Speaker 1: Brought to you by the two thousand twelve Toyota Camry.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and uh, this is stuff
Speaker 1: you should don't very serious edition, So don't even laugh
Speaker 1: once we're the whole episode. We're just a couple of
Speaker 1: fracking podcasters. But we can't do that the whole time.
Speaker 1: I wasn't going to do it at all. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I would I find a distasteful to something. For the effort. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even the effort. I can barely get that out calling
Speaker 1: it the F word. Oh yeah, yeah, right, you just
Speaker 1: want to say it. Yeah, don't say fudging right, I
Speaker 1: hate those people, Yeah, fudging Midwesterners. Yeah, just don't even
Speaker 1: say anything at all. Yeah, just yeah, or say entirely unrelated.
Speaker 1: But all it does is make people think of the
Speaker 1: real left word, which is like loses the spirit of
Speaker 1: your intent, which is did not curse. Oh yeah, that's
Speaker 1: definitely a way to put it. That's one problem with it. All. Right,
Speaker 1: what's your intro? What's your frecking intro? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: we did that episode on peak oil. And it was
Speaker 1: really funny that we recorded it when we did, because
Speaker 1: like two days after we're talking about the US running
Speaker 1: out of oil, a report was released that basically said
Speaker 1: the United States is predicted to be energy independent by
Speaker 1: UM and we actually are. We probably are never going
Speaker 1: to achieve true energy independence. That's just I mean, a
Speaker 1: hundred percent of our supplies of oil and fossil fuels
Speaker 1: and all that stuff created here. It's just it's never
Speaker 1: gonna happen. But we're gonna closer and closer and closer.
Speaker 1: And in fact, in two thousand ten, John Kerry, famous senator,
Speaker 1: possibly a future Secretary of State. Oh yeah, he's being
Speaker 1: bandied about UM, he said that the United States is
Speaker 1: the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. And definitely natural gas
Speaker 1: is one of the reasons one of the ways that
Speaker 1: US has suddenly experienced this huge boom in oil production. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oil production, gas production, fuel production, clean clean burning natural gas. Uh,
Speaker 1: but we will learn that doesn't necessarily make it clean
Speaker 1: over its life cycle. It's a big difference. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I say it's as dirty as coal over its life cycle,
Speaker 1: especially people who love coal. Yeah, that is one problem
Speaker 1: I had with this fracking article is, and not just
Speaker 1: the article that the whole topic is. Everybody has a
Speaker 1: slant depending on who they're working for. Like if you're
Speaker 1: an environmentalist, you're gonna have your slant. If you're working
Speaker 1: with the big oil companies, you're gonna have your slant.
Speaker 1: And they all say, like, these are the facts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really annoying. Well, one of the reasons why everybody
Speaker 1: is able to get away with saying these are the
Speaker 1: facts is because this stuff is so new and so
Speaker 1: um unstudied. I guess at this point, yes, as far
Speaker 1: as published, pure of viewed studies are concerned, and as
Speaker 1: far as massive amounts of fracking, like it's been around
Speaker 1: for a while. But yeah, not like it's going on today,
Speaker 1: right exactly. Um, apparently there's in some form or fashion,
Speaker 1: it's been around since the nineteenth century. This the concepts
Speaker 1: of fracking. But the fracking like you just described massive
Speaker 1: fracking operations carried out by huge energy concerns, that's a
Speaker 1: couple of decades old. Yeah, I think Haliburton started it
Speaker 1: in Yeah, they invented it, did they really? Dick Cheney?
Speaker 1: I don't think Dick Cheney invented it. He's like, give
Speaker 1: me that pipem gone to try something new. Uh uh yeah,
Speaker 1: so they they developed the process at least, but it's
Speaker 1: really started to take off in the last few years
Speaker 1: and in the in the last decade or two is
Speaker 1: when you started to see real concerns about what's going
Speaker 1: on here. Wait a minute, what are you guys doing?
Speaker 1: And that's where this idea that oh, it's perfectly safe,
Speaker 1: Oh it's gonna cause a catastrophe has come about and
Speaker 1: that's why we should probably say, like we this isn't
Speaker 1: gonna settle the issue, but um, you should keep your eyes.
Speaker 1: I hope this raises people's awareness of this. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: I just on that note, I saw a study today
Speaker 1: that Americans have never heard of fracking and about said
Speaker 1: they've heard of it, but don't know what it is.
Speaker 1: So that's that's a lot. Well, let's let's teach a
Speaker 1: few people fracking a K hydraulic fracturing or if you're
Speaker 1: a total square, hydro fracking. You know, like that's the
Speaker 1: kid who's who thinks he's cool, but it's really kind
Speaker 1: of out of the loop, so he's calling it hydro fracking. Still,
Speaker 1: we really just call it fracking. It's a UM. It's
Speaker 1: a technique that's used to get to incredibly deep deposits
Speaker 1: of fossil fuels, not always natural gas. But most of
Speaker 1: our discussion will be on that, right. And I shouldn't
Speaker 1: even say fossil fuels, because you can use fracking to
Speaker 1: get to incredibly deep deposits of water, sure if you
Speaker 1: wanted to UM. But the one thing in common that UM,
Speaker 1: all of this, all of these techniques have UM is
Speaker 1: that you go down in a vertical line and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you just cut to the right
Speaker 1: or cut to the left anywhere between six thousand and
Speaker 1: thirteen feet down to get after shale, to get after it.
Speaker 1: And shale UM is this type of porous rock. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we did right a long time ago, years ago, maybe
Speaker 1: like two oil shale UM. And it's a type of rock.
Speaker 1: It may contain oil and may contain gas, it can
Speaker 1: contain water, but the stuff is trapped in it because
Speaker 1: of the trim this pressure at these debts. And with
Speaker 1: a fracking operation, you go down there, break it up,
Speaker 1: get it out, and it comes back up. Yep. And
Speaker 1: here in the US, UM we have a lot of
Speaker 1: the shale specifically the Marcella Shale is one of the
Speaker 1: main fracking grounds in the in the country. And what
Speaker 1: does it cover Pennsylvania, Ohio, parts of New York, Virginia, Maryland,
Speaker 1: or West Virginia, Maryland. Yeah, it's huge. So that's where
Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff is taking place right now.
