Recent fracking news roundup

Recent fracking news roundup all in one place.

I can’t stay on top of the news like I did in the past because there is too much and I’m way busy. So sometimes I have gather it up and dump it in all at once. This news ain’t pretty.

Frackquakes

When I first started blogging about fracking, the industry would go nuts because I didn’t misspell fracking as fracing or frac’cing like they did. Fracking has a “k” because Lisa Sumi put it there. Now everyone spells it correctly, even the industry. Thanks Lisa.

Therefore: frackquakes. They hate that even more than the “k” but it’s too late to stop it. That’s kind of like the frackquakes fracking causes.

Frackquakes are getting bigger and more frequent.

Three of Monday’s quakes measured above a magnitude 4.0, with a 4.5 earthquake centered just north of Crescent, roughly 45 miles (72 km) north of Oklahoma City, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said.

The largest tremor, logged a “significant earthquake” by the USGS, could be felt as far away as Wichita, Kansas, about 160 miles north, broadcaster KOTV reported. Reuters via Yahoo

The people who live in the area feel terrorized by fracking. One lady said it was like being assaulted. Watch these heartbreaking videos of them talking about what it’s like to live with frackquakes.

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The Fracking Industry Has Changed Earthquake Patterns in Northeast BC

Yikes! There have been more than 1000 frackquakes in Northern BC ranging from in magnitude from 1.0 to 4.3. These frackquakes have changed the the flow of groundwater in the region and caused “migration of gases such as methane, radon and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.” But due to limited monitoring the industry and government lack understanding of how.

The article discusses frackquakes caused by waste injection and frackquakes caused by fracking injection. The article is packed with information that won’t make you sleep easier if you live in a fracking zone.

U.S. frackquakes are mentioned and how the fracking put sdams at risk.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has expressed a number of concerns with hydraulic fracturing. The agency says industry-triggered earthquakes could crack a dam, and that the transmission of frack fluids through natural faults could erode a dam’s embankment.

Industry-made fractures in rock cannot always be controlled and tend to find the path of least resistance. Since 2010, hydraulic fractures have “communicated” with neighbouring well sites and drilling pads in northern B.C. more than 107 times.

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More studies about how fracking hurts babies.

Pennsylvania Study Links Fracking to Health Hazards in Fetuses, Infants, and Young Children

The study found that heavily-fracked counties have

• 13.9% greater infant mortality,
• 23.6% greater perinatal mortality,
• 3.4% more low-weight births,
• 12.4% more premature births,
• 35.1% more cancer in children ages zero to four.

Dirty Air Correlates with Lower Grades in Texas Schoolchildren

“This is an interesting paper that deals with a serious problem affecting millions of children around the world,” said Dr. Lilian Calderón-Garcidueñas, a researcher who studies air pollution and health effects at the University of Montana in an email.

“These exposures start in utero, so the detrimental effects upon the developing brain are affecting the embryo and the fetus and continue once the child is exposed to the outside environment,” said Calderón-Garcidueñas, who was not involved in the study.

The toxins they measured are the same ones we see associated with fracking.

• benzene
• arsenic
• lead
• mercury
• hydrochloric acid
• toluene
• vinyl bromide
• xylenes
• diesel particulate matter

Fracking has contaminated water

DeSmogBlog has a great analysis of what’s hidden in the EPA’s fracking water study. I haven’t finished reading it yet because it is dense with great tweetable nuggets like this:

EPA couldn’t say with certainty how many fracked wells there are in the US, nor could it say how much wastewater was produced from fracking. They could say that overall, the oil and gas industry is producing billions of gallons of wastewater a day – hundreds of billions of gallons per year – but couldn’t say how much of that was tied to fracking.

You know how industry is always saying that fracking couldn’t possibly contaminate water because it happens thousands of feet below where our groundwater is? Well, that’s not exactly true, especially in certain states like Texas, where they have shallow frack jobs. Since fractures ofter go astray for 2000′ or more, this is another bad idea from the frackers.

A new study about fracking and water contamination:Depth Matters: Fracking and Drinking Water Contamination.

And that’s it for this installment of the Fracking News Roundup.