Shale gas drilling worries some Quebecers

[News]

Shale gas exploration along the banks of Quèbec's fertile St. Lawrence River has worried residents, town leaders and environmentalists, who say projects to extract the natural resource are forging ahead in a regulatory vacuum.

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[Twill23]

Stories like this anger me more and more. I personally work in the gas exploration field. Things like this are written by people who are extremely unknowledgeable of the process. Gas is extracted a mile(5280 ft) below the surface, while average well water is drilled no deeper than 300 feet. Gas drilling has been going on for some 50 years in the states. Infact Michigan is starting to become a popular place, especially northern Michigan.

[danthebuilder]

Stories like this anger me more and more. I personally work in the gas exploration field. Things like this are written by people who are extremely unknowledgeable of the process. Gas is extracted a mile(5280 ft) below the surface, while average well water is drilled no deeper than 300 feet. Gas drilling has been going on for some 50 years in the states. Infact Michigan is starting to become a popular place, especially northern Michigan.

Have you seen the movie gasland? They refute alot of things you just said. With nice video interviews of house after house of people who can no longer drink their own water due to fracking which was just recently deregulated.

Also, if its not a big deal why not let the EPA have oversight on the matter? Why did a loophole in the EPA's responsibility get put in there so that if they drill for natural gas & frac... then the EPA has no business testing water quality in the area? I mean if its so far away... Why not let the EPA test drinking water.

Drilling for natural gas has been going on a long time. Most of it has been done no where near cities & homes. Now that gas prices have gone up and the law has changed its not economically viable to invade neighborhoods and towns. Nobody cares about some water in the middle of nowhere being contaminated. But when it gets closer to home and can ruin and entire watershed thats something to worry about.

[Twill23]

Hello Dan, Firstly i'd like to welcome you to the site. There is a great wealth of fishing knowledge here from some great people. My reply is to solely express my opinion and to produce what i believe are hard facts to support this subject. In no way am i trying to "attack" you or anything of that matter. With that being said and knowing that this is my field of work i am VERY opinionated on this subject and will apologize now if i do end up getting too fired up and say something i shouldn't. I believe this will prolly be my last post on this subject for fear of causing too much trouble.(Brought on by myself)

i have seen the movie. I did not say anything that could possibly be refuted as false. The gas drilling is done ABOUT a mile under the surface. How deep is your water well? I will challenge your word of "Nice" for the video interviews. Much of this "movie" is of the narrator making idiotic faces towards the camera as he lights water on fire. These movies are in the same weight class as my childhood movies where my mothers hands shake from side to side as my first few steps are taken across the living room.

But lets move past the total neglect for any actual fact put into the movie and look at some real facts. I PERSONALLY worked in Dimock, PA. If you have seen the movie you will recognize the name and associate it with one of the "nice video interviews" that were done. I have PERSONALLY spoken with SOME of the 15 families who were filing the suit against Cabot Gas and Oil. The water was never tested before their sudden claims of "bad water." Cabot is reportedly to have drilled over 100 gas wells drilled by the end of this year. I will be the first to admit that the water issues are not because of the method of drilling, rather that of the drillers themselves. Most of these so called water issues people have are from spills. Weather it be sludge spills, diesel spills, or any of the many hazardous materials that could be mishandled.

With that being said the DEP(Department of Enviromental Protection) did fine Cabot some 120,000 dollars for spills.

These people were more angry about their agreed permit leases than they were about the water. These were the same people who agreed to lease their land for X amount of dollars, realized their neighbors got more and tried to grab some more out of the huge gas money pot. Sir i do not think you realize how much money is envolved with this entire gas search program. Cabot settled for a sum of 250,000 dollars.

You see there is so much money to be had in this all its getting to be overwhelming. Many of the issues you will see are with non land owners. Those who do not own mineral rights to their property or those who do not own a large amount of land. Farmers in and around the area stated above are receiving anywhere from 6,000 to 10,000 dollars PER ACRE just to have seismic data collected.(The process of finding out whats down there) But for those who don't have a legitimate stake of land they are receiving as little as 1,000 per acre(some areas even less).

I spent 8 months working around Dimock, and I will support gas search in anyways possible. I saw it turn around a dieing area. I saw it put HUNDREDS of unemployed people into work. Not just people working on the rigs, but people doing road construction(a large amount of semis drive up and down the roads and gas companies are paying to have roads re-done), people who do logging business(some areas trees do have to be removed to put in test wells or big rigs), people who do landscaping(all the big rigs hire landscapers to come smooth out the ground, AS WELL AS replanting of seeds and trees when the area is vacated), people who are in the trucking business(there is SOOOO much equipment that has to be moved daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. Many of the companies will hire people to move their equipment for them), hotels and motels(hundreds of people need to stay somewhere. This is a nomad type of job.) gas station owners as well as any little country store that has food or snacks(there is an overwhelming amount of hard working people who will stop in every single day and spend anywhere from 10-25 bucks a day in a gas station buying food and snacks for the days work)local car dealerships (Cabot gas and oil, the first day i was there, went down to a local Ford dealer and bought 3 brand new Ford F-150's for use in the field. A company like this has several hundred trucks that are used everyday and they get replaced pretty often.).

I will agree with you that all drilling does need to be regulated. The DEP needs to be involved. Laws need to be put into place. But it has to be taken into consideration that gas search is an economy changing type of even. Pennsylvania was getting to be just as bad as Michigan currently is, until gas exploration took off in the Marcellus Shale. In my educated opinion i will say its really turning the economy around in the state.

With that being said, we are currently working on SEVERAL projects in northern michigan. We have recently just finished a job in and around Hawks. Which happens to be only 30minutes from my home. I am not sure how data came out, nor am i sure how many test wells are going to be put in this area. Personally i hope and pray that there are a decent amount. I live near Alpena and had around 10 of my personal friends get hired into a seismic crew to help with the job in Hawks. Some of these friends have since quit and decided this work is not for them, although others have decided to stick with it and are in several other places like Texas, West Virginia, and Montana. All of these people were unemployed before this job was started.

This site is about fishing so lets bring that into play also. Salmon fishing on the great lakes, as we all know, is not a cheap hobby to participate in. I grew up fishing with my father in a small 17ft sport boat. 2 downriggers and and couple of dipsies caught us a few fish. Now i run 3 boats my self that i have bought and paid for with my own money. Over a hundred rods and more bells and whistles than you can shake a stick at. I am 21 years old and will be the first to say i am thankful for everything i have and i owe that to the field i work in.

I think a man said it best who owned a small gas station in South Montrose,PA "I was about to lose this store before you guys got here, now once you leave ill be able to take a 3 month vacation!"