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>>Rafeal Canas: Okay, our presentation today
is about oil fracking, my name is Rafeal Canas,
first year in technology.
>>Teresa Bice: I'm Teresa Bice.
>> Denel Howery: Denel Howery.
>>Michael Gioia: Mike Gioia.
>> Canas: Okay, we will be talking about
hydraulic fracturing, most commonly known as fracking.
The title of our presentation "It's not my Fracking Problem."
I hope I am pronouncing it correctly.
Fracking has proven itself to be very helpful to alleviate some
of the dependency of [unclear dialogue] oil.
Until recently, pockets of natural gas have been laying
approximately about 1.5 miles below the surface of the earth.
Fracturing allows us to recover this resource and bring relief
to the ever-growing energy crisis facing the US.
So, how does the process begin, what is fracking.
So this is the technical definition of fracking,
it is basically how we get the oil out of the ground.
So, how the process begins is by drilling a borehole into the
earth approximately going 1.5 miles below the surface,
its about 7700 feet below the surface.
To visualize this extreme peak, imagine that you are the top of
the Sears tower--now known as Willis towers in Chicago--
that's about 1200 feet.
Now imagine yourself five times, stacking 5 Sears towers on top
of each other and you look up at the observation decks and then
you look downward, that's pretty deep.
That's how deep we are going.
Here's the ground level, they're going 7700 feet down and then
they turn horizontally and what they do is, they create
fractures here, see those.
And then once the, once they're done with that, this is the
key process, how did they take out the gas and the oil,
how did they extract that?
They mix water and sand by 99% and 1% is only additives.
This right here is the sand, this is a special type of sand
that they use to abstract the oil and gas.
The 1% that they mix it with is water and sand that is combined
with a very small portion of chemicals and that can be
laundry detergent, acrylic fibers, plastics, cosmetic,
and [unclear dialogue].
Okay, I will play...we're playing the video now,
and this is about 2 minutes.
[video playing].
♪ [music playing] ♪♪
>> Bice: Okay, I am going to speak about
the history and development of fracking.
It was first actually used in the 1860s with a formula of
nitro actually, and in the 1930s different techniques
were developed involving acid.
In the 1940s Floyd Farris from the Stanolined Oil, researched
all the previous methods and between him, his research and
the 1948 JB Clark--who also worked for the Stanolined Oil,
they wrote an industrial paper about fracking and this resulted
in a patent in 1949 and this gave exclusive rights for
fracking for the Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Company.
Basically in 1949--because of this patent--they were the one's
drilling 300; they were treating 332 of the wells in 1949.
And each one these wells increased the production 75%.
In 1950, there were over 3,000 wells that they did
the same process with.
Between that time and 2008, more than 205 million treatments
had been performed worldwide.
By 2008, 50,000 of the fracking stages were estimated to be
completed globally, not just treated.
And back in the 50s---sorry let me retract a little bit---there
were different chemicals used that some of them were used
for the same process that plastic explosives were used.
And they used different types of chemicals.
One process added potassium chloride to stabilize the clay
because once they would break apart the ground, it just became
unstable and unsafe for the workers to be working around.
Then they developed gel stabilizers, which were
developed for the wells that had the higher temperature.
And I am going to turn it over to Denel.
>> Denel: So in 2004, there was
a safety study done by the EPA,
the Environmental Protection Agency.
And in the study EPA said, well oil fracking poses only a
minimal threat to the underground drinking water.
Now there were a lot of issues with this study because they
focused only on the injections of the chemicals at the site.
They didn't take into effect and of the after effects of the
chemicals staying in the ground, they didn't take into effect,
any disposal methods--they only focused on one aspect to oil
fracking so there was a lot of uproar about the studying.
They felt that it wasn't done correctly.
Nevertheless, because of the study oil fracking was deemed to
be the exempt from the Safe Water Drinking Act,
which meant that there was pretty much no government
regulation on what they were doing.
