Methane is migrating into groundwater from fracking wells causing explosions and fires where it builds up in buildings, and at least two rivers, the Condamine River in Queensland and the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania, are bubbling methane. Continue reading
Concentration Of Methane In Water Wells As A Function Of Their Distance From Marcellus Shale Wells (Click To Enlarge)
Government report points the finger at CSG as cause for bubbles in the Condamine River (Courier-Mail, August 2013) A Queensland government report has shown that methane bubbling along a 5km stretch of the Condamine River, in the Surat Basin, is consistent with being caused by coal seam gas (CSG) extraction and detected concentration in the air up to 300 ppm
Duke Study Links Fracking To Methane In Drinking Water (Environmental Working Group, June 2013) New Duke University study of 141 drinking water wells in the Marcellus Shale region finds much higher concentrations of methane, ethane and propane in wells within one kilometre of a natural gas operation
Three years after drilling, feds say natural gas in Medina County well water is potentially explosive (Akron Beacon Journal, January 2012) A federal health agency says explosive levels of mathane at two houses in eastern Medina County, Ohio are a public health threat, and has linked them to the drilling of two shale gas wells in 2008
Stray gas plagues NEPA Marcellus wells (Scranton Times-Tribune, July 2011) As shale gas drilling has increased in Pennsylvania, so has the prevalence of methane migrating into water supplies causing a blast in a Dimock water well, forced a family to evacuate a Terry Twp. home, bubbled up in the Susquehanna River and affecting 35 drinking-water wells in Bradford and Susquehanna counties according to state investigators
Attorney: Methane probed in NW Pa. house explosion (Charleston Daily Mail, March 2011) Methane gas from fracking operations migrating through homeowner’s water wells is being investigated as the cause of explosions and fires in two Pennsylvania homes over the last three months
Methane threat to drinking water (Nature, May 2011) Study by US environmental scientists at Duke University finds significantly increases methane concentrations in drinking water taken from wells within 1 km of one or more fracking operations in northeastern Pennsylvania and nearby areas of New York state
Water Problems From Drilling Are More Frequent Than PA Officials Said (Pro Publica, July 2009) Methane related to fracking has contaminated water wells in at least seven Pennsylvania counties and in one case was detected in water sampled over 15 square miles since 2004, when an explosion killed a couple and their 17-month-old grandson after gas seeped into their home