Derec
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This guy!
Putin Calls U.S. Shale “Barbaric”
Putin Calls U.S. Shale “Barbaric”
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Bernie and Warren want to ban fracking. You know who else hates US shale?
- Thread starter Derec
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zorq
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Is this supposed to be news?
TV and credit cards
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Okay. Who had Putin?
barbos
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Besides not liking fracking that Guy does not smoke.
Elixir
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He would if you got him hot enough...
Politesse
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He didn't call the shale barbaric. He called our means of accessing it (by irrevocably destroying the surrounding environment) barbaric. I agree.
Putin is of course not the most sentimental man, and he is no doubt more motivated by pushing Russian oil than urgently trying to save Canadian caribou. But even a corrupt clock is right when convenient.
Putin is of course not the most sentimental man, and he is no doubt more motivated by pushing Russian oil than urgently trying to save Canadian caribou. But even a corrupt clock is right when convenient.
Derec
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As opposed to Russians, who just beam their oil and gas directly from underground reservoirs?
The fact is that environmental standards in US are much better than in Russia. The real reason Putin is badmouthing US fracking is that it doubles US oil production and thereby reduces the oil price from ~$100/bbl as it was before the shale revolution.
US is also very dependent on fracking for natural gas, which is a less CO2-intensive alternative to oil and coal.
What do Canadian caribou have to do with fracking in the Permian Basin or the Bakken? Are you confusing fracking with Canadian oil sands, which is a completely different type of unconventional oil, not to mention a different country?
Except that he is not. At all.
By the way, Tulsi is also anti-fracking. She even protested against the Dakota Access Pipeline. She is pro-Putin on other issues too, such as Syria. Unlike her, I think Bernie and Warren are just useful idiots.
Politesse
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Is everything a this-or-that for you? I'm not pro-Putin, nor am I obliged to endorse the destruction of my own country in order to oppose his.
Derec
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The country is not being "destroyed" because of fracking. That's a ridiculous assertion.
The point of the two graphs I posted was to show you how reliant US is on fracking for both oil and gas. While US is still a large net importer of oil, we were able to cut our net imports by about a half. And US is self-sufficient for natural gas. And the abundant natural gas is displacing the very dirty coal for electricity generation and heating oil for home heating.
Politesse
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Dude, you don't know the first thing about what life is like in gas country these days. That land will never be used for anything else.
Derec
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Citation? Especially on the "will never be used for anything else". Fracking employs horizontal drilling, so surface footprint is less than that of traditional vertical drilling, and all the fracturing happens deep underground.
starwater
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Fracking in itself is not “bad” . It’s the volume of equipment, the amount of water and the surface activity required that creates environmental issues. With adequate surface casing cemented correctly to depth fracking is safe. However there are very few inspectors and corners are cut, coupled with poor surface management, it becomes a problem. In addition the large volume of water required (20 to 30 acre feet), in the dry west, I don’t think it is realistic in the long run. Oil is a non renewable supply, it will run out eventually.
There are many excellent high paying jobs that go with it. But they go up and down with the price of oil. I know many people in the oil industry, layoffs happen frequently. The price of oil goes up, big oil hires anyone who is breathing and conscience, but will lay them off without a moments notice if the price of oil fluctuates a tiny bit. Big oil only plans 2 to 5 years in advance. Mergers, layoffs, big hiring, more layoffs make it a very volatile industry, and very hard to rely on for steady work and to raise a family.
If you are in exploration or health and safety for example, those jobs are more steady.
There are many excellent high paying jobs that go with it. But they go up and down with the price of oil. I know many people in the oil industry, layoffs happen frequently. The price of oil goes up, big oil hires anyone who is breathing and conscience, but will lay them off without a moments notice if the price of oil fluctuates a tiny bit. Big oil only plans 2 to 5 years in advance. Mergers, layoffs, big hiring, more layoffs make it a very volatile industry, and very hard to rely on for steady work and to raise a family.
