Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Les Bamburg on June 26, 2010 at 19:40

Ok I just finished watching Gasland for myself. Unfortunately it was a "documentary" that was extremely short on facts and long on sensationalism. Actually let me take that back - it was long on JF's droning on in a monotone commentary. One hint about JF's position was when he said can't we just forget all drilling and get a solar panel. I did find it ironic that he talked about drilling destroying the scenic views and then shows lines of giant wind turbines in the closing credits.

I would have had to take notes to list all the distortions & mis-statements (lies) but here are some that come to mind.

- Stating that all wells can be "re-frac'ed" 18 times during the well live.
- Saying that one-third of all natural gas passes thru the Henry Hub
- Showing pictures of large treating plants or gas processing plants and saying that each individual well would have similar equipment
- Repeatly showing a map that showed gas shale formations covering almost all the US
- Wilma's statement about the tanks all along the Gulf Coast being full of drill mud and that all these toxic chemicals had been spread by the Katrina storm surge along the Gulf Coast from Texas to Florida.
- Always showing "wells" with a drilling rig on location which implies the rig is always there
- Saying that hydraulic fracturing only started after the 2005 Halliburton "loophole"
- Stating the state of Texas had no idea how many wells were being drilled in the Barnett Shale
- Implying that all natural gas drilling is to shale formations with frac'ing
- Implying that all issues with drinking water are related to shale gas drilling

JF would have us believe he is only concerned about the environment. I say JF knows how to make a fast buck by making a film on the cheap and selling it to HBO. Or just maybe he had some nice under the table money from the coal industry. This is NIMBYISM at its greatest. No one was concerned about gas drilling when it was primarily in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, etc but now that it appears to be spreading to the Northeast it has become a big concern.

Permalink Reply by Les Bamburg on June 26, 2010 at 19:49

Oh, I forgot to mention - when I saw Texas Sharon in the credits I knew we were doomed!!

Permalink Reply by essay on June 27, 2010 at 3:52

did someone say doom? the doctor is IN

i heard he was an uncredited adviser to mr. fox, who knows for sure, as neither one of them will return my phone calls or emails.

Permalink Reply by Les Bamburg on June 27, 2010 at 6:56

Essay, thanks for the injection of some fun. Yes - this movie was all doom & gloom (depressing) in stark contrast to the upbeat and balanced tone of "Haynesville".

"Drill The Shale"

"Gas Factory"

"The Blue Bridge to a Green Future"

Note - All rights to Drill The Shale are patented and controlled by Jffree1.

Permalink Reply by essay on June 27, 2010 at 15:39

well i try, this thread is pretty much a laugh to keep from crying kind of thing, lots of depressing stuff going on in the world right now and we don't need crap like this scaring the bajebus out of people for no good reason.

Permalink Reply by sesport on June 27, 2010 at 19:57

Les - And wouldn't ya know it would hit a theater near everyone at the same darned time as that nasty goo hit the gulf. Geez, talk about bad timing.

Methinks the public already has the carp scared outta them.

80)

Permalink Reply by essay on June 28, 2010 at 3:07

notice i said "good" reason. i even came back and edited that part in when i realized that i had left you an opening to tie the movie back to the spill. you're extremely predictable.

parse parse parse.

Permalink Reply by sesport on June 28, 2010 at 8:04

Here, that mask has me in the mood for a tragic ballad. LOL!

"When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,
And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat" (Noyes)

Permalink Reply by Mac Davis on June 27, 2010 at 9:07

The real tragedy here is that BS like GASland obscures and trivializes the legitimate concerns about the downside of the O&G business.

When someone tries to bring up a legitimate concern about something the O&G business is doing wrong, they get lumped in with the tinfoil hat crowd. Imagine if you're in a hearing about O&G and you're trying to bring up some well reasoned concern like damage to your street from overweight vehicles and the previous 5 people objecting have been conspiracy nuts shouting about how the government is putting drugs in the drinking water and spraying chemtrails in the sky, cancer from cell phones, etc.

Sometimes, I wonder if the tinfoil hat crowd isn't actually spurred on by whatever industry they're trying to attack. If you can make the opposition look like fools, you may be able to marginalize your legitimate critics.

Permalink Reply by sesport on June 27, 2010 at 9:25

Mac - The hilarious thing to me is that it MAY be presumed that I've seen GASland. Sorry to disappoint some, nope, I haven't. I have seen "Haynesville," though.

Me, I'm just voicing legit concerns based on what's happened around here recently. There have been blow-outs where folks were displaced, rig workers injured and/or killed. Someone did lose a herd of cattle. A neighborhood the radius of 2 miles had to be evacuated. Hey, I'm not making this stuff up, and I'm not exaggerating.

And the industry shills say, "The workers and/or widows will be compensated, they knew the risks. The folks displaced are just envious & bitter because they probably don't own minerals. The rancher was compensated for the loss of cattle, the company fined (although the $$$ amount was probably nothing more than lunch money to them). The neighborhood evacuees were put up in hotels, provided with drinking water." These are lives interrupted, in some instances most tragically, by these incidents.

Is there anything wrong with taking precautions? Lord knows the taxpayers expect utmost precautions in my profession, why shouldn't industry be held to the same standard?

Again, I'm all for the bennies of drilling & producing on the condition that the risk factors are as low as possible and we don't end up looking like Detroit.

Okay, send the monkey back in to make the usual personal attack.

lol, 80)

Permalink Reply by Mac Davis on June 27, 2010 at 11:30

Nothing wrong with taking precautions. The trick is to take precautions against the real problems, not the fantasy problems like fracing polluting the groundwater.

Yes, any liquids accidentally flowing out of a well site are probably bad to drink. Fluids shouldn't be allowed to flow out of a well site. If they do, you shouldn't drink them or let your livestock drink them either.

Yes, blowouts can happen. It's a bad thing when they do. Salt water trucks can run over innocent people. Workers do get killed in oil rig accidents. Pipelines can leak and cause explosions.

Maybe one day, a drilling rig will puncture some underground strata and bring up some ancient bacteria that will make the black death look like the common cold. Maybe they'll dig up John Carpenter's The Thing and it will assimilate humanity. Maybe letting the gas out of the ground will cause the North American tectonic plate to crack, dropping everything east of the Mississippi into the Atlantic.

People will die exploiting the Haynesville shale. People will die building solar power installations. People will electrocute themselves because their homes are wired for electricity. People will die because there was something wrong with the food they ate. People will die in car accidents because they decided to go visit Grandma. We take chances in most of the things we do.

We need to evaluate the risks based on facts and logic, not on sensationalist films made by Michael Moore wannabe's. We should not evaluate the risks based on what the O&G industry says, either.

Permalink Reply by Two Dogs, Pirate on June 27, 2010 at 12:54

All grandmaws are dead and Two Dogs is grasping for breath in the saga of life.

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