Propublica.org has been producing a series of investigative reports on fracking for months, covering both the western states and New York where the water supply to NYCity may be threatened. Go to their "most read" list and work back from there.

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The way this reads, it would appear that no effort is made by the production company to reach some agreement with the land-owners in these situations. That is an omission which, in my opinion, makes this a falsely inflammatory piece of "journalism".

First, some background: I work for Halliburton. I spend weeks and weeks at a time away from my family (a wife and five children) providing support for fracturing operations to make ends meet. I am not some faceless corporate vampire feeding off Mother Earth and lighting Cuban cigars with hundred dollar bills. I'm an average guy, and I am concerned with the impact my actions have on my neighbors and friends. I know that the entire industry as a whole has sucked in the past at making sure we conducted our business in socially responsible ways. Those days are over, and have been for some time. We spend a huge amount of money and untold man-hours every year making our environmental policies some of the strictest in the industry. We have developed numerous eco-friendly solutions for our customers, and continue to do so. We in the oil industry are not, as some seem to have been led to believe, intentionally finding the worst possible way to conduct our business and making that our policy.

On the subject of well stimulation on private land, without exception, the land-owners lease their surface land to the development company, sometimes at fairly hefty (dare I say overinflated?) fees. It is then the LEGAL responsibility of the developer--Chevron, Shell, or others--to ensure that every contract company--such as Halliburton--adheres to EPA policies. If you are interested in understanding what hydraulic fracturing is all about and why it is necessary, you can get a good bit of information from Leonardo Maugeri's informative article in the October 2009 Scientific American. I don't have space to go into it here.

My opinion is that any person who is made ill from frac fluids getting into the water table should be fully taken care of by the developing company and the contract company that caused the issue. It is our responsibility to set things right. However, it should be noted that those instances are less frequent now than they were in the past. We expend enormous resources to ensure that our fluids do not enter people's drinking water, but unfortunately, accidents still happen. Should we do away with the airlines because occasionally a plane crashes? What about all the people who are maimed or killed in car accidents? Should we ban cars?

I don't like the fact that the world is dependent on oil and gas any more than anyone else. I would love for another viable energy source to present itself, but our current technology is insufficient to the task. Until our need for hydrocarbons ceases, fracturing will continue to be an integral part of providing the energy you need to heat your homes, power your vehicles, and cook your food.

Fracking kills - lets get the frack out of there.

But I could be wrong !

Give me a brake. Without the money from our mineral rights, we might lose our family farm. If those families bought land without knowing who owns the minerals than it's their fault.

In many parts of Texas and Okla the ground water has been contaminated by the 'oil patch' for decades. The industry has never had the environment as a primary concern, for many reasons; but they all are money centered, and controlled by the members of the Plutocratic Oligarchy. The former presidents, and "war Criminals"; GHW Bush, and GW Bush were members of the Plutocratic Oligarchy who were at the head of many of the corporations that are directly responsible yet are not held responsible, for any of their actions.
When more people, whatever political 'leaning' they may adhere to stand up against the corporations that are deciding their futures there will be little or no change.
When they all realize that the water under a Republicans land that is polluted beyond use, the same would apply to a Democrats or any other determining factor. With the corporate profit margin as primary motivation their decision making process follows certain guidlines. When the corporations are held responsible and forced to 'part with much of that profit', when they harm others while obtaining it; it tends to make their decision making process 'follow a different path'.
Then who knows, after the corporations are forced to show responsibility for their actions; the US Government may be the next in line.

"If the USA were another nation the USA would invade the USA to keep the world safe; and they would be justified."

Indicative of the wrenching deep change that our culture and consciousness need, if we are to meet the challenge of living in harmony with the living Earth.

Probably too late, looking at the trends...

Before the present fracking methods were developed, the certifiably mad scientists of the old Atomic Energy Commission, many of whom had been part of the Manhattan Project which developed nuclear weapons, proposed a set of plans to demonstate the "peaceful" uses of nuclear explosives--their preferred term for the bombs to be used. It was called the Plowshares Project from the Biblical term for beating weapons into plows and included plans for developing the deep tight dispersed gas deposits that exist over a vast area of the US Southwest by "fracking" the formations with the explosive power of an atomic bomb. Other Plowshare plans included blasting shut the Straits of Gibraltar to separate the Mediterranean from the Atlantic with the supposed result that the waters of the Mediterranean would desalinate via dilution from the river waters flowing in and no longer mix with the Atlantic. Soon, in the lifetime of living humans, not geologic time, the water would be fresh enough to be used to irrigate the deserts of North Africa into lush productivity. Another plan was to blast a new, wider, deeper Central America canal across Nicaragua to thus accomodate super tankers and aircraft carriers.

For the "nuclear gas stimulation program", two actual underground tests were conducted. In Garfield County, Colorado, where the "Split Estate" film is set. The first was a 43 kiloton bomb exploded on September 10, 1969 at a depth of 8426 feet producing a 5.5 Richter scale earthquake. The AEC and the cooperating corporations said that if the test was successful, they would move forward to fully develop the gas field of western Garfield County by setting off 100 or more underground fracking blasts. Concerns that any resultant gas would be radioactive were brushed aside with glib reassurances about diluting it in the normal natural gas supply. When results from the first test tagged "Project Rulison" were disappointing, they went 50 miles north and in 1973 detonated three 30 kiloton bombs in a vertical stack, hoping to achieve a larger fracture zone, named Project Rio Blanco.

In the publicity for the nuclear gas stimuatlion program, the AEC claimed that they could develop 73 trillion cubic feet of new natural gas supply. David Evans, then director of the Potential Gas Agency at the Colorado School of Mines, then did some calculations showing that they were projecting 12,000 to 13,000 underground nuclear blasts over a vast area of the US Southwest and asked what the consequences of such literally earth quaking and shattering would be on underground water, bridges, dams, and structures, landslides and many other "collateral" damages. These questions seemed unimportant to the men who had developed a "toy" that could instantly incinerate a whole city, just as the present US military machine remains generally unconcerned with the collateral damage it inflicts on the unfortunate people whose lives and livelihood are devastated by high tech warfare.
And today the proponents of fracking as well are little concerned with the dire effects they produce on the environment and communities. Resources and profits, first, last and always.

Readers and activists in the NE US Marcellus shale region would do well to use the "Split Estate" film in their citizen education efforts. If the water sources of the vast urban populations of the NE US are contaminated with the secret toxic brews used by today's fracking technologies, another spike will join the many questions of ongoing human habitation of a vast area.

I'm glad there's a documentary on this, I'll make sure the groups I know host screenings.

This one of the inevitable outcomes of allowing a distant Corporation to own a local resource.

The Companies and shareholders that grow rich off the exploitation of the same do not have to live with the consequences.