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Have you seen a fracking pad? How about a wastewater pond? And semi traffic coming in and out. It all adds up to something that isn't good stewardship of our state parks.
Here are some aerial photos of fracking operations in West Virginia.
Columbus Underground Messageboard » General Columbus Discussion
Natural Gas Drilling / Fracking in Ohio
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gramarye
In Exile
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Those are interesting photos, but frankly, nothing there looks so environmentally ruinous as to merit sealing off millions of acres of land against gas exploration. Leasing the mineral rights is better than selling off the parks in their entirety, and also better than leaving all that energy in the ground. If the gas can be gotten by horizontal drilling from private land and leave the campers in peace, so much the better, but if not, the needs of tens of millions of consumers have to take priority over the needs of tens of thousands of campers.
Posted 1 year ago # -
joev
Merion Village
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But it's not an either/or situation.
Look at the maps of Marcellus and Utica shale: is there any necessity to get that gas under state parks when there is 1000-times more land under private ownership to be fracked? Those millions of consumers aren't being starved of needed energy. Furthermore, wouldn't be a wiser plan for the state to sit on those reserves until both less-invasive/cleaner technology were in place to retrieve it AND a higher price could be attained for that it?
As far as I know, you're attacking a straw man when you say selling mineral rights is better than selling off state parks completely - there isn't a proposal to do that at all.
As to whether fracking is sufficiently ruinous to prevent it from occurring on publicly owned state park land, your opinion is only one of 11.5 million that matter.
Posted 1 year ago # -
rus
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joev
Merion Village
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rus said:
Never happen. Short of star trek style transporter technology there will be no method acceptable to some.You're saying technology and efficiency don't improve over time?
And if you discount that, are you saying that you think natural gas prices will decrease over a long time period? You know they aren't making any more of it that what we've got...
Posted 1 year ago # -
gramarye
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joev said:
But it's not an either/or situation.Look at the maps of Marcellus and Utica shale: is there any necessity to get that gas under state parks when there is 1000-times more land under private ownership to be fracked? Those millions of consumers aren't being starved of needed energy. Furthermore, wouldn't be a wiser plan for the state to sit on those reserves until both less-invasive/cleaner technology were in place to retrieve it AND a higher price could be attained for that it?
It may be, but I don't have the information to know that one way or another. Also, the same could be said for any private owner as much as the state. I would suggest that it is probably best to be drilling wherever it's easiest to access right now, and leave wherever the more complicated sites to bore through are for when the technology has developed further.
As far as I know, you're attacking a straw man when you say selling mineral rights is better than selling off state parks completely - there isn't a proposal to do that at all.
There are always proposals out there to sell of federal and state lands. Those proposals would probably get a boost if exploration were made off-limits on government land but fair game on private land.
As to whether fracking is sufficiently ruinous to prevent it from occurring on publicly owned state park land, your opinion is only one of 11.5 million that matter.
Well, sure. That goes for any opinion of any poster on these message boards, including you and me.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Buster Bluth
Columbus, OH
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joev said:
Have you seen a fracking pad? How about a wastewater pond? And semi traffic coming in and out. It all adds up to something that isn't good stewardship of our state parks.Here are some aerial photos of fracking operations in West Virginia.
None of those pictures showed me something that even comes close to "permanent damage." This isn't strip mining, not at all. Those trees grow back.
joev said:
You're saying technology and efficiency don't improve over time?And if you discount that, are you saying that you think natural gas prices will decrease over a long time period? You know they aren't making any more of it that what we've got...
Technology, thanks to the joys of capitalism, does improve over time. In fact it was technological advances that made this natural gas possible to extract.
They aren't making any more, but they are discovering more and improving the technology to reach more. Natural gas will be cheap for a long time since it is not an international commodity so to speak.
joev said:
Furthermore, wouldn't be a wiser plan for the state to sit on those reserves until both less-invasive/cleaner technology were in place to retrieve it AND a higher price could be attained for that it?This is absolute lunacy.
This is on par with environmentalists "protecting" ANWR, claiming it's for "future generations" while we are arguably that generation.
