Stuff You Should Know - How the Frick Fracking Works

Episode Date: January 23, 2013

Fracking, the process of breaking trapped resources like natural gas and oil from shale, has led to a revolution in energy production in the U.S. It's also given rise to increasing worries that the process can have sweeping environmental impacts. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the 2012 Toyota Camry. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And this is Stuff You Should Know, a very serious edition. So don't even laugh once.

We're out the whole episode. We're just a couple of fracking podcasters. But we can't do that the whole time. I wasn't going to do it at all. Well, you know I would. I find it distasteful to substance something for the F-word. Yeah, sure. Even the F-word, I can barely get that out, calling it the F-word. Oh, yeah, yeah, right. You just want to say it. Yeah, don't say Fudgin. Right. I hate those people. Yeah. Fudgin. Midwesterners. Yeah, just don't even say anything at all. Yeah, just glower. Yeah, or say something entirely unrelated. But all it does is make

people think of the real F-word, which is like loses the spirit of your intent, which is to not curse. Oh, yeah, that's definitely a way to put it. That's one problem with it. All right. What's your intro? What's your fracking intro? Well, you know, we did that episode on peak oil. Yeah. And it was really funny that we recorded it when we did, because like two days after we're talking about the U.S. running out of oil, a report was released that basically said the United States is predicted to be energy independent by like 2030 at this rate. And we actually are. We probably are never going to achieve true energy independence.

That's just, I mean, 100% of our supplies of oil and fossil fuels and all that stuff created here, it's just it's never going to happen. But we're going to get closer and closer and closer. And in fact, in 2010, John Kerry, famous Senator, possibly a future Secretary of State. Oh, yeah. So you've been bandied him out. Okay. He said that the United States is the Saudi Arabia of natural gas and definitely natural gas is one of the reasons one of the ways that U.S. has suddenly experienced this huge boom in oil production. Yeah. Oil production, gas production, fuel production, clean, clean burning natural gas. But we will learn that doesn't necessarily make it clean over its life cycle. It's a big difference. Yeah. Some say it's as dirty as coal

over its life cycle, especially people who love coal. Yeah, that is one problem I had with this fracking article is and not just the article, the whole topic is everybody has a slant depending on who they're working for. Like, if you're an environmentalist, you're gonna have your slant. If you're working with the big oil companies, you're gonna have your slant. And they all say like these are the facts. Yeah, it's really annoying. Well, one of the reasons why everybody's able to get away with saying these are the facts is because this stuff is so new. Yeah. And so unstudied, I guess to this point. Yes. As far as published peer reviewed studies are concerned. And as far as massive amounts of fracking, like it's been around for a while, but yeah,

not like it's going on today. Right, exactly. Apparently, there's in some form or fashion, it's been around since the 19th century, the concept of fracking. But the fracking, like you just described, massive fracking operations carried out by huge energy concerns. That's a couple of decades old. Yeah, I think Halliburton started it in 1949. Yeah, they invented it. Did they? Yeah. Really? Dick Cheney? I don't think Dick Cheney invented it. He's like, give me that pipe. I'm gonna try something new. Yeah, so they developed the process at least. But it's really started to take off in the last few years. And in the last decade or two is when you started to see real concerns about what's going on here. Wait a minute,

what are you guys doing? Right. And that's where this idea that Oh, it's perfectly safe. Oh, it's going to cause a catastrophe has come about. And that's why we should probably say like we this isn't going to settle the issue. But you should keep your eyes. I hope this raises people's awareness of this. Well, yeah, I just on that note, I'd saw a study today that 35% of Americans have never heard of fracking. And about 28% said they've heard of it, but don't know what it is. Yeah. So that's that's a lot. Well, let's let's teach a few people. Okay, fracking, aka hydraulic fracturing, or if you're a total square hydrofracking, you know, like that's the kid is who thinks he's cool, but it's really kind of out of the loop. So he's calling it hydrofracking

still really just call it fracking. Sure. It's a it's a technique that's used to get to incredibly deep deposits of fossil fuels. Yeah, not always natural gas, but most of our discussion will be on that. Right. And I shouldn't even say fossil fuels because you can use fracking to get to incredibly deep deposits of water, sure if you wanted to. But the one thing in common that that all of this all of these techniques have is that you go down in a vertical line. And then all of a sudden you just cut to the right or cut to the left anywhere between 6000 to 13,000 feet down to get after shale to get after it and shale is this type of porous rock. Yeah, we did oil shell, right? Well, long time ago, years ago, maybe like 2008, we did oil shale. And it's a

type of rock. It may contain oil and may contain gas. It can contain water, but the stuff is trapped in it because of the tremendous pressure at these depths. Yeah. And with a fracking operation, you go down there, break it up, get it out, and it comes back up. Yep. And here in the US, we have a lot of the shale, specifically the Marcella shale is one of the main fracking grounds in the country. And what does it cover? Pennsylvania, Ohio, parts of New York, Virginia, Maryland, or West Virginia, Maryland. Yeah. It's huge. So that's where a lot of this stuff is taking place right now. And many more states in Europe are hot on the scene here to get into fracking. They think that there's about 2552 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the United

