Recent comments

First off, the US is a democratically elected Constitutional Republic and not a Democracy. It recognizes the rights of the individual to protection from the masses. How does that apply to Denton's Frac ban? In Texas (and other similar states) we have what's called a Two-tiered Ownership of Private Property. The state recognizes two fundamental estates under the same surveys. At one point the original owner owned both the surface estate and the mineral estate. He/She may have sold the surface but kept the mineral estate. Or they may have sold the mineral estate and kept the surface. What if the original owner decided to sale the minerals but then denied the new mineral owner from coming onto the surface estate to drill, IOW deny the mineral from exercising their ability to use the surface property to exploit the minerals they purchased from the surface owning seller? The new mineral owner got nothing for their value paid. It's for reasoning like this states (not just Texas) recognize the mineral estate as being the dominate estate. It dominates the surface estate in that it can use the surface, within reason, to drill for oil/gas. As per Texas law, if the current property owner owns both estates and decides to sale they *must* specify they are keeping the minerals, and only selling the surface, or the minerals will also be conveyed to purchaser. For more search: Texas Mineral Estate dominance. 1st> If the city of Denton denies these mineral owner from accessing their property rights it would be an unconstitutional taking without just compensation. Search Tom Phillips, a former Texas Supreme Court Justice. Tom has made specific statements to that effect. 2nd> City government cannot overrule state legislation. For example: Texas has legalized the licensing of private citizens to carry concealed handguns for self protection. Whether anyone likes that or not it is the current law of the state. But what if Denton's citizens decide *they* don't want to let anyone legally carry within *their* city jurisdiction so they get a petition for a referendum, bring it to city hall, and have a citywide vote. Can their vote overrule the state's jurisdiction? NO. But that's exactly what this fracking does so once this vote hits the Texas Supreme Courts it lose and the city of Denton will have spent a lot of money on a fight it can't win. 3rd> On the mechanics of Fracking itself: Hydraulic Fracking isn't new. It was patented by Halliburton 65 years ago. Most wells since that time have been fracked. It's a procedure that is well researched and understood by the industry. Because of Gasland, fracking is only new to environmentalists. But Gasland was full of lies. The Colorado family whose faucet lite on fire had been investigate two years earlier by the Colorado Oil and Gas Commission. The COGC pulled gas samples from both the faucet and the area gas wells. The samples chemistry didn't match up...and Fox knew that. The COGO wanted to be interviewed for the film but Fox refused. Go to Wikipedia - Gasland's references for this and other sources. I'm in north Texas and in the 1970s and 80s I worked as a roughneck on a drilling rig and later as a pumper completing new wells and checking the wells daily. People who think fracking somehow makes its way through thousands of feet of strata completely ignorant (as in not understanding) the geology involved. In order to have a productive zone there must be a impermeable cap over those zones or the the gas/oil would've migrated to the surface over millions of years. The hydrocarbons must be "trapped." Fracking is like pushing fissures (think tree roots) through the softer shale (or tight sands) and not through the harder rock overburden. Those fissures will follow the least area of resistance. But just for the sake of the argument lets suppose the frack job did migrate upwards through the different stratigraphic layers. On the way to the freshwater zone a mile up the fracture will encounter (at least in the case of the Barnett) saltwater sands. The frack job would then spread through the saltwater formation. The downside for the oil company is that they would have just ruined their producing well since the saltwater would migrate downwards and into the wellbore. The oil company would've wasted millions of dollars. I don't think they'd want that to happen and have a financial incentive to guard against a bad frac job. 4th> Where there exists the possibility of the gas well contaminating a freshwater sand is not through fracking but from poor cementing the casing inside the well bore. Search: "National Academy of Sciences Fracking Study". Oil companies are required to set multiple strings of casing as they drill a well. The first string is an 8 5/8" diameter surface pipe that is cemented below the freshwater zone. If the well is a producer then smaller diameter pipe will be cemented