If you are in exploration or health and safety for example, those jobs are more steady.
Don2 (Don1 Revised)
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You know who loves threads like this? Putin.
Toni
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What you mean is that you avoid going outside and have never, ever been to any community or area where fracking or, also environmentally catastrophic and inexcusable sand mining occurs and the silica dust does not actually coat your lungs and you don't give a fuck about anything that doesn't affect you personally.
Toni
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I don't actually live in an area where fracking happens, but I do live in an area where sand mining, necessary for fracking occurs.
I'm going to go with: fracking is bad and so are the processes that support it.
It may be a necessary evil but we are foolish and ignorant if we ignore the fact that it is indeed evil and that we need to replace fossil fuels with safer, cleaner energy sources.
Elixir
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Politesse
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I've lived in a lot of places where this shit is going on, and given that my family was in the business, grew up with more knowledge about drilling than you likely possess now. As others have pointed out above, fracking does not occur in a vacuum, but as an integral point a large, destructive industry with many tentacles. But even just fracking itself is transparently destructive, and increases the likelihood of catastrophic events, from water and air pollution, severe waste control issues, the collapse of competing industries, to blowouts, to silicosis, to oil spills, to fricking fracking earthquakes. I'm sure you've heard all this before and dismissed it, so I won't belabor the point, but I will oppose the opening of new areas to oil and gas exploration whenever the question re-occurs. And no, Russians are not exactly setting the high bar on this issue either. Though I would argue that we are more to blame for failing to encourage alternative energy strategies, simply because we have entrepreneurial power in a way that Russia does not.
Derec
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But you get all that with conventional drilling, including water use, which is used in conventional extraction to maintain reservoir pressure.
True. Therefore, a better approach would be to call for enforcement of environmental regulations, NOT to call for a ban on fracking, as this technology is very much needed.
May I just interject that this is a really weird unit of volume. US should have switched to metric in the 70s, when they tried to do it.
It most certainly will. And in not too distant future. Good news is that in not too distant future we will need far less oil due to technological advances. But it will take a few decades until say electric cars are majority of cars on the road, and therefore we will keep using oil. It's just a fact of transitioning a huge sector of the economy with hundreds of millions of individual units: cars, trucks, delivery vans, etc. And that's just ground transportation. Airplanes are even more complicated transition, as is transitioning away from gas for electricity generation and as industrial feedstock.
True. But that's still better than no jobs, higher oil prices and siphoning US energy spending overseas instead of supporting local economy and tax revenues. Yes, we need a higher overall carbon price for the climate, but a carbon tax (where revenues go to the federal governments, preferably with rebates like Canada is doing) is better than driving the price upward by destroying most of the domestic oil/gas industry and sending the extra cash overseas to Putin, MbS and the bus driver.
Derec
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You mean to say "if banning fracking makes people suffer...". Billionaires like Tom Steyer don't care if gas is $2.50 or $5/gal pr even $10/gal. Working class people do. Billionaires also don't need jobs in the oil/gas patches or to build/maintain pipelines. Working class people do. So are Warren and Bernie really for working class people outside maybe adjunct English professors at CUNY who can commute to work by subway?
Derec
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I do spend quite a bit of time outside, but you are right, I have not been to areas where oil, gas, coal or metals are extracted.
Have you been? Anyway, I do not see why it matter whether I personally visited or worked at extraction sites.
We still need oil and gas and we have to get it from somewhere. As long as environmental regulations are followed, the areas can be reclaimed after the extraction is done. Yes, even for Canadian oil sands.
Oil Sands: Land Use and Reclamation
I would rather support responsible oil sands in Canada than the environmental disaster that is ultraheavy extraction in the workers' paradise that is Bolivarian Venezuela. And if most oil and gas extraction in US is banned, as Warren and Bernie demand, we will need to cover the balance with more imports, including from Venezuela or Saudi Arabia.