The Marcellus Shale: New York is the Natural Gas Industry’s New Lab Rat

December 4th, 2009 | Natural Resources News Service | | One comment

Under some of the most beautiful parts of rural New York State in the pre-Jurassic era formation called the Marcellus Shale is an unimaginable fortune in natural gas. Getting that gas to market has become an obsession of Wall Street and the biggest gas drilling companies in the world. In this gas rush, New York is fast becoming a geological science experiment that many experts fear will have profound, dire environmental and health consequences. The drilling companies use a witch’s brew of water, pressure and chemicals to force the gas from the shale. It is the secrecy of what is in that brew that has New Yorkers worried and many suspicious. Even the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has not yet identified all of the compounds in products proposed for use in fracturing shale.
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What is hydraulic fracturing (hydrofracking)

December 4th, 2009 | Natural Resources News Service | | Leave a comment

Drillers create artificial fractures in shale to release natural gas, predominately using a method called hydraulic fracturing. During hydraulic fracturing well operators inject a mixture of water and chemicals – about two to nine million gallons of water with chemicals making up about one to five percent of the total volume – into wells at extremely high pressure to crack and prop open the shale. The degree of risk posed by the chemicals in fracturing and drilling fluids depends on their concentrations and the nature of exposure.

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