Now, the reason why this is such a big deal is because
10 out of 11 CBM--CBM are coalbed methane deposits--
this is where the oil fracking usually occurs.
10 out of 11 or roughly 91% of those are located near USDW's
(Underground Sources of Drinking Water).
So if the oil fracking industry or the gas and oil industry is
exempt from regulation under the Safe Water Drinking Act, yet
91% of their business is located within underground sources of
drinking water, you can see where that would pose a problem.
During the oil fracturing process 85% of the fracturing
fluids remain underground in or near these underground sources
of drinking water.
So these are some to the mere environmental concerns
associated with this.
Another one of the things is the documented decrease in
air quality around gas and oil wells.
A lot of residents complained of horrible smells.
There have been instances where people said they could not
even leave their houses because of the smell.
There have been instances of thin films covering windows and
cars and vehicles, there has been ash and deposits raining
down from the sky, so there are a lot of heath concerns.
There's a lot of quality of life concerns, there are just a lot
of environmental concerns, period,
associated with oil fracking.
>>Gioia: With this, we are seeing
a lot of, actually foreign investments coming to
the US for this process.
And that is mainly because--as an example--
the Marcellus Formation actually runs from Upstate New York
all the way to Tennessee.
So China actually bought out a Canadian company for 2.1billion
dollars to for the--to take over the area that they are fracking
in Canada.
And then the UK has purchased an oil company--the UK has actually
purchased a company that makes fracking equipment for almost a
billion dollars.
With the reasoning of the federal government saying that
this does not follow the Safe Water Drinking Act,
they have now pushed any regulation of fracking on to
the state governments for them to take charge of.
You run into problems because a lot of state governments
allow their smaller governments--
municipalities, the cities-- to actually do a lot their
regulations, especially for the environment.
With this though, this next, you have to take in consideration
how fracking is going to help out the area as opposed to the
state coming in doing the regulations and there can be
lapse into how well they do it.
If they protect the environment or if they don't.
A lot of these areas like the Marcellus Formation
and I know it's economically depressed.
I grew up in upstate New York, its a very poor area,
it's near [unclear dialogue].
All the rich people live in the city, all the poor people
live in the rest of the huge state that exist.
There are not a lot of jobs and you can see the toss-up the
states are having.
One acre of land that you were lease to an oil company can
generate 180 thousand dollars of royalty a year--
that's just not total--that's a year.
You add in two acres, now you double that,
plus there are signing bonuses to do that.
So if you're in a farmland you have lots of acres you can
make a tremendous amount of money from that.
And then also the state government makes a lot of money
by doing it on state parks, state land--
land that is not owned privately.
So you can see a lot of the conflict state governments have
about over regulating it or not regulating it at all.
That's some of the gains, some of the negative aspects
that we see, especially in the economic cost.
Socioeconomically division may increase, and this is a concern
because if a farmer sells or lease all his land.
Say he has maybe 50 acres, he's making a lot of money, fracking
turns out maybe not to be great for the area,
he just move away, he can keep leasing that land,
he can buy land some where else.
Now the person that maybe works on the land, or has a job
in the city nearby, can't leave because they're
not making that money; they're not receiving those royalties.
Because we are not sure what fracking will do to everything,
especially the land, positive negative.
It can turn negative so it will be hard to sell the land or
decreases the land value.
Everyone knows if someone forecloses on a home next door,
your house value plummets, right.
Kind of the same concept on your land value.
Contamination, if that does come to light, is a concern.
Again, it affects everything in the area.
Another thing that they talked about was if the farmers making
all this money by not doing anything, human nature would
be not to keep farming and just earn off the royalties.
You can just sit there, because you own this piece of land,
you're making money.
I thought it was interesting that if they let the land go
[unclear dialogue] and don't farm it, it actually hurts the
environment more because it changes the landscape.
It will effect how the winds blow, how the habitat occurs
in that area.
