Drillers sue over Allegheny National Forest rules

[jaybo41]

http://postgazette.com/pg/09154/974673-113.stm

Discuss.

 

[pcray1231]

The forest service is trying to make sure its done right, which is a good thing.

The companies own the mineral rights and by law, the restrictions on the ANF are no different than they would be on private land. Legally the forest service has little or no say in what mining companies do on ANF land.

 

[Brownout]

Article says defendants include the Allegheny Defense Project. I am going to give them some money, but I am going to look at the defendant list to see who would be able to use it the best.

What do you think about giving money to this?
A.not necessary
B. I pay taxes, some of my money will help
C.I will give money

 

[pcray1231]

Well, my point of view is this....

I don't oppose the drilling, in fact I fully support it. We've had extensive gas drilling in this state for many years, and it hasn't been that bad at all, much better than the coal industry has been to us (both with mining and the use of the product, i.e. acid rain). This is just deeper, but the same basic stuff.

I do want to make sure its done right, though. The biggest issue is water. There's plenty of water in this state for this, but you don't want them draining a small stream during summertime lows, for instance. And economics of transportation and storage being what they are, the cheapest way is to take it from the nearest location the day it is to be used.

So

1. Make sure the conservation organizations involved understand our concerns about even the small streams, not just the major rivers. Make sure the permits state time of year or minimum flows, as well as exact waterways, in which they can take water from. Make sure there are random checks to make sure all of the leak protections are in place.

2. Even if the restrictions are proper, you have to enforce them, with some teeth in the bite. Especially problematic is that it seems like the drilling companies are a multitude of small companies, rather than a few large corporations. Small operations tend to be ignored and get away with more, the lawyers are after the big money.

3. Treatment of the water. I know there's only 1 or 2 facilities, but I don't know where they're located, or how much water they can handle. Might be worthwhile to compare the volume they can handle per day compared with what is expected to come in.

 

[RLeeP]

If the wellhead pre-production bond in adherence with the PA Oil & Gas act of 1984 is sufficiently high enough, you shouldn't have that many small operators in the mix any more, because they cannot afford the bond.

But I don't know how that portion of the law applies to this newer form of exploration and indeed, I do not know if the nitwits in the General Assy have not done something in the interim to negate the original intent of the bonding requirement.

Personally, I think the regulations should be as slack as the companies need them to be, so long as the bond in high enough that if they screw up and have to forfeit , their sole option is bankruptcy.

That's fair, don't you think?

 

[Brownout]

Eh, fair..not sure..devil in the details. Biggest problem is the use of the water, and disposal of it, if they really need 5 million gallons to frac, and they pump that down 6,000 feet, and don't recover all of it, and taint all of it, that is not coming back into the watershed. That is a lot to take out each time they do it. Then they start the movement of methane which moves into the wells.

Just like oil drilling, they are drilling in an environment where current land going creatures don't live. Pulling sludge up from those depths, and stabbing into, always has bad consequences.

 

[pcray1231]

Brownout,

Obviously methane is simply natural gas, they are one and the same. While it is possible, due to the fracing, some methane may contaminate groundwater, this is less likely with marcellus than with our traditional sandstone natural gas wells due to the depth of the marcellus formation.

Is there any known methane contamination other than the one in Dimock? I know of only that case, and I don't know the cause of that one.

There was also a pipe burst in Washington County somewhere, which resulted in a fluid leak from an already frac'd well and a fish kill. DEP is investigating and will fine the company.

Those are the only two pollution events that I know of. Of course with the landscaping you'll have some siltation, but the sites have better erosion controls than most other forms of development. The real worry, for me, remains to be the water use. 5 million gallons from a major waterway during good flows is nothing, a drop in the bucket, when you consider that its one time use and not continuous. But 5 million gallons from a small stream during low flow is real bad indeed.

 

[Brownout]

It's natural but it can still do damage to people via explosions and breathing it in. This article is very interesting : methane leaks in drilling

People make mistakes, and when there is huge sums of money at stake, sometimes they make really huge mistakes. Once we start contaminating aquifers with drilling chemicals it's a slippery slope. People settling this far north and populating to this extent is obviously not going to turn out well. Burning trees would probably be better if these chemicals seep indefinitely into the water supply. Now, there's probably too many people to burn trees, so I'm guessing nuclear power is much better. Or rigging the whole eastern coastline with windmills.

 

[pcray1231]

Brownout,

If the methane contamination from fracing is due to fissures being opened up which could lead up to the aquifer, would not Marcellus then be a much more suitable formation to drill than would traditional shallow gas?

