Porter Ranch Los Angeleses: A Case Study

McGraw describes several of the numerous incidents of air and water pollution that occurred directly from the fracking. Methane, a colorless and odorless greenhouse gas that is known to trap radiation, leaked several times in Susquehanna. Not only were water supplies contaminated by chemicals, but fracking can often lead to droughts as the oil companies draw water for the hydraulic fracturing. Some people have found so much gas in their water that it could be set on fire. Methane can have harmful long-term effects from

The Ventura County fire department is reporting that 700 barrels of crude oil, approximately 29,000 gallons, were spilled from a pipeline in southern California. At 5:30 A.M. PST the leak was spotted, flowing towards a beach nearby. The Los Angeles times reports that officials are relying on a natural catch basin, that exists in the area, to capture the oil while crews work on building bigger barriers.

In December 2011, the federal Environmental Protection Agency concluded that fracking operations could be responsible for groundwater pollution.“Today’s methods make gas drilling a filthy business. You know it’s bad when nearby residents can light the water coming out of their tap on fire,” says Larry Schweiger, president of the National Wildlife Federation. What’s causing the fire is the methane from the drilling operations. A ProPublica investigation in 2009 revealed methane contamination was widespread in drinking water in areas around fracking operations in Colorado, Texas, Wyoming, and Pennsylvania. The presence of methane in drinking water in Dimock, Pa., had become the focal point for Josh Fox’s investigative documentary, Gasland, which received an Academy Award nomination in 2011 for Outstanding Documentary; Fox also received an Emmy for non-fiction directing. Fox’s interest in fracking intensified when a natural gas company offered $100,000 for mineral rights on property his family owned in Milanville, in the extreme northeast part of Pennsylvania, about 60 miles east of Dimock.

“In addition to carbon pollution, fracking exploits massive amounts of methane pollution, which drive global climate change. Methane warms the climate approximately 80 times more than the equivalent of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.” This is a big problem which needs to

Not only is breathing in the methane fumes a risk to health, but also methane is flammable. In Wyoming, a leaking methane gas well burst into flames, swaying the views of several individuals (Lavelle 109). Since this well not only leaked methane but also natural gas, this fire quickly expanded and burned a large flame. This fire lasted for months until the firefighters were finally able to put it out. Copious amounts of individuals became forced to evacuate and eventually, their homes would be engulfed in the flames. Another fire broke out, but this time it was located in a home. A family in Colorado, who lived near a fracking well were enjoying supper (Lavelle 109). Shortly after supper concluded the mother turned on the sink to wash

The most dangerous consequence of fracking is that hundreds of chemicals are blasted into the Earth’s crust, which creates cracks in the bedrock. Many times, these cracks lead to an aquifer, in which case, all of the water in the aquifer becomes contaminated with these chemicals (Jackson, 2014). Additionally, when the natural gas is being pumped out of the wells, methane is released into the atmosphere. A study conducted by NOAA found that approximately 4% of the methane is being released into the atmosphere. This same study found that methane pollution increases climate changes because it traps heat in the atmosphere 25 times more than carbon dioxide (Hoffman, 2016). Furthermore, fracking waste wells are the primary cause of the increase of earthquakes in the Central U.S. This is because these wells operate for a longer period of time, which means that they inject more “solid ‘cake’” into the Earth than the actual fracking process (USGS, n.d. and StateImpact, 2017). Finally, recent studies have found that people who live near a fracking site are at higher risk to develop respiratory problems, which is due to the increased levels of pollutants. These pollutants are not only affecting the people who live in close proximity to these sites, but to the workers, as well. The most common type of respiratory problem reported was lung

Fracking is short for hydraulic fracturing, a type of drilling used by oil companies to tap the valuable oil veins located miles below the earth’s surface. Fracking has been the subject of discussion for some time now, not necessarily for its effectiveness, but for its effect on the environment. Fracking has been known to release methane gas into the atmosphere; methane gas is a greenhouse gas and along with gasses like CO2 is one of the gasses that contributes to the warming of the planet. In Louis W. Allstadt’s article “Fracking Contributes to Global Warming” he states that, “methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas in the short term-less