Speaker 1: And many more states and Europe are hot on the
Speaker 1: the scene here to get into fracking. And they think that, Um,
Speaker 1: there's about fifty two trillion cubic feet of natural gas
Speaker 1: in the United States and about five hundred trillion of
Speaker 1: that is in the Marcelli's region on so it's a
Speaker 1: big deal. Yeah. New York just they were letting it
Speaker 1: through and then um the governor kai boshed it and
Speaker 1: for now and said, wait, maybe we should study this
Speaker 1: some more. Yeah, because a lot of municipalities were taking
Speaker 1: it on their own outlaw fracking in one form or fashion.
Speaker 1: And this has caused like a huge problem because there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people out there who are saying, well,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I own land, I'm kind of happy
Speaker 1: with this idea, and I want to get incredibly rich overnight.
Speaker 1: Like Jed Clampett, did you know where's my where's my
Speaker 1: bubbling crude. Well, yeah, you gotta. You do have two sides.
Speaker 1: You have some farmers that are like, this is contaminating
Speaker 1: our land, and you have some farmers saying, I haven't
Speaker 1: been able to farm and make money a year, so
Speaker 1: I would love to sell my land off or least
Speaker 1: my land and um make some serious money. So it's
Speaker 1: not like every farmers like, no, I don't want this.
Speaker 1: A lot of them do. No, it's very much divided.
Speaker 1: And this out in like town halls around New York
Speaker 1: and around the country wherever fracking is is possible, I guess, um,
Speaker 1: and it is definitely dividing communities. All right, So let's
Speaker 1: let's go a little more in depth about the process
Speaker 1: of fracking in depth. Yeah, it's really pretty simple. Um.
Speaker 1: It starts off like a conventional Well, so you drill deep. Um,
Speaker 1: I think you said between six and thirteen. They said
Speaker 1: the average is about seventy feet down and I think
Speaker 1: chess peak energy as wells and so, um, Well, they
Speaker 1: go to wherever the deposits are. So it just sort
Speaker 1: of depends, Um, how do they find that? Out of wonder? Um,
Speaker 1: what's a good site? They they detect radioactivity I believe
Speaker 1: because this stuff is slightly radioactive. We'll get to that too,
Speaker 1: but I think that's one of the techniques they use
Speaker 1: as they really analyze the radioactivity and say, oh, there's
Speaker 1: a bunch right here. Interesting. Okay, So you got your
Speaker 1: regular well and like you said, what's called the kickoff point.
Speaker 1: It's gonna take a left or right and become a
Speaker 1: horizontal um line and that can span anywhere from a
Speaker 1: thousand and six thousand feet. Then they stick something called
Speaker 1: a well board. It's just basically a steel uh casing
Speaker 1: like a big steel pipe, and they stick that down
Speaker 1: in there, and then they shoot a bunch of cement
Speaker 1: down and it comes out the bottom and goes back
Speaker 1: and fills it up on the outside further in casing it,
Speaker 1: and they cleared out of the middle of the well board.
Speaker 1: Then they clear that out, so you've got a you know,
Speaker 1: a pipeline, I guess. And then the actual fracking uh
Speaker 1: part takes place. Right So I'm setting you up for
Speaker 1: that part. Oh you were sure, you'd think after all
Speaker 1: these years I would have noticed that, um. Well, So
Speaker 1: that you've got the well board completely cemented and in place,
Speaker 1: and it's going down about a mile off from the
Speaker 1: kickoff point, and it's right there in the in the
Speaker 1: middle of this shale deposit. And they send down a
Speaker 1: a little tool. It's like, um, a little cable scrambler,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm talking about. It looks kind of
Speaker 1: like that, yeah, Um. And it it's an explosive device.
Speaker 1: And it blows a hole into a little holes, a
Speaker 1: bunch of little holes in through the well board, through
Speaker 1: the sum and into the surrounding rock, just a few
Speaker 1: inches each each one, will you know, be two or
Speaker 1: three inches of a little mini shaft. I guess right.
Speaker 1: So you've got you've got the horizontal well boar and
Speaker 1: the cracks are then vertical, vertical perpendicular to it, right,
Speaker 1: and then they plug that up and then move on
Speaker 1: and do it again all the way down the line
Speaker 1: of this the horizontal kickoff point, in the horizonal kickoff point,
Speaker 1: and they blow them up and blow them up and
Speaker 1: blow them up. You've got all these perforations into the rock.
Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden, now you are prepared
Speaker 1: to frack. Yeah, And I was setting you up at
Speaker 1: this point. They pump um water. Well, they pump a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff. It's mostly water though it's it's mostly
Speaker 1: water and sand and then uh what they call other
Speaker 1: chemicals and um, although sometimes diesel fuels are part of this.
Speaker 1: Apparently they stopped doing that in two thousand three. That's
Speaker 1: not true. Well, they were supposed to stop it. The
Speaker 1: e PA came up the something that sounds like it
Speaker 1: has a lot of teeth. It's called a Memorandum of Agreement,
Speaker 1: and they asked the oil companies to sign it and
Speaker 1: say that they won't use diesel as part of their
Speaker 1: fracking fluid any longer. I didn't realize that people were
Speaker 1: still doing Yeah. A recent congressional investigation found that thirty
Speaker 1: two million gallons of diesel fuel has been injected UM
Speaker 1: in nineteen different states between two thousand five and two
Speaker 1: thousand nine. So it's still going on. Well, that flies
Speaker 1: in the face of the memorandum of understanding. The memorandum understanding. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they didn't have teeth that it. Yeah. Um, but you
Speaker 1: can get a permit to do it. That's messed up.
