When even the rapacious EPA is beaten into submission by science and concedes fracking is safe
So even the Environmental Protection Agency now concedes that fracking is safe, which won’t surprise anyone familiar with the reality of unconventional oil and natural gas drilling in the U.S. But if no less than the EPA is saying this, then the political opposition doesn’t have much of a case left.
“We did not find evidence that these mechanisms have led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States,” the EPA observes in a 1,399-page report and multiple appendices. By mechanisms, the researchers mean the practice of injecting water and chemicals into shale at high pressure to extract oil or natural gas.
The environmental movement has stoked speculative fears about chemical mixes leaching into aquifers, poisoned potable water and toxic spills. States including New York, Maryland, California and Vermont have used this pretext for fracking moratoriums or bans. Yet the EPA study is the most exhaustive review ever conducted of the scientific literature and fracking in practice. Dozens of researchers spent five years and likely tens of millions of dollars.
EPA’s conclusion really is remarkable. The agency has yearned for an excuse to take over fracking regulation from the states, which do the job well. So if there was so much as a sliver of evidence that fracking was dangerous, the EPA would have found it. Think of this as the Obama Administration’s equivalent of the Bush Administration failing to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
The truth is that state oversight, industry best practices and especially innovation in technology and engineering are more than adequate to protect water and the wider ecology, as well as the prosperity that fracking underwrites. The EPA paper even accepts that the domestic energy boom has “increased domestic energy supplies and brought economic benefits to many areas of the United States.”
Andrew Cuomo has yet to comment, though his local watermelon Greens are busy trying to spin the report in their favor.
Screw the Luddites.
I freely admit I know little of the science behind fracking, so with that caveat, I do have a concern. That is, I wonder about trading fresh water for oil. To me that sounds as dumb as using food (corn) for making ethanol.
The water used is a tiny part of the earth’s water – I suppose you could see some localized effects in the immediate watershed, but for the overall hydrological cycle it would seem to be a pretty small concern.
Corn for fuel ethanol is many orders of magnitude dumber – some analysts think it’s a net energy loss to do this, and there are unpleasant secondary problems like raising food prices (disproportionately impacting the poor, of course). Also, note that it only happens because of being mandated and subsidized (those hallmarks of a naturally good idea).
[Corn for bourbon is a whole different calculation, of course.]
all water recycles eventually right?
There we go: Are there subsidies for the water used in fracking? No? Well then, the economics of the thing is made plain.
bgbear –
For a long enough ‘eventually’, sure.
Pumping it way underground to displace / free up oil might make that a long time in the case of those particular gallons.
Maybe if we pump enough down there we can offset the seas rising from global warming!
Win win, tree huggers!
matt damon and his fuckhead mama hardest hit
It might use a tiny amount of the worlds water, but they are using local resources. no?
I can see that being a problem in the drought prone SW, where I bet a large proportion of our frackable oil is…
I agree, you could conceivably see some impact in a local watershed (as I mentioned) – but I think it would typically be too small to be observed.
Also, correspondence between fracking sites and drought areas appears to be minimal.
I think seeing this as a problem with fracking is a stretch – whereas the whole ethanol in the gas tank deal is really hitting us in the wallet every day. (Coincidentally, part of the problem with corn for fuel is the water used for the growing and processing, although at least that is not potentially sequestered deep underground.)
Yeah, they say corn requires quite a bit of water, and I’ve heard there are concerns over all the fertilizer required too. That could be old news now and there’s no longer concerns because of better crop rotations or something. The whole scheme doesn’t make the news much these days.
Most of your frackable oil (that we know of, we find more everytime the incentives are rightly structured) is in the Bakken formation, most of which is under North Dakota.
Lots of water is used for industrial purposes. I can’t see singling out fracking.
I told someone not that long ago “you know what takes a lot of water? Everything. That is why securing it is so damn important”. I live in CA, the water can be there if you can ignore the environmental loonies.
Greetings:
Just as that Princess couldn’t get enough mattresses to ameliorate that pea’s impact, there’s no rest for the wicked and they’ll soon be back with their next iteration.
And wasn’t it Mark Twain who said, “Whiskey’s for drinking and water’s for fighting over.” or some such ???
BGbear, I live in Cali too, Tulare county, were the wells are drying up.
It’s worse. We don’t have the infrastructure built to supply our populations water needs now. It would probably take ten years to build it, and as many wet years to charge it.
Maybe when they get done with their bullet train they’ll start working on that…
I’ll wait. I hope our little well doesn’t dry up till then.
I hear somewhere back in the 70s some idiot politician named Brown halted major water projects.
If only we could get a Kardashian look-alike to cut a PSA telling the proles that the solution to California’s water problems was to import more mineral water.
Bonus points if the camera pans back to show her watering her lawn from a hose attached to tanker truck painted to look like a bottle of Perrier.
and Paid for by the we care about the environment more than you committe to reelect your Democratic betters naturally.
Oprah could afford Perrier for her lawn and swimming pools and all her houses.
It is frustrating. Southern Idaho can be dry as a bone but, they have the Snake River and they use it wisely.
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