Shale Gas Well Blowout Raises Specter of New BP: Energy Markets

[highplainsdem]

Source: Bloomberg Businessweek

Shale Gas Well Blowout Raises Specter of New BP: Energy Markets
June 06, 2010, 9:28 PM EDT


By David Wethe and Asjylyn Loder

June 7 (Bloomberg) -- A Pennsylvania natural gas well “blowout” last week helped drive prices to a 14-week high on concern that tighter restrictions on offshore drilling following BP Plc’s Gulf of Mexico spill will spread onshore.

The incident on June 3 at the project operated by EOG Resources Inc. shot flames and drilling fluids 75 feet (23 meters) into the air, the state Department of Environmental Protection said in a statement on June 5. The well is in the Marcellus Shale gas find in Clearfield County, about 122 miles northeast of Pittsburgh.

-snip-

The BP spill is “drawing attention to” the risks associated with oil and gas production, said U.S. Representative Maurice Hinchey, a Democrat from New York.

Hinchey has sponsored legislation to require drillers to disclose the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing, in which drilling fluid is forced into the earth at high pressure to crack the shale and release the gas. The regulation, put in place in 1974, was scrapped in 2005, he said.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-06/shale-gas-well-blowout-raises-specter-of-new-bp-energy-markets.html

[PSPS]

1. "The regulation, put in place in 1974, was scrapped in 2005"

Hinchey has sponsored legislation to require drillers to disclose the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing, in which drilling fluid is forced into the earth at high pressure to crack the shale and release the gas. The regulation, put in place in 1974, was scrapped in 2005, he said.

Yet more steaming turds courtesy of bush/cheney.

[RamboLiberal]

2. Another Gas Well Explosion in WV today - 7 hurt

http://www.wpxi.com/news/23815961/detail.html

They hit a methane pocket drilling through an old coal mine.