Fracking idiots

Al Granberg image used in ProPublica reporting***
A Denver radio caller yesterday defended the practice of “fracking” (some spell it “fracing” … that just looks wrong). He said that to this time there had been no accidents, proving that the practice was safe. (He’s wrong about that, but set that small point aside.)

That did not sit right with me … there is in there a logical fallacy. I’m no expert in such matters, but the one I use is called “the gambler’s fallacy.” It goes like this: Suppose I flip a coin ten times, and it comes up heads eight times. A gambler might intuit that the odds of the next toss coming up tails are greater than 50-50, as heads-tails has to even out eventually.

The chance of the next toss coming up tails is 50-50. The past says nothing about the future. Past coin tosses are completely independent of future ones.

Fracking is a little more complicated than a coin toss, of course. It’s a process by which millions of gallons of chemicals are injected by high pressure into gas-bearing formations underground to free up trapped gas. The danger is migration of those chemical into water-bearing formations, and localized earthquakes. Assuming we’ve never had an accident, what are the odds that we will have one in the future?

We don’t really know. The past says nothing about the future. If accidents are small and if they can be remedied, this is not a big deal. If accidents are large and cannot be remedied, we have a problem. Put another way, certain nuclear reactors in Japan were deemed safe, and had three back-up systems built into them. They were built to withstand an earthquake as large as the one that happened on March 13th. They were not built to withstand both an earthquake and a tsunami, but what the hell – up through March 12, nothing bad had happened!

It’s worse than that with fracking in that we do not know the risks and are not getting good information. The chemicals that gas companies inject into the ground are a trade secret. We must rely on them for our information. They have a conflict of interest, the profit motive, and a great incentive to lie not only to us, but to themselves, about the safety of what they are doing.

Consequently, the government needs to step into the process, find out what is in the fracking fluids, do detailed studies and simulations, and decide if the process is safe. If not, it needs to be outlawed. If risky but if the risk is deemed acceptable, then the process can go forward, but only under heavy regulation.

It’s only sensible, but next I intend to write about the phenomenon known as “regulatory capture,” which explains why fracking is not transparent, outlawed, or even regulated, and why the prospects of this happening are dim.
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***Buried Secrets: Gas Drilling’s Environmental Threat, ProPublica, by Abrahm Lustgarten, February 25, 2011

8 thoughts on “Fracking idiots”

  1. Mark, you are obviously confused about the topic. See: http://marcellusdrilling.com/2010/06/list-of-78-chemicals-used-in-hydraulic-fracturing-fluid-in-pennsylvania/

    In the link you will find a MSDS on fracking fluids and this:

    There are many nasty chemicals in this list, no one disputes that. But here’s a few things to keep in mind:

    No one knows how much of these chemicals are being used by any given driller. We do know that fracking fluid is composed of less than one percent of the chemicals in this list, with water and sand making up the other 99 percent.
    When fracking fluid is pumped into the ground, the vertical hole down which it’s pumped is lined with concrete to protect surface water supplies from chemicals. The fracking fluid goes down some 5,000 feet to where it’s used to help break rock apart releasing the natural gas, and then most of the fluid is pumped back out again and carted away where it’s treated at a regulated and approved facility. For the fluid that stays behind, it’s down some 5,000 feet. That’s almost a mile of solid rock between where it sits and surface water supplies (which are located at about 300 feet). There’s no way any of that fluid will “seep up” into water supplies. And remember that most fluid is pumped back out again. So less than one percent of the fluid are chemicals from this list, and most of that comes out again, leaving behind a very very small amount of chemicals a mile below the surface and heavily diluted by water and sand.
    Compare the list below with the labels on the containers under your kitchen and bathroom sinks. You’ll find some of the same names on the labels.
    One last thing to keep in mind: No driller uses all of these chemicals. In fact, Range Resources has openly discussed what they use in their fracking fluid:

    Range Resources, which uses contractor Frac Tech for its fracing work, says its frac fluid additives are chosen from a list of only nine compounds — hydrochloric acid, methanol propargyl, polyacrylamide, glutaraldehyde, ethanol, ethylene glycol, alcohol and sodium hydroxide.*

    There is no one size fits all fracking process. However, the 99% being water and sand seems to be the norm. What’s never mentioned is the all the old unlined open pit dumps and such used by farmers and ranchers and small towns across the West for over a 100 years. The closest contact with potable well water comes from the surface, not 1000’s of feet below.

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    2. Hey Craig, you know the good thing about Fukushima? It wasn’t as bad as Chernobyl (yet).

      I love this style of, if I can something that is worse than the topic at hand, then what we’re discussing really isn’t all that important.

      Oh, and Craig, what’s your take on the fracking blowout in Pennsylvania? Fracking fluid headed into the Susquehanna river.

      Gee, I wonder what chemicals are headed downstream???

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      1. Lost a few words there:

        “I love this style of debate, if I can point to something that is worse than the topic at hand, then what we’re discussing really isn’t all that important.”

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    3. Now that I have a minute, Craig: The points you raise are either wrong or irrelevant.

      The percentage of chemicals in a compound has no bearing on their potentate threat. Most products sold even for medicinal purposes are a tiny amount of a chemical compound contained in a delivery agent.

      The depth of gas bearing formations is of some importance, but not definitive. The fracking chemicals have to be delivered via a string of tubing, and if that tubing fails, the casing in which it exists will be inundated. It then depends on the integrity of the cementing job, and depth can help alleviate risk, but does not eliminate it. Remember that fracking itself contributes to instability of geological formations.

      In northern Montana, gas-bearing formations are often less than a thousand feet underground. Make a difference to you?

      Voluntary disclose is meaningless.

      The state of Wyoming has forced producers to disclose the chemical in the solution. This is mere common sense, but only the beginning of the problem. Ever hear the expression “unknown unknowns?”

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  2. “There’s no way….” Fameous last words of every industrial polluter and their K Street lobbyists. The list of lies is so long, how about the highlights reel.

    Exxon Valdez, BP Gulf, Amazon rainforest, and every pipeline ever built. There are spills, always. Nuclear industry lies are legendary. Mining, whether it’s coal blowing tops of mountains into streams and rivers, or cyanide pulluting the groundwater, it’s always the same story. Ask Libby. Plastics in the ocean, or acid rain, or overfishing, or “research” whaling, it’s lies.

    Why aren’t fracking industry flacks lying too? The burden should be on them, not us to prove them liars AFTER they’ve polluted the groundwater for generations, or millenia. Cancer anyone? Oh, just one more chemical won’t hurt anyone.

    As Reagan was so fond of saying: “Verify.”

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  4. Wow, I know that focus is on all the chemicals that are used, on average over 15,000 gallons of potentially dangerous, toxic, health destroying chemicals. But what about the millions of gallons of water that is gone…poof… One frack uses millions of gallons of water that is then no longer in the water system. We are using one no renewable resource to extract another non renewable resource. Shale gas I can live without, water I can’t. My wife and I have become sort of experts on this topic ever since there was an exploratory oil/gas permit given less than 600 meters from our front door.Less than 600 meters from the shore line of Nova Scotia largest fresh water lake.
    Cape Breton, Canada.

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