I agree on nuclear. My order of preference is nuclear, gas, oil, coal, which is the order of the environmental friendliness of the resources. Wind and solar as much as possible, but both are severely limited by the shear amount of land they need.

We will continue to need all types of energy. But if every gas well drilled prevents a strip mine and a coal plant, I'm all for it. But I do want to make sure its well-regulated.

 

[Brownout]

I think I see what you're getting at..the article I linked studied deep wells, like we are getting here. There's a snippet below. I am learning about the process more and more, so bringing up points of contention is helpful. I may have an alarmist mentality here, but, when it comes to water, you can never be too careful. I mean, these contaminants may be a drop in the bucket compared to the volume of crap that we knowingly allow to enter major water ways in PA. I'm sure factories around the Susky are allowed to dump junk in there legally with permits.

When a pipe extends 8,000 feet below the earth's surface, he said, "there are numerous potential leak points along the way. So is it leaking at 8,000 feet and coming up a well bore, a natural fault or fracture? Or is it leaking 500 feet from the surface? We don't know."

The most plausible explanation, Thyne said, is that the same type of well casing and cementing issues that had proved problematic in Ohio and are suspected in Pennsylvania were presenting problems in Colorado too.

"The thesis is that because of the way the wells are designed they could be a conduit," said Garfield County's Jordan, who commissioned the report.

Jordan worries that the methane leaks could be a sign of worse to come.

"We suspect the methane would be the most mobile constituent that would come out of the gas fields. Our concern is that it's a sort of sentinel, and there are going to be worse contaminants behind it," she said. "It's not just sitting down there as pure CH4 (methane). It's in a whole bath of hydrocarbons," she said, and some of those "can be problematic."

 

[Brownout]

I think we should discuss this in well water shale contamination , another thread I started, perhaps with a more appropriate title.

 

[spectorfly]

While the federal government owns the surface, more than 90 percent of the rights to underground minerals are privately owned. The government didn't buy those rights when the forest was created nearly 90 years ago.

Too bad. Sounds like an access (right of way) issue. I belive the forest was created millions of years ago.

I say don't let them drill. We should be focusing on alternative fuel sources anyway. Leave the natural state of the forest alone. They will have to do some clear cutting to get to it. I see all kinds of clear cutting going on in my area now and it makes me sick. The Human race is getting to be more and more of a burden on the planet now that times seen to be getting desperate and we are acting like a disease raping the planet of it's resouces at alarming rates.

Something that crossed my mind today while driving to my favorite brookie stream that is on state game lands way back in the woods that relates:

It was 90 degrees outside today in town. On the drive in and while fishing back there it was over 10 degrees cooler. I think a bigger problem with global warming is more related to the clear cutting of the planets forests than anything else. Sure we create carbon monoxide gas with alot of things these days. (basic science class) Trees take in that gas and give off oxygen. No trees, carbon monoxide builds up. Oxygen has a natural cooling effect compared to carbon monoxide..........

Well, you see where I'm going with this. That's my insight and opinion on it.

 

[pcray1231]

Too bad. Sounds like an access (right of way) issue. I belive the forest was created millions of years ago.

Not true. A forest was created millions of years ago. That forest was cut down to bare ground, essentially ALL of it. The forest service purchased the bare ground in 1923, and allowed it to regrow as they wanted. The intent of the land was, and is, to provide forestry resources for eternity, namely, wood.

Leave the natural state of the forest alone.

Again, its not natural.

They will have to do some clear cutting to get to it.I see all kinds of clear cutting going on in my area now and it makes me sick.

Boy, I hope so, and so do all of the animals in the forest. It needs it badly.

Sure we create carbon monoxide gas with alot of things these days. (basic science class) Trees take in that gas and give off oxygen. No trees, carbon monoxide builds up. Oxygen has a natural cooling effect compared to carbon monoxide.

Umm, don't mean to be negative or anything, but its carbon DIoxide. Carbon monoxide is a poisonous gas and would kill us all in high concentrations, but I don't think its a greenhouse gas related to global warming.

Yes, due to the fact that they were originally located on the outskirts of cities, and cities are growing, and there is a such thing as an urban heat island effect, the ground based weather stations are not reliable indicators of historical temperature. Satellite data goes back to the late 70's and is much more reliable, and it shows the same thing. Ice core readings are also more reliable, and show the same trend back to the 1800's really.

And yes, the idea behind greenhouse gas induced global warming is a combination of deforestation and human greenhouse gas emissions; reducing either is beneficial. This is why solar will never work on a large scale in forested areas, it takes too much land and requires deforestation. Not a good idea to cut down forest so that a manmade device does what trees do better anyway. You're farther along by just using the wood, and letting the forest regrow.

 

[spectorfly]

They remove both.

