Shale Oil Proposal Is Not the Answer

As of Tuesday, February 22, 2011

A recent article in The Pilot about shale oil being the next “gold rush” in Moore County is very disturbing.

Natural gas is extracted from the ground by drilling hundreds of feet straight down and then sideways. The shale is then fractured by introducing millions of gallons of water along with many chemicals into the shale. The chemicals and water cause the natural gas to rise to the surface, where it is piped into holding tanks.

The problem? The chemicals and natural gas can pollute our aquifer, a very huge supplier of Moore County’s water. I do not profess to know much about geology, but what I have read and seen in a documentary concerning “fracking” is a guarantee that our water supply, air, health and wildlife will suffer.

A second article about well drilling refers to thousands of permits being issued within the city limits of Fort Worth, Texas. Imagine someone with an undesirable lot in Moore County taking a huge cash incentive to allow such drilling? Then multiply that by 500 or 1,000?

I urge everyone to take a few minutes to watch a trailer on YouTube called “Gasland.” Is this documentary one-sided? Yes, but it is on the side of the people who are suffering from fracking.

Big business and politics, as usual, are the bad guys in this film. Companies like Halliburton pushed for and got an exemption from the Environmental Protection Agency to allow fracking for its own and similar types of businesses.

I care very much about Moore County, and I do believe that we need alternative sources of energy, but not the get-rich quick method suggested in the article. It might be a win-win situation for the gas drilling companies, but it might leave Moore County with a polluted water supply.

Ray Tkacz

Pinehurst

More like this story

tlm123 2 years, 2 months ago

Preventing the destruction of the quality of life we enjoy in Moore County and in NC is vitally important. The risk is huge. A moratorium should be immediately enacted while a prohibition of this method is developed and implemented. If we don't prevent profiteers from destroying the environment, then go ahead and start making plans of where your children and grandchildren, as well as you, will want to live -- no one will want to live in the toxic depleted environment that would be here if we allow fracking.

I love the Sandhills ecosystem. Let's protect it.

Darkwing 2 years, 2 months ago

The EPA studied it and decided it was safe. The EPA! The "any enviro-whacko idea is good" agency found it was safe. We need to be doing this NOW to get out from under foreign oil until we can shift to nuclear plants and hydrogen cars.

Tommy 2 years, 2 months ago

You're right, Ray we don't need to do it.

The environmentalists in this administration need to use some wisdom and objectivity and allow drilling again in safe places like shallow areas of the gulf and in Alaska and increase the number of US refineries, so we can get ahead of this recession, reverse the lunacy of raising gas prices out of environmental ideology, and free our dependency on lunatic middle eastern and other nations until we come up with a viable energy alternative.

Darkwing 2 years, 2 months ago

See my blog 'Clean coal vs offshore wind' for the viable alternatives. Also, according to an article a couple weeks ago, fracturing is cheaper than traditional methods, does away with the risk of BP-style spills, and reduces transportation to market, since it's not in northern Alaska or out to sea.

SH59 2 years, 2 months ago

Oh, Get over the immediate fix and think about the long term affects of pressure shooting chemicals into our water system. I agree with Ray in that we need to make good decisions about the future of this county. Water is a huge issue and I don't think people realize how valuable clean water is going to be in the future. Water is the one resource that can never be replaced, it is limited in it's availability and needs to be protected. Someone told me once that the water you drink from your faucet today has been around since the beginning of time on this earth. Do we really want to pollute it and make it unavailable for human consumption?

JAP 2 years, 2 months ago

SH59,

"...(water) is limited in it's availability..."

Approx. 2/3 of the earth's surface is covered in water.

JAP

Darkwing 2 years, 2 months ago

Water is replaced every second. It's evaporation and condensation. As I mentioned in my blog, desalination plants can give us all the water we need. And as for your 'long-term effects', I recall a newspaper interview where one of the activists behind the alar scam admitted it was all trumped up to see if they could do it. I cast a jaundiced eye on everything coming from environmental activists since. If there are no known risks, they claim unknown and unknowable 'long-term effects'.

I say we need to do this now, not as an immediate FIX, but as an interim solution until we build enough reactors to power the grid, desalinate clean water for drinking, and cracking hydrogen to power our cars. Electric cars are okay for running around town, but not for off-road use, going into the mountains, or long-distance cross-country, nor for large cargo or other applications, such as dump trucks. For that, we need hydrogen or else we'll stick ourselves with ethanol or other non-solutions.