Speaker 1: Apparently you can get a permit, but there is no
Speaker 1: office to process the permit at the e p A.
Speaker 1: So it's an effective ban. But they're still doing it. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you you've got you've got your fracking ready, you
Speaker 1: pump your you start actually the process of fracking. What
Speaker 1: you've just done. Everything we talked about up to the
Speaker 1: water is preparing for fracking. Once you start pumping this
Speaker 1: water down at an incredibly um pressurized state like nine
Speaker 1: thousand p s I. By contrast, you know air compressor
Speaker 1: for your air tools and your garage that's like s
Speaker 1: i H. Nine thousand p s I is just an
Speaker 1: incredibly pressurized state. Um. The water rushes down and when
Speaker 1: it hits those perforated areas, it cracks the shale even further. Uh.
Speaker 1: And eventually the it also the particulate matter sand or
Speaker 1: whatever else that they added, goes into those cracks and
Speaker 1: then keeps it open, keeps the cracks open after the
Speaker 1: water they are but it's enough, because what you're talking
Speaker 1: about is like you're getting gas out of rock rather
Speaker 1: than yeah, just a little bit UM. And then once
Speaker 1: the once you stop pumping the water and the pressure
Speaker 1: pushes it back up and eventually the water's done. The
Speaker 1: water that you set back down there comes back up,
Speaker 1: and then it's followed by U or whatever else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that water is waste water that is UM and
Speaker 1: we will get into. This is one of the controversies.
Speaker 1: How that wastewater is handled is um kind of one
Speaker 1: of the things at the center point of the controversy.
Speaker 1: So that's that's fracking. Um. It's it's it's complex engineering wise,
Speaker 1: but it's actually kind of simple as a concept. And
Speaker 1: then the whole thing lasts from preparation. I guess the
Speaker 1: first drilling to the end of fracking about four months.
Speaker 1: But then this well that's just been developed can produce
Speaker 1: natural gas for decades, possibly years or decades. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: saw up to like forty years even sometimes. Okay, So
Speaker 1: that's that's fracking, and that's where the story ends. That's
Speaker 1: where the story ends. Um. So we're gonna present both
Speaker 1: sides of the argument, like we try to do, sometimes
Speaker 1: more successfully than others at other times. Yeah, because if
Speaker 1: you're an environmentalist, you probably just noticed eight things that
Speaker 1: we said that are driving you crazy right now, because
Speaker 1: it's like, well, what about this? What about that? We're
Speaker 1: going to address that. Well, let's let's take the pro
Speaker 1: fracking side, um first of all, Um, which right now
Speaker 1: you know includes President Obama. You know, it's not like
Speaker 1: we're not dividing this politically as best we can, like
Speaker 1: he's in favor of it right now. And we also
Speaker 1: need to point out that we had a listener mail
Speaker 1: that point out that there was a there's an ep
Speaker 1: A study that was commissioned in two thousand eleven that's
Speaker 1: really the most comprehensive study ever and it will be done,
Speaker 1: and I think it by the time this comes out,
Speaker 1: some preliminary notes should be should be in, so we'll
Speaker 1: learn a lot more soon and maybe the Obama administration
Speaker 1: will come out against it after that. But as of now,
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of hard science, which is problematic.
Speaker 1: It is problematic. So on the pro side, you're gonna say,
Speaker 1: you know what, we can these horizontal wells are really
Speaker 1: sort of efficient, and that you're not gonna have above
Speaker 1: ground hundreds and hundreds of wells. This one well can
Speaker 1: go horse only for six thousand feet and do most
Speaker 1: of the work out of sight. Yeah. Of course, counter
Speaker 1: that with their like tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of these wells fracking wells, and there's still a lot
Speaker 1: going on above ground. There is because the whole operation.
Speaker 1: While once they finished drilling, they removed the drill rig.
Speaker 1: But now you have pump trucks coming in. It takes
Speaker 1: about two hundred trucks to deliver a million gallons of water. Yeah. Man,
Speaker 1: I saw this one mini documentary on this small town
Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania. They're like on main Street and the guy
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, we used to sit out here at
Speaker 1: the sidewalk cafe, and literally while they were filming this,
Speaker 1: it's like every other every third car that passed was
Speaker 1: a huge tanker truck through like the middle of this
Speaker 1: like little quaint town, carrying water to the site and
Speaker 1: removing waste water and whatever else. So if it takes
Speaker 1: two hundred trucks to carry one million gallons of water,
Speaker 1: some of these some of these operations used ten million gallons,
Speaker 1: so two thousand trucks just to carry it there. Then
Speaker 1: you've got pump trucks and it, I mean, it is
Speaker 1: an operation. Even though compared to oil drilling above ground,
Speaker 1: it's it's less Yeah, it's more nocuous, that's right. So um,
Speaker 1: another pro is that natural gas is pretty great and
Speaker 1: you're you're not gonna find a lot of people argue
Speaker 1: with that. It burns very cleanly. It's a good solution.
Speaker 1: But it's the like we said over its lifetime. Some
Speaker 1: contend that because of the practices, it's not any cleaner
Speaker 1: than coal UM in the end. Yeah, like if you
Speaker 1: burn it itself, if in a perfect world, as emits
Speaker 1: one third the nitrogen oxides of coal, half of the
Speaker 1: CO two, and just one percent of the sulfur oxides,
Speaker 1: so it is like a lot cleaner. But then again,
Speaker 1: as part of the fracking process, you have like all
Speaker 1: these trucks that are using all this diesel that are
Speaker 1: coming to and from the site. Right. Another problem with
Speaker 1: it is methane release associated with UM tapping natural gas.
Speaker 1: Apparently as much as eight percent of the methane in
Speaker 1: a natural gas well is lost, and methane is bad.
Speaker 1: It's a really serious greenhouse gas. It's worse than CEO
Speaker 1: two as far as creating the greenhouse effect is concerned.
Speaker 1: It's just there's typically less of it, and we usually
Speaker 1: produce less than we produce CEO two, so there's an
Speaker 1: air pollution factor to it as well. Yeah, that's true. Um.