"Oh yeah, we'll just hold off until the technology is better. I promise, we'll come back to it in the near future."
Posted 1 year ago # -
Buster Bluth
Columbus, OH
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Even the front page of that website was such a joke:
We are not anti drilling; we are pro clean energy! We believe that the ability to have renewable, environmentally friendly, non fossil fueled energy is available and should be implemented immediately.
Ummm, yeah. Whatever. If only it were that simple. Like, there's a horde of evil men (rich, overweight, and white Republicans to be sure...) who simply hate the idea of clean energy. Booo windmills! Boo solar power! Boo anything but fossil fuels.
OR, fracking will at the very least cure our state's budgetary woes, fill our coffers, regenerate the entire economy, and lift millions out of poverty all over time.
NAhhhhhhhh screw that! It's ugly! We have to save our poverty-stricken, sparsely-populated, SE Ohio from temporary damage! What's the point of boosting Ohio's economy if I can't fly a plane over every state park and not see wells?!
Posted 1 year ago # -
pedex
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They aren't making any more, but they are discovering more and improving the technology to reach more. Natural gas will be cheap for a long time since it is not an international commodity so to speak.
the economics and trends indicate otherwise, already posted in this thread too
in fact many of these fracking projects are already being abandoned or facing bankruptcy
Posted 1 year ago # -
gramarye
In Exile
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pedex said:
They aren't making any more, but they are discovering more and improving the technology to reach more. Natural gas will be cheap for a long time since it is not an international commodity so to speak.
the economics and trends indicate otherwise, already posted in this thread too
in fact many of these fracking projects are already being abandoned or facing bankruptcy
It doesn't matter if "many" projects are facing bankruptcy; what matters is the total economic activity in the system, not the success of every single venture. Oil and gas exploration has always been a very high-risk, chancy business. There will be losers. There will just also be a lot more winners, including the entire consumer population.
Posted 1 year ago # -
pedex
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gramarye said:
It doesn't matter if "many" projects are facing bankruptcy; what matters is the total economic activity in the system, not the success of every single venture. Oil and gas exploration has always been a very high-risk, chancy business. There will be losers. There will just also be a lot more winners, including the entire consumer population.Well if its costs on average $7 to $9 per mcf and natural gas is paying only $2-$3 guess what happens? and given how these operations require significant planning, lead time, and financing it makes for a picture far different than what is being portrayed around here doesn't it?
Then there's the other trends involved which are easily going to pretty much destroy this business just like it has the other variations of it which have already occurred.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Buster Bluth
Columbus, OH
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Buster Bluth
Columbus, OH
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pedex said:
They aren't making any more, but they are discovering more and improving the technology to reach more. Natural gas will be cheap for a long time since it is not an international commodity so to speak.
the economics and trends indicate otherwise, already posted in this thread too
in fact many of these fracking projects are already being abandoned or facing bankruptcy
I think trends may be moot solely because fracking is a game-changer.
And then there are those who feel that shale gas is a drop in the bucket and that we have centuries of supply in the oceans...
Posted 1 year ago # -
pedex
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Buster Bluth said:
Such as?leverage both physical and economic
the overall energy resource base left in the US
the credit cycle with respect to the US economy
the deflation of the housing bubble and debt cycle
globalization and how its reversal is playing out
the nature and set up of the US economy both physically and politically
the reality and nature of what money really is and represents
scale of the resource vs the others
All these things are intertwined but fundamentally it comes down to leverage or the lack thereof afforded by both fracking and the resource(s) in question.........this is already playing out in the petroleum refining industry although few pay attention to it but it is a perfect illustration of how leverage works in reverse. These processes and our economy or any economy for that matter operate on leverage, the actual physical leverage of energy and once it drops below a certain level businesses start getting abandoned whether they are necessary or not. Regardless of the old adage that "price" will alway make new energy viable even when there is evidence to the contrary. Same deal with the mantra that the "market" will provide, it won't, it requires leverage to be viable or there is no profit in it. The leverage envelope or window if you prefer is flexible up to a point but most people or businesses economically tend to cease to function much under about 4:1. High volume industries can push it far further down and operate purely on scale but we have already hit those limits with refining. Fracking simply doesn't work, it simply isn't capable of sustained leverage high enough for any length of time. The case studies and histories available already show this, in a few years or less this ugly reality will force the issue. Until then it will be just another bubble or fad until well after it is already in the collapse phase which ironically has already begun just when the hype is really getting strong.