>> Howery: Okay, so there are benefits
to oil fracking of course.
One of the greatest benefits would be a reduction in the US
dependency upon foreign oil.
The oil fracking process--I believe it said that it reduced
our dependence on oil by 43% in the last couple of years so
it's understandable why we would want to do that.
It's also helped to eliminate the downturn in certain
poverty-stricken areas.
In the Delaware River Basin there is actually a housing
crunch now because there is so much oil fracking going on
and there are people just moving in the area.
Well housing values have literally quadrupled--
motels and hotels are completely full.
People who are renting their houses at $300 a month are
now wanting them at 12, 15, 16 hundred dollars a month,
because of all the people flooding in.
So there are definitely some economic benefits to going into
oil fracking.
At the same time however the Delaware River Basin Committee,
which is in charge of like a valley located in
a forest state group.
It's being sued by the New York City state attorney general for
negligence, because when they agreed to allow the oil fracking
to come in, they didn't really do a lot of safety test.
They just said, well okay, this is what the oil industry said,
we're going to go ahead and take their word for it.
So they're being sued by the New York state attorney general
because he says in essence they aren't the people who live in
that river valley and that river basin into test subjects.
The committees reasoning was, "well, hey were only going to
let then drill a couple of hundred wells and if we don't
like the environmental impact, then we can just shut it down."
But what does that mean to people who have already been
affected by this?
So there's upsides, there are downsides, there is a lot of
public scrutiny going on concerning this issue because
we don't know if it's right or wrong answer at this point,
it's just that there is a lot of information.
Conclusion.
Okay, so, I just feel like I can understand why
oil fracking would be a big thing like I said.
The biggest thing would be the reduction of foreign oil.
Our country definitely needs to be able to be more dependent
upon itself and the reduction on foreign oil would really solve
a lot of political issues.
At the same time I feel like maybe we should just give it
a couple of years.
Technology in this country increases at an amazing rate and
something that is unsafe today may be completely safe by
tomorrow, or next week, or next month.
So I say hey, that oil, that gas is not going anywhere.
It's underground, it's been there for a thousand years,
it'll stay down there for a thousand more.
Lets just take the time to perfect the process, try to
remove as much of the insecurities from the public as
we can and then go after instead of trying to rush the process
and make a quick buck now, I just thing that it would
benefit us more in the long term to just take our time
and feel the process out a little more completely.
>>Gioia: For my conclusion,
just doing this paper, kind of on the same lines as him,
give it some time.
I think there needs to be more research done and learn exactly
what the effects are that they're currently using.
The chemicals that they're using to do the process.
One needs to stop being a proprietary and be publicly
released so we know may show us in the drinking water
if that's a problem.
But with that, with advancements and how fast technology moves,
I think that we can move to a process that it can be done
safely to harness that energy and hopefully some economically
depressed areas can reap the benefits for that.
>> Bice: How many of you have actually
heard of fracking before tonight?
I hadn't, before I started doing my research,
heard anything about it really.
I knew that we harvested the oil but I really
didn't know anything about the methods of it.
To me, it's America's little unspoken secret.
They really have hidden the details of it from
public scrutiny; a lot of it.
But realistically, would knowing solve the deeper issue of the
fact that we need the oil.
I mean, one way or the other--unless something changed
so that we are more energy efficient, that we're using more
sustainable methods--we still need that oil to get to work.
We need to have ways of doing that and if we're relying too
heavily on international global sources,
than we're depriving our own nations.
So you've got both hands in and I mean,
one way or the other, the base problem would need to be fixed.
We would need to be more sustainable in order to fix
the symptom.
>> Canas: Just like Teresa,
I am on the same page with her.
I agree that we need the oil now.
We need to start digging now getting that oil, because we are
depending too much on the oil that comes from Venezuela.
Hugo Chavez is telling us that he is pretty much threatening
us, if we don't do certain types of things,
then he pretty much has got us by the neck.