The Southern California natural gas leak was the biggest of its kind in U.S. history. This natural gas leak was pumping out enough methane to fill a balloon the size of the Rose Bowl every day until utility workers discovered it and charily patched it up with cement. According to the first study of the accident published in the journal Science, more than 100,000 tons of methane which is a powerful greenhouse gas that has 25 times the warming energy of carbon dioxide had been releasing itself into the world from a natural gas well in Aliso Canyon for 112 days without anyone even knowing. This gas leak accident was unnoticed for so long that its effects on Earth were and will continue to be detrimental as methane then turns into carbon dioxide

Hydraulic fracturing has numerous negative effects on Oklahoma. A nearly unavoidable byproduct of fracking that cannot be ignored is the pollution that stems from it. During the fracking process, a portion of the methane produced, which is shown to trap heat twenty-five times more effectively than carbon dioxide, another common greenhouse gas, escapes into the atmosphere as it is brought to the surface (Hoffman). Studies conducted in Weld County, Colorado, which has a comparable number of fracking wells to many places in Oklahoma; show that this loose methane is the equivalent of the carbon emissions of nearly three million cars (Hoffman). Furthermore, fracking has been shown to release large amounts of nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide into the air, which are two of the main components of smog (Hoffman). Even in places such as

One thing that most reasonable people should be able to agree upon is that 620 million tonnes of methane released into the atmosphere

‘Methane’ is the primary source of natural gas and the methane settlement found in coal seams is called ‘Coal Bed Methane’ a.k.a. CBM. Unlike conventional sources of energy, the extraction mechanism of CBM is very unique. Earlier methane used to be extracted through biological processes like Methanogenesis by formation of microbes, or a thermal processes where as wells are drilled deeper into the coal seam the temperature rises steeply and as a result thermogenic gas is created from buried organic material. The latest extraction technology uses water pumped from wells drilled into the coal seam thereby depreassurising the water held in the seam and results in the free flow of methane gas which is pipped and marketed. This technology grabbed popularity among energy traders and geophysicists and was considered as an ‘eco-friendly’ technique of CBM extraction unlike other extraction processes which required mining or combustion of coal. Though in comparison, this hydraulic technique is not as polluting as mining or combustion, the water which is produced from such operation can contain harmful and hazardous radio active material from the earth, thus if not regulated and discharged in a safe and proper manner it could pose extreme

On October 23, 2015 a massive release of natural gas from Well SS-25 leaked at the Aliso Canyon Natural Gas Storage Facility operated by Southern California Gas Company (“Aliso Canyon Gas,” 2016). The leak persisted for approximately 16 weeks, expelling natural gas, toxic pollutants, hazardous chemicals and poisonous odors into the Porter Ranch community in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles County (“Porter Ranch,” 2016). The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (DPH) reported over 700 hundred complaints of health symptoms associated with odors from the leak from nearby residents (“Aliso Canyon,” 2016).

The concept of global warming has become one of the most widely debated and controversial topics of our time. Scientists learned long ago that the earth’s climate has powerfully shaped the history of humanity. However, it is only in the past few decades that research has revealed that humans have a significant influence on the climate as well. A growing body of scientific evidence indicates that since 1950, the world’s climate has been warming, primarily as a result of emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and the destruction of tropical forests. More importantly, an article titled "Global Warming" published in the New York Times shows that methane, a gas that is emitted from landfills, livestock and oil gas facilities,

Fart jokes aside, methane isn’t all that exciting. But for energy hungry nations such as Japan, methane could the key element in developing national energy independence. Methane in the form of methane hydrate, a crystalline form of natural gas found at the bottom of oceans and in the Arctic permafrost, will within the next twenty years reshape the global geopolitical landscape of energy.

On our planet, there is a small community of people in a town called Lost Hills, California. An unhealthy misery has struck Lost Hills. Lost Hills has lived in terrible and harmful conditions ever since toxic gas has been spilling out into the atmosphere out of oil and gas wells. These toxic gases poison the people every day leaving them exposed to several health defects such as bronchitis, lung cancer, birth defects and other adverse defects that are drastically overwhelming. These people suffer from these defects because oil companies choose to leak all of these toxins and choose to poison these poor people to make quick money, talk about inhumane. People cannot live without a clean supply of water; it is a need that everybody has and these gas and oil wells take that away from the people of Lost Hills. These toxic emissions poison the water supply everyday with their gases and this makes the people truly distraught. Without a refreshing supply of water to help these people live another day, more and more people will suffer at the fate of these oil and gas wells, contaminating the community of Lost Hills California and its atmosphere. (Prupis 2)