90% of all Oil & Gas Wells are Fracked

Response to:  Easy Reader Opinion Letter "On Local Government: Regarding Fracking"

Fracking is the process by which drillers inject millions of gallons of water, sand, salts, mud and chemicals—all too often toxic chemicals and human carcinogens such as benzene—into the ground at extremely high pressure, to fracture the rock and extract the raw fuel.  Its hard NOT to find a well in Southern California that has NOT been fracked in the last 60 years because the unregulated process has been going on for a long time.  How are we to ever know if this is what has caused the thousands of earthquakes the Midwest is now experiencing?

The fracking process is used to boost production at 90% of all oil and gas wells in the United States, according to the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, and fracking is increasingly common in other countries as well.  Although fracking most often occurs when a well is new, companies fracture many wells repeatedly in an effort to extract as much valuable oil or natural gas as possible and to maximize the return on their investment in a profitable site.

The Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC), is a United States organization that represents the governors of 30 member and eight associate states, and works to ensure the nation's oil and natural gas resources are conserved and utilized to their maximum potential while protecting health, safety and the environment. It was established by the charter member states' governors in 1935. The Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission is the oldest and largest interstate compact in the nation.

Fracking poses serious dangers to both human health and the environment. The three biggest problems with fracking are:

1. Fracking is causing earthquakes in Midwest
2. Fracking can cause adjacent older plugged wells to explode. 
3. Fracking leaves behind a toxic sludge that companies and communities must find some way to manage. Safely disposing of the sludge created by fracking is an ongoing challenge.
4. Somewhere between 20 percent and 40 percent of the toxic chemicals used in the fracking process remain stranded underground where they can, and often do, contaminate drinking water, soil and other parts of the environment that support plant, animal and human life.
5. Methane from fracture wells can leak into groundwater, creating a serious risk of explosion and contaminating drinking water supplies so severely that some homeowners have been able to set fire to the mixture of water and gas coming out of their faucets.

In 2005, President George W. Bush exempted oil and gas companies from federal regulations designed to protect U.S. drinking water, and most state oil and gas regulatory agencies don’t require companies to report the volumes or names of the chemicals they use in the fracking process, chemicals such as benzene, chloride, toluene and sulfates.

The result, according to the nonprofit Oil and Gas Accountability Project, is that one of the nation's dirtiest industries is also one of its least regulated, and enjoys an exclusive right to "inject toxic fluids directly into good quality groundwater without oversight."

In May 2012 the California Senate defeated a bill, introduced by state Sen. Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills), requiring drillers to notify local property owners and water authorities in advance that hydraulic fracturing was going to occur, and requiring the testing of groundwater before and after the hydraulic fracturing to determine whether contamination had occurred. Pavley said that this monitoring and reporting approach would help to address citizens' concerns. The state Senate defeated the bill in a bipartisan 18-17 vote.

Capped Oil Wells Beneath Homes & Ocean Can Blowout

Capped Oil Wells That Could Blowout in Redondo Beach & Hermosa Beach

Capped oil wells are a real danger in the South Bay.  Pat Aust the Redondo Beach City Councilman and former firefighter knows first hand of the dangers.  Hermosa Beach has a handful of capped wells and some are out in the Ocean as you can see.  However, Redondo Beach has hundreds of them underneath homes and Manhattan Beach has plugged oil wells at Mira Costa High School.  Here is an explanation to help you understand the potential threat to our community if slant hydraulic pressurized oil drilling is permitted underground.

Oil drilling blowout preventers (BOPs) can be used on the drilling site itself on the surface to mitigate risk.  However, blowout preventers CANNOT be used on capped wells or adjacent wells underground & in the Ocean.   If an adjacent capped oil well were to blow on the ocean seabed it would cause a massive oil spill and mess on up and down the coast.  The ocena seabed well could be capped but would required significant emergency effort (like the BP Spill in the Gulf) and would change the integrity of life in the South Bay as we know it.  If an adjacent capped oil were to blow underground beneath homes.  Lives and homes could be lost because an explosion is highly likely.  Residents in Hermosa Beach and Redondo Beach who own homes over a capped underground well would never know about the problem until it is too late.  Do we really want to trust the that the integrity of the well was capped properly 30 or 40 years ago?

Crude oil is a flammable liquid consisting of a complex mixture of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights that are found in geologic formations beneath the Earth's surface. Because hydrocarbons and gas are lighter than rock or water, they often migrate upward through adjacent rock layers until either reaching the surface or becoming trapped within porous rocks (known as reservoirs) by impermeable rocks above. However, the process is influenced by underground water flows, causing oil to migrate hundreds of kilometres horizontally or even short distances downward before becoming trapped in a reservoir. When hydrocarbons are concentrated in a trap, an oil field forms, from which the liquid can be extracted by drilling and pumping at high pressure. The down hole pressures experienced at the rock structures change depending upon the depth and the characteristic of the source rock.  The deeper the well the more risky the operation.  E&B is proposing deep wells.

Blowouts happen all the time and are daily occurrence in the oil industry.  Don't convince yourself it can't happen here because Steve Layton knows too well from his Blowout in Louisiana which bankrupted Equinox Oil.

Here is another conclusion that supports this argument from the Coastal Commission.

Fracking in California Can Induce More Earthquakes

Josh Fox of Gas Land Movie reveals unregulated fracking going on in Los Angeles, California and could cause a major earthquakes in the near future.  The USGS is studying the relationship to fracking but regulation still seems a long ways off.  Oil and gas companies are not required to disclose fracking even though hundreds of wells in Southern Califoria have and are currently being fracked.

In Oklahoma , Arkansas, and in Ohio, earthquakes shake the ground and rattle nerves. But these quakes are not the work of mother nature. The USGS says a controversial oil production method called "fracking" is responsible for triggering them

Fracking is a drilling method where highly pressurized water, sand, and a cocktail of chemicals are injected miles into the ground to shatter the rock, which allows the oil and gas to escape. A critical part of this process is getting rid of millions of gallons of waste water. A common way to do that is to re-inject it back into the earth. And that's what can trigger an earthquake. E&B will tell you they are not doing the controversial "hydraulic fracking" but won't be specific on how their technique differs from the above.  Do we want to take this risk?