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Environmental group explains risks of fracking
COLUMBIANA
Those who came to an Ohio Environmental Council event learned about the risks associated with fracking and heard an assessment of how well the state’s newest law protects citizens.
Wednesday’s event at the Columbiana Public Library also helped residents learn how to organize and potentially file a complaint with the state against an oil or gas company.
“Oil and gas drilling is an industrial process, and like any industrial process, there is risk,” said Jack Shaner, deputy director for the OEC.
The state has not done a good job of promoting the risks that are associated with shale drilling, he said.
The companies drilling within the shale do not have a clear idea what is going on thousands of feet below the surface, said Jim Logan, director of agricultural programs for the OEC. The process puts significant amounts of pressure on rocks to cause fracturing.
Fracking is the process in which water, chemicals and sand are blasted into rocks thousands of feet below the ground to unlock natural gas and oil.
“The companies try to put enough concrete and steel into the well, but there are a number of things that could happen,” he said.
Drillers might believe they have placed enough concrete in the well, but if they have hit a fissure, it could allow the frack fluid to leak through the fissure and up to the water supply, Logan said.
“The seeping of methane [or other chemicals] into aquifers is the worst-case scenario,” he said.
The concrete and steel used are relatively reliable materials, Logan said. In addition, there is such an appetite for steel pipe that companies will use foreign steel to build the wells that may not be of the highest quality.
The industry says that less than 1 percent of fracking fluids are chemicals, but when it takes more than 5 million gallons to frack a well, that is a large amount of chemicals, he said.
The oil-and-gas industry has put forth a lot of information about the positive economic benefits of fracking, Logan said.
A study released by the Ohio State University agricultural economics department places the number of jobs that will created by shale drilling at much less than the industry is advertising, he said.
There are a lot of positive aspects about the recently signed Senate Bill 315, Shaner said. It creates additional standards that oil and gas companies have to follow, he added.
The OEC is attempting to get the state to prevent drilling near major drinking-water supplies and within the 100-year flood plain, he said. Those initiatives have not been successful.
The OEC has requested a full moratorium on horizontal fracturing until the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finishes its study of the process, releasing preliminary results later this year, Shaner said.