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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Do you have the faintest idea what percentage of fracking wells fail in the first year? After 20 years? Of course not. Facts... not your thing. You just believe they're safe because they told you so.

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Chief among them is the notion that a "leakproof well" is possible. We've heard time again that strict regulation is the key to moving forward on fracking, and that new regulations should make sure that industry constructs leakproof wells that do not pollute the water table. There is no such thing as a leakproof gas well. The gas industry knows this; in fact, it has known it for decades.

The part of the gas well that they're relying on to protect groundwater is simply cement: about a 1-inch-thick layer between the steel casing and the surrounding rock. Cement is permeable before it sets, subject to cracking afterward and can never be made leakproof. A 1-inch layer could never be adequate when groundwater is at risk.

The gas industry's own documents and case studies show that about 6 percent of cement jobs fail immediately upon installation, and recent experience in the Pennsylvania Marcellus shale has borne this out over and over again.

Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection has tracked gas leaking from wells across the state. They found 6.2 percent of new gas wells were leaking in 2010, 6.2 percent in 2011 and 7.2 percent so far in 2012.

When the cement fails, it opens a pathway for gas and other toxins involved in the drilling and fracking process to migrate into groundwater and to the surface.

Cementing failure was what caused the blowout of the Macondo Well in the Gulf of Mexico, the ongoing enormous gas leak in the North Sea and contamination of groundwater onshore from Pennsylvania to Wyoming. Over the nearly four years the "Gasland'' film team spent researching the issue on the ground, there was nowhere in the hundreds of cities and towns in 20 states we visited that didn't have a significant groundwater contamination problem resulting from drilling and fracking.

The gas industry has been studying the ongoing problem for decades, and knows it full well. In a report entitled "Well Integrity Failure Presentation," drilling service company Archer reports that nearly 20 percent of all oil and gas wells are leaking worldwide. A 2003 joint industry publication from Schlumberger, the world's No. 1 fracking company, and oil and gas giant ConocoPhillips, cites astronomical failure rates of 60 percent over a 30-year span. Industry reports on the problem point to its persistence and the impossibility of completely preventing it.

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