States. Wow. And about 500 trillion of that is in the Marcellus region alone. So it's a big deal. Yeah. New York just, they were letting it through. And then the governor kiboshed it for now and said, wait, maybe we should study this some more. Yeah. Because a lot of municipalities were taking it on their own to outlaw fracking in one form or fashion. Yeah. And this has cost like a huge problem because there's a lot of people out there who are saying, well, wait a minute, I own land. Yeah. I'm kind of happy with this idea. And I want to get incredibly rich overnight, like Jed Clampett did. Yeah. You know, where's my, where's my bubbling crude? Well, yeah, you do have two sides. You have some farmers that are like, this is contaminating our land.

And you have some farmers saying, I haven't been able to farm and make money in years. So I would love to sell my land off or lease my land and make some serious money. So it's not like every farmer is like, no, I don't want this. A lot of them do. No, it's very much divided and this is playing out in like town halls around New York and around the country, wherever fracking is possible, I guess. And it is definitely dividing communities. Yeah. All right. So let's, let's go a little more in depth about the process of fracking. In depth. Yeah. It's really pretty simple. It starts off like a conventional well, so you drill deep. I think you said between six and 13, they said the average is about 7700 feet down. Thanks for, I think, just peak energy as

well. Oh, okay. Yeah. And so, well, they go to wherever the deposits are. Right. So it just sort of depends. How do they find that out? I wonder, what's a good site? They, they detect radio activity, I believe, because this stuff is slightly radioactive. We'll get to that too. But I think that's one of the techniques they use is they analyze the radio activity and say, Oh, there's a bunch right here. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. So you got your regular well. And like you said, it, what's called the kickoff point, it's going to take a left or a right and become a horizontal line. And that can span anywhere from 1000 to 6000 feet. Then they stick something called a well bore. It's just basically a steel casing, like a big steel pipe. Right. And they

stick that down in there. And then they shoot a bunch of cement down and it comes out the bottom and goes back and fills it up on the outside, further encasing it. And they clear it out of the middle of the well bore. Then they clear that out. So you've got a, you know, a pipeline, I guess. Right. And then the actual fracking part takes place. Right. So I'm setting you up for that part. Oh, you were? Sure. You'd think after all these years, I would have noticed that. Well, so that you've got the well bore completely cemented and in place and it's going down about a mile off from the kickoff point. And it's right there in the middle of this shale deposit. And they send down a little tool. It's like a little cable scrambler. You know what I'm talking about? It looks kind of

like that. Yeah. And it's an explosive device. Yeah. And it blows a hole into a little holes, a bunch of little holes, in through the well bore, through the cement and into the surrounding rock. Yeah. Just a few inches. Right. Each one will, you know, be two or three inches of a little mini shaft, I guess. Right. So you've got the horizontal well bore and the cracks are then vertical perpendicular to it. Yes. Right. And then they plug that up and then move on and do it again all the way down the line. Yes. Of this, the horizontal kickoff point and the horizontal kickoff point and they blow them up and blow them up and blow them up. You've got all these perforations into the rock and then all of a sudden now you are prepared to frack. Yeah.

And I was setting you up. At this point they pump water. Well, they pump a lot of stuff. It's mostly water though. It's mostly water and sand and then what they call other chemicals. And although sometimes diesel fuels are part of this. Apparently they stopped doing that in 2003. That's not true. Well, they were supposed to stop it. Yeah. The EPA came up with something that sounds like it has a lot of teeth. It's called a memorandum of agreement. Yeah. And they asked the oil companies to sign it and say that they won't use diesel as part of their fracking fluid any longer. I didn't realize that people were still doing it. Yeah. A recent congressional investigation found that 32 million gallons of diesel fuel has been injected in 19 different states

between 2005 and 2009. So it's still going on. Well, that flies in the face of the memorandum of understanding. Yeah. The memorandum of understanding. Yeah. They didn't have teeth did it. Yeah. But you can get a permit to do it. That's messed up. Apparently you can get a permit but there is no office to process the permit at the EPA. So it's an effective ban, but they're still doing it. Okay. So you've got your fracking ready. You start actually the process of fracking, what you've just done, everything we talked about up to the water is preparing for fracking. Once you start pumping this water down at an incredibly pressurized state. Yeah. Like 9,000 PSI by contrast, you know, air compressor for your air tools in your garage. That's like 90 PSI.