The pattern of production and demand destruction resulting in stranded resources isn't new, we have seen this before. Right now a perfect example is the US petroleum refining industry. For many it may be counterintuitive that at wholesale gas prices around $3 per gallon that refining would be suffering but it is and in a huge way. It got hit by the lack of demand, lack of leverage, credit cycle collapsing in its face, and having to use feedstock with a continuously declining amount of leverage which also happens to be our primary source of energy. Energy and money have a very tight relationship for good reason even if people rarely if ever even notice it much less are taught it at all. This kind of economic situation doesn't fall apart from the top down, it falls apart from the bottom up or from the periphery inward. Natural gas will inevitably follow a similar path as the petroleum based liquid fuel refining is already. This trend also gets more severe as the leverage of our energy sources decreases. When it goes from like 100:1 down into the 20:1 range it's noticeable but not serious. The change when it goes from 20:1 to around 5 or 6:1 though is damn dramatic economically. Our aggregate energy leverage is well into the "oh shit" zone and has been for a few years already and it is showing in our economy.
Posted 1 year ago # -
gramarye
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Wow, that was ... strange.
I'm not sure if you're advocating solar power, or just not investing in fracking companies, or selling off everything we all own and moving into a shack in the mountains full of gold bullion, canned goods, and guns & ammunition.
Posted 1 year ago # -
pedex
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gramarye said:
Wow, that was ... strange.I'm not sure if you're advocating solar power, or just not investing in fracking companies, or selling off everything we all own and moving into a shack in the mountains full of gold bullion, canned goods, and guns & ammunition.
do you make decisions about your future blindly or try to be as informed as possible?
do you avoid doing any digging into multiple industries, trends, and how things work?
if the answer is yes then you are pretty typical, not everyone is like that
Ever looked at coal bed methane? ever looked at the existing case histories involving fracking? take some physics classes in college? economics? Some of this info has already been linked and provided for you in this thread and like most you blew it off completely, how strange to use your term.
Ever run a business that faced extinction due to decreasing leverage? Would you even know what it was if it happened? Some people in your line of work are already experiencing it, talk to some domestic attorneys, see what is going on in their businesses?
Let me make it even simpler, we are experiencing demand destruction with gas prices at just $4 a gallon combined with the above trends, imagine what $10-$12 per mcf retail of natural gas looks like. What do you think that will do?
The Dispatch just did a huge two page spread on fracking, they mentioned stats from one friggin well with no comparison, no ROI, no actual meaningful point of reference to judge what was going on. It was mostly fluff and BS. The US petroleum industry in its entirety has pretty readily available stats as does our economy. A quick glance at project starts, rig counts, and actual costs involved reveals what? Does the hype match the reality of what is going on? How about the actual physics involved? Have we done this before in similar fashion? What has been the trend with respect to what is actually recoverable, has it been growing or experiencing massive downgrades as more info is actually gathered? It takes very little digging to find this stuff out.
None of this is a recommendation to do anything, simply putting out some actual facts and trends as to what is going on and posing some simple questions that if answered reveal some perspective needed to understand the big picture. Do you gamble or make policy blindly in an adhoc reactionary way too late fashion? Our govt does. Businesses do too.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Buster Bluth
Columbus, OH
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Sooooo, we should pull the wells out pronto and pretend the cheap oil wasn't in the ground? Does your conclusion require an increase in price? Prices have indeed fallen ~33% just this year--not saying that's sustainable or anything. Don't these companies have armies of economists and whatnot looking at the same data (and then some) you have? You make it seem like a pseudo-conspiracy to make a quick buck and scram.
