"Fracking" Oil & Gas Companies....

A new bill has been submitted to the California Legislature authorizing the Dept of Conservation (regulators) to permit "Fracking" for extraction of natural gas in California. Bill no. AB 591. The co-author is Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento.

I'm sure most of you have heard of the practice of injecting water under very high pressure into underground geological (principally shale) formations to break up the rock and free natural gas for extraction. The negative side affects on pollution in the form of mud and tainted water are massive as seen in eastern states where "fracking" is common. Natural gas occurs in rock/shale formations all over the southwest.

Aside from the impacts of the pollution, use of fresh water for this purpose would create yet another demand on already over-committed water supplies. This seems inappropriate in view of the recent history of water problems in this state. Of course, Off shore wells, if any, would use salt water but still would cause pollution.

This bill bears watching, carefully.... :-|

I may be wrong (which wouldn't be suprising), but I don't get the same interpretation you do from reading this bill. I think fracking is already used in California, and this bill would provide some additional regulation to help reduce the possibility of pollution.

From the bill's findings

(d) The Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources in the
Department of Conservation, which has the obligation to protect
public health and the resources of the state, including groundwater
resources, has the authority to regulate all oil and gas drilling in
the state, but has not been regulating hydraulic fracturing,
apparently due to the lack of the adoption of specific regulations.

Thanks for the heads up.... Actually, permitting/licensing(?) was what I meant but see how I skewed the point. My bad. :confused:

The balance of the post are observations about the side affects and practice of "Fracking". While "Fracking" is already being used here and has been for a while, the side affects haven't been reported as heavily as they have in eastern states. :-|

I hope you're right about additional regulation. My reason for watching this bill is that it might provide and opportunity to try to have a fee/fund of some sort attached to cover potential costs of clean-up/mitigation from the side affects.... :-| Unfortunately, the Dept of Conservation hasn't had much success in meeting it's obligation to regulate pollution of groundwater resources and I'm not holding much hope for new regulations. It'll be interesting watching the progress of this bill. :nod:

An article in the monday SF Chronicle brought more info about this practice to the headlines once more. According to the article, there is almost no information/tracking of where wells being fracked are located or what, if any affect, this practice is having on pollution of ground water even tho the practice has been angoing for many years (albeit at a relatively small number of wells).

A new proposed state bill would require drillers to report available information about each well. When considered with Dickinson's bill, there's no doubt that's a positive.

All of this seems to be on the path of adequate regulation of fracking practices but doesn't address the fact that, as the article points out, fracking of wells is expected to expand rapidly over the next decade. Thereby, placing an additional demand on scarce and already over-committed water supplies. How does this practice contribute to conservation of water :question: Is this the highest use of a very limited resource :question:

Just to give us a better understanding of the impacts of fracking and tar sands oil extraction (steam flooding), the Sac News & Review carried an article in it that highlights the related issue of water distribution and usage. :-|

According to the article, SoCal gets 4% of NorCal waters from overall distribution/sales of water provided from the Delta. Somewhere between 85% and 90% of water taken from the Delta goes to the southern San joaquin Valley. in the southern SJV, "....83% of the water from the West Kern Water District is used for steam flooding - enough water to supply 200,000 households each year." Also, it takes "....8 barrels of water to produce 1 barrel of oil.":-|

Of course, West Kern is one of 13 water districts supplied by the Kern County Water Agency (majority owner Paramount Farms). Since the Fed/State water projects discounted their price per ACF to $8.00 and a barrel of oil is at a very high price level, that provides a great incentive to use more Delta water for non-agricultural purposes, partially explains why Kern County Water agency bought so many ACF and why pumping from the Delta was carried out at an all-time high level this year. What do you bet that none of the water used for oil extraction came from gray water source.... :?:

Interesting factoid: "Since the process began in the '60s, steam flooding has used nearly 3 trillion gallons of water to produce oil-roughly the equivalent of a 1 foot-deep lake the size of Lake Ontario."