9,000 PSI is just an incredibly pressurized state. Yeah. The water rushes down and when it hits those perforated areas, it cracks the the shale even further. Yeah. And eventually the the it also get that particulate matter that sand or whatever else that they added goes into those cracks and then keeps it open, keeps the cracks open. They are but it's enough because what you're talking about is like you're getting gas out of the exact rock rather than yeah. Just a little bit. Yeah. Sure. And then once the once you stop pumping the water and the pressure pushes it back up and eventually the water's done, the water that you set back down there comes back up and then it's followed by gas or whatever else. Yeah. And that water is wastewater that is and

we will get into this is one of the controversies how that wastewater is handled is kind of one of the things at the center point of the controversy. Yeah. So that's fracking. It's complex engineering wise, but it's actually kind of simple as a concept. And then the whole thing lasts from preparation, I guess the first drilling to the end of fracking about four months. But then this well that's just been developed can produce natural gas for decades, possibly years or decades. Yeah, it's all up to like 40 years even. So right. Okay. So that's fracking. That's fracking. And that's where the story ends. That's where the story ends. So we're going to present both sides of the argument like we try to do sometimes more successfully than others at other times.

Yeah, because if you're an environmentalist, you probably just noticed eight things that we said that are driving you crazy right now because it's like, well, what about this? What about that? We're going to address that. Well, let's take the pro fracking side. First of all, which right now, you know, includes President Obama. You know, it's not like we're not dividing this politically as best we can. Like he's in favor of it right now. And we also need to point out that we had a listener mail that point out that there was a there's an EPA study that was commissioned in 2011. That's really the most comprehensive study ever. And it'll be done in 2014. And I think it by the time this comes out, some preliminary notes should be should be in.

Okay. So we'll learn a lot more soon. And maybe the Obama administration will come out against it after that. But as of now, there's not a lot of hard science. Yeah, which is problematic. It is problematic. So on the pro side, you're going to say, you know what, we can, these horizontal wells are really sort of efficient in that you're not going to have above ground hundreds and hundreds of wells. This one well can go horizontally for 6,000 feet and do most of the work out of sight. Yeah. Of course, counter that with their like tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of these wells, fracking wells, and there's still a lot going on above ground. There is because the whole operation, while once they finish drilling, they remove the drill rig. But now you have pump trucks

coming in. Sure. It takes about 200 trucks to deliver a million gallons of water. Yeah, man, I saw this one mini documentary on this small town in Pennsylvania, and they're like on Main Street. And the guy was like, yeah, we used to sit out here at the sidewalk cafe and literally while they were filming this, it's like every other every third car that passed was a huge tanker truck right through like the middle of this like little quaint town carrying water to the site and removing wastewater and whatever else. So if it takes 200 trucks to carry one million gallons of water, some of these some of these operations use 10 million gallons. Yeah. So 2000 trucks just to carry it there. Right. Then you've got pump trucks. And I mean,

it is an operation that's true even though compared to oil drilling above ground, it's it's less. Yeah, it's more innocuous. That's right. So another pro is that natural gas is pretty great. And you're not going to find a lot of people to argue with that it burns very cleanly. It's a good solution. But it's the like we said over its lifetime, some contend that because of the practices, it's not any cleaner than coal in the end. Yeah, like if you burn it itself in a perfect world, as it emits one third the nitrogen oxides of coal, half of the CO2 and just 1% of the sulfur oxides. So it is like a lot cleaner. But then again, as part of the fracking process, you have like all these trucks that are using all this diesel that are coming to and from the site,

right? Yeah. Another problem with it is methane release associated with tapping natural gas. Apparently as much as 8% of the methane in a natural gas well is lost. And methane's bad. Yeah. It's a really serious greenhouse gas. It's worse than CO2 as far as creating the greenhouse effect is concerned. It's just there's typically less of it. And we usually produce less than we produce CO2. So there's an air pollution factor to it as well. Yeah, that's true. We should probably point out if anyone's seen the documentary Gas Land from 2010, it was the famous scene where the guy lights his tap water on fire. It's very impactful. Did you see it? Yeah. And you know, you can't see that and not go holy crap. Like they're letting this happen. As it turns out,

in fairness, the officials determined that it was a naturally occurring methane reserve at this particular homeowner's well. And it was not due to fracking. Right. His well had hit like a methane reserve. So that would explain what his flaming water. Exactly. But before that came out, I think Truthland, which was, I guess, an answer to Gas Land came out. Did you hear about that? No. Truthland was released by Energy in Depth, which is a pro fracking group. Yeah. Which if you go into SourceWatch is funded by oil companies. Yeah. But they released this documentary that said nothing about oil companies funding it and called it Truthland. It was exposed to propaganda like right out of the gate. Right. But there's definitely this propaganda war going on.