Speaker 1: We should probably point out if anyone's seen them the
Speaker 1: documentary gas Land from two thousand ten, that was the
Speaker 1: famous scene where the guy lights his tap water on fire. Impactful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: did you see it. Yeah, and you know you can't
Speaker 1: see that and not go holy crap, like they're letting
Speaker 1: this happen. Um. As it turns out, in fairness, the
Speaker 1: officials determined that it was a naturally occurring methane reserve
Speaker 1: at this particular homeowners well, and it was not due
Speaker 1: to fracking. Right, his well hit hit like a methane reserve,
Speaker 1: So that would explain what his flaming water. But before
Speaker 1: that came out, I think, um, truth Land, which was
Speaker 1: I guess an answer to gas Land, came out. Did
Speaker 1: you hear about that? Truth Land um was released by
Speaker 1: Energy and Depth, which is a pro fracking group which
Speaker 1: if you go into source watch, is funded by frank
Speaker 1: by oil companies. But they released this documentary that said
Speaker 1: nothing about the oil companies funding in and called it
Speaker 1: truth Land. It was exposed to propaganda like right out
Speaker 1: of the gate. But um, there's definitely this uh propaganda
Speaker 1: war going on, um between you know, pro and con
Speaker 1: sides speaking of prone country got any more prosum, I do,
Speaker 1: but quickly but just because that guy and gas Land, Um,
Speaker 1: it turned out to be a different thing. The companies
Speaker 1: have been fined um for negligence with methane reaching water
Speaker 1: supplies like that has happened, right, which is not supposed
Speaker 1: to happen. Because if you're talking about like a the
Speaker 1: Marcellus region, this this, that's the typically very deep deep shale,
Speaker 1: like seven thousand, ten thousand feet, that's how far you
Speaker 1: have to drill down before you hit that kickoff point. Right,
Speaker 1: Your um groundwater reserves, your aquifers are gonna be a
Speaker 1: few hundred to a thousand feet. So if you pass
Speaker 1: through them and then you use your steel well board
Speaker 1: and in case it and cement correctly, you're not you're
Speaker 1: not going to get any release into that groundwater. And
Speaker 1: the cracks that you're making the fractures are so deep
Speaker 1: and small enough that they're not going to travel all
Speaker 1: the way up thousands and thousands of feet up to
Speaker 1: the aquifer just the pressure won't allow it. Supposedly, that's
Speaker 1: like that, that's the that's the logic behind it now.
Speaker 1: But there are things like coal bed methane fields that
Speaker 1: are typically much more shallow and they're closer to aquifers,
Speaker 1: and those are the ones. If you're tapping those using fracking,
Speaker 1: you run amendous risk of of methane getting into the
Speaker 1: water supply big time. But if you're doing deep shale
Speaker 1: stuff as it stands now, all the evidence suggests that, No,
Speaker 1: it's it's if you steal your well bore correctly, you
Speaker 1: should be fine. Right, Well, that's the listener. Mail pointed
Speaker 1: out that, um, you know, most of the issues of
Speaker 1: the problems have been because of that concrete or incorrect Well,
Speaker 1: you know this and that, not the fracking itself, but
Speaker 1: it's the same people doing that, so it's still counts
Speaker 1: as part of the problem with fracking. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: you can't say, like, oh, the fracking segment of this
Speaker 1: operation went well, but of course we had cracks all
Speaker 1: up and down that ruined everything. So come on, that's semantics,
Speaker 1: all right. Um, some of them. The more last couple
Speaker 1: of pro arguments here, Josh, are UM revenue. It's a
Speaker 1: big one. Seventeen thousand, six hundred jobs would be created
Speaker 1: and a hundred million dollars in tax revenue if New
Speaker 1: York State UM lifted their fracking ban. Yeah, so a
Speaker 1: lot of jobs. A lot of these are former farming
Speaker 1: communities that are somewhat depressed, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: want those jobs. And anytime you're reducing our dependence on
Speaker 1: foreign oil. That's a good thing, uh in a worldview.
Speaker 1: So those are some of the pro arguments and they're
Speaker 1: good ones. Yeah. So um, and again we should say
Speaker 1: like the jury is still very much out, but there
Speaker 1: is a lot of common sense criticism of fracking operations. Um,
Speaker 1: some have already been discarded. Like a lot of people
Speaker 1: are worried about that radio activity and um, the wastewater
Speaker 1: that does come back up is slightly more radioactive than
Speaker 1: it was when it went down, but not any That's,
Speaker 1: as one professor put it, that's like the least of
Speaker 1: your worries with fracking is the radio activity. Yeah. Another
Speaker 1: one is that, um, it causes earthquakes, which is sensible.
Speaker 1: You know, you're down there, you're drilling, you're blowing holes
Speaker 1: into the shale thousands of feet down. How can you
Speaker 1: not cause an earthquake. Apparently, earthquakes are associated with fracking,
Speaker 1: but it's not the actual fracking. It's when you store
Speaker 1: wastewater in a retention pond reservoir induced seismicity where it's
Speaker 1: coming from. Yeah, So there are a couple of earthquakes
Speaker 1: that were associated with fracking, but not from the fracking process,
Speaker 1: from storing the wastewater. Again semantics, but so, but the
Speaker 1: wastewater is probably the single most UM. I guess if
Speaker 1: you're an environmentalist, that's the smoking gun, Like, that's the
Speaker 1: one that you can't get around if you're an energy company,
Speaker 1: because fracking uses tons of water, lots and lots of water,
Speaker 1: I mean millions of gallons of water to get to
Speaker 1: these and recovers maybe between fifteen and fifty of that water.