But I agree that there are some safety issues with the drinking
water just like Mike was saying but these companies
are digging pretty deep in the ground so I think we'll be fine
and it also turns into a political issue too.
Depending which party wins this time, that's how they are going
to play it out, so, thank you.
[applause].
>> Dr. Wafeek Wahby: Any questions?
Yes?
>> male voice: So we have something
underneath the area here called the Mahomet [unclear dialogue]
Aquifer that gives us all our fresh drinking water.
There is this huge underground river, how would each of you
feel if they were fracking around here?
>>Gioia: Well like I said,
I would hope they test extensively and keep testing.
I spent a couple years up in Massachusetts in the
[unclear dialogue] area and there's a movie about
how a company there was dumping wastewater
that ended up in the drinking water
that caused large amounts of cancer for that area.
I don't think I'd be that comfortable with it right now,
just with the fact that the chemicals are--
we don't know exactly what chemicals they do use.
One percent sounds not like a whole lot but again
it's all relative in perspective
just like the presentation we had by the professor.
One percent is actually like 25--it's 25 or 250,000 gallons
of those chemicals, it's a lot actually, because they use
a lot of water and sand also, it's a big area.
>> Howery: When I was younger,
I grew up in the country, Hopkins Park,
east of Kankakee County and we actually had a well
and as a kid we would go out there
and we'd pump the handle and we'd bring the water up
and we'd drink it and we'd run around and play, get thirsty
and we'd go back to it again.
So as an adult, I think I would pretty bothered at the thought
of this process going on near the underground drinking source
because I can remember pulling water up from that well
and how would I be living right now if I had been drinking
contaminated water-- would I be alive,
would I be having whatever health problems.
I don't know.
So I just feel like, until we can work on this process
a little more to perfect it, I would just prefer not to
be anywhere near it.
>> Dr. Wahby: Other questions?
Yes.
>> male voice: I would just like to make
an observation.
First of all I wanted to thank you guys for really,
you know, taking the veil off this topic
and really getting some of these underlying issues out.
But overall I think--and I want to know what you guys think
too--is, do you think that this is being done just because
there's money that is being made?
I don't really agree with your stance on it Rafeal,
just because of like Mark said, I would not want that,
especially with my children drinking it.
Because the research has not been extensively done and I
really don't think its going to...I'm all for reducing the
dependency on foreign oil but what I am seeing here is a lot
of foreign companies are investing in this.
So they're the one's that may be benefitting, getting the oil
and selling it back to us.
They are coming on our land buying these companies that
supply these materials and so we still have
that foreign dependency in some way, shape or form.
Foreign companies are still going to make some money.
So I guess my question is, do you think that this is really
being done because of the fact that it's available
and there's a lot of money to be made.
Or should a lot of this technology money be used
for using technology to make us less reliable on fossil fuels?
>> Rafeal: Well, you know,
what I think is that all about the money.
I mean look what happened back in 911, 2001--
why did we go to Iraq and Afghanistan.
So much oil is over there, you know,
that's the main reason for 10 years of war.
If we would have started this process earlier then
how many lives have we lost.
And just to go back to the first question, I think, Mark,
you were saying that how do we feel if they
start doing fracking over here.
And I'll just go back and turn the question to you,
when you go into a gas station, you pump gas into your car,
you want 100% gas in there--no water no nothing--just 100%.
But then what we are getting, we turn around and go to McDonalds
and we go to Hardy's and we go to Culver's or whatever---
we don't know what we put it in to so we are treating our cars
better than we are treating ourselves.
>> Dr. Wahby: Any other questions?
Were you going to say something?
>> Bice: No.
[laughter].
>> Dr. Wahby: Any other questions?
>> Rafeal: If anybody wants to see this
or take notes, I have the PowerPoint,
I will just pass it around.
>> Dr. Wahby: Okay, will you please join
with me in a round of applause for them.
[applause].