Water, Fracking, and Myths

Updates

August 28, 2012: this is the second part of that 2-part series by the Dickinson Press. This is one of the reasons why I support WAWS and have concerns with independents. 

August 26, 2012: The article is all over the place but if you take the time, you might be able to put together the water story posted by The Dickinson Press/InsideCimate News.  For newbies, water per se is not an issue in the Bakken: hauling water, cost of water, and greed, are the problems, but there is more water than necessary to frack wells in the Bakken. It appears that something less than 3,000 wells will be fracked yearly; the US Army Corps of Engineers promised enough water from the Missouri River for 10,000 wells/year (whether they keep that promise or not is another issue).

One inch of water drawn from Lake Sakakawea contains 10 billion gallons of water — enough to drill 5,000 wells using an average of 2 million gallons of water, according to state calculations.

One inch of water from Lake Sakakawea would more than meet the needs of twice the number of wells projected to be fracked in any given year.

One other data point:

"... a thriving market for water that has become an industry with yearly sales estimated at between $45 million to $120 million."

One well costs $10 million to complete; about 200 wells/month are being drilled in the Bakken. The cost of only 12 of those wells in one month alone works out to $120 million; or another way, the dollars it costs to complete one well per month (out of 200 wells) is all that water is costing. The volume of water is even less when put into perspective (see original post and go to link).

It must have been a slow news day. It's hard for me to believe WAWS is still an issue. One word: greed.

Original Post

If you don't do anything else this weekend while surfing the net, visit this site to see a great graphic on how much water is used to frack a typical Marcellus shale gas well. It's absolutely horrendous. When you get to the link, scroll down until you see the graphic on "How Much Water Does a Shale Gas Well Use."

It's shocking. Shocking, I say.

By they way, if you google the question, "how much water does a shale gas well use," the hits all use the same analogy but only tell the first half of the story. Thank goodness for the internet.

The link was provided by Independent Stock Analysis.