Conflicting reports fuel fracking debate tied to Wyoming town

[Judi Lynn]

Conflicting reports fuel fracking debate tied to Wyoming town
Fri, 28 Sep 2012 23:58 GMT
Source: reuters // Reuters
By Laura Zuckerman

SALMON, Idaho, Sept 28 (Reuters) - Government testing of a drinking water aquifer near a tiny Wyoming town has shown concentrations of gases like ethane and propane and diesel compounds, but a natural gas company said it did not cause the contamination.

A report by the U.S. Geological Survey showed petroleum-based pollutants in samples from a monitoring well in the aquifer adjacent to Pavillion, Wyoming, which is at the center of a national debate over hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

A draft study released in December by the Environmental Protection Agency linked fluids used in fracking, a drilling method that has unlocked vast shale gas deposits across the nation, to pollution in the underground formation that supplies drinking water to residents near Encana Corp's gas production wells east of Pavillion.

The findings contradicted claims by gas drillers that fluids from fracking, which injects water, sand and chemicals underground to boost extraction of fuel, have never contaminated drinking water.

More:
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/conflicting-reports-fuel-fracking-debate-tied-to-wyoming-town

[limpyhobbler]

1. No amount of evidence will ever be enough

No amount of evidence will ever be enough to convince people making millions of dollars. Big oil is not to be trusted.

They will always find a way to contest any evidence, to spin the results, to obfuscate, or pay off some scientists if need be.

The Reuters article (via trust.org) says

Jackson, co-author of a peer-reviewed paper that showed fracking in the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania did not pollute adjacent drinking water wells with brine, said the report by the USGS should quiet criticism of the EPA.

The reporter is repeating industry spin. Really the significant finding by the Duke University researchers in their Pennsylvania study was that they found proof that the pathways for contamination do exist there. The industry had long claimed that such pathways did not exist. Strictly speaking it is true they did not find any specific contamination directly as the result of drilling, but they proved that it is possible.

Here is an article specifically about the Duke study:

Fracking Can Pollute, Confirms Study
...
The study shows that briny fluids may have migrated from deep within Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale, one of the formations at the heart of the fracking revolution, into shallow aquifers hundreds of feet above.

And logic suggests that if natural briny fluids can travel through layers of rocks, fracking fluids could, too.

“The industry has always claimed that this is a separation zone, and there is no way fluids could flow” from the shale to the aquifers, said Avner Vengosh, a geochemist at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, one of the study’s authors.

“The fact that it’s a mile or two miles apart doesn’t mean that there’s separation,” he added. “Because there is a hydraulic connection, it increases the risk of contamination.”

http://priceofoil.org/2012/07/10/fracking-can-pollute-confirms-study/

Here is some commentary directly from the Duke University site:

Some homeowners claim they can’t drink their well water any longer and say it wasn’t that way before the fracking began.

Proving anecdotal claims about tainted water—and assessing blame—can be tricky, says Robert B. Jackson, Nicholas Professor of Global Environmental Change and director of the Center on Global Change, “but at least some of the homeowners who claim that their wells were contaminated by shale-gas extraction appear to be right.”

The team’s study detected measurable amounts of methane in 85 percent of the collected samples, and levels were 17 times higher on average in wells located within a kilometer of active hydrofracking sites, says geologist Stephen Osborn, a former postdoctoral research associate with Jackson and Vengosh at the Nicholas School and Duke’s Center on Global Change, who was lead author of the study. (Osborn joined the faculty at California Polytechnic State University this summer.)

Tests showed that the methane collected from water wells within a kilometer of active sites had a chemical fingerprint similar to thermogenic methane, which is formed at high temperatures deep underground and is captured in gas wells.

http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/dukenvironment/f11/in-the-midst-of-a-fracking-firestorm

The Oil/Gas Industry is determined and able to fight back. They will create a cloud of doubt around any study, no matter how much evidence there is. They don't care who gets hurt. Considering the risks, we really ought to be erring on the side of caution anyway.