Speaker 1: And then the water that is recovered is now way
Speaker 1: more toxic than it was before. So you're taking water
Speaker 1: from a municipal water supply, drinking water people, people, water
Speaker 1: people need, sending it down into the earth, and then
Speaker 1: getting maybe fifteen fifty back, and then the stuff you
Speaker 1: do get back is like, what are we gonna do
Speaker 1: with this? Yeah? Well they um, the oil companies will
Speaker 1: say that they dispose of it in ways that uh
Speaker 1: adequately match state regulations, UM, which may or may not
Speaker 1: be adequate. Yeah, may or may not be in depending
Speaker 1: on the state, the regulations are a little more lax
Speaker 1: than others. UM. I know a lot of the wastewater
Speaker 1: from Pennsylvania is deposited in surrounding states because I think
Speaker 1: they have one of the more aggressive wastewater policies. So
Speaker 1: they'll just say, ironically, New York, even though they banned
Speaker 1: fracking for now allows Pennsylvania wastewater to be dumped there. Okay,
Speaker 1: so there's at least one municipality that has banned uh,
Speaker 1: fracking fluids, Like you can't buy or sell them or
Speaker 1: possess them in the city, and you aren't allowed to
Speaker 1: introduce any used fracking fluid into their waste treatment plants
Speaker 1: like there their city waters and allowed to treat fracking fluid.
Speaker 1: So and some of this water, like the wastewater, some
Speaker 1: of it is reused for other fracking operations. Some of
Speaker 1: it is just treat makes sense, Yeah, economically, it just
Speaker 1: makes sense to get as much back as you can
Speaker 1: and then use it again. And she's the same water
Speaker 1: as much as possible. Yeah, that'd be a good idea.
Speaker 1: Some is treated, you're gonna say, in like a wastewater plant. Um. Others,
Speaker 1: like a lot of the stuff that comes back up
Speaker 1: includes like ancient salt beds, salt from ancient seabeds, yeah, um.
Speaker 1: And they use those on the to like clear off
Speaker 1: snow and ice on roadways. But they're starting to outlaw
Speaker 1: that as well. It's basically like the fracking industry went
Speaker 1: unregulated for a very long time. Like it was unregulated
Speaker 1: in that it was a drilling technique as as the
Speaker 1: EPA was concerned, and it wasn't until this environmental um
Speaker 1: group leaf sued. I guess the e p A over
Speaker 1: some fracking techniques in the late nineties in Alabama before
Speaker 1: the EPA finally started to regulate fracking. Wow, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: but I got a little, a little into it for
Speaker 1: a second. No, I love it. Um. We were talking
Speaker 1: about waste water. Some of that water also spills. Uh.
Speaker 1: In June two thousand eleven, there was a well blowout
Speaker 1: in Clearwater County, Pennsylvania. It's a gas explosion, sixteen hours
Speaker 1: of uncontrolled spill about a million gallons of toxic waste
Speaker 1: into a creek in Mohannon State Park. Um. I saw
Speaker 1: this one documentary they interviewed of a guy that used
Speaker 1: to one of the blue collar guys used to work
Speaker 1: at the operation and he was like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: some of them are heavily regulated and get visited by
Speaker 1: inspectors and he went, but many thousands are not. And
Speaker 1: he said, I worked at one of those and he said,
Speaker 1: in the at the frack path, it was on top
Speaker 1: of a like a mountain area. That's where the bar is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got so. But he said, you would look at
Speaker 1: this mountain on the side of it, and he said
Speaker 1: it would looked like it was bleeding like this red
Speaker 1: oozy water just tumbling down into like the forest below.
Speaker 1: And he said, but yeah, some of them regulated, some
Speaker 1: of them are or inspected, And I think it's probably
Speaker 1: one of the same issues as uh the mountaintop uh
Speaker 1: coal removal, is that you've got like a handful of
Speaker 1: inspectors for these like thousands and thousands of operations, which
Speaker 1: is not good. No, wasn't there and wasn't there a
Speaker 1: spill of just not even wastewater bills, straight up fracking
Speaker 1: fluid like all the additives, which by the way, are
Speaker 1: for a very long time. UM energy companies said that
Speaker 1: they're fracking fluid mixtures were proprietor proprietary and they wouldn't
Speaker 1: reveal what was in there. The PA finally said, no,
Speaker 1: you have to. We need a hundred percent transparency. So now,
Speaker 1: well not a percent though, because there's still some uh
Speaker 1: that is true. And dude, I saw that too, and
Speaker 1: I was like, great, finally released the chemicals that you're
Speaker 1: you're putting in there. And then they said that there's
Speaker 1: a bit of a loophole in that some of them
Speaker 1: can be still be listed as trade secrets. Well, it's
Speaker 1: like trans fat, like you can list you can put
Speaker 1: trans fats in your food still and say that has
Speaker 1: zero grams of trans fat as long as it has
Speaker 1: half a half a gram or less per serving of
Speaker 1: trans fats. But you can still play that big zero
Speaker 1: on there. It's very tricky. So some of the some
Speaker 1: of the state's outlawed um or some of the states
Speaker 1: said all right, you have to tell us at least
Speaker 1: what your little trade secrets are, and we won't release them.
Speaker 1: And then some states like Colorado believe it or not,
Speaker 1: just said you don't even have to tell us what
Speaker 1: your trade secret is. So well, the ones that have
Speaker 1: been released, it it's very there's some unusual stuff in there.
Speaker 1: Walnut holes, table salt, well that doesn't sound harmless, lemon
Speaker 1: juice that sounds great, laundry detergent, anti freeze, Okay, it's
Speaker 1: getting worse. Uh moosifiers. Apparently the price of this uh
Speaker 1: uh i' what is it called I want to say Guar,
Speaker 1: but it's not Guar, you knowir the band, But it's
Speaker 1: like gar. It is like Gar, but instead of a W,
Speaker 1: it's just a single us Amosifi are using ice cream,
Speaker 1: and apparently cracking operations have driven the price of this up.
Speaker 1: So much of the ice cream industry is like, what
Speaker 1: the heck man? Like we we you just lowered our
Speaker 1: profit margin significantly. Is that why Ben and Jerry's is
Speaker 1: so expensive now? Ben and Jerry's is expensive because it's
Speaker 1: so delicious. It is delicious. Chubby Hubby, that's a good one.
