Water Pollution by Oil Companies

The following article explains in simple terms, the way Oil companies extract natural gas from the rock, it's called Hydraulic Fracturing. It sounds fairly safe, just pump water pressure, fracture the rock, release the gas and you are done right? not exactly, the problem is they also add toxic chemicals into the bore hole and in all instances they will poison any water table in the vicinity. In places where people depend on water wells for their drinking water, it poisons the water for all uses. Oil companies take advantage by not disclosing all information on the process and chemicals involved in Hydraulic fracturing.

Please attend the Expo, come and learn new ways of procuring and managing water sources and please remember that the first and foremost responsibility we all have is to stop poisoning our water sources for money and greed, it's just NOT worth it. Just look at the problems oil has caused in the poisoning of our water, air and lands, the clean technologies are now a reality and we must make use of them before it's too late.

Extraction Methods for Natural Gas in the Barnett Shale

October 7th, 2007 tun

By Chris Jent

The Barnett Natural Gas Field is contained within a very hard sedimentary rock formation called Shale. Shale is a fine-grained rock made up of ancient compacted clays or mud. Until recently the Barnett Shale Gas Fields were largely untapped due to the difficulty and cost to extract the gas. The recent increase in natural gas prices along with improvements in extraction methods has made it possible to produce wells in the Barnett Shale that are commercially viable.

One of the improved extraction methods is called Hydraulic Fracturing. First developed in the United States 1948, Hydraulic Fracturing simply creates fractures that extend from a borehole into rock formations. A hydraulic fracture is formed by pumping a fracturing fluid into the well bore at a rate sufficient to increase the pressure down the bore hole fracturing the surrounding rock formation. In order to keep this fracture open after the injection stops, a solid proppant is added to the fracture fluid. The proppant, which is commonly a sieved round sand, is pumped into the fracture. This sand is chosen to be higher in permeability than the surrounding formation and the propped hydraulic fracture then becomes a conduit through which the fluids can be produced back to the well. Another recently improved method is Directional or Horizontal Drilling. Horizontal Drilling is the science of drilling non-vertical wells. Directional drillers are given a well path to follow that is predetermined by engineers and geologists before the drilling starts. Once the drilling starts, periodic surveys are taken with a camera instrument to provide survey data such as inclination and azimuth of the well bore.