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All posts tagged 'oil + gas'

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Fear of fracking in the oil and gas biz

Here's the best story I've read to date explaining what "fracking" - the new technology that is unlocking heretofore unobtainable oil and gas out of "conventional" oil and gas fields - is all about. From the Globe & Mail, Sat. March 10, 2012 edition,http: "Fear of fracking: How public concerns put an energy reniassance at risk." And it's a considered review of the environmental worries around fracking. Seems to me there is a quite simple solution to immediate fracking concerns, that all the underground explosions are upsetting the natural order of things in the sub-stratas, a fear that contaminates could leak into clean-water underground acquifers. Whether this fear is justified is a whole different story. Most fracking happens hundreds, if not thousands of metres below the water zones that play into the Earth's ecological cycles. Responsible governments should simply impose no-drill precautionary safety zones - at whatever distances the scientists agree upon - around all hamlets, villages, towns and citi ...

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Oil's well with Alberta Energy - Hicks on Biz column from The Edmonton Sun, originally posted Saturday, March 03, 2012

Oil's well with Alberta energy 6 BY GRAHAM HICKS ,EDMONTON SUNFIRST POSTED: SATURDAY, MARCH 03, 2012 12:29 PM MST | UPDATED: SATURDAY, MARCH 03, 2012 12:39 PM MST 1Change text size for the storyPrint this storyReport an error If you’re going to understand the nature of business in Edmonton, understand just one thing.All roads lead to energy.Oil, natural gas, and that poor kid on the wrong side of the environmental tracks, coal.You likely know the essentials – 300 to 600 million years ago, all things lush and green were deeply buried and eventually decayed into hydrocarbon molecules.Mother Nature did us a big favour, pushing up the Rockies so those hydrocarbons oozed eastward and were concentrated under what happily happened to be Alberta.Generally speaking, natural gas is really deep, conventional oil is deep, and heavy oil close to the surface. Alberta sits on top of one of the world’s 40 major oil basins.Ever since the Leduc #1 oil well hit pay dirt in 1947, we have fretted over oil’s end.Once the big under ...

Recommended oil + gas blog from University of Alberta geologist Murray Gingras

When I took The Fundamentals of Energy, Environment and Sustainabilty at the University of Alberta in 2010, petroleum geologist professor Murray Gingras handled the geological side of the multi-disciplinary course.

He was one of the better teachers I've ever had, able to present his material in a way that was interesting, fascinating and somehow stuck in your mind!

Murray has been writing an oil and gas blog that's covering some important aspects of Alberta's oil and gas, i.e. the pros and cons of fracking and other social issues surrounding oil and gas extraction.

He's good, because A) he knows his stuff inside out, B) he's not writing from any pre-determined ideological viewpoint and C) he writes clearly, in a style most of us can read.

Good bookmark for anybody who follows the sociological issues around Alberta's #1 industry and the source of most of our wealth.