Also interesting. My issue with shale oil and fracking is the impact on the ground itself. We have had a shall we say, 'mini boom' on well drilling right here (in my backyard almost). While we did not allow geophysical exploration on our owned land, the land owner across the road did and a drilling company sank a hole about 500 feet from us.
First off, it was drilled last fall and winter. It's a noisy operation that goes non-stop, 24-7 with no let up. We live in a very rural setting (farming) and we aren't accustomed to noise and commotion, let along bright lights at night (the drill rig is all lit up with huge lights at night). Not on my property but plenty close....
The driller literally tore up a field getting in and out, put in an all weather access road to the wellhead but the heavy trucks tore up our road real bad, so bad, it's still rough a year later.
So they drilled the well and it was a dud so they came back in this last spring and deepened it some more and hit oil....
Meanwhile, our well water went decidedly down hill in quality. We now have 'red' water where we had no issue prior to the drillers. I'm think that they somehow impacted the aquafier. We've lived here almost 40 years with no 'red' water. Hard to prove or disprove I suspect.
Interestingly, they were pumping the well 24/7 and pulling at least 3 tanker trucks of crude out everyday until the oil (gas prices) started to slide, then they shut the well off, locked the chain link gates (around the well site) and haven't been back since. That tells me it's a definite 'for profit' operation. Playing a waiting game with the oil.
I'd have preferred it to be a 'dry hole' myself. The stuff stinks. We can smell it when the wind blows our way, which it usually does and there is a gas flare that burns too. Really disrupted our way of life and we had no choice.
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