Posted 1 year ago # -
TomOver
lovecause.org
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Resident Opposes Gas Industry Secrecy, Not Necessarily Fracking Itself
Eric Boardman came to Columbus from Mansfield on April 18 to call for better fracking regulations. Acknowledging our country's need for energy, he said he is not necessarily against fracking. But he said the public can’t make an informed decision about the safety of fracking because of the industry’s lack of disclosure. He supports the idea of using non-toxic tracer dyes to track chemicals gas companies might be putting into the water.
“If they did that, then, if you draw your water and it’s blue or green or whatever dye color is assigned to that particular company, then you know for a fact that your water has been compromised, and you know who to hold responsible. It seems to me such a simple thing to do. It works both ways; if the companies are accused of polluting the water and they’re not doing that, and have a tracer or some other way to follow their activities, then they can say, ‘look, it’s not us; we’re not responsible because there’s no dye; there’s no activity to suggest we did this.’ To me, it just seems like a common sense solution.”
Boardman said Governor John Kasich used inaccurate numbers about fracking jobs, during his state press tour.
“He was touting 200,000 jobs, and within a month or two, a professor from the Economics Department of Ohio State released a paper and said it’s more like 20,000 jobs. If my math is correct, that’s a 900 percent discrepancy between the gas industry’s release and the economics professor’s release. Now I see it’s revised to around 60,000 jobs, and many of those jobs appear to be going to out-of-state trained workers. This is another one of the inaccuracies, if you will. I hate to call people liars.”
Boardman said Chesapeake Energy Corp is having trouble selling natural gas for a profit.
“They’re well over $10 billion in debt and the only assets they have are the leases themselves. So anybody who can keep them afloat---the Chinese, the French, Black Water which is a private investment firm (will be sold those leases). This gas which has been touted as American energy independence is going to be going to the Chinese, or, quite simply, to whomever has the most money.”
On March 16, The Plain Dealer quoted Chesapeake Energy Corp CEO Aubrey McClendon as saying he wants the company to be owned by investors who live in a part of the world that believes gas prices will never go below $10 (for a thousand cubic feet.)
Boardman handed me a photocopy of the article.
“How much more information do you need when the CEO of the company says he wants to be owned by foreign investors and he wants the natural gas which is now $2 to be $10? That’s not cheap gas and it’s not even going to be our gas. We’re simply not being told the truth. Unless we stand up and expose this, we only have ourselves to blame.”
Boardman said protesting and visiting legislators is new to him. He said this is the first time he saw the inside of the State House.
“I never even complained or called a township trustee about a barking dog or anything like that. But in the last 3 or 4 months I’ve learned a tremendous amount about how local government and state government works. I just think, at the end of the day, one of the big problems is the actual lobbyists. I just don’t believe that when our founding fathers put our constitution together and built this country, they intended for lobbyists to be running our state and federal government.”
Boardman said he is concerned about barriers imposed several years ago that make it harder for work-a-day people to have a say about what happens in our communities.
“In 2004, in Mansfield, Ohio and other local communities, we had our own zoning laws. We had the ability to monitor what we felt was best for our community. This is just a personal opinion, but I believe the gas companies knew the drilling techniques were coming and this gas was going to be available, so they lobbied the state to take away local rights. That’s exactly what happened. In 2004, they crafted a bill under Republican guidance to take away all local control. I don’t know much about government, but if I don’t have a local say, to me that’s taxation without representation.”
He said he made the trip to Columbus to make sure legislators publicly defend their votes, instead of voting secretly.
“I think that’s the first step to starting to turn the tide and making our state work for us instead of the lobbyists and the business interests. Those interests don’t really bring a whole lot to the table for our well-being and our safety.”
Posted 1 year ago # -
News
Columbus Underground
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Chesapeake CEO McClendon to Lose Chairman Post
By Joe Carroll - May 1, 2012 4:21 PM ET
Chesapeake Energy Corp. (CHK) will name an independent chairman to replace Aubrey McClendon and halt an incentive program that allowed the chief executive officer to amass personal stakes in thousands of company-operated wells.
READ MORE: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-01/chesapeake-energy-to-strip-mcclendon-of-chairman-role.html
Posted 1 year ago #
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