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Farmrail sets traffic record
Why does it not say how many carloads per year, both of oil and total traffic?
Just thinking out loud, but if they have to frack, maybe it would be better to do it on public lands further away from people’s water wells. Fracking is turning out to be a real threat to drinking water. I know it’s a hot issue here in west central Pennsylvania (Butler County). There ARE families right here in our county who have lost their wells due to fracking so it’s not just tree-huggers, it’s real people.
Mr. Hendricks, they have been fracking wells around the Farmrail area since Earl Halliburton came up with the idea, 60 some years ago. The town of Elk City, for example, gets most of its drinking water from water wells, as do several of the other local towns. This is one of the reasons those of us in the oil and gas business, and from historic oil and gas production areas get so frustrated with all the tales of destuction and woe resulting from our work. We’ve lived around it all our lives, you would think we have seen some of the damage in the places we’ve always worked. Another frustration is for those who have become very wealthy benifitting from O&G, such as those who jet all over the country singing songs at huge stadiums or those who helicopter into their movie set in the South Pacific, yet they protest and moan over hard working women and men making all of this possible for them.
One other thing, if not for working on private land, the recent oil and gas production bonaza would not be happening. Public land production has gone down for the last few years.
Excuse my rant, but the Chicken Little “Sky is falling” NIMBY attitude really bugs me…
Mr. Hendricks, they have been fracking wells around the Farmrail area since Earl Halliburton came up with the idea, 60 some years ago. The town of Elk City, for example, gets most of its drinking water from water wells, as do several of the other local towns. This is one of the reasons those of us in the oil and gas business, and from historic oil and gas production areas get so frustrated with all the tales of destuction and woe resulting from our work. We’ve lived around it all our lives, you would think we have seen some of the damage in the places we’ve always worked. Another frustration is for those who have become very wealthy benifitting from O&G, such as those who jet all over the country singing songs at huge stadiums or those who helicopter into their movie set in the South Pacific, yet they protest and moan over hard working women and men making all of this possible for them.
One other thing, if not for working on private land, the recent oil and gas production bonaza would not be happening. Public land production has gone down for the last few years.
Excuse my rant, but the Chicken Little “Sky is falling” NIMBY attitude really bugs me…
Bradley,
FYI, Wider use of fracking didn’t begin until the mid-1970s. Up to the early 2000s, most fracking was on vertical gas wells with only one or two fracks. With commercialization of the Barnett Shale in Texas, horizontal drilling was used for the first time on a wide scale and pumping pressures and operating times increased.
Fracking boomed after the Energy Policy Act in 2005 exempted it from compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Air and the Clean Water Act. Also, the CERCLA Superfund Act doesn’t cover fracking sites.
Regulation was then left up to the States and has been piecemeal. This has allowed the energy industry to keep the exact chemicals used in fracking fluids secret. But here are a few for those used: hydrochloric acid, Sodium chloride, Polyacrylamide, Ethylene glycol, Borate salts, Sodium and potassium carbonates, Glutaraldehyde, Guar gum, Citric acid, Isopropanol, zirconium, chromium, antimony, titanium salts, Aluminium phosphate and ester oils, plus a bunch more. And YES, this stuff CAN, and HAS, polluted wells that provide drinking water.
One other thing, that haze you will be seeing in the air during the summer and fall is not from automobiles.
If fracking is such a great thing, why did it need to be exempt from almost all federal regulations before it became doable?
Fracking does have it’s pluses. It is great for the railroads, I am happy for UP, BNSF etal. It is putting many people back to work and is great for the economy. In the short term.
This aint your grandfathers fracking.
Imagine the benefit to railroads and the economy if the government was supporting this new type of oil exploration on public lands!
Now Farmrail needs to get to work and reopen the line between east Weatherford and Bridgeport. The track is still there but most of the bridges are washed out. This would give them a conection with the AT&L’s line from Bridgeport to El Reno and allow them to interchange with the Union Pacific. Currently the only Class 1 they interchange with is BNSF and they are at their mercy.