ll get ya coming and going, after they’ve lured the losers in control in with a few big bucks.
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North Dakota’s oil industry shot themselves in the foot and now finally are trying to address the differences between shallow and deep fracking? Shallow fracking in Pennsylvania has allowed natural gas to flow into water wells resulting in flammable water (but no fracking fluid is in the water so obviously not a fracking problem). Shallow fracking for gas production is BAD and the people in ND that support fracking should acknowledge that it’s bad in PA, and then carefully point out why fracking at over 5000 feet below the surface is different. Then they also should acknowledge that handling of fracking fluids at the well head does pose a significant ground water risk similar to the risk posed by all of the non oil waste that comes out of the well that has to be treated and disposed.
Instead for some time now ND oil producers just stuck to the company line that all fracking is good and all fracking is safe, which it isn’t. So when fracking is finally shut down in Pennsylvania it will also be shut down in North Dakota.
Fracking in ND may be an acceptable risk, as long as it is done in a carefully controlled environment, but of course that would drive up the cost due to frivilous regulations, because we all know that the oil companies, if left to their own accord, would surely protect people and the earth over profit, just like they did at the old refinery in Williston.
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It’s aptly named, anyway.
As in “Fracking up the environment”.
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Environmentalist all ready Fracked up the water! Back in the 80s under Bushie Sr the Eco-religion demanded that M.T.B be mixed in Gasoline supplies to keep automobiles from smoking.
The Eco-religion was warned that M.T.B is soluble with water and there is no way to clean contaminated water once they mix.
Now there is not one water supply in the Nation that does not have M.T.B in it. The Young Environmentalist have no clue and the Old Environmentalist are eather dead or in a Hospital with Cancer from M.T.B……
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So, what’s MTB? You should have made that plain in your post.
Back in the day, when cars were just catching on, we had what was called, “white gas”, basically what we now call unleaded.
Then, they put lead in our gas and charged us more for it.
Then, in the mid or late 70′s, the EPA said that lead wasn’t all that good for us.
So, Big Oil took the lead out. And charged us more for it…
Don’t know about you, but I feel like I should have at least got dinner and a dance before they had their way with me?
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I don’t know how true it is, but I’ve heard before that the original engines ran on alcohol, but they switched to gas because it was safer and more stable…..It would seem that if they can make much safer engines today that could run on pure alcohol that we probably could get out from under oil….Especially if we allowed a durable plant like Hemp to be grown in areas where general food crops don’t grow as well…..Well…Then again I guess you really couldn’t just use alcohol could you? For the amount we consume they probably couldn’t keep up with the demand….
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Really, tundra, some of the earliest engines that weren’t steam, would be started with alcohol or something similar, and when they were warmed up would be switched over to kerosene or even parrafin, (sp?)
From what I’ve been hearing, most of Europe is running on natural gas, something we tend to burn off in the flares.
Guess the US has never heard of ‘waste not, want not’?
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