GAZETTE COLUMN: WHAT A GAS! by John P. Flannery

We have a lot of folk who wouldn’t see it -- if they didn’t already believe it

We are talking about those who believe the Oil and Gas Energy Industry’s PR hogwash – that the Industry is there to help us - even as the Industry misleads and exploits homeowners by contaminating their water with their deep well gas drilling. 

Let’s consider a few facts.

Fact: The Oil and Gas Industry is shattering the earth two miles beneath our feet, “fracturing” they call it, a recent drilling “innovation,” that pumps two to seven million gallons of water as well as sand and toxic chemicals including diesel fuel, into the earth below, at 13,500 pounds of pressure per square inch, to shatter the shale that is trapping bubbles of natural gas that industry is harvesting for a profit; incidentally, industry denies the use of diesel but it has been repeatedly confirmed. 

Fact: When the Oil and Gas industry fought to pass the Energy Policy Act of 2005, Congressman Joe Barton of Texas wrote a provision for oil and gas that excluded “hydraulic fracture” from any regulations that would protect underground sources of drinking water.

Fact: When the industry drives those drill bits into the earth, at the rate of 35,000 wells a year, they are making new migration pathways for natural gas, and they are compromising the aquifers, our drinking water, the air we breathe, therefore the homes we can inhabit, bringing on headaches from the evaporated gases, nausea, possible brain damage, and risking life itself.

Fact: There are thousands of families with contaminated water across the nation including those found in Garfield County, Colorado; Pavilion, Wyoming; DISH, Texas; Dimock in Bradford County, Pennsylvania; and Hickory, also in Pennsylvania. 

Fact: Oil and gas companies are giving these families hauled “replacement water” -- if they’ll agree to keep their mouths shut about their contaminated wells. 

Fact: One dramatic illustration of contamination is that fire may result when you light a match near your faucet’s water.  Deeper gas (thermogenic methane) appears to be pushing the surface natural gas (biogenic methane) into the water wells.  That’s what appears to have happened in Colorado.  In Dimock, Pennsylvania, the state agency first said that the methane in the water was surface gas as well (biogenic methane), but then, when forced to test it again, they admitted it was from the deepest layers (thermogenic).  It is possible that Pennsylvania got it right both times, and the surface gas had been pushed out of the way by the deeper gases.  The state agencies also admit that they’re not only finding natural gas but also contaminants related to oil and gas production in these water wells. 

Fact: These same wells had no contaminants, gas or other toxic materials in the waters, before the fracturing wells were drilled.

Conclusion: we’ve got to stop this toxic drilling before we contaminate our underground water system for good as we don’t know how aquifers work well enough to know that we can fix them again if we contaminate them.  If we get this wrong, we’ll all be hauling replacement water from some other smarter nation.