Just a quick search on yahoo and:

From the NC State University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences website

NC State University

Trees absorb carbon dioxide and potentially harmful gasses, such as sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, from the air and release oxygen.

 

[pcray1231]

They remove both.

That is true. Well, I'm not sure if its directly true. The small concentrations of CO in the atmosphere eventually oxidize to the more stable CO2 in the upper atmosphere, then the plants remove that. The contribution to total CO2 levels from CO is negligible. But you're right in that without plants, CO would never be totally separated back into carbon and oxygen.

Oxygen has a natural cooling effect compared to carbon monoxide.

That is not. CO is not a greenhouse gas. And oxygen has no "cooling effect" either, so they are equal in having no effect on temperature. CO2 has a warming effect, as does methane, O3 (ozone), and several others. And the fact that its cooler in the forest has nothing to do with the composition of the air, its shade and insulation, as well as soil type. Trees use the sun's energy to create sugars (photosynthesis) instead of letting it heat the ground.

Carbon monoxide results from the incomplete burning of fuel, and it is highly toxic. Environmentally speaking, it has not been that much of an issue. But it is a danger to our health, for instance, if you leave a car running in a closed garage, as the engine gets starved of oxygen and starts spitting out carbon monoxide instead of carbon dioxide. Any "smothered" fire does this, so if a heater isn't running efficiently it could be a major problem.

 

[tomgamber]

spectorfly wrote:
I think a bigger problem with global warming is more related to the clear cutting of the planets forests than anything else.

Maybe not the bigger problem but absolutely a big part of the problem. Rain forests, like the Amazon, once covered 14% of the earth. That figure is now 6%. Imagine the impact of all the deciduous forest calculated into that...

 

[jayL]

Gotta agree with pcray here. One other small pedantic point is that when speaking in terms of science, the forest was not "created". Religious stuff is in the eye of the beholder, but it kind of destroys any logical arguments.

 

[JackM]

Jay is correct-- the forests of the earth materialized from nothingness. I have spoken.

 

[pcray1231]

tom,

One interesting debate is how much of our oxygen is actually produced by rainforests. You are right that rainforests once covered 14% of the LAND AREA of earth, not the total earth, and now its much lower.

I've seen estimates that they produce anywhere from 10 to 40% of the oxygen, though. The higher figures are based on amount of foliage. The lower figures take into account a tree's age, as young growing trees are much more efficient. Hence logging might actually increase CO2 absorption and O2 production presuming you allow the forest to grow back afterwards.

Of course, with the rainforest, they're not letting it grow back, it becomes farmland. But the fact is that at any time, they could decide, ok, lets let it grow, just like they did here in PA. Of course it'd take thousands of years to recover to original form, just as our forests have not done yet. But nonetheless, it'd become forest of some type in only a few decades.

You also have to take into account algae blooms in the ocean, which constitutes a considerable portion of our O2 and is tricky to put a number on. Some say the contribution of these areas is better than 50%, AND the rainforests 40%, so that all the huge deciduous forests and northern pine forests contribute a combined less than 10%. Meaning deforestation of our regions means next to nothing for the consideration of O2 vs. CO2 (it still means something for recreation, water supply, etc.).

Another interesting tidbit is that the ocean's algae blooms are generally getting stronger, due to warmer temperatures and more CO2 with which to work. This is one of Earth's many feedback mechanisms, this particular one tends to counteract greenhouse warming.

 

[tomgamber]

pcray1231 wrote:
tom,

One interesting debate is how much of our oxygen is actually produced by rainforests. You are right that rainforests once covered 14% of the LAND AREA of earth, not the total earth, and now its much lower.

Yes, that is a more accurate statement.

I've seen estimates that they produce anywhere from 10 to 40% of the oxygen, though. The higher figures are based on amount of foliage. The lower figures take into account a tree's age, as young growing trees are much more efficient. Hence logging might actually increase CO2 absorption and O2 production presuming you allow the forest to grow back afterwards.

Most of the ones I saw were 20 % + or -

Of course, with the rainforest, they're not letting it grow back, it becomes farmland. But the fact is that at any time, they could decide, ok, lets let it grow, just like they did here in PA. Of course it'd take thousands of years to recover to original form, just as our forests have not done yet. But nonetheless, it'd become forest of some type in only a few decades.

Yes, a LOT of it is becoming cattle grazing land for European bound beef.

Another interesting tidbit is that the ocean's algae blooms are generally getting stronger, due to warmer temperatures and more CO2 with which to work. This is one of Earth's many feedback mechanisms, this particular one tends to counteract greenhouse warming.

And this combined with excess nutrients is warming that water much faster.