|
|
|
Drilling the Marcellus Shale is totally safe...
The Web site for the award-winning alternative weekly, the Philadelphia City Paper.
Drilling the Marcellus Shale is totally safe...
Uh, or you know, not really.
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection said it plans to "investigate aggressively" after natural gas and drilling fluids spewed from an out-of-control well in Clearfield County on Thursday night and all Friday morning.
As Tara Lohan at Alternet reminds us, “This spill is likely a toxic mix of who know what (because industry won’t reveal what’s in their fracking fluid). So yeah, it’s not just off-shore drilling that is an environmental and human health threat and it’s not just oil.”
CPÂ’s own Isaiah Thompson reported on the many environmental dangers of fracking and Marcellus Shale drilling in this story, which is as good a primer as any:
Perhaps more importantly, the need for natural gas is skyrocketing. In Pennsylvania, natural gas prices quadrupled between 2002 and 2008. This surge is driven largely by the fact that the energy sources that powered the last two centuries — oil and coal — are running out. Not to mention, they are both primary contributors to climate change. Among the fuel sources often discussed as short-term alternatives, natural gas has a special allure. It's a fossil fuel, yes, but it's cleaner than coal, immediately available (unlike solar and wind), and we don't have to buy it from the Middle East. In 2008, billionaire oil magnate T. Boone Pickens made headlines with his so-called "Pickens Plan" to move the U.S. off foreign oil, which relied upon natural gas as the "energy bridge" to the future.
The Marcellus Shale holds enough of it to power an energy bonanza that could rival the California Gold Rush.
The mighty gas-drilling industry — powered by the even-mightier oil industry — proclaims the shale a godsend. Its gas will create jobs, generate tax revenues and spur growth. The shale, drilling proponents say, is the magic carpet that will carry the United States to the future of energy independence.
But to its critics, the shale is the opposite: a catastrophe of opportunity. They point to the alleged dangers of fracing, which then-Vice President Dick Cheney managed to get exempted from the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, thus stripping the Environmental Protection Agency of the ability to regulate it. (U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr., D-Pennsylvania, has proposed legislation that would remove this exemption.) Environmentalists point to numerous reports of various kinds of contamination associated with fracing — particularly an ongoing investigative series by the nonprofit journalism group ProPublica, which has catalogued such troubling episodes as the April 2009 incident in which 16 cows in Louisiana dropped dead after drinking "a mysterious fluid adjacent to a natural gas drilling rig," as well as the time, in September 2009, that nearly 8,000 gallons of fracing fluid leaked from a gas-drilling pipe system into a freshwater stream in Dimock, Pa., a small town near the New York border.
Love it or hate it, fracing has arrived in Pennsylvania. The state has permitted some 2,765 wells since 2005; in 2010 alone, that number stands to double. The pressure to lease state-owned forestland for Marcellus Shale drilling has been building for years. The development of new technology, coupled with the ever-growing need, made for the perfect storm.
Interesting article, it seems that when drillers are inexperienced, or make mistakes there can be real problems. Through my research I have yet to find evidence of proper drilling and/or fraccing causing any type of environmental problem.
- ActiVman
- adventures
- Arts
- Ask A Man-About-Town
- Award Tour
- Awards
- Bad Idea Factory
- Beer
- Below the Curve
- Bikes
- Booze
- Brian Hickey
- BRT
- Budget
- Budget Fuss
- Business
- Casinos
- City Council
- City Hall
- CouncilMANIC
- CP Abroad
- CP in the Community
- Criminal Justice System
- Day Tripper
- Death and Taxes
- Delaware River
- Design
- DROP
- Drugs
- Dubious Distinction
- Elections
- End of Days
- Environment
- Fashion
- Film Fest
- Financial Meltdown
- FrackTrack
- Free Library
- Gambling
- Gay Stuff
- Get Lit
- Greenstorming
- guns
- Hall Monitor
- Health
- Health Care
- Hello, Kitty
- Holidays
- Ice Cubes
- Iggles
- Immigration
- In Memoriam
- Labor
- Lawsuits
- Letters
- LGBTQ
- Maps
- Marcellus Shale
- Media
- MMA
- Mummers
- Music
- MUST READ
- Mysterious Mysteries
- Nation
- News
- Non Sequitur
- Opinion
- PA politics 2010
- Parking Wars
- Parks and Recreation
- People Send Us This Stuff
- Philadelphia Police
- Philadelphia Union
- Philaphemera
- Philly From Scratch
- philly madness
- Photos
- Poverty
- PPA
- President Obama
- Print Edition
- Prisons
- Protest
- Readers Write
- Real Estate
- Rock Bottom
- Schools
- Science
- Screwing Philly
- SEPTA
- snow
- So Lush
- Soccer
- Sporting Life
- Sports Complex
- State Politicians
- State Politics
- Street Art
- Strike
- Stuff We Like
- Taxes
- Taxi Drivers
- Tech Fetish
- television
- The Budget Crisis
- The City Paper
- The CLOG
- The Human Condition
- The Mayor
- The Phightin Phils
- The World
- Things that make you go hm
- Tinfoil Hats Off
- Under the Table
- Under the Tables
- Urban Development
- Urban Planning
- urban wildlife
- Video Poker
- We Call Shenanigans
- Weather
- Web Junk
- Weekend Omnibus
- White House
- What We've Found
- Women's Issues
- Flyered Up!
- How 'Bout That Weather?
- it's always sunny in philadelphia
- Stu!
- Shopping
- get out
- 10-track mind
- ArtsFlash
- Bloggity
- Bruce Being Bruce
- Colleges
- Comedy
- Gigantic Surprises
- Hello Canary
- Hello Puppy
- errata
- get lost
- Inside The Fishbowl
- Library Closings
- Local Support
- Movies
- Murder
- Night Moves
- Recycling
- radio
- Scientology
- Sex
- Sixers
- Skeeze Police
- State Politicians Screwing Philly
- That's a cool stencil!
- Theater
- Things We See
- This Week
- This Week in Oates
- University City
- WIN
- What we don't heart
- trailer!
- what we heart
- Feeling Guilty
- Askadelphia.
- Broke in Philly
- Contest
- Dance
- Dear Paper Doll
- Do A Good Thing
- Education
- Film Fest Schism
- G20-20 Vision
- Goodbye
- Gossip
- Great American Heroes
- PATCO
- Pearl Jam Week
- Puppy
- Stars of the Photostream
- sustainability
- Lower Merion Webcam-Gate
- The Cycle
- Equality Forum
- Bureaucrat of the Week
- Animals
- ElectionEar
- Photostream
