A Thread About The Future of Natural Gas.

Post Reply New Topic

I saw the HBO documentary Gasland and watched T. (BP) Pickens on Larry King Live last night and they inspired me to contemplate the next ten years.

T. Boone's energy plan is to replace deisel fuel with natural gas, which the US has a trillion cubic feet of. He said doing it will cut OPEC's profits by half while increasing our GDP by billions. My question is; won't China, India and other developing countries simply buy from the middle east. making up for the market they will lose? Will it really decrease OPEC's profits, or will more populous markets simply compensate? Somehow I doubt domestic drilling will hurt OPEC's profits any, so I'll call Boone's assertion rhetoric.


My other concern is the horizontal hydraulic fracturing method used to capture the natural gas. 596 chemicals (supposedly) are used in the process, many are carcinogens, corrosives and suctifants, and are proprietized, meaning the energy companies who lease the land and drill the fracking wells do not have to tell anyone what is in their fracking fluids.
These volatile organic compounds (VOCs)(including benzenes) are mixed with hundreds of gallons of water, then pumped into a casing under high pressure, causing shale 8,000-10,000 feet down to crack releasing natural gas. The gas isn't fully contained and can contaminate water wells, streams, and anything that's between the shale and the surface, or on the surface.

The Halliburton Loophole Dick Cheney created in 2005 exempted industry from the Clean Water and Air acts, they don't answer to anyone now. They have the corporate value of polluting, making people prove the water or land has been harmed, then paying them the minimal dollar amount for the damage.

The FRAC Act (Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness to Chemical Act) is a house bill that, if passed, will close the Halliburton Loophole.

I understand the need for Natural Gas as an energy solution (even though I long for the day the Hydrogen Economy is a reality) and have no problem with people making boatloads of cash, but do corporations really have to be so irresponsible? There is no reason why they cannot store produced water (water that is mixed with fracking chemicals, sent into the ground, then extracted and placed in an on site pit to later be transferred for disposal by tanker trucks) in tanks off site to be collected by trucks. This way it won't contaminate ground water. What about the harnessing of VOCs or, even better, the usage of non toxic substances in the fracking fluid? The condensation tanks vent too much VOCs as well. Then there's the Evaporation of the produced water pits.

Is there really enough Brita filters and reverse osmosis machines to repair all the damage to the water cycle if this continues on course?

Oh, and if you ever seen a natural gas explosion, it's. like, kinda scary. This needs to be safer.

My mom and her siblings grew up among the oil and natural gas wells and all of them show signs of peripheral neuropathy. My mom has the really bad headaches, my aunt lost her sense of smell, my other Aunt came down with something diagnosed first as Multiple Sclerosis, later, Parkinson's Disease, but she started out with something that strongly resembled Arsenic Poisoning. Her left arm shriveled up and couldn't move one of her legs very well.
My Uncle has headaches. My Grandfather, who was in charge of the oil and the wells, died of a mysterious respitory illness that was misdiagnosed more than once. They thought he had Tuberculosis, then Emphazema. He become sick shortly after he started working with oil wells on his property. Back then they breathed in the PAHs and dumped the oil into rivers, creeks, wherever.
When I was a kid, I saw oil slicks in rivers around my grandmother's property. I am fortunate I wasn't raised there.
I suspect most of the problems the family had/has are due to exposure to various VOCs, heavy metals and hydrocarbons because of oil and natural gas drilling. You can't put a price tag on health. I hope congress starts regulating the oil and natural gas industry again soon, and makes public all chemicals used in the fracking and drilling processes. Also, stop making people sign non disclosure agreements. People have the right to talk about what happened.

Most matter is out to kill you, animal life is the product of a weathered and leached surface, where the water cycle stayed clean. Most ground water is mineralized.

T. Boone Pickens invested in gas, and is looking to make billions reselling his interests.

This oil shale idea has been around for 40 years, but still no way to free the oil, gas, and propriatory often means imaginary, if enough invest, we will figure out something. First we make a killing selling our rights, then the suckers pay for the research, so we win twice.

The truth is there is lots of oil, it is cheap, we could buy all we need for a lot less than were spend on Walmart junk from China. The bottoms of the oceans are covered in Methane Hydrates, an endless fuel supply.

Geothermal is endless, but public domain, drilling the Yellowstone Caldera could power the country, totally clean and endless energy.

The oil is public domain, but with crooks in Congress, and crooks who want to control energy, it leads to the current situation.

Over a million barrels of the Gulf spill has evaporated and the south wind has blown it over land. 43,000,000 gallons, and all highly restricted. Everyone along the Gulf has been exposed, but there will be big payoffs to Congress, that the results, which will not show up for years, like Agent Orange, will be impossible to prove.

America was dosed in Lead, it will hang around for 100,000 years, lower IQ, but Congress protected the oil companies.

Congress, for $100,000 we will let you poison generations to come.

There are better things we can do than burning hydrocarbons. However, if we must burn hydrocarbons, at least let us burn those available from local sources which are not dependent on the fickleness of Middle Eastern politics.

I prefer fast breeder reactors, but it will take us at least ten years to build enough of them to make a difference.

Bob Kolker

During WW2 when Germany was short of gasoline they fitted thousands of cars with wood chip burners. These gave off carbon monoxide which powered the car engine. The Germans also made gasoline from coal.

In Australia during WW2 people put big bags on the roof of their cars filled with coal gas from their home gas supply.

At this point in time Australia has vast reserves of liquid petroleum gas or LPG. Many cars and most taxis run on LPG because it is cheaper than petrol.

We in Australia have enough LPG to run all our cars for the next 500 years or more.

BUT, we are selling it to China to burn in their power stations and at the same time we are paying a fortune to import gasoline from the Middle East..

Can anyone say STUPID?

That is damned strange.

ruveyn

Keep on gettin' gas thru frac-ing.

But, a warning to the US... make sure you invest enough money to keep a sympathetic (aka bribed and on the take) PM here in Canada, otherwise where will you get fresh water once you've contaminated every source you have left?

Since we do have filtering machines and reverse osmosis, perhaps the ground water isn't the biggest concern, since we can filter out many of those pesky VOCs and chemicals (except for glycol ethers which stay in the water), but we still have those condensate tanks to worry about. Tanks that create dangerous localized ozone in communities, way past EPA safe breathing standards. They can hold anything from produced water to something like jet fuel while venting benzenes and VOCs into the atmosphere at alarming rates.

Imagine 50,000 plus natural gas wells, condensate tanks, produced water pits and seperators in the Marcellus Shale. This is what companies like Chesapeake and Cabot plan for the northeast.