Yeah. Between pro and consides. Speaking of pro and cons, you got any more pros? I do. But quickly, just because that guy in Gas Land, it turned out to be a different thing, the companies have been fined for negligence with methane reaching water supplies. Like that has happened. Right. Which is not supposed to happen because if you're talking about like the Marcellus region, that's the typically very deep, deep shale, like 7,000, 10,000 feet deep. That's how far you have to drill down before you hit that kickoff point, right? Your groundwater reserves, your aquifers are going to be a few hundred to a thousand feet. Yeah. So if you pass through them and then you use your steel wellbore and encase it in cement correctly, you're not going to get

any release into that groundwater and the cracks that you're making, the fractures, are so deep and small enough that they're not going to travel all the way up. Right. Thousands and thousands of feet up to the aquifer. Just the pressure won't allow it. Supposedly. That's the logic behind it now. But there are things like coal bed methane fields that are typically much more shallow and are closer to aquifers. And those are the ones, if you're tapping those using fracking, you run a tremendous risk of methane getting into the water supply big time. But if you're doing deep shale stuff, as it stands now, all the evidence suggests that no, if you seal your wellbore correctly, you should be fine. Right. Well, that's the listener

mail pointed out that most of the issues of the problems have been because of bad concrete or incorrect well, this and that, not the fracking itself. But it's the same people doing that, so it still counts as part of the problem with fracking. Yeah. You can't say like, oh, the fracking segment of this operation went well. But of course, we had cracks all up and down that ruined everything. Sure. So come on. That's semantics. Yeah. All right. Some of them, the more last couple of pro arguments here, Josh, are revenue. It's a big one. 17,600 jobs would be created. And $125 million in tax revenue, if New York State lifted their fracking ban. New York State alone. Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of jobs, a lot of these are former farming communities

that are somewhat depressed. And a lot of people want those jobs. And anytime you're reducing our dependence on foreign oil, that's a good thing. And a worldview. So those are some of the pro arguments. Sure. And they're good ones. Yeah. So and again, we should say like the jury is still very much out. But there is a lot of common sense criticism of fracking operations. Yeah. Some have already been discarded. Like a lot of people are worried about that radioactivity. And the wastewater that does come back up is slightly more radioactive than it was when it went down, but not any that's as one professor put it, that's like the least of your worries with fracking is the radioactivity. Yeah. Another one is that it causes earthquakes, which is sensible.

You know, you're down there, you're drilling your blowing holes into the shale thousands of feet down. How can you not cause an earthquake? Apparently earthquakes are associated with fracking, but it's not the actual fracking. It's when you store wastewater in a retention pond, right reservoir induced seismicity. Oh, is that where it's coming from? Yeah. So there are a couple earthquakes that were associated with fracking, but not from the fracking process from storing the wastewater. Again, semantics. But if you ask me. So but the wastewater is probably the single most. I guess if you're an environmentalist, that's the smoking gun. Like that's the one that you can't get around if you're an energy company, because fracking uses tons of

water, lots and lots of water. I mean, millions of gallons of water to get to these and recovers maybe between 15 and 50% of that water. And then the water that is recovered is now way more toxic than it was before. So you're taking water from a municipal water supply. Yeah. Drinking water, people water people need sending it down in the earth and then getting maybe 15 to 50% back. And then the stuff you do get back is like, what are we going to do with this? Yeah, well, they the oil companies will say that they dispose of it in ways that adequately match state regulations, which may or may not be adequate. Yeah, may or may not be independent on the state. The regulations are a little more lax than others. I know a lot of the

the wastewater from Pennsylvania is deposited in surrounding states, because I think they have one of the more aggressive wastewater policies. They'll just say, ironically, New York, even though they banned fracking for now, allows Pennsylvania wastewater to be dumped there. Okay, so there's at least one municipality that has banned fracking fluids, like you can't buy or sell them or possess them in the city. And you aren't allowed to introduce any used fracking fluid into their waste treatment plants, like their their city water isn't allowed to treat fracking fluid. So yeah, and some of this water, like the wastewater, some of it is reused for other fracking operations, some of it is just which makes sense. Yeah, economically, it just makes sense to get as

