Revolution Watch---Fracking for Goodies

Up until recently, I had only read about fracking wells that have begun to crop up all over the west, mostly the west. Like everybody, I had seen aerial shots of vast tracts of land honeycombed with pads and connecting roads. It didn't take an ecological environmentalist to recognize that landscape was being altered.

Not long ago while on the road to Colorado, we began seeing these new wells cropping up where we had never seen them before, lots of them. While we had seen drilling rigs when we lived there, and yes we even had them in Elbert county where I was some sort of two-bit politician, never had I seen such monsters. The amount of gear was astounding and it certainly left no doubt why these things cost many millions of dollars. Tank truck after tank truck brought in various liquids to shoot down the bore holes at great pressure. They were, from a technological point of view impressive.

While some are cheering their arrival, it would seem a bit odd for all the joy in that the burning of hydrocarbons is proving to possibly be our undoing. Ya, we get more energy and that will drive the system, but at what cost?

 Right off, I find myself asking a couple of questions. These things are able to squeak huge amounts of gas, oil and condensates out of the this tight shale, like get most of it. It seems a bit strange to me that we should work so hard at getting all of it so quickly. Are we going to leave any of it for future generations? It will clearly not last forever.

The odd thing about these wells is the decline very quickly,  up to 80% in two years. That goes for all types of wells. Now, if they heavily drill all the sweet spots first, which they are doing in the Bakken and Eagle Ford, and they are cleaned out in 2-3 years will they not have to move out to the peripheral holdings and then drill more and more wells just to produce the same amount. No wonder they are talking about the Red Queen affect. They have to drill faster and faster all the time just to stay even. Independent analyst don't think these beast will ever increase our net energy production by more than 1.5 million barrels a day. Whoopee! We use 19 M/b/d  now.

During all this we keep hearing that because of this fracking we will be energy independent. What? It is mind boggling to me how the American people can be so easily duped into thinking this means anything. It does not bode well for the Sustainable Revolution. The longer we get duped, the harder will be the news when we are told to back off consumption as the stuff runs out. Humans are idiots.