19 Jul Drilling Industry Executive: Fracking Today is Not the Fracking of 60 Years Ago

July 19, 2013 –

A retired Mobil Vice President explains that fracking today is not the same as how oil and gas drillers got to resources decades ago. After 31 years with the company, Louis W. Allstadt is speaking out about the lax regulation of the new-age fracking industry.

He has called the new form of fracking, which requires millions of gallons of waters and often toxic chemicals, “conventional drilling on steroids.”

In a must-read interview, Mr. Allstadt shared his views on the risks of the ever-expanding fracking industry.

“The industry will tell you this over and over again – they’ve been around for 60 years, things like that. That is correct,” Mr. Allstadt told Truth-out.org. “What’s different is the volume of fracking fluids and the volume of flow-back that occurs in these wells. It is 50 to 100 times more than what was used in the conventional wells.”

“The other [difference] is that the rock above the target zone is not necessarily impervious the way it was in the conventional wells. And to me that last point is at least as big as the volume. The industry will tell you that the mile or two between the zone that’s being fracked is not going to let anything come up. But there are already cases where the methane gas has made it up into the aquifers and atmosphere. Sometimes through old well bores, sometimes through natural fissures in the rock. What we don’t know is just how much gas is going to come up over time.”

Click here to read the complete interview with retired Mobil Vice President Louis W. Allstadt.