I've done several months of research on fracking, and I don't mean reading a few one-sided "facts" I found on a website or watching "Gasland".. I mean real research.
Here's my rebuttal to your "easy facts," listed in the same order:
1. Hydraulic fracturing was first used 60 years ago, at a time when people thought swallowing a tapeworm was a great idea to lose weight and using lard in every meal was good for you. Really, the only changes the "U.S. engineers" made to hydraulic fracturing was converting it from vertical drilling to horizontal, making fracking more profitable, but riskier. So commercially viable, yes, safer and more efficient... um no.
2. How about the settlement between Cabot Oil & Gas and the 19 residents of Dimock, PA? There's 19 documented cases right there in one incident. Cabot Oil & Gas agreed to pay the residents millions and to provide them with an alternative water source for contaminating their water from a fracked well that was not properly sealed.
3. Just because 90% of all wells have been fracked doesn't mean it's safe. That statistic refers to all fracked wells, not just the horizontally fracked ones which is what us "proglodytes" are "poo-pooing" about anyway.
4. The fracking well depth doesn't matter in this issue. What matters is the open evaporation pit which holds the used fracking fluid. The pit is either not lined at all or it's lined with a simple tarp, leaking all that fracking water back into the ground. In addition, evaporation pumps are installed in the pits to help evaporate the fracking water into the air. So not only are we going to be drinking the chemicals, we'll be inhaling them also.
5. You're right, the fracking chemicals don't "migrate" into the aquifers through millions of tons of impermeable rock. Fracking intentionally creates fractures in the rock. Through those fractures is where the gas (and the fracking fluid) escape towards the surface... hence the name hydraulic FRACTURing. And all that "hard data" in that graph doesn't mean anything to anyone other than the person who made it. There's no explanation and no citation where it came from.
6. So what, of course they do... everyone knows it's all about money. The oil and gas companies go to even greater lengths to cut corners to reduce costs. Now tell us all something we don't know.
7. This "fact" is actually kind of funny considering the chemicals used in Halliburton's fracking process are actually listed on their website and there's a lot more than 12 chemicals on there. Some of them are found in "frozen peas," (hey that sounds safe) "industrial metal cleaner," and "industrial acid corrosion inhibitors." Even if these chemicals aren't toxic, I still don't want to drink them or bathe in them, do you?
And what about all the unknown chemicals that every oil and gas company refuses to disclose? No one can properly regulate this industry if no one knows what the chemicals are. Thanks to the loophole created by Dick Cheney, Halliburton's ex-CEO, in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the companies do not have to disclose all of the chemicals used.
8. Being able to light your faucet water on fire scares more people than it "wows" considering that you can potentially cause an explosion in your water well by doing that. Yes, methane gas can naturally be present in drinking water, but not in the concentrations being found in the wells of the people who can light their water on fire. You aren't going to drink water that smalls like gas. And you ignored the fact that those people couldn't even do that before the oil companies started fracking in their back yard. Sorry, but you don't see or hear about incidents like that from people who are not close to a fracked well.
9. That is just a plain lie. Under the Energy Policy Act, everything related to hydraulic fracturing and oil and gas extraction and production is specifically exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Federal Water Pollution Control Act and the Clean Air Act. You can look it up yourself... they are all amended to include those exemptions. This shouldn't be regulated at the state level anyway, this is happening countrywide, not just in a few states.
And by the way, this has nothing to do with "eco-activism." It has to do with everyone's health.
10. How much water do you think they actually "recycle" to be able to make that claim? Do you have those numbers... does anyone? And how often is the water re-used before it's useless? One well can be fracked up to 18 times. The oil and gas companies claim that half the water that is forced underground does not come back up. It gets absorbed into the ground. Where does that go? It definitely, 100% does not ever rejoin other water sources? Is that what I am supposed to believe?
So I've debunked each and every one of your "facts" that you copy and pasted from somewhere else. You can even go ahead and do your own research, and I'm not talking about reading someone's opinion from a blog. You'll see that what I've said is backed up by actual facts that come from sources who are involved in the process. Do you really think these oil and gas companies are looking out for you, that they really care? They don't live in the places they drill, they don't give a sh*t what happens to our country. These oil companies are worldwide.. WORLDWIDE.. they don't pay that much attention to the little things like residents. And if there is a problem they settle out of court for a few million, mere pennies to them, and have everyone involved sign non-disclosure agreements, and move on.
Don't be a fool, there are no "easy facts" about this. It's a very complicated and political issue that will be debated and fought over for years.
From http://alfin2300.blogspot.com/
About fracking:
...the whole anti-fracking movement has its head where the sun doesn’t shine – and here are just ten reasons why.
1.Hydraulic fracking has been around for 60 years. Developments made by U.S. engineers around 2008-9 have simply made the process much more commercially viable.
2.Since fracking was introduced in 1949, over 2 million frack treatments have been pumped without a single documented case of treatments polluting a water aquifer.
3.90 percent of all gas wells drilled in the United States since 1949 have been fracked.
4.The depth of most shale gas deposits drilled is between 6,000 and 10,000 feet – water aquifers exist at an average depth of 500 feet.
5.Claims of ‘migration’ between the shale gas layers and water aquifers due to fracking or for any other reason, are patently absurd as the gas would have to pass through millions of tons of impermeable rock. If the rock was that porous, neither the water nor the gas would have been there in the first place. (As the hard data in fig. 1 from a study of 15,000 frac treatments in the Barnett Shale Field reveals plainly.)
6.Fracture design engineers go to great lengths to avoid fracture growth of even 100 feet to prevent losing production.
7.The new eco-horror genre flicks like Josh Fox’s Gasland, create impact by making outrageous claims which include suggesting “569 chemicals” are used in a single “toxic cocktail” frack treatment. The reality is that 99.5 percent of the treatment is water and sand. Much of the remainder is made up of a maximum of 12 or so harmless gelling agents, like Guar gum (used in ice cream making), and chemicals commonly used around the house.
8.Domestic running water faucets being set alight with a match might wow gullible film audiences, but dissolved methane found in well water may well be biogenic (naturally occurring). As the largest component in natural gas, methane is not even regulated as it is not toxic and escapes naturally like soda bubbles.
9.Hydraulic fracking procedures are heavily regulated and not, as often claimed by eco-activists, exempt from drinking water and other key regulatory laws.
10.Concerns about using “excessive water resources” in the process are already being assuaged by new developments, including recycling water. And the U.S. Ground Water Protection Council confirms that drilling with compressed air is becoming increasingly common.
With all the proglodyte poo poo-ing the fracking process, I figured that we could use the info to refute their claims.