VIDEO: Carrizo gas well venting in Pantego, Texas near school

This is a video of life near fracking. You can see the neighbors roof tops in the video.

Raise your hand if you want this near your home and your children’s school.

Hopefully we will have more information soon. So far the response has been the typical “Who’s on first.”

UPDATE: As you can see from the comments, this video might be from sometime around October. But, everything is perfectly fine because Carrizo has informed the City Manager, Sean Fox, that it’s just steam. See his email reply in the comments.

He is right about this:

The Texas Railroad Commission is responsible for regulating the well and pipeline control and maintenance the amount of venting that is allowed and they stated the gas companies have the right to “unload” water and/or vent gas during the course of normal operations as long as the unloading or venting does not exceed 24 hours or 72 hours in one month.

If they want to vent longer the RRC will gladly give them permission. However, they can vent and call it an emergency any old time they want to.

The one thing I’m working on with the gas company currently is the makeup of the water vapor being released or atomized. It is most likely frack water, meaning it is a mixture of gum guar (an emulsifier), an insecticide, and a rust inhibitor (like antifreeze) and sand and water but…the sand and water make up 99.5% of the mixture so all the other chemicals involved are less than ½ percent. I’m just not certain what affect that ½ percent has when atomized.

First, they don’t have to tell you what chemicals are involved. Carrizo has not bothered to register any of the fracking chemicals used in Tarrant County on FracFocus. So we are forced to look at the scant information provided by Carrizo in the Eagle Ford Shale. A few of the chemicals for one randomly selected well are:

• Hydrochloric Acid
• Silica Quartz – a carcinogen
• Hydrotreated light petroleum distillate (diesel)
• Quaternary ammonium salt – Confidential Business Information 1
• Aldehyde – Confidential Business Information 2
• Isopropanol
• Methanol
• Acetic acid
• Ammonium acetate
• Borate salts – Confidential Business Information 3
• Guar gum
• Glutaraldehyde
• Quaternary ammonium compounds, benzyl-C12-16-alkyldimethyl, chlorides
• Alcohols, C12-16, ethoxylated
• Amines, coco alkyl, ethoxylated
• Amines, hydrogenated tallow alkyl, acetates
• Ammonium chloride
• Ammonium phosphate
• Ethoxylated Nonylphenol – Confidential Business Information 4
• Fatty Acids, Tall Oil – Confidential Business Information 5
• Inorganic mineral – Proprietary
• Modified Bentonite – Confidential Business Information 6
• Naphthenic acid ethoxylate
• Polyacrylamide Copolymer – Confidential Business Information 7
• Polymer – Proprietary
• etc.

Second, on the FracFocus website it says the chemicals make up between 1/2 and 2%. In a minimal frack of about 2.5 millions gallons of water, that would be a minimum of 80 tons of chemicals.

Third, it’s not steam. We have proven this.

• Venting from flowback tanks contains the chemicals used during the fracking process, methane, volatile organic compounds and impurities from the formation including the possibility of radioactive material.
• Venting from the condensate tanks contains many of the same substances.
• Venting from the produced water tanks, ditto.

This has been proven over and over. Peer reviewed studies have documented the health impacts to humans and animals from exposure to these toxins.

Engineer Larry Hulsey works for industry. He is paid to say things like that there should be no danger to the residents.

It is irresponsible for cities to be so uninformed.