Speaker 1: It's my favorite one New York superfudge chunk that white
Speaker 1: chocolate in there. I like the offerings, the seasonal offerings
Speaker 1: to like I had some pumpkin cheesecake the other day
Speaker 1: that was really good. I have not tried that. It's delicious.
Speaker 1: You know what else as good as there? Um it's
Speaker 1: a blueberry graham Greek yogurt and we had that as
Speaker 1: a very good too. But we can conside checked the
Speaker 1: food the drop of a half. We've been doing good
Speaker 1: this when we've been talking about nothing but fracking. That's true,
Speaker 1: So they will um. Depending on what website you go to,
Speaker 1: you will if you're worried about chemical additives. You will
Speaker 1: see stats from people like Caliber and they say it
Speaker 1: only makes up like point five percent of this mixture.
Speaker 1: But what they don't say is that can still equal
Speaker 1: like three hundred millions I'm sorry, three hundred tons of
Speaker 1: chemical additives. Is that for a single operation? That's for
Speaker 1: for four million gallons of water used in a fracking
Speaker 1: operation would equal about three hundred tons of these additives
Speaker 1: chemical additives. So there's a lot of this stuff. It
Speaker 1: may be only a point five percent to two percent,
Speaker 1: but um, there's still a lot of like many tons
Speaker 1: of harmful chemicals. And again, what are you doing with it?
Speaker 1: I mean, like what do you do with it afterwards?
Speaker 1: If you could reuse it? Awesome, I have very few
Speaker 1: problems with it. Um, But it's taking water from a
Speaker 1: water supply, and it's in Texas. Fracking operations have been
Speaker 1: shown to actually have exacerbated droughts in the area. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: around the Marcellus region. There's apparently plenty of water, like
Speaker 1: for example, in Pennsylvania in a single day, Uh, the
Speaker 1: whole state uses about nine point five billion gallons of
Speaker 1: water every day. The natural gas development fracking uses about
Speaker 1: one point nine million gallons of the nine point five
Speaker 1: billion every day, one point nine million to nine point
Speaker 1: five billion, So it's insignificant. But in an area that's
Speaker 1: already water stressed, that's a problem taking all that water
Speaker 1: and using it for fracking, wasting it, and then what
Speaker 1: do you do with it afterwards. Yeah, Well, at least
Speaker 1: Texas has um apparently that's like the leading state as
Speaker 1: far as having capabilities to have many more disposal wells
Speaker 1: is what they're called there um. But in places like
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania where the Marcella shale is, they don't have nearly
Speaker 1: the kind of disposal wells at this point yet, which
Speaker 1: leads to more um retreatment or treatment of the water
Speaker 1: and dumping it in places like New York. When I
Speaker 1: say they're dumping it, I mean I don't think they're like,
Speaker 1: you know, putting a big tube out in the middle
Speaker 1: of a field in New York and just letting it
Speaker 1: run out everywhere. They better not be doing that. They
Speaker 1: probably aren't. Um. I saw one stat where there is
Speaker 1: one serious environmental concern for every one and fifty wells,
Speaker 1: which if you multiply that over hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: wells the reason a lot of people point out and
Speaker 1: say it's not so dangerous. It's like, where the where's
Speaker 1: the hard science on the effect right now? And this
Speaker 1: guy was like, well, we're not seeing it quite yet.
Speaker 1: Like come back in ten years at the rate that
Speaker 1: we're going, uh, and you'll you'll see some problems. One
Speaker 1: for every hundred and fifty operations h one serious environmental
Speaker 1: concern could be spill, could be leaching into the soil.
Speaker 1: Kind of depends. Um. And my whole thing is, if
Speaker 1: it's really no big deal and it's totally safe and
Speaker 1: it's just not going to impact anyone in any way, Um,
Speaker 1: then why do you exclude it from the Safe Water
Speaker 1: Drinking Act in two thousand five? Like why do you
Speaker 1: take congressional measures measures to have the language of what
Speaker 1: a pollutant is changed? Which is what happened in two
Speaker 1: thousand five? Well, the Safe Water Drinking Act, um, the
Speaker 1: Energy Policy Act of two thousand five. Um. And then
Speaker 1: this is not political. This this happened. You can go
Speaker 1: look it up, settled down. Dick Cheney did push for
Speaker 1: these measures to go through. They went through the loophole.
Speaker 1: The Haliburton loophole is what it's called um and I
Speaker 1: will even give you the section if you go to
Speaker 1: page one or two. Section two. It covers hydraulic fracturing
Speaker 1: and it excludes in the Safe Water Drinking Act the
Speaker 1: underground injection of fluids or propping agents other than diesel fuels.
Speaker 1: That's the one that they still said, like, you can't
Speaker 1: do pursue it too. Hydraulic fracturing related to oil, gas
Speaker 1: or geothermal production activities. So basically, uh, you need to
Speaker 1: keep your water safe unless it's hydraulic fracturing, fracturing, fractling,
Speaker 1: hydro fracking. Furthermore, in the Clean Water Act, they change
Speaker 1: the definition of pollutant to not include water, gas, or
Speaker 1: other material which is injected into a well to facilitate
Speaker 1: production of oil or gas. So if it's so clean
Speaker 1: and no big deal, where are they going in and
Speaker 1: changing the term for pollutant and saying exclude fracking from
Speaker 1: Safe Water Drinking Act? You know, it's a great question.
Speaker 1: And what was the guy behind pushing this? A former
Speaker 1: Haliburton executive. It's like, I'm no smart guy, but I'm
Speaker 1: no dummy either, you know, well, I think you know,
Speaker 1: check the jury still out. As we said on this
Speaker 1: and we're waiting for this hard science to come in.
