Fracking, The New Wunderkind

Wunderkind, noun: wunderkind; plural noun: wunderkinds; plural noun: wunderkinder

1. a person who achieves great success when relatively young. 

Fracking is not exactly young, having been around for more than 60 years, I guess, but it has achieved success beyond one's wildest dreams.

There will be a lot of articles written about the supposed risks of fracking and politicians will get a lot of money and support from activists trying to slow/stop fracking, but that will all be on the margins.

It turns out, surprisingly enough, fracking is sort of like a bell curve. Seventy-five percent of fracking is about the current oil and natural gas boom in the US. To the left of the middle of that bell curve are the activists who are trying to shut the boom down.

The question is, what is at the right? It turns out that forces even much more powerful (and surprising) than the activists to the far left are the innovators and entrepreneurs at the far right.

From Scientific American, July, 2013 (it was in the August, 2013, print edition), an overlooked, short, little article, it turns out that the US Department of Energy is looking into using fracking to unleash geothermal energy.

Cool. Ah, yes, the war is won; fill my glass high, the time has come ...

Yellow River, Christie  

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Generally speaking, Bakken crude oil shipped by rail does not erupt into balls of fire if the tank cars don't leave the rails....

Updates

May 20, 2014: again the obvious:

• Bakken crude oil is similar to other North American light, sweet grades and does not pose a greater rail transportation risk than other transportation fuels, according to a report compiled for a North Dakota energy producers lobby group.
• The study shows Bakken crude is more volatile than heavier oils such as from Canada’s tar sands, but is similar to light crudes produced elsewhere in the U.S., with characteristics that fall well within the margin of safety for the current tank car fleet.
• The oil producers' study follows a report with similar results issued last week by a refining industry group.

The reason for increased explosions? Increased derailments. The reason for increased derailments? Increased CBR.

Original Post

Confirming the obvious, and something I've point out from the beginning, SeekingAlpha is reporting:

Oil and refining companies say it's mostly the railroads that are at fault: a probe into the derailment and explosion of a train in Lac-Megantic last year found that brakes weren’t applied correctly; a train that exploded in North Dakota in December crashed into a train that had derailed across the tracks; and the April explosion of a train carrying Bakken crude through Lynchburg, VA, may have been caused because sections of the track bed had been washed away by heavy rains.

By the way, whenever the mainstream media talks about this issue, they use boilerplate "... series of recent accidents..." and then can only come up with three CBR mishaps over the course of several years (since 2009 when CBR first began in the Bakken), and deaths due to CBR in only one case -- when the engineer failed to set the brake. I could be wrong, but I believe CBR is less dangerous than chlorine shipments. Even Ted Kennedy learned that bad things happen when you don't brake at the end of a bridge.