through the well bore. To keep the casing centered inside the well bore "casing stabilizers" are spaced throughout the string of pipe before cementing because you don't want your casing against the well bores wall creating a channel for gas to migrate up...or to have your frac job migrate up the well. So how does an oil company know if they have a good or bad cement job? They run what's called a "Cement Bond Log" using a wireline logging company, think Schlumberger. Search, or better yet Youtube" Cement Bond Log. Horizontal drilling/fracking is identified as unconventional as opposed to traditional vertical drilling. It isn't going away and here's why, this may scare you, it scares me: In 2008 the International Energy Agency (IEA), for which we pays federal taxes to fund, released its study of 800 worldwide oilfields' decline rates. Those fields produce 2/3rds of the world's petroleum. That was their statistical sampling. There conclusion was that conventional oil peaked in 2006 and is now in decline. To offset that decline new reserves will have to come from unconventional methods/plays. The decline rate was somewhat shocking. The IEA estimated that the world oil industry must put online the equivalent of 4 new Saudi Arabias by 2030 just to keep capacity flat. That's putting on a new Saudi Arabia worth of oil, roughly, every 5 years. However, because of growing demand from modernizing countries (China, India, Middle East), the world oil industry actually needs to put online the equivalent of 6 new Saudi Arabias by 2030. If you want to understand the consequences of not having enough petroleum search/youtube Joseph Tainter's "Energy Complexity Spiral" Environmentalist like to think we can go to alternatives to replace oil. I don't believe they comprehend the volume the world needs to have a functioning economy. So here's a visual that I've used: According to the IEA the world uses 90-92 million barrels per day. I'm going to use the 88 million daily consumption of a few years ago, only because the number round better. 1bbl of oil = 42 gallons 1 steel drum = 55 gallons a steel drum is 3 feet tall 1 mile = 5280 feet Circumference of the earth is 24,900 miles The speed of sound, Mach 1 = 768mph Since everyone has seen steel drums I'm going to convert those barrel of oil in drums and lay them on their side as if making a pipeline from steel drums representing one day's consumption of oil worldwide. (88,000,000bbl x 42gal) / 55 gal = 67,200,000 steel drums of oil are consumed each day. Laying those 3ft tall drums on their side on their side and stacking them end to end give.... (67,200,000 x 3ft) / 5280ft = 38,182 miles long The circumference of the earth is 24,900 miles 38182 / 24,900 = 1.53 or a steel-drum pipeline worth of oil stretching 1 1/2 times around the earth each day. In one year you could encircle the earth with steel drums 560 times 365days x 1.53 = 560 And the speed at which you'd have to pump the oil through this pipeline is.... (38,182miles / 24 hours) / 768mph = 2.07 or Mach 2. Now that's for 88 million barrels per day. The world is using an estimated 90-92 million. IMO anyone who thinks we can replace that volume using renewables does not understand the world they live in. Modern humans are the petro-sapiens. We don't just use petroleum for fuel. It's also used in everything from aspirin to asphalt. Try searching products made from oil to see what I mean and "The Incredible Journey of Oil" documentary. Think about this the next time your on a road trip, asphalt only represents 2% of a refined barrel of oil. You can drive from Maine to Southern California or from Alaska to Florida and be on asphalt highway the entire distance. I wonder how many barrels of oil it took to make those road surfaces...and then to maintain them. I once had someone tell me we could resurface highways with concrete. I asked them if they knew how cement was made? It's cooked in a kiln to a temperature 2800 degrees. That's 600 degrees hotter then the red-hot liquid lave flowing out of Kilauea volcano. Even if you could replace that volume with renewable biofuels/source the volume of water required would dwarf the volume used to hydraulically frac horizontal wells. For example, and you can search this too, the volume of water used for a typical corn-based ethanol plant is equivalent to a typical Midwestern city. Residents believe the open pits are off-gassing toxic air pollution and making them sick. That's easy to sample. There's not only regulations against that if it's true and the residence can bring civil suits against the company. But what about the frac crews working these jobs day in and day out, aren't they getting sick too? Where's the (successful, if any filings at all) employee lawsuits against the frac companies? I think you need to do more homework before writing about a subject you have no experience with, just my opinion.