Speaker 1: But I feel like you should always be wary of
Speaker 1: any group or industry or anyone on either side that
Speaker 1: engages in a disinformation campaign that tries to sway the
Speaker 1: public using underhanded tactics. That should always raise red flags
Speaker 1: to you. And they're both doing it right now, which
Speaker 1: is what's maddening for sure. UM and you anytime somebody's
Speaker 1: selling you something and you find out that like they're
Speaker 1: they're being underhanded, you should wonder about everything they're doing
Speaker 1: across the board, Like with UM Energy and Development releasing
Speaker 1: truth Land that was misinformation. That was a misinformation campaign.
Speaker 1: They didn't say who released it, and there's yeah exactly,
Speaker 1: And if you go onto the Energy and Development website
Speaker 1: in particular, it reads really defensive, real defensive, like the
Speaker 1: text of it does. I can't believe that they let
Speaker 1: whatever whatever PR company put that together release it like that,
Speaker 1: because it's it's like like, why are you asking you know,
Speaker 1: almost like I'll bet you didn't know that. I'll bet
Speaker 1: you didn't know that natural gas could blow up your
Speaker 1: whole family if we wanted it to. Did happen to UM?
Speaker 1: Well tell him first about the studies in This month
Speaker 1: represents the third month in a row where a major
Speaker 1: public university has taken a real black eye from being
Speaker 1: exposed for being in bed with UM the fracking community. Yeah,
Speaker 1: University of Texas study said that UM fracking is safe,
Speaker 1: and um, it's really no big deal. Well, I don't
Speaker 1: know if they said that. They said it was safe,
Speaker 1: I don't want to paraphrase. Uh. And then they got
Speaker 1: some independent reviews of Professor groats um study and they said, oh,
Speaker 1: you know what, he's on the board of a natural
Speaker 1: gas drilling company and received more than a million and
Speaker 1: a half dollars in compensation and he didn't mention that
Speaker 1: anywhere in his study. But what he did do is,
Speaker 1: uh quit his job at the University of Texas afterward
Speaker 1: and kind of retreat quietly into his corner full of money.
Speaker 1: And the department head over him was forced to resign
Speaker 1: to But the thing was, it wasn't just that he
Speaker 1: didn't he didn't report that conflict of interest. He said that, Um,
Speaker 1: there there was like flaws in the science. It was
Speaker 1: a bad article, it was a bad study, and they
Speaker 1: retracted it. And that's a big deal to retract the
Speaker 1: scientific study. We're they're saying, like, we want that back.
Speaker 1: Pretend we never said anything. UM. Penn State I tried
Speaker 1: to open a shale development UM school, I guess UM,
Speaker 1: and they couldn't because all the professors wouldn't wouldn't join, Like,
Speaker 1: they couldn't get anybody to be a part of it.
Speaker 1: And then there was one more I think that was
Speaker 1: part of this little three months sweep that our buddy
Speaker 1: Wade Goodwin over MPR was reporting. Yeah, the Shale Resources
Speaker 1: Institute at the State University of New York at Buffalo
Speaker 1: was closed after UM people wanted to know who was
Speaker 1: funding its work and whether it's work was truly independent
Speaker 1: into studying fracking. So they closed this whole cool down
Speaker 1: because they found out that it was basically funded by
Speaker 1: energy companies and that people were working for them rather
Speaker 1: than the public good. Wow. So there are plenty more
Speaker 1: anecdotal stories that we could not get to UM. If
Speaker 1: you type in fracking timeline, there's a great UH timeline
Speaker 1: oddly enough of UH of incidences and accidents. UM, and
Speaker 1: you're you know, I realized that there's no way to
Speaker 1: get oil and petroleum out of the earth without there
Speaker 1: being accidents at some point. It's just one of the
Speaker 1: dangers and unfortunate side effects. It's gonna happen. But um,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of them out there. Wells exploding
Speaker 1: U two thousand nine, a fracking waste water impoundment caught
Speaker 1: fire exploded in develop, Pennsylvania. Soil tests conducted at the
Speaker 1: site found arsenic at six thousand times of permissible level UM.
Speaker 1: November to December two thousand seven, twenty two water wells
Speaker 1: in Bainbridge, Ohio intaminated with drilling chemicals. One explodes, a
Speaker 1: lot of methane explosions. One family was killed. Pretty flammable,
Speaker 1: like when they lit their pilot light in their house.
Speaker 1: Killed the family. So and what was it doing to
Speaker 1: their brains leading up to that, just huffing it all
Speaker 1: the time. Who knows that the levels were so high
Speaker 1: it blew up their house. I mean, how long was
Speaker 1: it acumulating? Well, anecdotally, you'll see interviews with people talking
Speaker 1: it's just like Aaron Brockovich, like I went to drink
Speaker 1: my water after they started this operation and it had
Speaker 1: a little, uh, petroleum like residue on top, and it
Speaker 1: tasted awful, and uh like they say don't even bathe
Speaker 1: in it, and like this is what I'm supposed to drink.
Speaker 1: I want to say, I want to really make sure
Speaker 1: everyone one gets this. If you ask me, natural gas
Speaker 1: is a really great fuel, Like it really does it, Chuck.
