Growing Irrigation Concern - Oily Water

Central Valley's growing concern: Crops raised with oil field water

Here  in California's thirsty farm belt, where pumpjacks nod amid neat rows of crops, it's a proposition that seems to make sense: using treated oil field wastewater to irrigate crops.

Oil giant Chevron recycles 21 million gallons of that water each day and sells it to farmers who use it on about 45,000 acres of crops, about 10% of Kern County's farmland.

State and local officials praise the 2-decade-old program as a national model for coping with the region's water shortages. As California's four-year drought lingers and authorities scramble to conserve every drop, agricultural officials have said that more companies are seeking permits to begin similar programs. The heightened interest in recycling oil field wastewater has raised concern over the adequacy of safety measures in place to prevent contamination from toxic oil production chemicals. Read More.

Not Salad Oil

New Donnie Brasco: Pacino Says "For Frack About It"

Sometimes Donnie it just means:
 " For frack about it"

Fracking the USA: New Map Shows 1 Million Oil, Gas Wells

 

 By Bobby Magill

(Climate Central) – If you’re wondering where oil and gas production and hydraulic fracturing are happening near you, FracTracker has a new mapping tool that will help you find out.

Researchers at FracTracker, an independent oil and gas research group that started as a mapping project at the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Healthy Environments and Communities, analyzed oil and gas well location data for all 50 states and created a map showing where most of those wells are, including wells that have been fracked and those that haven’t.

Fracking is the energy industry’s practice of injecting water, sand and chemicals deep underground at high pressure to extract crude oil and natural gas from dense rock formations. It’s controversial because of its not-fully-determined affect on public health and the environment. The fossil fuel produced by way of fracking contributes to climate change through the burning of crude oil and possible leaks of methane and other gas emissions from oil and natural gas production equipment and distribution pipelines.

Using data available from individual state governments, FracTracker researchers counted more than 1.1 million active oil and gas wells across 36 states. The group published most of the raw well location data on its website and mapped them. The result is an interactive map showing generally where you’ll find oil and gas wells, fracked or not, and the oil and gas basins where wells could be drilled in the future.

The glaring exception to this is the state where you’ll find the highest concentration of oil and gas wells in the country — Texas.

Read More


Fom Pacino to the Beach Boys - fracking covers all the bases. New hits like "Fracking USA" are swamping the Billboard charts. 

We could go on and on evaluating this topic from all sides based on hard information, opinions, speculations and outright propaganda. it is not imagined that another rehashing would be useful at this stage.

So instead of following that path again, we will ask one simple question; "what happens when all this fracking is over?"

" For frack about it Donnie"

Dr Peter G Kinesa
April 1, 2014