KaiB said:
Gasoline also contains benzene and hundreds of thousands of Underground Storage Tanks have leaked. In most cases, the impact is benign. I have personally been directly involved in hundreds of these cases, as well as about 50 oilfield environmental cases, and can tell the stories as well as anyone can.
While there can be no doubt that practices in the oil and gas industry over the past 75 years or so have indeed created environmental issues, current regulations and modern practices have curtailed almost all negative impact.
Horror stories abound; but an honest look will reveal to the observer that two sides to every story do in fact exist.
KaiB,
Your second paragraph statement above is a joke and sounds just like every other statement about the negative affects and impact of oil and gas, when made by OIL and GAS!! You and I both KNOW that's HOGWASH!!. Yes, there are two sides to every story, and for way too long now, oil and gas has been able to cover up the truth and lie to the public. They do this through BIG MONEY!! Money buys many things, including some newspaper people, TV news people, legislators, local politicians, etc. You have one heck of a nerve coming in here and making any statement that most oil and gas companies care about ANYTHING, especially what regs are on the books regarding safety of the public's heath etc. They care about only ONE thing and that's making the almighty buck!! They care NOTHING about the people, with VERY few exceptions!!
First of all, they ( oil and gas) don't follow a lot of the regs they have on the books, because they don't have to. The regs are there all right, but THEY ARE NOT FOLLOWED!! No one is checking and the RRC section head admitted in our second hearing, UNDER OATH, that they don't have the manpower to check and must take the applicant's word for the truth on any application for an injection well that they receive. THAT ALONE is breaking their own regs, as their regs say they are to visually have an RRC field rep check all sites PRIOR to EVEN BEGINNING considering an application for an injection well. As it sits now, if there is no protest letter received within the 15 day protest period, the application is AUTOMATICALLY administratively approved, without an RRC rep ever inspecting the site AT ANY TIME!!
Oh, and also as per sworn testimony of RRC personel, no one checks as these injection wells are operating either, because there aren't enough RRC field reps. Want to guess how the RRC keeps track of just how much is injected into each well, each day, month and year? The operator (the oil and gas company) submits a written report each month, at the end of the month, as to what and how much liquid toxic waste was injected into that injection well.
Now, let's say $.80 per barrel is what the operator gets paid for every barrel of liquid toxic waste they inject into their injection well, and they're only supposed to inject 20,000 BARRELS PER DAY, but they KNOW that no one checks on that, except for what records THEY TURN IN, and they can easily inject 40,000 BARRELS PER DAY and double their money income daily and never get caught. I don't know about the rest of the folks reading this, but me personally, I already feel really safe because I know those oil and gas boys have ONLY the public's best interest, health and welfare, at heart and wouldn't do anything like that!! ( I almost can't type anymore because of the tears in my eyes from laughing so hard over that one!!)
Oh, and you're right in that the RRC people do come out and check things, BUT only AFTER a problem arises and is reported by someone in the public. At that point, the barn door is opened and the horse already ran out!! It's TOO LATE!! Otherwise, if they can, they cover it up and say nothing to anyone!
No my friend, what you're trying to spin is simply not true and Thank God the Texas public is no longer satisfied with just the word of oil and gas. Just check out Chico,Texas, Boyd, Texas, and again Panola County Texas as examples of that toxic liquid toxic waste coming to the surface from injection wells, poluting private water wells, and streams and those injection wells being shut down, AFTER they were approved to operate by the RRC.
You talk about Benzene as though it wasn't much to worry about. I'll just bet that you wouldn't want ANY CHANCE at all of it being in the water your family is drinking! It's very dangerous and you and I both know it!! Now add in there the other 27 or so types of toxic wastes in that liquid toxic waste in injection wells and you've really got a drinking cocktail that can kill and cause cancer along with many other health problems!
The time in which that "Oil and Gas Spin" of it all being "safe", being blindly believed, just because they say so, is now over and it's time for that industry to act in a responsible manner for present and future generations of Texans and the citizens of the United States in general. They have the technology to STOP wasting millions of gallons of fresh water for drilling and fracing, and you and I both know that too! They can recover about 85% of used water( liquid toxic waste) to use again, through a process called desalinization, but it's more expensive than just injecting it into the ground, and they just don't want to have to spend that extra money. They would save millions of gallons of fresh water, keep our groundwater safe, and help protect the public health, but they might make a million or two less a year, so they fight the desalinization process idea. It can be done, and Devon Energy is proving it, by using that process now with some of it's liquid toxic waste from drilling! Devon, and righfully so, even brags about it in newspaper articles!! They see the handwriting on the wall with all the truth that's been coming out in the last two years about the dangers of these injection wells. The rest of the industry better smarten up too in that regard!!
Once the public learns the truth, they are infuriated about it and the dangers they, their children, and grandchildren have been/will be exposed to!! Changes will be made, because the public will force those changes to be made, by several ways!!
