A Penn State study from a few years ago has found its way into the news.  Marcellus Drilling News has posted an article here.  If you have trouble viewing the article through that link, do a Google search for “Penn State Finds Chemical Migration in 3 PA Water Wells from 2010”.  MDN links to a bunch of the articles that have been published about the study.

The gist of the articles you will find at most news sources right now is that frack water is bad, and was found in three water wells, so fracking must be bad.

The reality is that the researchers thought the frack water had come from a bad casing job in the vertical portion of the well (the part that is not fracked) or from a frack water containment pit on the surface that was shown to be leaking.  It is splitting hairs to say that fracking is not the cause as it was a fracked well that was the cause, but the reality is that the actual fracking was not the cause.  If one reads far enough into most of the articles at most of the news sites one will find that they all point to something other than the actual fracking being the cause.

I can guarantee that fracked wells communicate with other wells in the area, pushing gas through naturally-occurring weaknesses in the formations between them, and probably pushing some frack fluid through, too.  It’s quite possible that fracked wells communicate with water wells and the surface.  There is not solid evidence yet that that’s the case.

Evidence of communication with the surface and with water wells has probably been covered up by oil and gas companies.  Affected landowners have most likely been given excellent settlements with confidentiality agreements attached.  If I were an oil and gas attorney working for one of the development companies, that’s what I would try to do.  One of these days a surface owner is not going to take the settlement, a case will go to court, and then we’ll all have the evidence at our fingertips.  Until then, it’s all just “he said, she said” and hearsay.  If anyone out there has hard evidence to the contrary, please give this office a call.