Regulation Lax as Gas Wells’ Tainted Water Hits Rivers – NYTimes.com
February 27, 2011
Regulation Lax as Gas Wells’ Tainted Water Hits Rivers – NYTimes.com.
Drilling Down
Regulation Lax as Gas Wells’ Tainted Water Hits Rivers
Wells for extracting natural gas, like these in Colorado, are a growing source of energy but can also pose hazards.
By IAN URBINA
Published: February 26, 2011
The American landscape is dotted with hundreds of thousands of new wells and drilling rigs, as the country scrambles to tap into this century’s gold rush — for natural gas.
Drilling Down
The Waste Problem
Articles in this series will examine the risks of natural-gas drilling and efforts to regulate this rapidly growing industry.
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Related
Spreadsheet: Contaminants in Samples From More Than 200 Wells (Microsoft Excel File)
Todd Heisler/The New York Times
Thousands of wells like this one outside Pittsburgh extract gas by injecting huge amounts of water.
The gas has always been there, of course, trapped deep underground in countless tiny bubbles, like frozen spills of seltzer water between thin layers of shale rock. But drilling companies have only in recent years developed techniques to unlock the enormous reserves, thought to be enough to supply the country with gas for heating buildings, generating electricity and powering vehicles for up to a hundred years.
So energy companies are clamoring to drill. And they are getting rare support from their usual sparring partners. Environmentalists say using natural gas will help slow climate change because it burns more cleanly than coal and oil. Lawmakers hail the gas as a source of jobs. They also see it as a way to wean the United States from its dependency on other countries for oil.
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