much back as you can and then use it again, use the same water as much as possible. Yeah, that'd be a good idea. Some is treated, you're going to say in like a wastewater plant. Sure. Others, like a lot of the stuff that comes back up includes like ancient salt beds, salt from ancient sea beds. Oh, really? Yeah. And they use those on the to like clear off snow and ice on roadways. But they're starting to outlaw that as well. It's basically like the fracking industry went unregulated for a very long time. Like it was unregulated in that it was a drilling technique as far as the EPA was concerned. Right. And it wasn't until this environmental group leaf sued, I guess the EPA over some fracking techniques in the late 90s in Alabama before the EPA finally

started to regulate fracking. I'm sorry. What? I got a little a little into it for a second. No, I love it. We were talking about wastewater. Some of that water also spills. In June 2011, there was a well blowout in Clearwater County, Pennsylvania. Oh, yeah. It's a gas explosion, 16 hours of uncontrolled spill, about a million gallons of toxic waste into a creek in Moshen and State Park. I saw this one documentary where they interviewed a guy that used to, one of the blue collar guys used to work at the operation. And he was like, yeah, you know, some of them are heavily regulated and get visited by inspectors. And he went, but many thousands are not. And he said, I worked at one of those. And he said, at the frack pad, it was on top of

like a mountain area. That's where the bar is. Yeah, I guess so. But he said, you would look at this mountain on the side of it. And he said, it would look like it was bleeding, like this red oozy water just tumbling down into like the forest below. And he said, but yeah, some of them were regulated, some of them aren't. Yeah. Or inspected. And I think it's probably one of the same issues as the mountaintop coal removal is that you've got like a handful of inspectors for these like thousands and thousands of operations, which is not good. No. Wasn't there a spill of just not even wastewater, but it was straight up fracking fluid, like all the additives, which by the way, are for a very long time, energy companies said that their

fracking fluid mixtures were proprietary. And they wouldn't reveal what was in there. The EPA finally said, no, you have to, we need 100% transparency. So now, well, not 100% though, because there's still some, that is true. And dude, I saw that too. And I was like, great, finally, yeah, release the chemicals that you're, you're putting in there. And then they said that there's a, a bit of a loophole in that some of them can be still be listed as trade secrets. Well, it's like trans fat, like you can list, you can put trans fats in your food still. Right. And say that has zero grams of trans fat, as long as it has half a, half a gram or less per serving of trans fats, but you can still put that big zero on there.

It's very tricky. So some of the, some of the states outlawed, or some of the states said, all right, you have to tell us at least what your little trade secrets are, and we won't release them. And then some states like Colorado, believe it or not, just said, you don't even have to tell us what your trade secret is. So well, the ones that have been released, it's very, there's some unusual stuff in there. Walnut hulls, table salt, lemon juice. That sounds great. Laundry detergent, antifreeze. Okay, it's getting worse. Emulsifiers, apparently the price of this, what is it called? I want to say guar, but it's not guar, you know, guar the band. But it's like guar. It is like guar. But instead of a W, it's just a single U. It's an emulsifier,

using ice cream. And apparently tracking operations have driven the price of this up so much that the ice cream industry is like, what the heck, man? Like we, we just lowered our profit margin significantly. Is that why Ben and Jerry's is so expensive? No, Ben and Jerry's is expensive because it's so delicious. It is delicious. Chubby hubby. That's a good one. It's my favorite one. New York super fudge chunk. White chocolate in there. I like the offerings, the seasonal offerings too. Like I had some pumpkin cheesecake the other day that was really good. I have not tried that one yet. It's delicious. You know what else is good is there? It's a blueberry, Graham, Greek yogurt. Oh yeah, Emily had that as a good. It's very good too. The war on drugs impacts everyone,

whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that in on the prime example. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that will piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid.

Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. From Wall Street to Main Street and from Hollywood to Washington, the news is filled with decisions, turning points, deals and collisions. I'm Tim O'Brien, the senior executive editor for Bloomberg Opinion. And I'm your host for Crash Course, a weekly podcast from Bloomberg and iHeart Radio. Every week on Crash Course, I'll bring listeners directly into the arenas where epic upheavals occur. And I'm going to explore the lessons we can learn when creativity and ambition collide with competition and power. Each Tuesday, I'll talk to Bloomberg reporters around the world, as well as experts and big names in the news. Together, we'll explore business,

political and social disruptions and what we can learn from them. I'm Tim O'Brien, host of Crash Course, a new weekly podcast from Bloomberg and iHeart Radio. Listen to Crash Course every Tuesday on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. We've been doing good in this one. We've been talking about nothing but fracking. That's true. So depending on what website you go to, if you're worried about chemical additives, you will see stats from people like Haliburton that say it only makes up 0.5% of this mixture. But what they don't say is that can still equal 300 tons of chemical additives. Is that for a single operation? That's for four million gallons of water used in a fracking

operation would equal about 300 tons of these additives. Chemical additives. So there's a lot of this stuff. It may be only 0.5% to 2%, but there's still a lot of like many tons of harmful chemicals. And again, what are you doing with it? I mean, what do you do with it afterward? If you could reuse it, awesome. I have very few problems with it. But it's taking water from a water supply. And in Texas, fracking operations have been shown to actually have exacerbated droughts in the area. Around the Marcellus region, there's apparently plenty of water. Like for example, in Pennsylvania in a single day, the whole state uses about 9.5 billion gallons of water every day. The natural gas development fracking uses about 1.9 million

gallons of the 9.5 billion every day. 1.9 million to 9.5 billion. So it's insignificant, but in an area that's already water stressed, that's a problem. Taking all that water and using it for fracking, wasting it. And then what do you do with it afterwards? Yeah. Well, at least Texas has apparently that's like the leading state as far as having capabilities. They have many more disposal wells is what they're called there. But in places like Pennsylvania, where the Marcellus shale is, they don't have nearly the kind of disposal wells at this point yet, which leads to more treatment or treatment of the water and dumping it in places like New York. I want to say they're dumping it. I mean,

I don't think they're like putting a big tube out in the middle of the field in New York and just letting it run out everywhere. They better not be doing that. They probably aren't. I saw one stat where there is one serious environmental concern for every 150 wells, which if you multiply that over hundreds of thousands of wells, the reason a lot of people point out and say it's not so dangerous is like, where's the hard science on the effect right now? And this guy was like, well, we're not seeing it quite yet. Like come back in 10 years at the rate that we're going and you'll see some problems. Sure. One for every 150 operations. One serious environmental concern. That could be spill, could be leaching into the soil kind of depends.

And my whole thing is if it's really no big deal and it's totally safe and it's just not going to impact anyone in any way, then why do you exclude it from the Safe Water Drinking Act in 2005? Like why do you take congressional measures to have the language of what a pollutant is changed, which is what happened in 2005? Tell me about it. Well, the Safe Water Drinking Act, the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and this is not political. This happened. You can go look it up. It just settled down. Dick Cheney did push for these measures to go through. They went through. The Cheney loophole. The Halliburton loophole is what it's called. And I'll even give you the section. If you go to page 102, section 322, it covers hydraulic fracturing and it excludes,

in the Safe Water Drinking Act, the underground injection of fluids or propping agents other than diesel fuels. That's the one that they still said like you can't do. Pursuant to hydraulic fracturing related to oil gas or geothermal production activities. So basically, you need to keep your water safe unless it's hydraulic fracturing. Fractaline? Hydrofracking. Furthermore, in the Clean Water Act, they changed the definition of pollutant to not include water, gas, or other material which is injected into a well to facilitate production of oil or gas. So if it's so clean and no big deal, why are they going in and changing the term for pollutant and saying exclude fracking from Safe Water Drinking Act? It's a great question.

And why was the guy behind pushing this a former Halliburton executive? It's like, I'm no smart guy, but I'm no dummy either. Well, I think check the jury's still out, as we said, on this and we're waiting for this hard time to come in. But I feel like you should always be wary of any group or industry or anyone on either side that engages in a disinformation campaign that tries to sway the public using underhanded tactics that should always raise red flags to you. And they're both doing it right now, which is what's maddening. For sure. For sure. And anytime somebody's selling you something and you find out that like they're they're being underhanded, you should wonder about everything they're doing across the

board like with the energy and development, releasing Truthland. That was misinformation. That was a misinformation campaign. They didn't say who released it. And there's a called it Truthland. Yeah, exactly. And if you go on to the energy and development website in particular, it reads really defensive, real defensive, like the text of it does. I can't believe that they let whatever PR company put that together, release it like that because it's like, why are you asking? You know, right? Like, I'll bet you didn't know that. I'll bet you didn't know that natural gas could blow up your whole family if we wanted it to. Well, that did happen too. Well, tell them first about the studies in this month represents the

third month in a row where a major public university has taken a real black eye from being exposed for being in bed with the fracking community. Yeah, University of Texas study said that fracking is safe. And it's really no big deal. Well, I don't know if they said that they said it was safe. I don't want to paraphrase. And then they got some independent reviews of Professor Grotes study. And they said, Oh, you know what? He's on the board of a natural gas drilling company and received more than a million and a half dollars in compensation. And he didn't mention that anywhere in his study. No, nowhere. But what he did do is quit his job at the University of Texas afterward and kind of retreat quietly into his corner full of money.

