Dear RDA Members and Friends,

PRESSURE BUILDS AND PRESSURE BULBS

New legislative proposals in the PA House and Senate to amend ACT 13 were announced this week. Senator Jim Ferlo from the southwest is looking for other Senators to co-sponsor a bill that would, "Impose a reasonable Marcellus Shale severance tax, toughen environmental and public health protections, and restore local zoning powers." Similarly, a number of House Democrats have banded together and come up with a six-point plan they are calling the "Marcellus Compact" to accomplish the same goals.

Excerpts from Senator Ferlo's press release:

"Since the enactment of Act 13, a sweetheart deal for the lucrative gas drilling industry, we have seen alarming examples of drilling companies engaged in dishonest business practices; bullying residents and municipalities where they drill, and manipulating Pennsylvania's medical community by requiring confidentiality agreements that violate the doctor-patient relationship," Ferlo said.

Ferlo asserts that the public endures the decimation of the education system and social safety net while Marcellus Shale drillers fill their pockets and Ferlo believes that a severance tax which helps close Pennsylvania budget loopholes is the best course of action.

Ferlo expressed additional concerns about the Pennsylvania Medical Society's suspect about-face regarding the oil and gas industry's insistence that physicians adhere to strict confidentiality agreements on the exact contents of fracking fluid.

The Society seems resigned to accepting how Corbett bureaucrats claim the law will be interpreted rather than demanding that the law be fixed in order to assure doctors of their freedom to discuss potentially deadly toxins in fracking fluid." Ferlo said.

He reiterated that the state's current law, Act 13, is weak in nearly every way, shape and form. Ferlo voted against the measure and strenuously opposed the bill at every turn in the legislative process. He and his Senate Democratic colleagues offered numerous amendments to protect the public and the environment, only to have every one defeated by the Republican majority.

The local fee component in the law is insignificant and grossly undersells Pennsylvania's Marcellus shale resources," Ferlo said. "My legislation would do away with this unreliable and inadequate fee structure, and impose a more robust severance tax like nearly every other major gas producing state in America has done."

Pressure Bulbs Underground

Many of you may have already seen articles this week in both Bloomberg news and Pro Publica regarding a study by Nevada hydrogeologist Tom Myers on the potential for very fast migration of toxic fluids from the depths of fracked shale-gas formations up into fresh water aquifers. Myers work was quickly refuted by PSU's Dr. Terry Engelder, who has always maintained that the migration will happen eventually, but over a time span in the millions of years and so, nothing we should consider putting on our present-day list of concerns. The Myers study puts the time frame at years and decades. News reports on Myers' study and Engelder's response are available here:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-03/fracking-fluids-may-migrate-to-aquifers-researcher-says.html

http://www.propublica.org/article/new-study-predicts-frack-fluids-can-migrate-to-aquifers-within-years  

Anyone of the small number of people who were in attendance at a forum at Hughesville High School in mid January of 2011 may recall Dr. Engelder speaking on this very issue. While he was firm in his assertion that fracking into the Marcellus at the depths targeted in PA (6,000 feet or more below the surface) was safe in terms of the fluid migration timeline, he did make the statement, " those people in Ithaca are right to be acting like Luddites... " Engelder was referring to the fact that gas would be found at 3,000 feet or less in the Ithaca region. That could mean there would not be enough pressure from above to ensure that the frack fluids would not move up into aquifers at a concerning rate.

It would be interesting to see if Dr. Engelder has expressed the position he asserted in Hughesville to NY state regulators as they continue their research before deciding on whether to issue shale-gas drilling permits. It may also be worthwhile to ask him what he makes of a report from last summer by Ohio hydrogeologist Bob Hagg and his wife Ruth, CEO of Haag Environmental, a Sandusky based business focused on industrial contamination.

Read the entire report at:

http://www.publicherald.org/archives/13916/investigative-reports/energy-investigations/fracking-energy-investigations/  

Exerpts from the Sandusky Bay Journal July 1 2011:

When questions about this used fracking water are asked, the response is to point out that the shale is 1-2 miles deep, and groundwater supplies come from less than 300 feet deep, so what could be the problem? The same debate has occurred many times, with regard to (1) EPA permitted deep hazardous waste injection wells, (2) injection/solution mining, and (3) deep burial of nuclear wastes. When we look at problem scenarios from those three past issues, we find that the argument that the fracking fluids won't reach drinking water wells can be a case of "telling the truth in such a way that lying is unnecessary."

What to really worry about: secondary effects of pressure

While it is true that the fracking fluid will most likely not reach the groundwater, what we need to examine are the secondary effects on drinking water wells, caused by a fracking induced "pressure bulb".

When you apply pressure to soil or rock, the pressure doesn't just stop at the surface you are pushing on; the pressure spreads and dissipates through the surrounding soil or rock. In hydro-fracking, the pressure applied is enormous...

High pressure is injected at depth of a mile or more. This creates a pressure bulb above the injection location, which slightly lifts all of the strata above the injection location. In the immediate vicinity of the injection, cracks open in the shale layer, and a sand "proppant" is injected to keep the cracks open and allow the gas to flow. Further up in the profile, there are tiny shifts along existing fractures, and permeability of the overlying rocks is increased. The existing fluids in the overlying rocks are pushed up by the injected fracking fluids. We never expect the fracking fluids themselves to enter shallow groundwater aquifers, nearly a mile above the shale. However, the fracking fluids may be expected to push naturally salty water up into the freshwater zone near the surface.