Will This Be The Smoking Gun to Regulate Fracking? Fracking, Benzene, the EPA, Wyoming, And All That Jazz

Updates

September 29, 2012: USGS report shows no evidence linking hydraulic fracturing to water -- Encana

Original Post

Benzene levels are almost nil in water sampling around fracking site in Wyoming -- the most recent data:

Benzene is a hydrocarbon commonly associated with oil and gas development. Last year's testing by the EPA showed benzene at almost 50 times the recommended EPA limit. The new data released Wednesday by the U.S. Geological Survey show benzene at 3 percent of the recommended EPA limit.

But no one is willing to "really" comment on the findings. Test after test, year after year, nothing to show that fracking is an issue, but this test -- benzene at 3 percent of the recommended EPA limit. If I'm reading that correctly, the study seems to suggest that if the EPA allows up to 100 units of benzene in a given sample, only three units are showing up.

The fact that neither side is willing to "really" comment on this suggests that the EPA will continue to test until they get the results they want.

I wonder how Dimock, Pennsylvania, is doing these days? But I digress.

But back to the benzene story. A cut and paste from the article:

Benzene is not among the chemicals the EPA pointed to last year in making the link to hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking.

"...making the link." What link? Any college chemistry student is seeing where this is leading. Unlike hydrocarbons which have a "fingerprint" which rules in / rules out the source of a contaminant, benzene, a simple C6H6 molecule has no identifying "fingerprint." So, I guess another way to look at this is "guilt by association" but with 3% of EPA recommended limits, there's not even an association, must less a link.

And here the same story in the WSJ; EPA using results to say fracking is a problem. Encana dismisses EPA statement; says the results have not been vetted by outside source.

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On another note, I have to chuckle. I get a lot of criticism when I post non-Bakken articles, but the vast majority of comments I get are to posts about non-Bakken issues. And that's one reason (but not the "real" reason) why I post them.  I don't post most of those comments that criticize the blog (the comments are generally poorly written, lots of misspellings, bad grammar, and language that I prefer not to see anywhere, much less on the blog). But riding around Boston this evening, I "mused" over the Rigzone article I posted earlier: Musings: Energy, Unemployment, and the Health of the US Economy.

It starts out:

Most people are aware of President Barack Obama's "all-of-the-above" energy strategy, which provides a number of popular talking points about him being open to all forms of energy while campaigning, but in reality means only a few energy sources will be favored. Those favored energy sources seem to be only "green" ones. 

On the other side of the issue is the Republican standard-bearer, Mitt Romney, who is advocating for increased development and use of domestic fossil fuel resources while mandating that very expensive green energy sources need to achieve commerciality on their own and without government mandates and subsidies. America's domestic oil and gas production is growing dramatically suggesting to some students of the energy business that the country is on track to eventually achieve self-sufficiency. 

The definition of self-sufficiency seems to mean different things to different people, but on balance it suggests the U.S. will be importing significantly less energy than in the recent past and may actually begin exporting meaningful energy volumes assuming government regulatory barriers are removed and no new ones erected. Just how much energy the country may wind up exporting is an open question, since it depends on the growth of our productive output, our increased consumption and legal barriers being lowered. The answer to the question of how much energy consumption may grow is tied to the economic outlook. 

A key ingredient for predicting the economy's growth rate lies in understanding how the health of our labor market will influence future activity. The traditional measure of the labor market's health is the unemployment rate, which, following the latest monthly employment report showed the U.S. economy with 12.5 million unemployed workers, or an 8.1 percent unemployment rate. Despite the high rate, the unemployment rate for August improved by two-tenths of one percentage point from what was reported in July. 

Compared to a year ago, the unemployment rate has declined by one full percentage point, but part of the improvement is a reflection of changes within the dynamics of the American labor force combined with some private sector employment growth. We will examine some of these labor force dynamics later in this article.

The conclusions may surprise you. Go  to the link and read the entire article.  But I love the opening paragraph: the president's "all-the-above" menu includes only those energy sources he favors.