And the department head over him was forced to resign too. But the thing was, it wasn't just that he didn't he didn't report that conflict of interest. He said that there was like flaws in the science. It was a bad article. It was a bad study. And they retracted it. And that's a big deal to retract the scientific study. Yeah, they're saying like, we want that back pretend we never said anything. Penn State tried to open a shale development school, I guess. Oh, yeah. And they couldn't because all the professors wouldn't wouldn't join. They couldn't get anybody to be a part of it. And then there was one more, I think, that was part of this little three month sweep that our buddy Wade Goodwin over MPR was reporting. Oh, yeah. Yeah, the shale resources Institute at

the State University of New York at Buffalo was closed after people wanted to know who was funding its work and whether its work was truly independent into studying fracking. So they closed this whole school down because they found out that it was basically funded by energy companies and that people were working for them rather than the public good. Wow. So there are plenty more anecdotal stories that we could not get to. If you type in fracking timeline, there's a great timeline, oddly enough, of of incidences and accidents. And you're, you know, I realized that there's no way to get oil and petroleum out of the earth without there being accidents at some point. Sure. It's just one of the dangers and unfortunate side effects. It's going to happen. But there are

a lot of them out there. Welles exploding. 2009 a fracking wastewater impoundment caught fire exploded in Avella, Pennsylvania. Soil tests conducted at the site found arsenic at 6000 times a permissible level. November to December 2007, 22 water wells in Bainbridge, Ohio contaminated with drilling chemicals. One explodes. A lot of methane explosions. Yeah. One family was killed. Pretty flammable. Like when they lit their pilot light in their house. Oh my gosh. Killed the family. So. And what was it doing to their brains leading up to that? Just huffing it all the time. Yeah, who knows? The levels were so high it blew up their house. I mean, how long was it accumulating? Well, anecdotally, you'll see interviews with people talking. It's just like Aaron Brockovich.

Like I went to drink my water after they started this operation and it had a little petroleum like residue on top and it tasted awful. And like they say don't even bathe in it. And like this is what I'm supposed to drink. I want to say, I want to really make sure everyone gets this. If you ask me, natural gas is a really great fuel. Yeah, like it really does. Chuck, if we could convert the nation's transportation sector to natural gas only cars and trucks, we would reduce CO2 emissions by 90%. No, I'm sorry. We reduce CO carbon monoxide emissions, which makes smog by 90%. CO2 by 25% and nitrous oxides by 60%. It really is a good idea. And it probably will be this excellent bridge fuel between coal and oil and whatever renewable we

come up with, wind, solar in the future. And we could become energy independent thanks to natural gas. And if fracking is the best way to do it, that's awesome. But we have to hold the people who are doing this feet to the fire to do it as safely as possible, to cut down on these incidents that you're talking about, to not pollute water, but to get it out as reasonably and efficiently as possible, but also as safely as possible. Because if we don't say you have to do this smartly and safely, they're going to do it as cheaply as possible because it's a mandate of their corporate charters to maximize profits, not maximize public safety, which is why it's important for people to be talking about this. It's not inherently bad. It just has to be done

correctly, it seems like to me after researching this. Right, agreed. And didn't you find a new fracking method that does not use the chemicals at all? Yeah, it's called gelled fracking. It uses a liquid propane. And when you pump it down in there, it doesn't come back up. It turns into vapor, which escapes back up as a vapor, which you can capture and reuse, resell, or burn as fuel for it to power the site. That sounds pretty good. No wastewater. Gelled fracking doesn't even water at all. And are people using this yet or is it? It's, they're patenting it. It's been used about a thousand times since 2008. Gotcha. I should probably say I invented it. So I have an enormous financial stake in this. See, I admit my financial interests. Yeah, Josh Jell, that's what it's

called. Right. But yeah, I ran across that today. It seemed like a pretty good jam, gelled fracking. Yeah, I bet one of the issues with that though is like, it probably requires some sort of redoing of your current systems, which probably would incur costs that companies don't want. I'm just guessing. But yeah, plus you have to sacrifice like 8,000 cats just to get the machine to start working. Who cares? This is inhabited by a god that loves cat sacrifice. Just leave my cats alone and you can have the rest. The war on drugs impacts everyone. Whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds

