Beware the French cuff

A commenter (Cliff Schecter, whoever he is) on Huffington Post had these unkind words to say about Rick Perry.

Perry, meanwhile, is a "cowboy" who wears Armani suits and French cuffs (seriously, French cuffs?). Attacks stimulus spending while taking a heaped helping of it to bail himself out. Uses taxpayer money to enrich his corporate-lobbyist friends -- and endangers the United States of America by inviting a Chinese telecom company into Texas that George W Bush's national security team warned him would pose a cyber-security threat to our military -- after talking tough on the Chinese in his children's book: Fed Up.

I can think of another french-cuff wearing "cowboy" governor. I've even seen him wear French cuffs, a silk scarf around his neck, and a Carhart coat, all at the same time. Oh, and a Cowboy hat style hard hat, for a ground breaking ceremony.

Fracking

Bridge Energy is planning to do some drilling in Payette County in an effort to determine whether there are viable natural gas fields available there.  As part of that, they intend to conduct fracking operations.

Various articles about fracking are available here.

Anyway, the articles frequently mention that, in addition to the water pumped at high pressure into the ground, the companies also inject chemicals.  I have been wondering why, until I read this article about petroleum.  It's nice written and well worth a read if you're interested in this at all.

The new gas deposits are contained in porous rock, kind of like a sponge.  Fracturing the rock allows the gas to escape.  The rock containing the gas is porous, but it also must be permeable, i.e., the pockets of gas must be somewhat connected so that all (or most, or at least much) of the gas will flow out once it's fractured.  Here's the money quote from the article:

Another involves fracturing the reservoir rock by pumping fluids and sand into it under high pressure. The fluids open cracks, and the sand keeps them open to let out the petroleum. This can overcome low permeability, and in the eastern U.S. states large new reserves of natural gas have been found through such techniques. Treating the wellbore with various acids or solvents can also raise permeability.

So, I guess the acids and solvents dissolve some rock and create or enlarge the connections among the gas pockets so that the gas will flow out faster.

Well.  That's odd.  Knowing the reasons for injecting acids and solvents into the ground doesn't really make me feel any better about the risks to the ground water.