Fracking’s the new normal

[xchrom]

http://www.salon.com/2012/04/18/frackings_the_new_normal/

The Upper Green River Basin isn’t the type of place that’s supposed to have smog. In the southwest corner of Wyoming, right in the heart of the Yellowstone ecosystem, the basin’s seas of sagebrush stretch on for miles, and every year, antelope migrate south from the Grand Tetons. Only 10,000 or so people live in Sublette County, which stretches over an area the size of Connecticut. There are no stoplights.

But last winter, ozone levels in the county spiked above federally acceptable standards 13 times, hitting levels more commonly associated with places like Los Angeles and New York City. In the last 10 years, the gas drilling industry has moved into the area, alongside the ranchers and the grizzly bears, and started opening up gas wells using hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, methods. The industrial equipment drillers brought with them — the heaters, dehydrators and engines — has been spitting smog-forming pollutants into the air. The wells themselves have been polluting the air, too, as methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and other hazardous compounds vent from the ground and into the atmosphere.

This hasn’t been a problem only in Wyoming. Similar ozone spikes have appeared near drilling fields in Utah and Colorado, and at least a portion of Texas’ air problems could be linked to drilling there. Air pollutants like benzene are also threatening the health of people living near gas wells. And so today the Environmental Protection Agency announced new standards for oil and gas companies that within the next few years should reduce emissions from gas wells. They’re the first ever air quality standards that apply to wells drilled using fracking methods. For newly fracked wells, the EPA estimates the rules will reduce the emissions of some hazardous compounds as much as 95 percent.

Since the Obama administration started touting its “all-of-the-above” energy strategy, the president has been emphasizing that natural gas should be embraced, and at the top of the EPA call announcing the new standards, Assistant Administrator Gina McCarthy reiterated that “natural gas is key to country’s clean energy future.” This enthusiasm rests on the premise that drilling companies can extract natural gas from the ground safely and with minimal impacts to the environment and to the health of people living in and around gas fields. Or, at least, more safely than they’re managing to now.

[FBaggins]

1. Yep... expect lots more of it in the coming years.

Particularly if the US dramatically expands into the LNG export business (as it almost certainly will).

[izquierdista]

2. Fracking and tar sands

They represent the final diaperload that the human race will bequeath the planet as they join every other species that has gone extinct. After the Great Postmodern Extinction Event, Mother Earth will take a long nap and perhaps another species with self-aware intelligence and opposable thumbs will get to have a go at the top of the pyramid.

[Nihil]

3. Extinction? Pah ...

... a mere triviality compared to the unmitigated joy of short-term profit and
the subsequent [s]bribes[/s] "campaign donations" that keep the populace
out of the way ...

Like you say: fracking & tar sands, natural gas & petroleum sludge,
large amounts of fresh water & energy wasted for the production of
large-scale pollution & biosphere degradation ... all for money ...