of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that will piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil asset. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. From Wall Street to Main Street and from Hollywood to Washington,

the news is filled with decisions, turning points, deals and collisions. I'm Tim O'Brien, the senior executive editor for Bloomberg Opinion, and I'm your host for Crash Course, a weekly podcast from Bloomberg and iHeart Radio. Every week on Crash Course, I'll bring listeners directly into the arenas where epic upheavals occur. And I'm going to explore the lessons we can learn when creativity and ambition collide with competition and power. Each Tuesday, I'll talk to Bloomberg reporters around the world, as well as experts in big names in the news. Together, we'll explore business, political and social disruptions, and what we can learn from them. I'm Tim O'Brien, host of Crash Course,

a new weekly podcast from Bloomberg and iHeart Radio. Listen to Crash Course every Tuesday on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. You got anything else? No. Fracking has been done. Yeah, we've been asked about this one for a while, so. If you want to learn more about fracking, you can type that word, F-R-A-C-K-I-N-G, into the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com, and I said search bar, so it's time for listener mail. Josh, before we do listen to mail. Yes. Our TV show is going on. We debuted last week, hopefully to great numbers.

And we would like to remind everyone to watch each and every week on Science Channel at 10 p.m. Following Idiot Abroad, which is our lead-in, which is great. And it's on Science Channel on Saturdays. 10 p.m. What else are you doing on Saturday night at 10 p.m.? Nothing. That's why you should watch our show, because you'll like it. Yeah, if you're out DVR it. And if you don't have a DVR and you don't have a TV or cable, you can get these on iTunes for, I think, a buck 99. Yeah, day after the premiere, so Sundays. That's right. So go to iTunes and search for stuff you should know on the television side of things. And we thank you for your support.

Yes. That's off to you guys. All right, listener mail. Yes. I'm going to call this Caving Sucks. This is from Michelle Mariani. Guys, I'm a Canadian speech pathologist currently living in Manhattan. Last month, I went to my honeymoon in Belize, inside of going a guided cave tour. I imagine a large opening in a rock, beautiful sparkling waterfall and lights, and rainbows coming from the ceiling. Kind of like you were talking about Chuck, but what it really turned out to be was five hours of total darkness, except for the headlight, of course. High-pressure water rushing over jagged moving rocks. I swam, stumbled, crabbed, walked for two and a half hours to reach a series of seven waterfalls

that I then climbed. Someday I looked back and laughed, but at the time I was screaming to Jesus to save me. Luckily, my crew thought I was hilarious and enjoyed my jokes, but I kept my tears on the inside. The guys were very well trained, also very relaxed, and I never felt like we were in too much danger. At first, I tried really hard not to touch the precious centuries old stalagg tights. As I stumbled through, but by hour four, I was grabbing at anything I could as I was going down, trying not to have my eyes stabbed out by jagged rocks. I can't believe I let random tourists, they let random tourists through these caves with no special training, or a fitness test. Living in New York City have had some crazy experiences,

such as inadvertently get caught in the middle of a shootout and being quasi-attacked by a gentleman on PCB, but caving was the scariest thing that has ever happened to me. Had I listened to this podcast before my honeymoon, I never would have gone and disaster would have been avoided. Thank you for the delightful podcast. Much love. Michelle Mariani. Thanks a lot, Michelle. Sorry about the PCP guy. That's really something. Maybe that requires its own email as well, I should think. It's always PCP. I wonder how many times it really is. Everyone's always like they were crazed out on PCP. Yeah. Maybe it was just ambient.

They were eating a stick of butter and coming for me. Let's see if you have a commentary about how something that we thought was awesome actually sucks in real life. We want to hear about that. And if you have any kind of fracking operation in your neighborhood, we'd love to hear about that as well. ProCon, whatever. You can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. And you can send us an email to stuffpodcast at discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Brought to you by the 2012 Toyota Camry. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops

are they just like looting? They just like pillaging. They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Langston Kermit. Sometimes I'm on TV. I'm David Boring. I'm probably on TV right now. David and I are going to take a deep dive every week into the most exciting groundbreaking and sometimes problematic black conspiracy theories. We've had amazing past notable guests like Brandon Kyle Goodman, Sam J. Quinta Brunson, and so many more. New episodes around every Tuesday,

many episodes out on Thursdays, where we answer you, the listeners conspiracy theories. Listen to my mama told me on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.