Speaker 1: If we could convert the nation's transportation sector to natural
Speaker 1: gas only UM cars and trucks, we would reduce UM
Speaker 1: CEO two emissions by no, I'm sorry, we reduced CEO
Speaker 1: carbon monoxide emissions, which makes small O T and UM
Speaker 1: nitrous oxides by It really is a good idea, and
Speaker 1: it probably will be this excellent bridge fuel between coal
Speaker 1: and oil and whatever renewable we come up with, wind
Speaker 1: solar in the future, and we could become energy independent
Speaker 1: thanks to natural gas. And if fracking is the best
Speaker 1: way to do it, that's awesome. But we have to
Speaker 1: hold the people who are doing this feet to the fire,
Speaker 1: to do it as safely as possible, to cut down
Speaker 1: on these incidents that you're talking about, to not pollute water,
Speaker 1: but to get it out as as reasonably inefficiently as possible,
Speaker 1: but also as safely as possible, because if we don't
Speaker 1: say you have to do this Martley and safely, they're
Speaker 1: going to do it as cheaply as possible, because it's
Speaker 1: a mandate of their corporate charters maximized profits, not maximized
Speaker 1: public safety, which is why it's important for people to
Speaker 1: be talking about this. It's not inherently bad, it just
Speaker 1: has to be done correctly. It seems like to me
Speaker 1: after researching this agreed um, And didn't he find a
Speaker 1: new uh fracking method that does not use the chemicals
Speaker 1: at all. Yeah, it's called jelled fracking. Uses a liquid
Speaker 1: propane and um it when it when you pump it
Speaker 1: down in there, it doesn't come back up. It turns
Speaker 1: into vapor which escapes back up as a vapor which
Speaker 1: you can capture and reuse, resell, or burn a fuel
Speaker 1: for to power the site. That sounds pretty good. No
Speaker 1: waste water. Jelled fracking doesn't even water at all. And
Speaker 1: are people using this yet or is it? It's um,
Speaker 1: they're patenting it. It's been used about a thousand times
Speaker 1: since two thousand eight. I should probably say I invented it,
Speaker 1: so I have an enormous financial stake in see, I
Speaker 1: I admit my financial interests. Josh Jell's right, but um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I ran across that today. It seemed like a pretty
Speaker 1: good jam jelled fracking. Yeah. That. One of the issues
Speaker 1: with that though, is like it probably requires some sort
Speaker 1: of uh redoing of your current systems, which probably would
Speaker 1: incur costs that companies don't want. I'm just guessing. But
Speaker 1: plus you have to sacrifice like eight thousand cats just
Speaker 1: to get the machine to start working. Who cares? This
Speaker 1: is inhabited by a god that loves cats. Sacrifice. Just
Speaker 1: leave my cats alone and you can have the rest
Speaker 1: you got anything else? Now fracking has been done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: We've been asked about this one for a while. So
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about fracking, you can
Speaker 1: type that word f R A C K I n
Speaker 1: G into the search part. How still works dot com?
Speaker 1: And I said search parts. So it's time for listener mail, Josh.
Speaker 1: Before we do listener mail, Yes, um our TV show
Speaker 1: is going on the debut UH last week, hopefully to
Speaker 1: great numbers, and we would like to remind everyone to
Speaker 1: watch each and every week on Science Channel at ten pm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: following uh Idiot Abroad which is our lead end, which
Speaker 1: is great, and it's on Science Channel on Saturday's ten pm.
Speaker 1: What else are you doing on Saturday night? Ten p m. Nothing.
Speaker 1: That's why you should watch our show because you'll like it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're out DVR, and if you don't have a
Speaker 1: DVR and you don't have TV or cable, you can
Speaker 1: get these on iTunes for I think of Buck ninety nine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: day after the premiere, so Sundays, that's right, So go
Speaker 1: to iTunes and the search for stuff you should know
Speaker 1: on the television side of things. And let me thank
Speaker 1: you for your support. Yes, that's off to you, guys.
Speaker 1: All right, listener mail, Yes, I'm gonna call this caving sucks.
Speaker 1: This is from Michelle Marianni. Guys, I'm a Canadian speech
Speaker 1: pathologists currently living in Manhattan. Last month, I went to
Speaker 1: my honeymoon and belize insideed going a guid a cave tour.
Speaker 1: I imagine a large opening in a rock, beautiful sparkling
Speaker 1: waterfall and lights and rainbows coming from the ceiling, kind
Speaker 1: of like you were talking about, Chuck. But what it
Speaker 1: really turned out to be was five hours. It's total
Speaker 1: darkness except for the headlight of course, high pressure water
Speaker 1: rushing over jagged moving rocks. I swam, stumbled, crabbed, walked
Speaker 1: for two and a half hours to reach a series
Speaker 1: of seven waterfalls that I then climbed. Someday I look
Speaker 1: back and laugh, but at the time I was screaming
Speaker 1: to Jesus to save me. Luckily, my group thought I
Speaker 1: was hilarious and enjoyed my jokes, but I kept my
Speaker 1: tears on the inside. The guys were very well trained,
Speaker 1: also very relaxed, and I never felt like we were
Speaker 1: in too much danger. Um At first, I really tried
Speaker 1: really hard enough to touch the precious centuries old stalag
Speaker 1: tights as I stumbled through, but by hour or four
Speaker 1: I was grabbing it anything I could as I was
Speaker 1: going down, trying not to have my eyes stabbed out
Speaker 1: by jagged rocks. I can't believe I let random tourists.
Speaker 1: They let random tourists of these caves with no special
Speaker 1: training or a fitness test. Living in New York City,
Speaker 1: I've had some crazy experiences, so just inadvertently get taught
Speaker 1: in the middle of a shootout and being quasi attacked
Speaker 1: by a gentleman on PCP. But caving was the scariest
Speaker 1: thing that has ever happened to me. Um. Had I
Speaker 1: listened to this podcast before my honeymoon, I never would
Speaker 1: have gone in disaster it would have been avoided. Thank
Speaker 1: you for the delightful podcast. So much love, Michelle Marianni.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Michelle. Sorry about the PCP guy. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's really something. Maybe that requires its own email as well.
Speaker 1: It's always PCP. I wonder how many times it really is.
Speaker 1: Everyone's always like they were crazed out on PCP. Maybe
Speaker 1: it was just ambient. They were eating a stick of
Speaker 1: butter and coming for me. Um. Well, let's see if
Speaker 1: you have a commentary about how something that we thought
Speaker 1: was awesome actually sucks in real life. We want to
Speaker 1: hear about that. Um. And if you have any kind
Speaker 1: of fracking operation in your neighborhood, we'd love to hear
Speaker 1: about that as well. Pro con whatever. Um, you can
Speaker 1: and tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know, and you can send us an email
Speaker 1: to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com. For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, visit how Stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. M brought to you by the two thousand
Speaker 1: twelve Toyota Camera