This is an extraordinarily restrained apologia for fracking that operates on the assumption that the objectors are rational–NOT.
What will I have to do to stop this insanity from the Luddites?
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=24359&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD
SUpercritical Extraction compresses CO2 until it becomes a dense fluid like water. It can be used to extract gas and oil from wells like fracking, but without the water, without ‘risk’ to the water table, and concurrent with CO2 ‘sequestration’.
3 birds with one stone!!
California is riddled with fault lines, and the oil is shallow. An earthquake of significant size can create seeps of crude. After the Feb 9th, 1971 quake (Sylmar) I found crude oil oozing out of the ground in Arroyo Simi, many miles away. Other seeps were found further afield, including the Santa Barbara Channel.
Failure to extract the oil under California means earthquakes can spew it out into the precious environment.
I wish someone would drill under California fro somewhere else and suck out all the oil while the pinheads under the dome in Sacramento pat themselves on the back for cutting themselves out of the tax revenue in the name of “green”.
Pathway is correct. The real neat invention that made this revolution in energy supply possible is the steerable mud motor. What a name for a revolutionary! But it works.
And hydraulic fracturing was a technique discussed in my 1953 Petroleum Geology textbook. No, it is not new.
Another development to look for is fracking using LPG or nitrogen. Nitrogen trucks have recently been seen in the Marcellus areas, and LPG fracking is being discussed in technical meetings..
Excellent article. Using brackish water and recycling will soon be a best practice by most of the industry.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/21/us-apache-water-idUSBRE9AK08Z20131121
It’s not fracking that has revolutionized the oil & gas industry but rather directional drilling in combination with the very old practice of hydrolic fracturing that has made previously inaccessable products now economically viable.